Thom Hartmann. The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America. Berrett-Koehler, 2019.
Two of the bitterest people I ever met were a brother and sister whose parents were American Communists. In the fifties when these siblings were young, their parents were blacklisted, and these young adults still carried some kind of animosity over it. The parents were never imprisoned or found guilty of a crime even though they were working with the Soviet Union to help overthrow the United States.
I found it hard to understand their bitterness unless it was simply that the Communist Party in the United States had not succeeded in its goals. After all, this was not like McCarthy vs. the Army. There were no false accusations. Their parents actually were Communists.
The Hidden History of the Supreme Court reminded me of those two aspiring Communists. There may have been some political similarities between Communists in the seventies and the positions taken by the book, but throughout the tone was so bitter I had to read it in small doses.
According to this book, every Republican elected to the presidency from Nixon on “stole” the election—even Reagan’s landslides apparently were stolen. That sets the tone. Basically, Republicans have somehow “betrayed” America, especially by naming justices to the Supreme Court.
I heard someone say recently that calling people of racist is becoming like the boy who cried wolf. The term is being bandied about to label nearly anyone’s political opponents that the word is losing its meaning. Nearly everyone this book disagrees with is accused of racism.
So here, by innuendo, Bush’s close win in Florida was caused by racism. At the time of the election I remember someone reporting that blacks at least in the Panhandle area of the state were supporting Bush in spite of their party affiliation. In other words more blacks in Florida supported Bush than normally would support a Republican candidate for president.
Even though Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood began out of concern that inferior classes and races were procreating too quickly, this book claims that the pro-life movement is racist. Until Hitler and Tojo went too far in World War II, the Progressive movement in the West included eugenics and various neo-Darwinian racial theories.
Even the late Jerry Falwell is accused of racism here. The author clearly knows little about Falwell’s background and how he rose above and beyond the narrow fundamentalism of his origins. Falwell probably received as much criticism from the “separated” fundamentalists loosely characterized by Bob Jones University as he did by liberals.
According to The Hidden History of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court betrayed America mostly because of two of its decisions: the Citizens United decision which upheld freedom of speech in political campaigns and the Heller decision which said that the Washington D.C. gun law clashed with the right to bear arms.
Since the nineteen-thirties most of the most radical and heavy-handed policies of the U. S. Government have been initiated by the Supreme Court: the 1963 ban on school prayer and Bible reading, unregulated sale of birth control devices, the legalization of abortion, decriminalization of sodomy, homosexual marriage, eminent domain for non-governmental “public” purposes. One would think that it was a political conservative that would be claiming the Supreme Court has betrayed America! One would think a “progressive” like the author would feel elated instead of betrayed!
He rightly notes that the Supreme Court began changing its view of the Constitution when President Franklin Roosevelt threatened to “pack” the court with six new members. Pundits today have speculated that Chief Justice Roberts may have used the Social Security as a tax precedent to cast the deciding vote supporting most of the Affordable Healthcare Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) to avoid such a thing happening during his term of office.
One tired cliché repeated several times is “human rights, not property rights.” The Kelo case is not even mentioned, even though it clearly gave Mrs. Kelo’s property rights over to the City of New London, Connecticut. One would think the author would have been delighted at that outcome.
That overused line about property rights is a straw man to begin with. Take, for example, the Soviet Union. Its Marxist principles included the idea that the state would own the means of production. In other words, the government owned all the property. There were no property rights. This means that the government owned all printing presses, copiers, computers, fax machines, parks, meeting halls, church buildings, auditoriums, etc.
The Constitution of the U.S.S.R. did say the people had freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but since the government owned all the property, people could only publish or say publicly what the government would allow. Because the government controlled all the means of producing publications and speech, it rendered its claim to a free press and free speech meaningless. Property rights are necessary for freedom of speech, press, and religion—things the American founding documents recognize as human rights.
By the way, the 1963 decision banning prayer and Bible reading in schools picked up the term “separation of church and state” from various Soviet Constitutions. That would permit the government to regulate and restrict religious beliefs and behavior. The American Constitution has no such wording. “Establishment of religion” refers to a state religion, not religious expression by people employed the government.
