Justice Gorsuch vs. the U.S. Preamble

Comments after reading the book: A Republic if You Can Keep It, Neil M. Gorsuch, 2019.

Introduction

Did you imagine a culture without chaos? Do you think most citizens would like to live with mutual, comprehensive safety and security so that individual citizens may pursue the happiness they prefer? Many people tolerate the happiness someone else designed for them. I appreciate Supreme Court Associate Justice Gorsuch’s generous sharing in his book, A Republic if You Can Keep It, and perceive he tolerates my citizenship.

I consider Justice Gorsuch and all fellow citizens, first, fellow citizens---American commoners. However, not every citizen is of the society We the People of the United States as abstractly proposed in the U.S. Preamble. Many citizens arbitrarily, egocentrically elevate the public service they choose. Many judges forgot they began with "I don't know" in a nation wherein many citizens work to discover the-literal-truth, and expect fellow citizens to aid the research for ineluctable evidence.

Ours is not a mixed Constitution that designates human rank, like clergy, lords, judges, lawyers, and workers. Nevertheless, citizens divide themselves according to trust-in and commitment-to their interpretations of the U.S. Preamble. Some assign themselves to a minority with no intentions to join Civic Citizens of the United States, a more accurate expression of citizens who aid the U.S. dream of public discipline for responsibel independence.

I study and listen to fellow citizens who are willing speak about the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, which I call “the U.S. Preamble.” Only recently, I discovered that in the phrase “ourselves and our Posterity,” living families are the “ourselves” to the coming generation of descendants and legal immigrants. Thus, living citizens are 1) “posterity” to the long-past generation including framers and signers of the 1787 Constitution and 2) “ourselves” to the coming generation.

Not every citizen is of “ourselves.” Only those citizens who trust-in and commit-to their earned understanding of the U.S. Preamble’s proposition join Civic Citizens of the United States. They may be appreciated among fellow citizens, some of whom conduct errant lifestyles under influences for reform such as law enforcement. Some fellow citizens think crime pays. Other mistaken citizens would impose their religion/spiritualism both on self-citizenship and on fellow citizens. I cannot think of a more egregious tyranny than to impose arbitrary concerns.

The U.S. Preamble is an abstract sentence, and the entity Civic Citizens of the United States acts on personal comprehension and individual interpretation. Each citizen who owns an individual interpretation may consider it among their most precious personal properties. I doubt many citizens understand these statements. I share them because I think a civic culture is attainable in the near future.

I share my continually improving interpretation of the U.S. Preamble so that fellow citizens may criticize my understanding and thereby enhance my civic life. My interpretation today is:  Civic citizens of the United States connect for 5 public disciplines---integrity, justice, peace, strength, and prosperity---in order to encourage responsible human independence to living inhabitants. I have no idea that the preamble’s authors would be pleased with my interpretation. However, their 52 abstractly-phrased words created my opportunity/obligation to earn my own view of their profound proposition. My understanding is developed in my blog, promotethepreamble.blogspot.com, where appreciation for contributions by over 70 people may be found.

Two features of the U.S. Preamble’s proposition make the U.S. the best known place to live, in my view. First, the entity does not specify norms by which either the 5 disciplines or the purpose may be measured; thus, the consequence of the U.S. Preamble may be the standards posterity’s posterity approaches or ultimately reaches. Second, the 6 dependent propositions do not include spirituality/religion, implying private pursuit of spiritual goals rather than civic, civil, and legal practice. According to the U.S. Preamble's disciplines, fellow citizens who accept elected or appointed government office ought to commit to its purpose without the attempted Anglo-American-consignment “so help me [whatever-God-is].” Imagine a nation wherein elected officials rendered their oath of office ending, with ". . . so help me to posterity." Perhaps most Americans would find trust-in and commitment-to the U.S. Preamble’s proposition, as they view it, to be in their own self-interest.

My reactions to Justice Gorsuch’s views:

The content of Gorsuch’s book makes me doubt the wisdom of my two votes for Trump/Pence (but not enough to make me regret not choosing Clinton). The problem is that I strongly oppose Gorsuch’s hopes for so-called “Anglo-American law.” I doubt Gorsuch regards me as a member of the U.S. Preamble’s formal entity/society We the People of the United States. That, if nothing else puts us in a common group: perceiving each other to be dissidents to public discipline with fellow citizens, or whatever Gorsuch's interpretation may be. I cannot fault Trump for choosing Gorsuch to offset a different, serious threat to the preamble’s society: social democracy or mass chaos. However, I want to discover integrity rather than preserve arrogant tradition.

