Guest editorial – The most dangerous man in America

By Dale Cooper

My nomination for the most dangerous man in America is none other than that earnest, sagacious chief justice of the US Supreme Court – – John Roberts.

Roberts, you see, is blessed with both the wisdom of Solomon and the rhetorical legerdemain of  a Merlin.  His two notorious decisions in the Obamacare drama proved it.  Roberts’ vastly complex and convoluted cranial circuitry processed Everest-sized mountains of testimony regarding that subject – – and come judgement day was able to manufacture rulings by using convoluted rhetorical reasoning that would be the envy of Samuel Beckett himself.

Essentially, in order to make some kind of digestible legal sausage out of the cases – Roberts cleverly found that he only needed to morph the word “fee” into the word “tax” – – and expand the definition of the word “state” to include the word “federal” and everything would come out hunky-dory.   And so, with undaunted courage and unmatched verbal virtuosity, he did it.    He proclaimed that the word “fee” really means “tax” and that the word “state” can sometimes mean “federal”.

Of course, that also made truth – slave to fancy, but that was beside the point – who cares?   After all, he is “supreme”.

But that, no matter how egregious, is not what makes Roberts the most dangerous man in America.   It’s that following those notorious rulings – –  he revealed that he did so in order to preserve the court’s status as the one branch of Liberty’s Tree, that stands above politics.  He felt that if he’d ruled otherwise the resulting confusion, chaos and turmoil would have severely damaged the court’s reputation as – – non-political.   In other words, he made inherently political decisions in order to remain apolitical.

A common understanding of words is a critical foundation and the basis of all of our laws.  It is the common law that glues everything together.   It’s what creates communities and makes virtually all of our undertakings work.  Of course, the meaning of a word – like the Mississippi River – can change over time – – but not instantly and certainly not by fiat.   Not at the discretion of a judge who chooses to divorce words from their common meaning for political ends.

It’s not only an affront to poets, writers and other guardians of our language, his reasoning damages our fundamental respect for the legal system.  And, ironically, it achieves the opposite of what Roberts thought to accomplish by his topsy-turvy judicial opinions.

We should all fear John Roberts and his Ivy League buddies.  (Five graduated from Harvard, three from Yale and one from Columbia.)   That four of them agreed with Roberts, that four of them felt words are subject to re-definition by judges – – should be seen as terrifying by those of us who care deeply about the future of our republic – – for over time that legal tactic will become a deadly arrow in the quiver of tyrants.

That’s what makes John Roberts the most dangerous man in America.

(Editors note:   “When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean” – -Humpty Dumpty )