Disrobed

by Jonathan Garthwaite - June 22nd, 2006 - TownHall.com

Townhall recently sat down with Mark W. Smith, author of "Disrobed: The New Battle to Break the Left's Stranglehold on the Courts" to ask him a few questions about his controversial new book.

TH: It seems a lot of Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to judicial issues. What do you say to those who don’t seem interested in the issue?

MWS: Courts decide cases involving all aspects of American life. In many respects, they are more important than the President or Congress because in reality the power to “interpret” the law is the power to make the law. We have gay marriage and gay civil unions in America today; your local politicians can take your home thanks to the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision; many Americans have no right to own a gun for self-defense, and you can abort an unborn child but can’t destroy spotted owl eggs. All this wackiness thanks to our left-leaning courts.

TH: What can conservatives do to prevent these sorts of damaging decisions like the ones you talk about on gay marriage and eminent domain?

MWS: In Disrobed I lay out a brand-new battle plan to bring the Reagan Revolution to America’s courts—the last, and most important, area of government remaining to be conquered. Unless we adopt Ronald Reagan’s Cold War strategy (“We win. They lose.”) in the courts, brace for more liberal lunacies from our friends in black robes.

Invoking the name of Ronal Reagan in a campaign to go to war against liberal Judges is an effective strategy. The corruption of our courts has gone so far that many conservatives and libertarians are starting to give up on the concept of returning to a judiciary that rules according to the constitution with laws passed by our democratically elected representatives, and embrace the tactics of the left. They have reached the point where they are ready to totally politicize our courts and embrace something they call "conservative activist rulings".

It is discouraging to me that after 10 years of arguing that only a return to the court system envisioned by our founders could save the form of government that has served us so well, those I usually support would be considering this strategy. I have tried to get many to understand that the numerous campaigns to pass constitutional amendments was useless, unless it changed the balance of power between the courts and the legislature. I have not yet gotten conseratives and libertarians to accept that. I have tried to generate a campaign to start impeaching judges. Conservatives and libertarians have resisted that for some reason as well. Now, after all this time, we have someone who is leading us on the path that I predicted 10 years ago would be a mistake, and which I still abhor. Adopting the liberal strategy to politicize the courts is not the answer.

I pray this book does not generate much support or following. The answer is still to stop Judges from making law, not have both political wings fighting within the courts as to which philosophy will win.