This is not calling balls and strikes, people. This is monomaniacal, steroidal judicial activism. Alito and his cohort are not on the court to interpret law. They are on the court to change society. They are part of a movement dedicated to same. This is what makes them Leninists—vanguard members of a severe and narrow ideological movement that seeks total power for the purpose of fundamentally reordering society. Lenin used cruder methods, early twentieth-century tsarist Russia being altogether more welcoming of crude and violent methods than twenty-first century democratic America. But the impulses are identical.
Could one have said the same of the court’s liberals of an earlier time—William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall? Did they not “change society” in fundamental ways? Yes, they did. But they were not part of a severe and narrow ideological movement. And they didn’t impose their ideology on a skeptical nation in a series of hugely contentious 5-4 (now 6-3, alas) votes. Roe v. Wade, for example, was 7-2, with more-conservative-than-not Chief Justice Warren Burger joining the majority. Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage, was unanimous. And in those days, of course, the court enjoyed broad public respect.
The New Republic conveniently left out the army of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that ignored precedent and weren't popular. Check out Engel v. Vitale from the Warren Court.
