While the vast majority of Americans will dismiss Robertson and me as a couple of fellows whose elevators don’t go to the top, we’re joined in our belief that the greatest threat to our republic is an out-of-control judiciary by no less of an authority on American government than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson once warned that if "judges" ever came to view themselves "as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions"—as the bulk of those on the bench today undoubtedly do—then the judiciary would become "a despotic branch of government" and judges would become "despots" turning the Constitution into "a mere thing of wax, which they [could] twist and shape into any form they please." Jefferson went on to warn that this "dangerous doctrine" of judicial despotism must be soundly renounced, lest the judiciary "slyly and without alarm" accomplish "what open force would not dare attempt"—the undermining of our Constitution and the overthrow of our government.

It is argued that the Supreme Court’s Marbury v. Madison decision in 1803 is the most important legal case in American history. In deciding this momentous case, the Supreme Court declared itself the final arbiter of all constitutional questions. Henceforth, it reserved for itself the final word on the constitutionality of all things. This usurped authority, known today as "judicial review," is what Thomas Jefferson feared would lead to the downfall of our republic. It is also the basis upon which today’s federal judiciary wields its despotic power.

Thanks to judicial review, the Supreme Court has found all of the following unconstitutional: prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, invocations at high school graduations, the Ten Commandments on classroom or courthouse walls, and Nativity scenes on courthouse lawns. Thanks to judicial review, the Supreme Court has found all of the following constitutional: a woman’s right to abort her unborn child, a homosexual’s right to commit sodomy, an illegal alien’s right to welfare benefits and a taxpayer education, a pornographer’s right to distribute virtual child pornography, a captured terrorist’s right to sue our government, and the government’s right to take your property and give it to someone else.

Realizing the unchecked despotism of today’s federal judiciary, liberal Democrats have seized the courts as their last bastion of power. Unable to win public backing for their secular views and radical agenda at the ballot box, they have decided to bully us from the bench. In an audacious attempt to force down our throats what we refuse to favor at the polls, liberal Democrats have turned courtrooms into throne rooms, judges into kings, gavels into scepters, and laws into dictums. Through despotic judges, those willing to invent laws without constitutional basis or legal precedents, liberals have found a way to by-pass the polling place, thwart the will of the people, and impose their views on all Americans.

Since the courts are their last hope of imposing upon us their radical agenda, liberals will fight to the death to keep them. They will stop at nothing and stoop to anything. They proved this recently by circumventing the Constitution with their filibustering of President Bush’s conservative judicial nominees.

According to the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, the president has the power, "with the advice and consent of the Senate," to appoint federal judges. To pass the requisite for Senate "consent," the president’s judicial nominees must win a simple majority (51 votes). Knowing they lacked the votes to defeat President Bush’s conservative judicial nominees, Democratic senators unprecedentedly filibustered them. Since breaking a filibuster requires a super majority (60 votes) and Republican senators could only muster 55 votes, Democrats were able to circumvent the Constitution, hijack presidential powers, hold the nominating process hostage, and keep judges off the federal bench who would turn back, rather than further, their radical agenda.

Another tactic employed by liberal Democrats to keep judges who disagree with their left-wing lunacy off the federal judiciary is to mercilessly "bork" any nominee with a paper trail that proves their conservative judicial philosophy. When President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork, a strict constructionist who had lambasted the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision, was so viciously attacked by liberals that a new verb was added to our vernacular. The new verb, "borked," means to be viciously and unfairly treated.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas knows all too well what "borked" means. Nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, Thomas, a conservative jurist in the mold of Robert Bork, was so viciously and underhandedly attacked by liberals that he called his confirmation proceedings "a high-tech lynching." He went on to accuse the Senate Judiciary Committee, in particularly the committee’s Democratic members, of sending out a "message that unless you kowtow…this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree."

The Bork and Thomas’ confirmation hearings have forced conservative judges to think twice before allowing their names to be placed in nomination for the federal judiciary. Many conservatives, for fear of what they and their families will be put through by liberal Democrats, refuse to be considered for any judgeship requiring Senate confirmation. For instance, Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, recently revealed to reporters that some of the people President Bush was considering for the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor asked that their names be withdrawn from consideration. According to McClellan, these choice conservative candidates simply did not want to go through a grueling confirmation process that has become so partisan and ugly in recent years.

