Sheriff David Clarke Jr. of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
One of America’s most popular sheriffs has issued a “wake-up call” for conservatives following the Supreme Court’s two landmark decisions on same-sex marriage and Obamacare.
The way Sheriff David Clarke sees it, the wild horse has broken loose and is halfway out of the barn, threatening to trample the crops.
If the court can redefine marriage and force people to buy health care from a private business, there is nothing it can’t do, said Clarke, the sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and frequent Fox News contributor.
“The thing that bothers me the most in this decision, though, is the way the court acted as essentially five oligarchs,” he told WND. “If we wanted to change the U.S. Constitution, there is a process for that, and there was a robust debate going on in all states, where some states elected to change the definition of marriage, others had not, and these five decided to act like legislators. And my concern is, it takes away from the legislative authority of Congress. And if they can do it with gay marriage, they can do it with anything.”
The Obamacare decision was not much better, he said.
“You had one justice, Roberts, go along with the five other oligarchs and change the way people get their health care in the United States and make them buy a product,” he said.
He said the redefinition of marriage, while shockingly arrogant, was less disturbing to him than the way it was done, in effect shredding the Constitution.
“I think Justice Scalia points that out, that it was a very contorted view of the 14th Amendment,” he said. “There are well-established traditions, and gay marriage is not one of them. So if that tradition is to be changed, then there is an established process for that, and the Supreme Court is not one of them. You go through the amendment process and the Constitution. The same could be said for women’s suffrage, and we didn’t go to the court and have some oligarchs decide that; we amended the Constitution.”
Where do you see it going from here?
By inserting itself where it was not authorized to rule, the Supreme Court has done damage that will last for years, possibly generations, Clarke said, because it has now pitted two “rights” against each other. It created one new right, homosexual marriage, which will inevitably war against the well-established First Amendment right to freely “exercise” one’s religion.
It’s a danger four justices foresaw but five didn’t. History will determine which were the wiser.
“The problem with the way they decided is they did not end the issue. They now opened up the question of how do we protect the free exercise of religion? What are churches going to do? What are businesses going to do? And that’s usually what happens in life when you take shortcuts. You just open up other avenues of contention,” Clarke said. “I’m concerned, because it just became murkier to me. It didn’t clear anything up.”
What should the conservative response be?
Clarke said conservatives will have to determine for themselves how to respond.
“That’s going to be for individuals to determine on their own. I believe the Constitution is about individual liberties, not group liberties.”
But he said the strategy of the left is no mystery. It’s following its standard playbook.
“If you read Saul Alinsky’s ˜Rules for Radicals,’ you can see what their approach is,” he said. “It’s a step-by-step approach to destroy faith or religion because it stands in the way of their view of what American society should be.”
The left also recognizes the importance of words, he said. President Obama and others are now talking about the freedom to “worship,” a subtle change from freedom of “religion.”
Religion is something a person practices or, as the Constitution states, you “exercise” your freedom of religion. Worship is something a person does once a week in church or privately in one’s home. The importance of language is also something Alinsky pointed out in his handbook for radicals.
“It’s like anything else in life: If you do something you’ve never done before that violates your sense of right and wrong, at first it’s difficult, but over time it gets easier and easier. That’s the overriding strategy of the radicals as they seek to transform our society,” Clarke said. “I read Alinsky’s book about 10 years ago, and you can see what this whole process is about.”
Channeling Robert Bork
The late Judge Robert Bork
Incrementalism is what grinds America down, and Bork realized that. He wrote that the “will to resist” the destructive liberal agenda would be America’s last hope. He died in December 2012, but Clarke remembers his strong warning.
“After a big decision like this, people scream and holler, ˜This is bad for the country,’ and then we just acquiesce,” Clarke said. “I believe one of these decisions might just be a catalyst to not just say we don’t like it but to actually do something, to defy this stuff.
“And that’s what churches are supposed to do is resist. And if the court comes back and says you don’t have a right to exercise your religion, then they’re going to have to decide what to do next. … But who would have thought that in the 21 century homosexuality would come out of the closet and churches would be forced to go into the closet?”
Clarke said he read an article published on a conservative website following the same-sex marriage ruling. It declared, “How to survive the marriage ruling.”
“What do you mean ˜survive’? To have to ask that question is shocking. If we don’t resist, we can see what is happening before our eyes,” he said.
Clarke said he reads the Constitution once every year to remind himself of his duty as a sheriff.
“It doesn’t take long to read. I have several copies, and the reason I do that is I take an oath to uphold it,” he said.
Time for a revolution?
The Constitution is being “obliterated,” and “our democratic way of life is being transformed into a socialist agenda, and I don’t know what it’s going to take short of a Lexington-Concord type moment,” Clarke said.
“We had a Civil War. We see a great divide forming again. That’s a part of the landscape that has come from Obama; he’s an Alinskyite, and he knows you have to create a critical mass. So they’ve created all this division, stirring up racial animosity in our cities, rich against poor in the Occupy movement, and now it’s this religious divide. That’s why I keep telling people gay marriage is not the issue; you’re missing it. You have to peel back the layers and look at this transformation. It happens subtly right before your eyes, and you’ll miss it.”
Clarke said division in the conservative movement also aids the left.
“They will have to band together and decide what they’re going to do, but I think the first act is defiance,” he said. “Justices Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas said this is unconstitutional. I’m going with that, and what these four justices said went against the language of these five oligarchs. Amend the Constitution if we don’t like it because we’ve done it, what, 27 times?”
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