Sandra Day O'Connor: U.S. Must Avoid Dictatorship

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
-George W. Bush (December 18, 2000 )

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor apparently gave one helluva speech yesterday at Georgetown University. Her speech mainly focused on how the judiciary as a whole has been politically maligned (see the GOP campaign ad I posted earlier) lately, but she also brushed on larger issues like how this type of political behavior is how good nations start on the road to dictatorship. She stated that the behavior of today's leaders 'pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms'.

A quick description from the blog of the National Jewish Democratic Council :

...In a speech Thursday at Georgetown University, O'Connor clearly and concisely asserted that top GOP leaders have posed a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms when they attack judges and the judiciary.

Without mentioning his name, O'Connor quoted then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's attacks on the courts during "Justice Sunday". O'Connor then said, "This was after the federal courts had applied Congress' one-time-only statute about Schiavo as it was written -- not as the Congressman might have wished it were written. The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint was that the Congressman blasted the courts," O'Connor added sarcastically...

NPR has audio.

Raw Story has a rush transcript of the NPR piece. From it-

Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Sounds right to me.

Many have read O'Connor's statements and reacted with resentment. After all, if not for her critical vote in Bush v. Gore, we would've been spared all of this. And I can't disagree. That ruling was a sad day for democracy. Still, to pretend that anyone (even O'Connor) could have foreseen just how bad things would turn out is dishonest. Even the most cynical liberals in 2000 never thought we'd have come this far (we feared uber-conservative one-term idiot, not two-term Monarch shredding the Constitution every step of the way).

So say what will you will about that, but it is good that someone is speaking out on these important Constitutional issues, especially when it comes from someone of O'Connor's credibility. Right now she's showing more balls than many of the leaders in the Democratic party (although many Democrats have spoken on this, but the media ignores it... as I'm sure they will O'Connor's speech).

Americans don't think any of this affects them, but as O'Connor said, it's ultimately up to us to protect these principles, since politicians often don't. How do we do that? Well, that's the complicated part, isn't it? Speaking out helps. Voting helps. Writing letters helps. And, at this point, just paying attention helps.