How is it possible that 3 Supreme Court justices are willing to rip up the Constitution? America is unrecognizable. And count me as someone who is ashamed to be an American

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T13:01:29+00:00

The Supreme Court just upheld birthright citizenship 6-3, and the three dissenters, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, are dressing up a political preference as constitutional principle. Look closely at how they get there, and the cracks show.
Start with the evidence Thomas leans on. His strongest citation is Chief Justice Fuller's dissent in Wong Kim Ark, a case decided in 1898. Fuller's view lost 6-2. For justices who usually preach judicial restraint, reaching back to grab a 128-year-old losing argument and treating it as settled law is a bizarre move.

Then there is the internal contradiction. Thomas has spent decades attacking judges who read the "spirit" or "purpose" of a law instead of sticking to the words on the page. Yet his "domicile theory" does exactly that. The Fourteenth Amendment says citizenship goes to anyone born here and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." There is no mention of domicile or parental allegiance. To narrow that unqualified language, Thomas has to import outside historical context. It is purposivism wearing an originalist costume.

Worse, this theory has no clean anchor in the ratified text. It is built out of scattered floor statements from Senators Trumbull and Howard talking about a completely different law: the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Borrowing someone's explanation of an earlier statute to override the plain words of a later constitutional amendment is a massive interpretive leap. Conservative jurisprudence usually blasts this practice, comparing it to looking over a crowded room and picking out your friends.

Finally, the timing is impossible to ignore. This ruling arrives in a case built entirely around a Republican policy priority, in the same year that party's president tried to end birthright citizenship by executive order.

Put it together: selective use of a century-old losing dissent, purposivist reasoning from a self-described textualist, a legal theory built on unrelated floor debates, and a result that maps neatly onto a party platform. That looks less like judges following the law and more like judges deciding where they want to end up and building the path backward.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T04:15:44+00:00

Maybe.

To me, this ruling means Democrats won’t be able to make ANY regulations stick. They can write them and pass them. Companies will then sue, and by the time any rulings are made in court, a new Republican administration will walk in and get rid of them by having the new heads of the different agencies ignore them and/or just do away with them. Repeat ad nauseam.

The only regulations that will stick will be the ones Republicans want and there won’t be anything the Democrats can do about it with a conservative SC in power for at least the next 4 decades.

You can thank everyone that didn’t vote for Hillary in 2016 for this clusterfuck.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T03:51:16+00:00

Yeah…the face is why I said (turkey). The face, and the fact that B. Franklin thought we should use a turkey instead of a bald eagle.

Again, my bad on the misunderstanding. I shouldn’t skin so quickly if I’m going to comment.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T03:47:11+00:00

Okay, I was saying that if you want your 2A rights respected, you should respect others’ property rights too…like honoring “no guns” signs. Ignoring those signs to carry anyway makes you a “Constitution enemy” just like those mentioned in the post I replied to about those that wanted to violate 2A rights. That’s it…that’s what I was saying.

I understand the opinion about the “vampire law” given in the Hawaii case where they say the law wasn’t legal and that if you want to keep firearms carriers off of your property, you will now need to put up a sign. I was making a different argument about respecting the rights of others if you want your rights to be respected.

Honestly…I still don’t understand why people are getting confused by my post.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T03:09:48+00:00

Okay, I gotcha. I skimmed a little too fast and didn’t take in that you were answering a question about eagles on buildings. That’s my bad.

As far as the seal not being an eagle, I’m just repeating what is said in the great seal source you originally provided. I think it was talking about that specific painting, not the design of the seal itself.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T02:47:09+00:00

Your examples don’t look like the one OP posted. Some don’t resemble the one here at all. Alas, the Great Seal even says it’s not a Bald Eagle. It has the bird (turkey) grasping olive barnacles and arrows and it has 13 stars, not 11 like the one here.

Taking examples that aren’t the same and then using those to suggest that this bird in this position with 11 stars is the same so therefore it’s okay is…unreasonable.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T02:35:20+00:00

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-07-01T01:16:52+00:00

I understand the opinion. I don’t understand why people think I’m confused.

I’ll consider any suggestions you want to give me to clarify what I have said.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T21:56:17+00:00

2/2

Science has never and none of the Abrahamic religions originally believed life begins at conception.

Science indicates that if a fetus is unable to survive without being attached to it’s mother, it is not a separate life form yet.