Turning to some phrases Gorsuch used, I was delighted to read “civic understanding” and think it invites responsible human liberty. “Self-governance” is not possible since physics and its progeny---mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and imagination, for examples, constrain human independence. My view came from Albert Einstein (d. 1955). Framer Benjamin Franklin (d. 1790) cannot constrain living citizens’ use of Einstein’s civic discoveries. (Scalia’s angry bear story is about physics more that social bravado.) The hyperbole “This Constitution . . . [is] the supreme Law of the Land” pales before physics. In other words, the Constitution’s errors fruitlessly conflict physics. The judge who uses the Constitution to try to oppose physics begs woe. For example, allowing technologists to ignore the dignity and equity due the human ovum or the spermatozoon or the single-cell embryo begs woe---encourages adolescent infidelity toward life's beginning elements by psychologically immature adults. Making it a religious issue prolongs the cultural immaturity.

The fellow citizen who accepts Einstein’s political principles views “originalism” as the first consideration by which Congress legislates laws so as to develop statutory justice based on the-literal-truth. That is, ineluctable evidence for actual reality. There is nothing wrong with the Supreme Court advising Congress in order to develop statutory justice, and Congress must conform to physics.

I read the book title again when I read “democratic self-government.” Try the oxymoron democratic self-discipline or “hanging together” to replace “the rule of law.”

Often, I was confused by Gorsuch’s seemingly interchangeable use of “founders” and “framers.” For example, the passage from “At our founding” to “framers also knew that with a republic comes responsibility.” Maybe this comes from blending the Declaration of Independence (1776) into the U.S. Constitution (1787), which I consider both unconstitutional and un-civic. The preamble, ratified in 1788, legally terminated the 1774 Confederation of 13 States and replaced it with the 1789 Union of 11 of 12 represented states under 5 disciplines by civic citizens to encourage responsible human independence with fellow inhabitants.

I do not for one moment accept that under our Constitution ‘[t]he humblest is the peer of the most powerful’. The take-it-or-get-stonewalled civic-style of most legal scholars expresses their elitist power. That legal jargon fools the public is the bar associations folly. Fellow citizens divide themselves on whether or not they accept the civic agreement to aid equity under statutory justice. There is no evidence that most judges and lawyers accept the U.S. Preamble’s proposition, and it is common to hear the lame, beguiling "we, the people" from government-official lips.

Each citizen may interpret the U.S. Preamble's proposition so as to order his or her civic, civil, and legal living. Fellow citizens who neglect the U.S Preamble’s proposition are integrity-renters and civic minorities at best, and worse, some are criminals, tyrants, aliens, and traitors. The entity We the People of the United States owes nothing to Patrick Henry or other so-called "founders," and I do not agree that We the People of the United States is either the whole or the ruling class. The preamble’s proposition is to establish and maintain 5 public disciplines in order to encourage responsible human independence. Civic Citizens of the United States develop statutory justice; dissident fellow citizens are encouraged to reform. Gorsuch is correct to say that civic education is insufficient: engagement is essential.

The transition from the British idea of “self-governance” to the colonial British-American tradition of “self-rule and our liberties” turned to discipline by civic citizens when focus turned to domestic integrity at the 1787 Constitutional convention. To fellow citizens, statutory justice does not license liberty but does encourage responsible human independence. However, responsible independence was dimmed when some of the 9 states ratified the constitution only if the first Congress would amend it and include a British-mimicking Bill of Rights. Congressional oppression has reigned ever since, and the Supreme Court aids the tyranny with errors like Greece v Galloway (2014).

Gorsuch is correct: civic education is insufficient and citizen-engagement in justice for citizens is essential.

U.S. generations since 1788 have left to our generation the opportunity to reform from British-American precedents to conformance to the U.S. Preamble. Civic Citizens of the United States in 2020 comprehend that we are constrained by physics and may collaborate to take advantage of discovery. Albert Einstein has joined Benjamin Franklin as past citizen and John Locke is an Englishman, all three of whom have no stake in U.S. integrity.

Gorsuch’s explanation “the law bears its own distinctive structure, language, coherence, and integrity” gives a fellow citizen, much less a civic citizen, no comfort. The Supreme Court operates on opinion, often 5:4, while integrity brooks neither opinion, reason, compromise, fairness, nor any other human construct that opposes discovery. I hope Gorsuch’s hopes for originalism as surrogate for integrity are short lived. I am especially opposed to acceptances like “customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England,” and elsewhere “common truth” and again “a republic premised on self-rule” instead of public discipline, “social policy,” “commitment to equality” when uniqueness demands equity, “liberties the people enjoyed at the founding” (is that 1774’s confederation of 13 states or only the 5 non-slave states?) rather than the U.S. Preamble’s proposition, “the Constitution of the founders’ design” rather than the framers and signers, and “the ancient rights of the people.”

