US Supreme Court

The death of  Justice Antonin Scalia has created another rare void on the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States. Though the politics of conservative and liberal maneuvering has begun to degrade the entire selection process once again, there are some important issues on the horizon that will need to be address by a balanced and competent court.  One of the more significant issues on the horizon is a court order requested by the federal government to have the Apple corporation devise a decryption method for the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorist in the hopes of uncovering more information on their particular lives.

Apple CEO Tim Cook stated to customers that, “This order … has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.”  This, by any stretch of ones imagination, is an understatement.  Empowering anyone much less the federal government with the means by which to pry into ones personal life unchecked should be considered a blatant violation of civil rights and a dangerous threat to personal civil liberties and freedoms no matter what the driving mechanisms behind it.  Utilising acts of terrorism and fear as a pretense to curtail ones individual freedoms is dangerous to any society much less an established democracy.  With the Patriot Act still a component of American life, continued intrusions into our personal lives will lead the United States down a dark and dangerous path.  Surely the Founding Fathers in all their wisdom did not have this in mind when crafting the constitution. Every time we surrender freedoms and liberties we spit in the faces of the  intellectual juggernauts that founded a great nation upon a living, breathing and ever evolving document we call the United States Constitution.

Though there seems to be a lack of the wisdom, intelligence and sheer shrewdness in contemporary leadership that seemed to be omnipresent in the Patriot Fathers, the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court with the aforementioned qualities are paramount to maintaining the system of checks and balances as well as to ensure a healthy democracy of the people, by the people and for the people.   Though we perceive no particular greatness in our leaders, each and every citizen must throw off the shackles of arrogance, ignorance, selfishness and partisanship with respect to political grandstanding and involve themselves adeptly in the mechanics of our government especially with respect to the selection of Judge Scalia’s successor.  It is imperative that we remove the blinders that have been placed upon us and peer through the fog if we are to have any hope of holding back the dark night that is rapidly descending upon us and the rest of the world. Our time is invariably running short and you can rest assured that there are no knights in shinning armour or superheroes with powers beyond those of mortal men and women to save us.  That task, though monumental, invariably falls to each and every one of us!

Adiuva me verterem figuram mundi