Judge Brennan

CACN, Fall 1997

Justice William Brennan

To hell with him.  He died at 91 on 24 July, having been granted many long years to meditate upon his wicked life, repent, and receive the gift of eternal life in the Lord Jesus.  Frank Murray summarizes his work on the Supreme Court as that which “the Warren court used to revamp American life and mores . . . He spent a lifetime defining the new freedoms he discovered” in the Constitution, such as abortion and no capital punishment.   And he wanted to preserve this lunacy:  “This legacy can and will withstand the test of time” he said upon retiring in 1990 (Washington Times, 25 July).

Such lofty “wisdom” proceeded from his courageous and brilliant pursuit of the big questions:  “The ultimate question must be, I think, ‘What do the words of the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean to us in our time?’” he explained in his thesis for a recent PBS documentary.

And what does hell mean for us moderns?  Is it any different now from what it was at the foundations of the earth?  Does one escape hell in 1997 any differently from the way one escaped it 1945?

Maybe the UN can be redeemed.  Imagine.  It’s easy if you try.  Sometime in the future, when the fires of a reformation purge the world of legalized childslaughter, seminars and symposiums will be convoked by the UN and all the Nazi-hunters could be gathered (Elie Wiesel foremost among them) for re-education.  All that prosecutorial energy could be put to good use.  Rather than chase down senescent Nazis, they could pursue neo-“back-alley” abortionists worldwide who continue to practice a re-criminalized trade.