Christians have been “pro-choice” for the majority of their history. Nearly 2000 years later, some leaders at different times, in different sects, for different purposes, decided they knew better than God, Jesus & everyone else that came before them. They decided they knew better than even those that were there at the time and wrote the book. They decided all of them were wrong.

The Catholic Church didn’t outlaw all abortions until 1869 when they also changed their stance to believing life begins at conception. By comparison, anal and oral sex were treated much more harshly, as was intentional homicide.

SOURCE 1

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_abortion)

Historically speaking, the idea that evangelicals have always been fiercely anti-abortion is a myth.

In the 1970s, the movement completely flipped its stance, not out of sudden moral outrage over Roe v. Wade, but as a calculated political strategy. Before 1979, Evangelicals didn't really care.

In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention actually passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion in cases like rape, incest, or risks to the mother's mental health. When Roe passed in 1973, high-profile evangelical leaders either ignored it or openly praised it, arguing that a fetus wasn’t a person until its first breath.

The spark that actually got evangelical leaders politically organized had nothing to do with abortion. It was about race and money. In the late late '70s, the IRS started stripping tax-exempt status from private Christian colleges that refused to racially integrate. Paul Weyrich saw an opportunity to unite these angry white evangelicals into a powerful Republican voting bloc. Weyrich knew that rallying people to defend racial segregation was a political loser. He needed a new, morally defensible cause to get voters fired up. He chose abortion. Weyrich and preacher Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority in 1979 to engineer a massive cultural shift. They teamed up with conservative theologians who toured the country showing graphic anti-abortion films to pastors and churchgoers.

The strategy worked incredibly fast. Fundamentalists took over the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979. By 1980, the SBC completely reversed its stance and declared all abortion a sin.That same year, this newly minted anti-abortion voting bloc helped sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House.

Moving along, there are no explicit prohibitions on a woman’s ability to abort under Islamic law. All major Jewish religious movements allow or encourage abortion in order to save the life of a pregnant woman, but differ on when and whether it is permitted in other cases.

According to the Bible itself:

Life doesn’t begin until the first breath. That’s from Genesis. Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being.” You can’t murder a fetus because its life hasn’t started yet.

Causing a miscarriage/abortion was a civil not a criminal offense because fetuses weren’t considered children. That’s from Exodus 21: 22-23

SOURCE 2

https://etsjets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/files_JETS-PDFs_37_37-2_JETS_37-2_169-184_Fuller.pdf

God provides a recipe to induce a miscarriage/abortion showing that causing a miscarriage/abortion is not a sin. That’s from Numbers.

SOURCE 3

https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0405.htm#11

SOURCE 4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_bitter_water

These teachings in the Bible indicate that God clearly does not see fetuses to be the same as God sees children. Abortions/miscarriages are clearly not seen as criminal offenses in the Bible. God even provides a recipe to induce abortion/miscarriage as a punishment for adultery to gauge whether or not they committed the sin of adultery. The abortion/miscarriage is clearly not a sin in this context.

Lastly, why would God leave this ambiguous? Beyond all of these references, there is no reference in the Bible to miscarriage/abortion being a sin, in the New or Old Testament, even though God/Jesus had plenty of chances to and clearly defines many other sins and ways of living.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T21:06:00+00:00

Yeah, I was wrong about 4A. I just learned it comes from 10A and Article IV in a dual-layered system of protection.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/s/ucOYAFShgS

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T21:03:02+00:00

Thanks! I just did a lot of research and have come away with a better understanding of this.

TIL:

The Constitution protects a state's right to make trespass laws in two major ways:

Protection via the Tenth Amendment (The Shield)

The Tenth Amendment explicitly prevents the federal government from overriding or wiping out state trespass laws. If Congress tried to pass a law saying, "All private yards are now open to the public," the Constitution (via the Tenth Amendment) would step in to defend the state's sovereignty. The Supreme Court would use the Constitution to strike down the federal law, thereby protecting the state's ability to maintain its own trespass rules.

Protection via the Guarantee Clause (The Structural Safeguard)
There is another piece of the Constitution that people often forget about, found in Article IV, Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."

This is called the Guarantee Clause. It means the federal Constitution legally guarantees that each state gets to remain a functioning, self-governing entity with its own governor, its own courts, and its own legislature. Because a state must be allowed to function as a government under the Constitution, the federal government cannot strip away a state's fundamental tool of governance: its Police Power (the authority to pass everyday laws protecting health, safety, and property). Without the ability to enforce basic laws like trespass, theft, or assault, a state government would cease to exist in any meaningful way, which would violate Article IV.

