Biden will need to convince the country, and thus the Court, that we are still in a real crisis.
The history of the United States, insofar as concerns the vitality of civil rights in times of crisis, can be summed up succinctly. While a crisis ensues, when there is a real perception of threat to our security, the courts give the executive a wide berth.
They don’t exactly turn a blind eye. It’s more like slow-walking. Cases claiming infringement of fundamental liberties may be rushed into the justice system during a crisis, but courts will proceed cautiously.
Sometimes they’ll wait to issue rulings until the security threat has passed. In the heat of the Civil War, for example, when President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and authorized detainees to be tried by military commission, the Supreme Court initially ducked the issue, claiming to lack jurisdiction (Ex Parte Vallandingham). Only after the war ended, only when the crisis had ebbed, did the Court hold, in Ex Parte Milligan, that Americans may not be subjected to courts-martial if the civilian courts are open and functioning. While it did not dispositively rule that Lincoln’s suspension of the writ was unconstitutional, the Court took pains to note that, to the extent such an action appeared to require congressional authorization, Congress had in fact affirmed the president’s action.
Other times, when crises rage, the Court is derelict. The classic case is Korematsu v. United States, during the height of World War II, when the justices upheld President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens of Japanese descent, rationalizing that this was a reasonable measure to counter the threat of espionage. The ruling ranks with the lowest chapters in the Court’s history, as Justice Robert Jackson rued at the time in dissent.
Just three years ago (in Trump v. Hawaii), Chief Justice John Roberts, on behalf of the Court, quoted Jackson in observing that Korematsu “has no place in law under the Constitution.” It was, Roberts added, “gravely wrong the day it was decided, [and] has been overruled in the court of history.” That would be cold comfort to Fred Korematsu, who died in 2005, 13 years before Roberts’s declamation. By then, President Gerald Ford had formally apologized in 1976 for the internment, and a federal court in 1983 had overturned Korematsu’s conviction for evading internment.
Still, systematically speaking, a High Court mea culpa about justice delayed is not justice denied. When the Supremes finally do correct error, it establishes norms for future cases.
That doesn’t mean the Court will be eager to jump into the next fray, but it does mean that presidents have bright civil-rights lines to heed when that next fray comes along. There is a steep political cost to ignoring them: A Supreme Court precedent is a powerful weapon for a president’s congressional opposition to invoke. Indeed, the Biden administration just got a taste of that. When the president rationalized that the COVID-19 pandemic gave him license to extend his patently lawless eviction moratorium, congressional Republicans hammered him by invoking an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh (a concurrence and thus not technically a precedent, but close enough under the circumstances).
Christian Media Giant Stephen Strang Blasts Cancel Culture, Urges Believers To Stand Up Because ‘Enough Is Enough’
A renowned evangelical Christian media leader wrote a new book which aims to raise Christians’ understanding of the perils of “cancel culture.”
“God and Cancel Culture: Stand Strong Before It’s Too Late,” by Stephen Strang, founder of Charisma Media and Charisma magazine, was published earlier this month, the Christian Post (CP) reported.
Strang’s new book, according to the Christian outlet, critiques cancel culture and the detrimental impact it may have on Christians. The book contains case studies of incidences of cancel culture perpetrated on social media and by large corporations.
One given example was the criticism MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who also authored the foreword for the book, received in response to his allegations that the 2020 presidential race had been compromised.
The author, Strang, said in an interview with The Christian Post that he authored the book on the grounds that people are “trying to cancel Christianity” “going all the way back to the Roman Empire.”
“It was a way to write about all the stuff that’s going on. And I am particularly concerned about cancel culture,” he said, emphasizing that “enough is enough.”
Following are some of the highlights of CP’s talk with Strang on the dangers of cancel culture for Christians and how blatantly political censorship should be addressed.
“Cancel culture isn’t new. Censorship, propaganda, and coercion have always been tools of the powerful throughout history, going by different names in each generation and under each new, intolerant regime,” Strang reportedly wrote in his book’s introduction.
CP then inquired as to whether there had been instances in which American Christians participated in “cancel culture” in order to promote conservative views.
Strang replied that it might have been done in the past for heretical statements in the strictest sense.
“Prohibition was an effort to cancel what in that generation was considered sinful behavior,” he explained, adding, “I don’t think that it’s tit-for-tat by any means. But I acknowledge that trying to cancel other people is part of the human experience to some extent.”
Comments from readers in Strang’s book included suggestions for countermeasures such as boycotting and “buycotting,” becoming more knowledgeable about history, and other strategies.
Strang, on the other hand, said that he is not a supporter of boycotts. However, “boycotts are so extreme on the other side now that we’re in a position where we have no option but to try to stand strong,” he noted.
“I believe that if we do nothing, we end up losing everything,” he continued. “That’s certainly the trajectory. But if we let people know that the attempts to eliminate the Christian voice and to punish Christians for believing the Bible and articulating that, that they won’t get away with it. It’s certainly not to punish, but it’s just to stand up for our rights and just say, ‘enough is enough.'”
Along with illustrating cases of social media cancel culture, Strang went into detail on state-sponsored cancel culture, highlighting California’s severe limits on in-person worship, which were ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court.
CP then questioned him about whether he thought that state-sponsored cancel culture would ultimately overtake social media cancel culture, or if cancel culture would always be primarily a non-government trend.
“Time will tell,” Strang replied. “When the government gets involved, at some point, it becomes force of law. People can be put in jail, those kinds of things. And we certainly see that. We see it right now in communist countries.”
However, when asked if social media platforms can justify deleting someone based on the subject of their postings, he said,
“[Social media sites are] like public utilities in a way,” he pointed out. “The water company does not decide that they’re not going to give water to your house or your office just because you voted for Donald Trump or same thing with the telephone company. The telephone company won’t decide, ‘Oh, you belong to the Ku Klux Klan. We’re not going to give you electricity.'”
Strang then explained how Big Tech’s censorship has become “totally one-sided” with some hostility, and that it is not limited to religious content.
“If you say, ‘people get better using Ivermectin,’ you’re taken down,” he said, adding that there’s a solid reason for people to consider that Ivermectin helps. In this case, “cancel culture” is put into play since it contradicts a widely held belief about how the world should handle COVID-19.
He also reminded listeners that the U.S. Constitution vests people with the Bill of Rights, which begins with religious liberty, free speech, and assembly. And the majority of Americans, he believed, thought that this should keep going as long as the nation lives.
Citing how California Gov. Gavin Newsom restricted churches, even labeling them as “non-essential,” but lauded left-wing rioters who were not required to maintain social distance or wear masks, Strang proclaimed that “our constitutional rights do not end when a crisis happens.”
“I am just saying, the whole point of the book is this is absurd, that’s absurd. At what point should we say, ‘enough is enough?’ I believe the point is now, and that’s why I wrote the book,” he concluded.