Sometimes It’s Good to Take a Little Dictation

He came to California last week, the King of the Klondike, or at least the Candidate Formerly Known as the King of the Klondike (oh, for the heady early days of the GOP primaries, when even an extremist could win an Alaskan straw poll). Poor Pat Buchanan. His streak is now as cold as the tundra.

But the bully is not about to relinquish the pulpit.

At a downtown news conference a few days ago, Buchanan announced that his theme in this state would be illegal immigration and the usurping of the “will of the people” by federal judges who engage in anti-American behavior by overturning such unconstitutional, though hugely popular, laws as Proposition 187.

He used the phrase “huge masses of illegals” like a mantra--three times in about 30 seconds--and claimed that for every 10 people immigrating illegally to California from Mexico, nine American citizens were abandoning California for other states.

Life would be a whole lot better in California and the rest of the country, said Buchanan, if federal judges--neither elected nor subject to recall--would just stay out of our faces.

“We gotta get back to the idea that we are a self-governing people,” Buchanan said. “We cannot allow judges to dictate how we govern ourselves. . . . We Americans govern ourselves. . . . Not little dictators in black robes.”

Good sound bite: Little dictators in black robes.

He said virtually the same thing last month on TV.

“We have got to take power back, gentlemen,” he intoned on “Face the Nation,” “ . . . and not be ruled by unelected judges and justices. That’s what America was all about.”

To which the inquiring voter can only respond:

Huh?

*

When was America “all about” a federal judiciary answerable to the political whim of the majority? I wondered as I strolled back to the office after the news conference. And what, come to think of it, was America “all about”?

I’d always thought America was about the blending of, all right, Pat, huge masses of immigrants--English, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Armenian, Polish, Mexican, whatever--into a great vibrant country full of optimistic folks flush with the notion that they’d come to make better lives.

I’d always thought that what America was all about was the delicious possibility that the poor and ruthlessly exploited have the opportunity to become the rich and ruthlessly exploiting. And often have.

But what do I know?

I called a friend who is a lawyer and legal scholar. What do you think Buchanan meant? I asked. Are federal judges really little dictators, out to thwart the will of the people?

“The Constitution says there are certain areas we don’t want to leave to the political process,” said my friend. “And we want to protect our cherished values from short-term moods of the majority. It is essential that we don’t leave the fundamental rights of individuals to the political process.”

Such as?

Take civil rights, my friend said. Neither Southern legislatures nor Congress probably would have voted on their own to desegregate the South. Jim Crow laws would have existed for many more years if little dictators in black robes had not outlawed school segregation in 1954. (To be fair to my friend, he called them “unelected federal judges.”)

And voting rights. We take the concept of “one person, one vote” for granted. Without the little dictators issuing decisions on apportionment in the middle of this century, we wouldn’t be able to do that. Now would we?

What about reproductive rights? Forget abortion for a moment. (I will if you will.) Let’s talk forced sterilization. It was little dictators in black robes who struck down an Oklahoma law requiring the sterilization of criminals with two or more convictions.

Not to mention free speech. The little dictators have outbursts all the time on this issue: upholding the rights of Nazis to march in our streets, assuring schoolchildren that they cannot be required to recite the pledge of allegiance in school or be compelled to pray.

Sometimes, a little dictatorship is good for you.

*

To be sure, as all dictators do, the ones in the robes have their shortcomings.

In this century, they have upheld the right of the government to intern its citizens for racist reasons. In the last, they endorsed slavery and indirectly helped spark the Civil War.

But if you ask me whether I would rather place my liberties in the hands of either the electorate or the federal judiciary, I say without hesitation: Give me little dictators in black robes, with all their flaws and foibles, any day.

Especially if the King of the Klondike is the alternative.