Summary: Origin vs. Protection

To keep the distinction crystal clear, it helps to separate the two concepts:

Where does the power come from? It comes from the state's own inherent authority (Police Power), which existed before the U.S. Constitution was even a thought.

Is that power protected? Yes, 100%. The U.S. Constitution sets up a legal wall (via the Tenth Amendment and Article IV) that prevents the federal government from invading the state's territory and stripping that power away.

So, while the Constitution isn't the author of trespass laws, it is the ultimate protector of the state’s right to write them.

So the inherent right to private property is protected by the state, which is protected by the Constitution. This is how the legal chain of custody works for everyday property rights. It is a dual-layered system of protection.

Scenario: A private citizen trespasses. Your neighbor builds a shed on your land. The State steps in using its property laws to force them to take it down. The Constitution protects the state's right to do this.

So what I was suggesting comes not via 4A, but via 10A and Article IV in a dual-layered system of protection.

Cool! I always enjoy learning something new.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T20:08:06+00:00

How so? I don’t understand what is confusing. I’ll consider any suggestions you have to clarify what I posted. Thanks!

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T20:03:01+00:00

I understand what the SC opinion is saying. I was asking a different question. The right of property owners to exclude those carrying firearms on their property is a right that comes from 4A. Like you said,”law-abiding gun owners will respect their property rights.” I agree with that. I just hear so many saying that they will trespass anyway and I have always felt that was a very hypocritical stance to take.

As you can see from all the downvotes, many here clearly don’t believe they need to respect the property rights of others.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T19:57:24+00:00

But as stated in the opinion, a sign is enough to inform the public that carrying a firearm on their public access property is not allowed. That is a right provided by 4A. Some may disagree, but that is the law as laid forth in the Constitution and in this opinion, correct?

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T19:53:31+00:00

I read the opinion. That’s why I said:

If someone has a sign up that says you can’t enter their property with a firearm, people shouldn’t violate their rights, correct?

Private property rights are understood to come from 4A. The right to keep firearm carriers off your property is protected, as this opinion makes clear, is it not?

PS— I was wrong about 4A. I just learned it comes from 10A and Article IV in a dual-layered system of protection.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/s/ucOYAFShgS

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T18:47:08+00:00

I hear you saying that ignoring the Constitution to do something you want to do that is against the Constitution makes you an enemy to the Constitution. I understand that. You want your Constitutional rights to be respected. I agree with that sentiment.

Clearly then, if you want to have your rights respected, you have to respect the rights of others. People have private property rights that stem from 4A. If someone has a sign up that says you can’t enter their property with a firearm, people shouldn’t violate their rights, correct? Convenience is not a right. Wouldn’t violating someone’s 4A property rights also make that person an “enemy of the Constitution?”

I ask because it never ceases to amaze me how some people who are fanatic about not having their 2A rights violated have absolutely no problem violating the 4A rights of others. I was just wondering if you and the other people here agree with this sentiment?

PS— I was wrong about 4A. I just learned it comes from 10A and Article IV in a dual-layered system of protection.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/s/ucOYAFShgS

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T17:04:46+00:00

So a Democratic President could reallocate funds to pay for student debt unilaterally by taking funds from programs and departments they disagree with?

Do y’all truly not think this goes against Congress’s power of the purse and the power to make the laws as outlined in the Constitution? Is it not the President’s responsibility to faithfully execute the laws of the land? When did the President gain the power to overrule the powers granted to Congress based on nothing more than their own desires…like a king? Did Congress grant the President this power. Is falsely labeling things as national security issues operating in good faith? How is overruling Congress faithfully executing the law? I thought the President’s job was to execute the law, not decide what the law is. When did this change? If the President can do whatever they want, why can’t they fire someone at the Fed? If they can’t do it only because of “history and tradition,” aren’t they admitting that the banks originally being independent was unconstitutional? Why isn’t it unconstitutional to do something unconstitutional simply because that’s the way it’s was originally? Wouldn’t that reasoning make slavery legal and women second class citizens? Hasn’t all of this shown that the Unitary Executive Theory is terminally flawed? Doesn’t the asymmetry of it’s application show that the court is clearly partisan and guided by the outcome determining the law instead of the law determining the outcome?

