WHAT BOTH CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS SHOULD WANT

Please, don’t stop reading after the next statement. Unlike many conservatives, I do not desire our next Supreme Court Justice to be one who is chosen simply for meeting the criteria that he thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and, thus, the legalization of abortion ended. I think such a desire is as wrong as the liberal who says he wants the next Supreme Court Justice to be one who will uphold the ruling. To me both expectations of a Supreme Court Justice are wrong. Both appeal to the possible justice’s views, desires, and personal intentions. No. I think we should desire a Supreme Court Justice who is knowledgeable, skilled, and honest in interpreting and applying the Constitution and laws according to their literal, contextual meanings and according to the intention of the authors. Although it is impossible for a person to divorce and divest himself completely of his ideology, we should not desire a justice who would bring his ideology to the Constitution and would interpret it according to that ideology. If it is wrong for a liberal to do so, it is wrong for a conservative to do so. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, it shouldn’t be because justices want to overturn it, think it should be overturned, or simply because they are against killing babies. It should be because the Constitution clearly protects life, even the life of the unborn. It should be because murder is murder whether it takes place inside or outside the womb, and the law has declared that murder is wrong and punishable. The liberal reveals his disdain of the literal, intentional interpretation of the Constitution by joining the brouhaha protesting that a nominee for the Supreme Court must “want” to uphold Roe v. Wade. If the liberal believed a literal, contextual reading of the Constitution supported a woman’s right to abort, he would be unafraid of a nominee who has sworn to interpret the Constitution literally and apply it faithfully. The liberal’s panic over a Constitutional literalist nominee reveals that he must know that a woman’s right to kill her unborn is NOT in the Constitution. If it were there, the liberal would also desire a nominee who would literally interpret the document. It is this realization that the Constitution does not allow for abortion that drives both the vitriol against a literalist, constructionist, nominee and the push to get the public to see the Constitution as an antiquated document reeking of historical prejudices that is incapable of addressing our times. Again, if the right for a woman to end her unborn’s life was protected by the Constitution, the liberal should be unafraid of and even desirous of a nominee who would literally interpret the Constitution. Likewise, the conservative should not succumb to thinking a nominee must be found who is driven by an ideology that says Roe v. Wade must be overturned. The conservative should desire that the nominee literally interpret the Constitution. A literal interpretation would protect the unborn and, ultimately, when challenged, overturn Roe v. Wade. A faithful jurist will interpret the Constitution even contrary to his personal ideology and desires. We should desire this of the conservative as well as of the liberal nominee. The same is true of the Bible. The desire should be to interpret it contextually, literally, honestly, and faithfully—even if it goes against one’s preconceived ideology and desires. If what we believe is really in there, we should be unafraid of its literal interpretation. Too often both liberals and conservatives take their ideology to the Bible rather than from it. In the end we would all have to agree with Mark Twain. “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do.” Neither the Bible nor the Constitution are really that unclear or hard to understand. It is what we want to find or not find in them that muddies the water.

WHAT BOTH CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS SHOULD WANT

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