Conservatives have been pushed to the brink by the betrayals. We want a revolution. We want a party to finally act in accordance with its campaign pledges. Where do we go from here?
In this episode of the Conservative Conscience, Daniel interviews Judge Roy Moore who is attempting to storm the establishment castle by running for Senate in Alabama. They discuss a wide range of topics, particularly related to the role of the courts and how the judicial crisis has neutered Congress. It takes an originalist in the Senate to solve the problem, not just originalists on the courts. But it also takes a man of integrity, something that is lacking with most Republicans.
The question for conservatives is if they will take yes for an answer.
Key quotes:
When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, “just men who will rule in the fear of God.” The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be sqandered (sic) on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.
— Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 336-337
Neither the Founding generation nor their children nor their children's children, right on down to our grandparents' generation, were so passive about their role as republican citizens. They would not have accepted-did not accept-being told that a lawyerly elite had charge of the Constitution, and they would have been incredulous if told (as we are often told today) that the main reason to worry about who becomes president is that the winner will control judicial appointments. Something would have gone terribly wrong, they believed, if an unelected judiciary were being given that kind of importance and deference. Perhaps such a country could still be called democratic, but it would no longer be the kind of democracy Americans had fought and died and struggled to create.
— Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 228.
A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
George Washington’s Farewells Address, on the danger of political parties
Show links:
Mark Levin’s call for doing more to save the republic
Lighting up America: Judge Roy Moore running for Senate
NRSC blackballing Roy Moore Supporters
Judge Moore falls victim to a culture of beta males
My interview with Judge Moore on the illegal suspension from the court
Editor's note: Daniel Horowitz has endorsed Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama.
