a nomad's view of church and state

i sympathize with my comrades' confusion with the boisterous harangues surrounding the recent yanks' partisan battle over the selection of a new supreme court judge, vacant by the retiring and well-deserved Sandra Day O'Connor. through the looking glass of a foreigner peeping in, it is perhaps only an appointment of a referee of domestic disputes and business tussles. yet the American conscience knows this is the birth of a determiner of morals, a champion of modern thoughts and an equalizer of rights & freedom all rolled into one. Let me digress.

In the nation's formative years, our founding fathers had the sage insights that any church's muddling of political affairs would inevitably over time lead to power corruption, gross deception and finally, manipulation of the masses. the untried alternative was true separation of church and state. yet without a religion to provide the absolute basis of ethics, a nation will be without moral foundation like a ship without an anchor, floating wherever the societal ebbs may carry it. this is perhaps the quintessential reason for the creation of the American constitution. 200+ years gone by, and countless additions of amendments A-to-Z provided clarifications, extensions and reinterpretations, yet the basic political philosophy of ruling by the republic, elected by the people, whose task is to execute according to the rules of engagement defined in the consitution, has not changed.

Fast-forward to January 22, 1973. In a historic ruling of Wade vs. Roe, the Supreme Court ruled that Jane Roe has the right to abort an unborn baby due to a fresh interpretation of Amendment 14 (right to privacy), despite existing Texas laws against abortion except extreme circumstances. The landmark ruling of this case by the highest legal authority of the land set the precedent for millions of abortions performed in the US annually.

Without taking a stand on the abortion issue (IMHO, a necessary evil), it is clear the Supreme Court stands to determine ultimate outcomes of controversial moral dilemmas of our time, based on its current and sometimes unorthodox interpretation of the constitution. throwing this understanding onto the backdrop of today's American political environment, where dogmatic religious right continues to wage battles fiercely with laissez-faire humanist left -- poor citizens often are bombarded to choose one of two extreme ideologies, and we see why supreme court judge selection is a dog fight till the last hound standing. is it a well-intended experiment gone horribly wrong? In the brave new world, if it doesn't work the first time, try try again. (Though, "In the long run, we are all dead," said Keynes).