Art of Conservatism---Antonin Scalia: The aftermath (updated)

I was having lunch with my lovely wife Kathy in a local restaurant that Saturday afternoon, when my phone erupted with the Fox News App sounder. There it was: “Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Dead at 79.” Now, that was an OMG moment!

Instantly crossing my mind was a word my mother used that I've never heard anywhere else: Thunderation! No need to guess at the meaning of that. Within a few minutes my reagan.com E-mail in-box had two messages in it, both from Conservative friends, both saying roughly the same thing: “The country is lost. It's a sad day.”

Antonin Scalia was one of the two staunchest Conservatives on the Supreme Court. He was the point/counterpoint to the other Conservative Justice, Clarence Thomas. Scalia was far and away the more loquacious of the two, always with his rapier wit at the ready, his disdain for those who exuded any disrespect for The Constitution always on display. He was in striking contrast to Justice Clarence Thomas, the Silent Conservative on The Bench. President Obama, on hearing the news, commented that Scalia was “a larger than life presence on the bench” and a deeply influential “brilliant legal mind” with an “incisive wit.” True as his words were (for once), Mr. Obama just has to be licking his lips at this turn of events, for now he has the chance to make permanent the change that he has struggled to make in this country, from a bastian of self-reliance to a third-world entity. For him, this is a true legacy moment.

The Liberal/'progressive'/statist wing of politics in this country believes in the Constitution as a 'living, breathing, changeable document'. It is their way of transforming it from the bulwork for We The People against a rapacious, over-bearing and over-reaching government that it is becoming, to a mere footnote of 'a piece of paper', as Mr. Obama calls it. For his part, Antonin Scalia had nothing but scorn for that concept. “If that is what they want, a 'living, breathing Constitution'”, he once stated, “then I much prefer the dead one.”

We The People, whom that Constitution was and is supposed to protect, are going to miss Justice Scalia a lot. Too many of us just don't know it.... yet.

But, can anything be done to make up for this loss? Is a Supreme Court that won't aid and abet the driving of America straight into the ground even possible? Well, it is, but I don't have to tell you that achieving it isn't going to be easy. Bottom line is that, now, We The People are going to have to get directly involved, to give a damn about whether we really want to keep this country as it should be, or to throw it all away.

Yes, I mean the Senate. That's it---the bulwark, the firewall, the last bastion. Now think of the all those RINO's in there. Is there a chance for us at all? Now, since the first edition of this AOC essay was written (this is the second), many of the Republicans in leadership of the Senate are saying that there is no way that any of B. Hussein O's nominees (any of them, they say) will see as much as a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, let alone see the light of the Senate floor. Umm, sure, we've all heard this before, haven't we?

Look, anyone who believes that Barack Obama is going to nominate a really ethnically attractive someone to the Supreme Court who also believes in the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, or any other safeguards of liberties or the rights of the Individual to be free of Government Intrusion into our lives, has another thing coming. Read that, temptation. Obama will have a whole host of these surface-attractive Statists ready to parade before the Senate. One of them of my knowledge believes that the establishment of property rights constitutes racism. And that's just one! Given such a lineup of suspects, there's little or no reason to believe that any of His nominees should ever be allowed to be fitted for a black robe. That means that the Senate is going to have to be persuaded, or shall we say super-encouraged, and in a loud voice, from We The People, to stick to their promise, and to their guns (figuratively, of course) and refuse to act on any and all of Mr. Obama's recommendations, right up to next January 21. Keep the Senate in session to avoid recess appointments. Use all the tricks that the Left uses. Hey, this is politics—war by other means!

Thus, the effort to ignore all of Mr. Obama's nominees has to start now, and must continue without letup until the beginning of the next Congress. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. We The People, for our part, need to have the ammunition, the facts on all these SCOTUS nominees, to reinforce our opposition. That means that every candidate must be vetted by us, as soon as they are announced, or before if possible. And we must to be ready to do this over and over again. We must maintain the energy we need to keep on keeping on, until the next Inaugural Day, when, if prayerfully a Republican/Conservative is elected President, we can get the kind of Supreme Court Justice, indeed, the kind of Supreme Court that this country needs. That's a lot of energy, but this is the future of the country we're talking about here.

Now, you non-believers who are reading this can go read something else, since what I'm going to say is antithetical to your sensitivities, but here's my take on this: God has just thrown us the ultimate challenge, in the form of a question: “How much do you care to keep the country that the Founders, with my help, gave you?” We The People must rise up, not in revolution, but in solidarity with the Founders, to make sure that the Supreme Court, which has the most lasting influence on where America is going, to re-establish the concept which is in line with the Freedom which God has given us, and to reverse some of the anti-Freedom laws, regulations and rulings which have come down on our heads across the last 100+ years.

Are we up for the battle?? For Art of Conservatism, I'm Art Reis