The Hidden History of the Supreme Court is mistaken about Roe vs. Wade in a few salient details. Justice Rehnquist was one of two (not three) justices who opposed the decision; the book said he supported it, but he did not. Indeed, Rehnquist’s dissent expressed concern that this would create a public problem that would be far more difficult to settle, and referred to the decision as “raw judicial power.” Yes, it was a topic that Congress is supposed to deal with, but why bother if there is an activist court? (Ms. “Roe” would later tell her story and admit that she lied under oath.)
By the way, this reviewer has read “racist” innuendo concerning Roe. The justices hypothesized that legalizing abortion would reduce the number of “the poor.” One source I read said that in Washington D.C., the poor were nearly all minority races, so the Roe decision was racist. I doubt if that were really much of an issue, but it is no different from the multiple charges of racism in this book.
The book claims that “the people” support abortion. Yet even today many states are passing laws to limit the number of abortions expectant mothers have. We are told “the people” support so-called gay marriage, but even the constitution of California contained a provision that marriage was between a man and woman. And that constitutional amendment was approved by a state-wide referendum in spite of harassment from the gay lobby on groups and individuals who supported the amendment. This is California, part of the Left Coast, not some “deplorable” fly-over state.
In a truly irrelevant rant, as the author seems to find racism behind every political figure he disagrees with, he even notes that somewhere between fifty and a hundred million Native Americans may have been killed in North America. While there were some Indian Wars, most of the deaths were caused by diseases Europeans brought with them that the Native Americans had no immunity to. In that past history, the Supreme Court often took the side of the Indians. When President Jackson overruled the Supreme Court on Indian removal, for example, he simply stated that the court had no army.
I am sorry that The Hidden History of the Supreme Court does not find the sixty-five million American babies that have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade equally appalling.
I kept asking myself, why is this book so bitter? The so-called progressives have gotten virtually everything they have wanted over the years, mostly thanks to the Supreme Court. I recall once my former Congressman, who had been a campus radical in the sixties, was disappointed when a certain bill he supported failed to pass. He simply said that we will try to get it done in the courts.
Currently there is a case winding its way through the courts where a climate scientist sued some writers who disagreed with him. I recall the 1992 vice-presidential debate where then-Senator Gore predicted some disaster within ten years. He similarly predicted disasters within about a dozen years after he came out with his film. Those things have not happened, but still the progressives complain about “climate change.” They do not even talk of “global warming” any more.
Not only is this reviewer old enough to remember when people were worried about global cooling in the seventies, but also after the fall of European Communism he recalls academics saying that they could not use economics as an argument for socialism or communism, but they could use the environmental movement for their ends.
It seems that this book would like the Supreme Court to take on this issue because Congress is unwilling to act. We saw under Hitler what “established science” could do in its theories of superior races. We saw under Stalin what “established science” could to with the theories of Lysenko. Where is the humility? Where is the compromise? At least an honest scientist will admit, “This is how we understand it now.”
A democratic republic that we have in the United States depends on compromise. They so-called progressives have nearly everything that they have lobbied for because of the courts, so why complain? It appears that some people are never satisfied.
The Hidden History of the Supreme Court seems to engage in some rewriting or at least re-slanting of history. Its cure for what minor “betrayals” it has found? “…diminish the power of the court, work around it, or pack it as FDR proposed.” That is the bottom line: We must pack the Court!
During both the first Barack Obama presidential campaign and the campaign of Hillary Clinton for president, people would sometimes recommend the book Rules for Radicals, not because they thought it was a good book, but because those two candidates thought it was a good book. It might help us understand what they believed and how they would implement those beliefs.
While the history and the bitterness of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court may leave the reader looking for something more balanced and positive, this book may give some insight into certain progressives who want to pack the court and to use compulsion rather than persuasion squeeze the American people into their mold. -The truth shall set you free! Lord, open the author’s eyes.