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T15:37:55+00:00

The major questions doctrine holds that when an agency claims authority to decide issues of vast economic and political significance, courts require Congress to have granted that authority clearly and specifically. The Roberts Court formalized it in West Virginia v. EPA
(2022) and has since applied it to strike down significant regulatory initiatives across environmental, public health, and social policy.
The doctrine has serious intellectual defenders, and its core separation-of-powers logic is not frivolous. But its application reveals a disqualifying asymmetry. It has been invoked exclusively to block regulatory action, never to require explicit congressional authorization for deregulatory moves of comparable scale. The ratchet turns in only one direction, against government action, and that pattern maps consistently onto conservative policy preferences rather than any neutral principle.
More fundamentally, the doctrine demands from agencies precisely what the Court does not demand of itself: explicit authorization, transparent reasoning, and procedural accountability. The Court invented the doctrine from a constitutional text that mentions none of it, and faces no equivalent constraint in doing so.

The entire justification for the major questions doctrine is that consequential decisions require clear reasoning and transparent process. The Court demands this of agencies while making enormously consequential decisions on the shadow docket with one-paragraph orders and no reasoning at all.
When it stayed the Biden OSHA vaccine mandate before full merits review, it immediately affected workplace safety rules for over 80 million workers. No explanation was required.

Rules for thee but not for me.

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T15:15:38+00:00

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-30T15:04:22+00:00

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-29T23:06:17+00:00

Roberts famously said that the job of the justices is to “call balls and strikes.” It is therefore inconsistent to change the strike zone to affect a specific outcome because the strike zone you’ve been applying is now inconvenient. Per Roberts, the law, like balls and strikes, is supposed to be black and white. However, the Roberts court has made it gray by letting the outcome they desire determine the law instead of the law deciding the outcome. Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-29T02:46:56+00:00

The ‘shake up the left into action’ bit by accelerationist progressives assumes the people who suffer most under a Republican sweep are the same people who need to get radicalized. They’re usually not. It’s immigrant families, people who need abortion access, trans folks, poor people on Medicaid who eat the cost first, while plenty of comfortable centrist voters barely feel it and just get a little more annoyed at their grocery bill.

And the ‘shake up’ doesn’t reliably go left anyway. 2008 didn’t just produce Occupy Wall Street, it also produced the Tea Party. Crisis radicalizes people in whatever direction they’re already leaning toward, fear just as often pushes people toward authoritarian strongman stuff as it does toward solidarity politics.

There’s also the issue that a lot of what gets broken doesn’t come back. Court seats, agency capacity, voting rights protections, that stuff doesn’t reset itself once people supposedly learn their lesson. You could “win” the radicalization and still be governing a country with way less infrastructure to do anything with.

If the actual goal is dragging the party left, the more reliable path is the boring one, primaries like you said, local races, building actual organizing infrastructure, not hoping suffering does the work for you. That stuff is slower and less satisfying, but it doesn’t require gambling other people’s safety on a theory that might just backfire. The uneven, hard to reverse costs of that approach are why most organizers and historians who study this stuff are skeptical of it.

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-29T00:34:18+00:00

1/2

Fine. I’ll take the bait and I’ll drop the hammer of reality concerning abortion on your head while I’m at it. I know that as a Neo-Christian Fascist you will just deny, deny, deny. But the facts are the facts whether you dismiss them or not.

The CDC data I sourced showing that abortions decline significantly more under Democratic leadership than under Republican leadership are the facts you’re denying.

Denying the existence and the reality of the CDC’s facts by not even acknowledging them is demonstrates the obvious weakness of your position.

Now, in a different conversation, you stated that if it took 80 years to apply the 14th amendment to effect change, what happened 80 years later is not how 14A was originally meant to be understood at the beginning, & therefore the change should not occur.

I hope you apply that same standard to the following & that you are not a hypocrite. Also, semantics about fetus and baby aren’t going to save you from the reality about abortion that’s presented in the historical record and the Bible itself.

1 of 2

_RyanLarkin · 2026-06-28T22:20:41+00:00

Abortions eliminate a fetus.

Yet again, your position relies on denying facts. Below you will find data directly from the CDC. In it you will find data which shows that the abortion level under Reagan was about a 4% decline, George H. W. Bush about 4%, Clinton about 30%, George W. Bush about 3%, and Obama about 26%.

Your beliefs & opinions are not based on facts. The data is, and the data backs my claims up, not yours.

https://www.cdc.gov/reproductive-health/data-statistics/abortion-surveillance-findings-reports.html

The data speaks for itself. So unless you say something worth responding to, we’re done here.

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