Along with making the confirmation process too hot to handle for many conservative jurists, the Democrats’ scorched-earth opposition to all conservative judicial candidates has also resulted in Republican presidents putting forth a string of pig in a poke Supreme Court nominees. Knowing that Democrats will declare all-out war on any Supreme Court nominee perceived by them as a threat to their liberal fetishes—things like abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and the separation of church and state—Republican presidents attempt to avoid Democratic ire by nominating stealth candidates with little or no paper trail. Furthermore, Republicans coach their nebulous nominees to go through the confirmation process without flying their flags or showing their true colors, lest the Democrats, who long ago succumbed to moral colorblindness, should be offended at a nominee’s brilliant display of black and white; that is, of right and wrong.

Make no mistake about it, the composition of today’s left-leaning Supreme Court is mostly owed to the cowardice of nail biting Republican presidents who have been bullied by bombastic Democratic bravado into putting forth milquetoast Supreme Court nominees. With the exceptions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, both of whom were nominated by Bill Clinton and overwhelmingly confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate, every member of today’s Supreme Court was nominated by a Republican president. This includes John Paul Stevens, the most liberal member of the court, David Souter, a staunch defender of abortion rights who was nominated by President Bush’s own father, and Anthony Kennedy, who Dr. James Dobson has called "the most dangerous man in America."

Time and time again constructionist-cloaked Republican nominees, like O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter, have snuck through the confirmation process without showing their activist fangs until safely seated on the Supreme Court with a lifetime appointment. Time and time again conservatives have been let down by Supreme Court nominees nominated by Republican presidents who were worried about liberal Democrats getting their hackles up.

Have you ever noticed that it is only conservative occupants of the Oval Office who have to nominate stealth candidates with little or no parper trail to the Supreme Court? When it comes to the radical left’s nominees to our nation’s highest court there is never any doubt about where they stand on the issues. For instance, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served as General Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union before being nominated by President Clinton to the highest court in the land. As General Counsel for the ACLU, Ginsburg questioned the constitutionality of laws against bigamy, called for the repeal of federal laws against prostitution, advocated the abolition of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and argued for reducing the age of consent for statutory rape cases from sixteen to twelve. During her confirmation hearings she expressly confirmed her belief in a woman’s right to an abortion, becoming the first Supreme Court nominee to ever do so. In spite of such far left fringe views and impeccable liberal credentials, Ginsburg sailed through the confirmation process and was confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate 96-to-3.

Why is it that liberals can demand to know what they’re getting in a Supreme Court nominee, but conservatives cannot? Why is it that a Democratic president can brazenly nominate to the Supreme Court a Bible banning, Ten Commandments removing, prayer silencing, Pledge of Allegiance outlawing, abortion championing, same-sex marriage supporting, pornography protecting, Boy Scout loathing, Communist sympathizing, card-carrying member of the ACLU, but a Republican president can only nominate a stealth candidate with little or no paper trail? And why is it that Democratic senators can mercilessly "bork" any conservative nominee to the Supreme Court, but Republican senators will sleepwalk into a straight line and unconsciously vote to confirm any liberal nominee, as long as the nominee has never committed an ax murder? This, despite the fact that once confirmed the liberal nominee will spend the rest of their life on the Supreme Court treating the United States Constitution as though it were made out of Play-Doh or Silly Putty.

It is high time that Christians woke up to the culture war being waged in our country and lost in our courts. Likewise, it is high time that we realized no war, cultural or otherwise, can be won by subterfuge alone. There comes a time when the enemy must be engaged; there comes a time for open and all-out conflict. If appeasement is tried too much, and confrontation is put off too long and too often, the war can be lost without ever being fought. This is the great danger of our day.

Today, we are conceding the courts to Democratic usurpers and judicial despots without ever firing a conservative shot. Sure, we hope every now and then to slip in some stealth nominee who pans out, but we’re not about to confront the liberal legions and fire at their nominees the way they do ours or fight for ours the way they do theirs. Instead, we just keep trying to get along with the enemy by going along with the enemy.

I know some will argue that we can’t win this fight, thanks to Democratic solidarity and moderate Republicans, like wishy-washy Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter. Any real conservative nominee is believed doomed to be done in by a Democratic filibuster. Thus, all we can do is try to sneak stealth nominees through the backdoor of the Supreme Court Building. Yet, what is lost in all of this is the truth that there is no shame in fighting for the right and losing. The only shame is in refusing to fight at all; as Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, "Let [the lie] come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me."

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