It’s not often that Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas speaks in public. Clarence Thomas has now served longer than anyone else on the court – since the fall of 1991.
What he said last week should be heard by every American. He called the nation back to our founding principles. The justice spoke to a full audience at the University of Texas at Austin in an event to honor America at 250.
Speaking of his grandparents, who reared Clarence and his brother, he noted, “They told us, ‘We don’t have no education and no chance, but you boys are going to have a chance, [and] we going to devote the rest of our lives to you boys. … It was their devotion, their love, their dedication to raising us right that has made the difference, not the words, though the words expressed as best they could what they intended to do, their devotion is what mattered.”
From rural Georgia to one of the most powerful positions in the nation – what an amazing story.
Clarence Thomas is the ultimate American success story. He was born in dire poverty. Apparently, he didn’t even have a bed to sleep in until he was in his teens. Prior to that, he slept in a chair.
In his recent speech, Justice Thomas was critical of progressivism because it promotes a vision for America that is different from that of the founders – and God is at the heart of that difference.
Said Thomas: “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. … It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. … It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”
He is absolutely correct. Just look at the epoch-changing statement in the Declaration of Independence, surely its single-most important sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I like to say that the essence of the American experiment (from the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact, 1620, through the Constitution, 1787) is self-rule under God. Self-rule under God is clearly promulgated in the Declaration: Rights from the Creator, government by “the consent of the governed.”
Clarence Thomas said of the Declaration: “It did not establish a form of government; that was the work of the Constitution that followed. But it stated the purpose of government.”
Thomas went on to highlight abuses that can take place at the hands of progressives. Here are some extreme examples: “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. … Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.”
Reporting on Justice Thomas’ speech, the New Republic called him to task for those remarks about 20th century totalitarian dictators.
But Thomas was exactly right. If rights come only from the state, not from God, then who is to save us from the tyrants?
In his Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy reminded the world about how critical God-given rights are: “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
As noted, Thomas spoke to honor America at 250, which indeed is a great milestone in human history. By voice vote on July 4, 1776, 56 men in Philadelphia, representing about 3 million people in the 13 individual colonies of British North America, accepted the final wording of the Declaration of Independence.
A month later, on Aug. 2, when they began to sign the document, Samuel Adams declared, “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom men ought to be obedient. … He reigns in heaven, and from the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come.”
Justice Clarence Thomas is totally right to remind Americans about our founding principles and the courage we need to hold on to them and fight against those who would effectively gut the Constitution, for example, by packing the Supreme Court or abolishing the Electoral College.
Thomas said now is a time to be courageous and to be counted before it’s too late: “I think if we don’t stand up and take ownership of our country, and take responsibility for it, we are slowly letting others control how we think and what we think.”