In some statements, Gorsuch begs embarrassment. For example, “no member of the public complained” that “the First Congress . . . hired a chaplain” 5 months before James Madison submitted the religion clauses. When did “the public” first re-Tweet? And was the free-public 99% Protestant? Did Thomas Jefferson object from Paris? Where’s the 1789 Gallup pole showing no objections? In 2020, I object to the imposition of congressional prayer instead of Congress’s integrity; court prayer instead of court integrity; administrative prayer instead of administrative integrity.

Gorsuch negatively astounds me with statements like “In a representative democracy, deciding which competing social good to choose and which to forgo generally isn’t supposed to be left to judges.” I think the U.S. is a republic under the rule of law: no government agency is authorized to choose social preferences according to democracy. And “Unlike . . . litigation in an inquisitorial search for the truth . . . [in] our common law system . . . litigants . . . choose which arguments to advance.” When the litigants advance arguments outside the rule of law, taxpaying citizens bear the cost, as we saw in the arrogant impeachment of President Donald Trump. U.S. rule of law did not lose, but We the People of the United States were unconstitutionally wounded by the Democrat majority in the House. 

The court misconstrues “equal protection of the laws due all persons.” For example, leniency toward black murderers lessens protection of black citizens; “every [black victim] matters monumentally to the [families] involved.” I doubt victims/families appreciate differentiation between a criminal “who wills that a particular act or result take place and another who is merely willing that it should take place.” Statutory justice does not condone such racial injustice even if the U.S. Supreme Court does. There’s no room for cordiality and respect in maintaining unjust traditions, British-American or not. We the People of the United States intends actually-real integrity despite “personal integrity” or “judicial integrity” or “fearless integrity.” Judicial failure seems rationalized by “A judge might not reach a perfect understanding of the basis for the judgement.” If not, how does reform come about? And stare decisis should not conflict with the U.S. Preamble’s proposition. Which matters more: that the law conforms to actual-reality or that all citizens obey? And “the modest station we judges are meant to occupy in a democracy” seems to trash the republic rather than try to keep it. I think liberty---rationalizing license---will yield to responsible human independence.

A most egregious offense to We the People of the United States as abstractly defined in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution on September 12, 1787 comes on Page 199.

I think our Anglo-American legal tradition and the role it gives the judge form . . . a special inheritance . . . convictions about treating individual persons as ends, not means; the importance of free will and individual liberty, not just social consequences and overall utility; and the equality of all human beings.

It’s no wonder that U.S. integrity has declined. The preamble proposes termination of unjust “Anglo-American legal tradition” to specify 5 disciplines by civic citizens, without attempting to impose on “all human beings,” except in defense. “Individual persons” are not means to salvation of souls. “Free will” is constrained by physics and its progeny. “Individual liberty” is constrained by responsible human independence (integrity). “Social consequences” must either conform to statutory justice, or reform, or remain alien. Each human being is unique and in his or her journey toward developed integrity, so providing “equality” is out of the question. Justice that “represents an eternal principle” conforms to physics and its progeny, not precedent.

Justices who try to accommodate social competition---efficiently, predictably, equally, adaptably, and individually---are missing the U.S. Preamble’s proposition for 5 public disciplines that encourage responsible human independence, or a better interpretation than mine. I doubt many justices have taken the preamble seriously enough to own their personal interpretation of “ourselves and our Posterity” or to recognize that U.S. liberty often equates to license rather than integrity. I think retired Justice O’Connor might agree that my objections are reasonable observations rather than egocentric niggling and whining.

Gorsuch defends his law “as a coherent discipline” without accepting that it strains against the constraints of physics and it progeny. Because he is steeped in precedence and tradition, he employs “some Platonic form or Absolute Truth [and] superhuman power” to fail to consider the new traditions suggested by Albert Einstein, in my view:  The laws of integrity and the laws of physics offer the same discoveries. With continually improved perception of the-objective-truth, We the People of the United States or “our Posterity” may eventually approach the-literal-truth.

I think Civic Citizens of the United States outperforms, and an achievable better future will come when civic citizens hold local, state, and national governments accountable to the U.S. preamble’s proposition, in order to approach the-literal-truth.

I hope Justice Gorsuch will aid development of statutory justice under the preamble to the United States Constitution.

Copyright©2020 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Updated on 6/14/20.