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Evolution vs. Tradition

Bing-o!
The movement to smuggle foreign jurisprudence into Supreme Court opinions, which picks up speed each year, is a de facto left-wing Constitutional Convention. That is, the Democrats wouldn't dare call openly for a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution resting on liberal European foundations but they are in effect holding one anyways through the courts. Judicial activism is an ongoing Constitutional Convention, which has the additional advantage for Democrats of allowing them to subject the Constitution to foreign editing and revision without risking the wrath of the American people. (Justice Stephen Breyer let the cat out of the bag about what they are up to when he said, "Our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think, will be a challenge for the next generations.") When the Democrats say something is "un-American," they usually mean something very American that they don't want in America anymore. Very reasonable American expectations fortified by history and custom, such as placing crosses and creches in public places, are suddenly declared "un-American" when what the Democrats really mean is un-European.
Sadly, Canada has already been overwhelmed constitutionally. Trudeau wrecked our English legal heritage and foisted on us a constitution in which thousands of years of tradition and common assumptions have been thrown into the ditch. All of our rights are now subject to the thinking of whoever happens to be sitting on the supreme court and how creatively those people can twist and bend that crap document, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's a grand name, isn't it? Trouble is, the only rights we have as Canadians are the ones listed in that document, subject to judicial interpretation. That is to say that ultimate power rests in the court and not the people. Ultimate power is only in the elected government if they can use the notwithstanding clause to overrule the court, which I think is unlikely in the extreme given that it was the Liberals who set up this system. For them to use it would be to admit that the system is a failure. Plus, they would lose the courts as cloak in which to hide. The only rights the government should have are the ones we give it in a constitution. All other rights should reside in the people, subject only to their traditions. The courts exist in order to define and defend those traditions. Tradition is liberating because you can see and understand the framework in which you operate. Under our current rationalistic system, we can only try and guess what the courts might think given how they have acted in the past, and even that is a thin reed. Look at the gay marriage ruling we got the other day. Evolution is a biological science term that has no place in politics. Tradition represents the wisdom of human experience. Change is very incremental. Evolution or progress is no way to justify anything because it can be turned against you just as well as for you. It political terms it has no past and no future. It can turn on a dime with disastrous consequences because it has no definite characteristics at all. In science, what evolution can do is checked by physical limitations (growing a new type of limb is possible only if each and every step in between is viable) and by Darwinian culling. In Judicial terms, evolution is limited only by the mental imagination and physical ruthlessness of those holding the levers of power. We had best hope the Americans do not succumb because they remain the best example of what is wrong with Europe and Canada.

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