Do We Teach Civics Anymore?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – In grade school the good nuns taught us civics. They were very proud of our country and encouraged us to continue with that pride. As kids we learned about the founding fathers, our history, as well as our faith. All have now come under attack by a society led by fascist fellow-travelers who no longer believe in those ideals taught to us as children.

Our founders gave us a government with limits on its powers to preserve our individual liberties. Our tri-part government, executive, legislative, and judicial, all equal branches, were established to protect those interests, and the courts, in particular, were designed to be independent and to make legal rulings without reference to public favor, or politics — that is why the founders put no tenure on the terms of federal judges.

One of the most recent and pernicious attacks on our system is from our Democratic friends and the stooges who have not recognized that the “party line” has changed from slightly left of center to full-blown Communism. This attack is on the Supreme Court itself…well, mainly the Republican appointees. When I read an article entitled, “The Left’s plan for a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court,” in the Washington Examiner by Thomas Jipping, I booked him as a guest on our Faith On Trial radio program.

Jipping is the senior legal fellow at the Edwin Meese Center for Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. And he carefully spelled out what the Left is doing: a grab for power by de-legitimizing the court as a political tool of the right. “The Left,” he wrote in his article, “is after power rather than liberty and, therefore, sees limits on government as obstacles to be overcome.”

The first thing he told my audience is that the Left is trying to weaken the trust the public has in the court as a legitimate institution.

“The Left wants people to see the Supreme Court and its decisions in a completely political way…in other words: whose political interests do these decisions further? Therefore, those decisions that don’t go your way must be political or partisan, or corrupt in some way….

“This is all part of a campaign that I call the hostile takeover. It’s a very misleading, abusive campaign and people need to see more thoroughly what is happening,” he said.

Jipping sees that what the Democrats are doing is really an attack on the independence of the court, and an attempt to diminish it “by any means necessary,” he told my audience. “The Left wants political judges, for them judicial independence is an obstacle.”

As an example of how the Left is working this plan he gave the example of Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas and his wife Virginia have a longtime close friend, Harlan Crowe, and for over 25 years Mr. Crowe has made available to the Thomases his home and plane for their vacations.

After arriving on the court, Justice Thomas sought an ethical ruling as to whether or not those vacation and lodging “gifts” required reporting on the court’s financial disclosure forms. Judges have a lot of financial reporting that they are required to make, but he was told that these “personal hospitality” gifts by close friends who had no business before the court need not be reported. That was the non-rule until two months ago.

It was then that the Democrats blasted Thomas for his ethical lapse by not reporting the vacation gifts from Mr. Crowe. When the story broke leftists were vocal and unanimous in their condemnation of Thomas for violating an ethical non-rule. They demanded that the ethical rules be amended so other judges must follow and after the rules were amended they continued to vilify Justice Thomas for not having reported what was not required to be reported until the adoption of the new rule on personal hospitality.

In response to the brouhaha over Thomas’ friend, the Judicial Conference of the United States amended its rules to make a distinction between accepting lodging at a friend’s home and at a resort he owns. “The Left wants us to believe that Thomas should have followed disclosure guidance that did not exist at the time and would not exist for years,” Jipping wrote.

So, Thomas was dammed as corrupt for violating no rule. It also should be noted that Mr. Crowe had no business before the court, either personally or through his business interests. Thus, there was no conflict for Justice Thomas, contrary to what the Left has tried to make the public believe.

But, he noted, when the shoe was on the other foot, the Left made no such complaint.

In 2018, he reported, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took an all-expense trip to Israel paid by a billionaire who was not a close friend and did have business before the court. Not a word from the Left. Neither was there any fuss when Ginsburg refused to recuse herself from multiple cases that came from her husband’s law firm.

The key to these disclosure rules is to prevent a conflict of interest on behalf of the judge, yet the Democrats call Thomas corrupt, and breathed not a word about Ginsburg.

Of course, he noted that this activity is not confined to the Supreme Court. He mentioned several district court and appeals court judges who have been hounded by leftists for decisions they made on the bench that liberals opposed.

“People need to care that the law is followed, people need to care that the Constitution is taken seriously, not just that their politics win every time,” he said.

One of the reasons these issues keep festering, he said, is that it is easy to manipulate citizens into believing what the Left is peddling, is the lack of civics education as well as the effect of social media.

“Unfortunately, the ignorance of most Americans, not just about our system of government in general but the judiciary in particular, makes it easy to manipulate [them] for political purposes; it’s easy to get people to believe [that] the Supreme Court decides cases based on their personal opinions rather than the law.”

Lesson from this: In a constitutional republic, such as ours, it is necessary for every person to do his part by understanding the mechanisms of the government to which we are a part. Then to respond in truth.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial or podcast at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/, the episode with Mr. Jipping is number 361.)