Commentary

The nation was stunned by the sudden loss of Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday. Grief is mixed with alarm over the prospect that Barack Obama could somehow gain the upper hand to send the Supreme Court, and the nation with it, over the great abyss by picking a history-changing replacement on the high court.

But there will be plenty of days to worry and pray that the GOP Majority in the Senate will be up to the task of stiff-arming Obama’s radical judicial agenda until his term mercifully ends.

For now, we should gratefully celebrate the incredible contributions Justice Scalia has made to his nation. His powerful reason and rabid defense of the Constitution has earned him a place in that great Hall of Patriots.

One could – and many will – read his opinions and blistering dissents on any number of challenges to the fundamental liberties of our Republic. But we are most appreciative of his stellar defense of the right to life and his scorn for those who invented a right to kill out of pure ideological fancy.  Here is but one sample of his potent pen, written in the first case on Partial Birth Abortion:

I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court’s jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott. The method of killing a human child-one cannot even accurately say an entirely unborn human child-proscribed by this statute is so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion. . . . The notion that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, “to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” prohibits the States from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.

We acknowledge the grief of a nation, and that of the Scalia family over his sudden departure. But it is hard not to celebrate such a life as well. We are certain that he was warmly greeted at Heaven’s Gate with those most precious words: Well done thou good and faithful servant!