Founding Fathers favored state rights

Well, it has happened. Roe v. Wade has been overturned and I suppose that many will react as they always do when laws are passed or things happen that they disagree with. There'll be a lot of burning, destruction, and vandalism. Of course we all will all pay the heavy price of the millions of dollars that now need to go into protecting the Supreme Court building, the judges, and the schools of their children and grandchildren as the addresses have been doxed.

The framers of the Constitution were very precise. They wanted a land where individuals in their own states could vote on the laws that they themselves wished to follow. Some national laws, of course, were and are essential but the framers of the Constitution were extremely clear that if the law was not specifically reserved for the federal government, it would be up to the individuals all across the United States to vote on what they wished for themselves. If people didn’t like what the framers had written, they allowed for change with amendments. But the Constitution is clear that it is not up to the Federal government or the court to take away the individual rights of people in individual states to decide for themselves what works best for them.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, individual rights of those in our states to decide for themselves came to an end when in the middle of the 20th century, nine folks in robes began to look at the clear words of the Constitution and declare, “Well, this is what the authors said, but we think that it really should have said……..” And all of a sudden we have cookie cutter states all across the land with similar federal controls and rules are in place and the individuals lose the power to decide for themselves the rules they wish to live by. Granted giving people freedom to decide for themselves can get confusing and messy, but I guess, for myself, I’ll take confusing and messy over being ruled by a dysfunctional group controlled by lobbyists.

Can you imagine such mind-bending interpretation being done with any other legal document? Thank God no jurist down the line will consider my legal will a “Living Document” subject to the judge’s whim of interpretation. When I write my will and give some of the estate to this or that 501c3 there will hopefully be no one in a robe declaring, “Well what Foster clearly said was this….” But that’s made a lot of folks feel disenfranchised and many disagree with it and I don’t think it’s fair to all members of his family. To boot they are upset and threatening to burn down his house or even mine! So I’ll just decide what Foster really probably meant to say even if he didn’t. Times change. I’m sure that if he wrote his will now, he would have written it differently. So I’ll just change it.

FOSTER W. CLINE, M.D.

Sandpoint