The Elena Kagan Mistake

In the initial days following the nomination of Elena Kagan, I found something deeply unsettling about the woman.  It had nothing to do with her own person, but rather the seeming lack of a substantive paper-trail for such a purported high-level intellectual.  How is it possible for a person to spend so many years in both academia and politics without having formulated a public opinion regarding the great issues of our times?  How is it possible to remain nothing more than an arbiter and a logic-box for the policies of other men?  It all seems so downright contrived as to be disturbing to no small degree.

Without being able to demonstrate any modicum of wisdom or substantive policy opinion, we're supposed to accept Elena Kagan to the most powerful post in the land because -- as liberals keep repeating -- "she's really smart."

Now, after days of questioning, we finally have the bombshell statement which should blow the hearing wide open.  In response to Sen. Tom Colburn's question regarding the fundamental right to bear arms, Ms. Kagan replied: "I don't have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution."

Yet is it the bombshell that nobody will notice?  While Kagan's statement should automatically disqualify her, we've come to a sad state in our society where 'Natural Law' - the very foundation of the American experiment - is no longer openly discussed.  Never mind that our "inalienable rights" proceed from Natural Law, and that Natural Law proceeds from our Creator.  When I recently asked a gay rights activist how he can possibly justify his silly arguments in the face of natural law, he responded: "if you like Natural Law so much, then go live in the jungle."

No, sir, I like Natural Law a great deal, which is why I live in the United States of America.  My free will and the right to express and defend it are given by God.  The defense of the Natural Law is America's unique role and purpose in history; it is our greatest justification to exist as a nation.  It matters little whether women like Elena Kagan see fit to uphold our inalienable rights, because they are absolutes, not "opinions."  No law can usurp what is objectively true and not cause irreparable social harm.  In America, we cannot deny the terrible legacy of legalized slavery or the holocaust of legalized abortion.  Both are examples of what happens when Natural Law is not fully considered.  Yet most of our elected officials remain either too clueless to make the correlation between Natural Law and inalienable rights, or too cowardly to press the point.

It seems that in Elena Kagan's world, the constitution is the only absolute under consideration in the American experiment.  In making such an assumption, she shows herself to be out of line with the American experiment, and completely unqualified to defend our inalienable rights as expressed -- not defined -- in the Constitution.

Somewhere out there, Joseph Stalin is giving a dusty, heartfelt cackle.  History has already shown us what happens to nations which ignore the mandates of natural law, and it is not a pretty fate.