Joseph Sobran Quotes
How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians.
Sobran, Joseph. Anything Called a Program is Unconstitutional: Confessions of a Reactionary Utopian. FGF Books, 2013.
The president was asked if he supported the Supreme court's school desegregation decision:
In modern times almost all countries have written constitutions. And almost all of those constitutions appear to be democratic. Many have been taken from the United States Constitution. However, most of the countries are not real democracies as they do not enforce their own constitutions. For example, in Egypt, the constitution guarantees women equal rights to men. There are many female attorneys. However, the notion of a female judge is too much for the sexist culture. So regardless of what the constitution says, it is not enforced with respect to female judges. When Smyth gave his lecture, constitutions were just getting popular. He was prescient enough to realize that a constitution to be effective must conform to the belief structure of most of the population and the constitution most be administered as well as written.
One of the conundrums of our constitutional system is who has the last word as to what the Constitution means. Essentially it is the judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. But there are those who believe that the current popular majority should have a say in what is or is not constitutional. If so the legislative branch should have the last word. Still others say that the President is the only person elected by ALL the people, so his opinion most reflects the will of the public. And then there are most who argue that the Constitutional system was created just to avoid the power of currently popular majorities, and the courts should decide based on the Constitution itself. So the statement has very little meaning except that Phillips thinks that the courts have too much power. Whoever gets to decide what is or is not Constitutional will be accused of being “over” the Constitution by those who don’t like the decisions. In our system, that is the courts.
Michael Joseph Sobran Jr. was an American journalist. He wrote for the National Review magazine and was a syndicated columnist. Pat Buchanan called Sobran "perhaps the finest columnist of our generation".
