The LA Times is reporting that Justice O’Connor, Supreme Court’s First Woman, Is Retiring. At a time when most eyes were on the Chief Justice, this is a bit of a surprise. It is also a blow to moderates as O’Connor has been a swing vote on many divisive issues during her term. She was part of a bloc of moderation that acted like a keel for the court, preventing it from tipping too far to the right or the left. Her retirement now allows the Republican party’s current incarnation as arch conservatives on social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage to change the tenor of the court by installing another mind like Justices Thomas or Scalia – something that, while certain to happen when Chief Justice Rehnquist retires, wouldn’t have changed the ideological mix of the court. A strongly right-wing court, with a strongly right-wing Congress, doesn’t offer much in the way of check-and-balance to a strongly right-wing President. I want to believe that this kind of situation kept Madison up at night with dread.
While it is no April 1865, this late spring – summer of 2005 looks as if it will turn out to be one of those times in U. S. history where scholars will point to as a nexus of activity in explanation for something deserving of explanation in a hundred or more years. Things are happening very fast, they are happening in an environment filled with an air of right-wing entitlement, and there doesn’t seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the agenda being advanced in Washington from progressing.
If the Democratic Party cannot pry the Congress from the control of the Republican Party in the 2006 mid-terms, I find it difficult to believe that they remain a viable force in national politics. That’s not to say they will die off – they are too large, too rich, and too accustomed to power to do that – but their last two Presidential candidates have been as viable as the Maginot Line and their utter lack of a compelling national message is really making them out to be amateurs. What may be more interesting, from a historical perspective, is that the United States’ loss of relevancy in the world will not be tied to a major battle or war, but instead to a kind of social atrophy of that metaphysical substance that has permitted the American culture to defy the norms with such success for so long. The will to own our freedom is fading away as we cleave to the notion that freedom is right, paid for with our dollars rather than a privilege, paid for with our comfort.