Judge H. Lee Sarokin has written an article on the Huffington Post entitled “I Want My America Back — not the Tea Party’s America”. While I will admit that I too want my America back, our two Americas are completely different. My America is based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is the country which guaranteed our rights under natural law including life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom.
The principles that made our nation great have been laid low by greed and envy. Judge Sarokin is the epitome of the activist judge who has put his own immoral tenets above the law he swore to uphold.
Before I address this thinly veiled attack on the basic principles of our country, let me give some background on the “activist judge”:
Putting Judicial Nominees in Perspective
On May 5, 1994, President Clinton nominated district judge H. Lee Sarokin to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. As Senator Hatch accurately stated at the time, Sarokin had earned a reputation as a stridently liberal judicial activist. Indeed, Sarokin described himself as a “flaming liberal” as a judge. The Third Circuit had lambasted Sarokin for “judicial usurpation of power,” for ignoring “fundamental concepts of due process,” for destroying the appearance of judicial impartiality, and for “superimpos[ing his] own view of what the law should be in the face of the Supreme Court’s contrary precedent.” The New Jersey Law Journal had reported that Sarokin “may be the most reversed federal judge in New Jersey when it comes to major cases.” A broad range of police and victim’s groups announced their opposition to his nomination.
Here’s a fuller memo on Sarokin’s record that Senator Hatch submitted on the Senate floor. If you read nothing else, be sure to read about Sarokin’s wildly lawless ruling (reversed by the Third Circuit) in Kreimer. There Sarokin ruled that the Morristown public library couldn’t enforce its written policies to expel a homeless man who regularly engaged in offensive and disruptive behavior and whose odor was so offensive that it prevented the library patrons from using certain areas of the library and prohibited library employees from performing their jobs. “[O]ne person’s hay-fever is another person’s ambrosia” was among Sarokin’s justifications for preventing a community from setting even minimal standards.
The basis of this “judge’s” argument is that the majority of the people make the rules. Obviously, this man’s knowledge of the Constitution is limited and reflects poorly on Harvard’s Law School. But then again, our president also graduated from this same law school. Here is a portion of Federalist Paper 51 clarifying the rights of the minority:
Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority — that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.
Mr. Sarokin’s premise of majority rule (mob rule) is what Democracy looks like. Our country’s success is due to its foundation of a representative Republic. Anyone who wants to label people espousing the truth as Tea Partiers is welcome to show their progressive ignorance. I don’t need a label to speak the truth with conviction. Mr. Sarokin needs a platform on the Huffington Post to rewrite our history and our legal foundation because no valid media outlet would post such ignorance. Is it any wonder so many of his “decisions” were overturned?
David DeGerolamo
I Want My America Back — not the Tea Party’s America
Judge H. Lee Sarokin
When I was a kid and we were deciding what games to play and how to play them, our slogan was “the majority rules.” That constant and lofty principle ranked right up there with “loser walks” after a touchdown in sandlot football. The bullies and the brats who stamped their feet to get their way did not make the rules. We carried the concept of majority rule into our adult lives and assumed it applied to government as well, but apparently that is no longer the case. Some of our elected representatives would bring down this country in pursuit of their own jihad. The majority no longer rules, and we are all losers as a result. When have we ever had a statute enacted when so many legislators voted their approval and simultaneously voiced their disapproval? The country is in a state of despair — and for good reason. The stock market has obviously given the debt-ceiling “compromise” and the debate leading up to it a flunking grade as has Standard & Poor’s.
Wiser voices have spoken about the consequences of the legislation saving the country from its credit default. I am interested and concerned with the process. The undisputed fact is that a minority of the country has taken over its control. Although the cabal may not share blood oaths or secret handshakes, they have their intractable pledges and fanaticism that makes them willing to destroy this country’s and possibly the world’s economy to achieve their ends. By holding up a vote on what had been a traditional rubber stamp for decades by both political parties to raise the debt limit, they sought to extort compliance with their own demands irrespective of the destruction that might ensue if their demands were not met. This conduct strikes at the very foundations of our democracy and the future of our country.
It’s interesting to see how the differences among people and States are perceived through the lens of progressive propaganda.
All States that voluntarily entered into the Union agreed to honor the laws and traditions of their sister States. The southern States left the “more perfect Union” because the northern States would not honor the construction and intent of the Constitution.
While morally wrong, slavery at the time of secession was a property rights dispute. The north renegged on a contractual agreement in the Constitution. The south walked away in peace, only to be provoked into arms.
The same geographic boundaries (north and south) are seen today between the union-shop and the right-to-work States. The States of the “old south” guarantees men the freedom to work whether or not they elect to participate in a union.
The progressive States of the “new north” have implemented a modern form of slavery. Dues extracted through closed union shops are for many persons a form of involuntary servitude. Unions have been working to force their “traditions” on the southern States.
Basically the geographic boundaries remain, only the side that supports slavery has changed. And the north hates the south, today as did 150 years ago, because the south believes in and defends property rights.
This is the continuing message of the left leaning media. They all still underestimate the American people. I am the Tea Party, an American from fly over country, tired of the shenanigans in Washington by all parties. I served 28 years in the US Army Special Forces, worked my rear off to send kids to college and pay my bills on time and in full. I’m retired now but I stand when my flag passes, my hand over my heart, and I pray for America. There is a rising tide in America who are tired of the Professional Politician elitists and special interest groups legislating the morality and “Americanism” out of America. We are the people who threw the King of England back across the Atlantic, and you better be praying we don’t have go to those lengths again to regain the freedoms that have been eroded over the last 60 years by progressives and lefties like our current president and leaders in Washington. I’m no radical, right wing extremist…I’m an American, and I spent my life standing by to protect others from all enemies, foreign and domestic. There are millions of Americans out here just like me with similar stories who will send this current president right where he belongs:on the trash heap of history. Our government has been hijacked and I believe American’s are waking to the fact that while we’ve been living our lives a small group of over educated, elitest, liberal, rich, sheltered, (enough adjectives?) professional political class has tried to impose their vision on the rest of us. The only way to get it back is to elect “regular” Americans who can add and subtract and don’t know or are not part of the good old boy system. I see Americans when I look at a crowd. A politician see’s blacks, women, and latino’s and don’t give a flying rat’s butt about anything except getting elected. 2012 WILL be a wave election, and the liberal progressive left will be swept right back to where they belong, next to the President.