In The Atlantic magazine’s excellent October article “How Originalism Killed the Constitution” (I highly recommend reading!), distinguished professor Jill Lapore (professor of American History, Harvard University and professor of law, Harvard Law School) illustrates the birth and promotion of this controversial concept, first broached in 1971 by future (and unsuccessful) Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

Lapore essentially argues originalism proponents are pushing interpretations of the Constitution using narrow, conjectured, simplistic or misrepresented intentions of its writers — that current conservative justices basically pick and choose history. “In a series of crucial cases, the Trump-era Court cited history if the history supported a preferred outcome; if the history did not support the outcome, the Court simply ignored the past.”

She maintains that the term “originalism” didn’t enter the English language until 1980 and was an abstract concept until Bork’s nomination by President Reagan in 1987, evolving as a legal strategy when efforts to amend the Constitution or win public support to ban abortion consistently met with failure.

Interestingly, Lapore’s recap of history states that Republicans in the 1970s were more pro-choice than Democrats, that the National Rifle Association was open to gun regulation, and that extremist conservatives recognized that they could not win an abortion ban unless they controlled the Supreme Court.

Further, Lapore notes that women’s rights champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court was opposed by leading women’s groups because Ginsburg argued that the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade was Constitutionally flawed for using “privacy” not the 14th Amendment’s “equality” clause as a rationale. It is a tragic irony that Trump’s Supreme Court voided Roe v. Wade based on this “flaw” – the intent was sound, the argument was not.

Hence, the battle began to saw off this third leg of our Constitution-established system of checks and balances in order to favor extremist conservatives.

Flawed originalism arguments, promoted by President Reagan, led conservative-dominated Justices to reconsider the Second Amendment. The N.R.A was quick to adopt “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Ironically, failed court nominee and “originalist” Bork wrote that the Second Amendment’s intent “was to guarantee the rights of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms.” Indeed, the Constitution preceded the Bill of Rights by two years and the Constitution’s very first Article (Article I, Section 8) clearly granted Congress authority to regulate arms and militias. Originalist founder Bork correctly interpreted the Second Amendment.

Justice Warren Burger characterized the N.R.A.’s new stance as “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen.”

Essentially, conservative politicians have successfully stacked the Supreme Court with ideologues who reimagine history to warp the Constitution away from decades of inconvenient established case law. Results? As Lapore puts it, “on the left, abortion came to mean freedom and guns murder; on the right guns came to mean freedom and abortion murder.”

The strictest adoption of originalism logic would require overturning much of the Bill of Rights. Current conservatives are waging war on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI or “wokeness”). This thinking, if carried to its logical outcome, would require negating parts of our Bill of Rights/Amendments — the First (establishing religious freedom), Thirteenth (ending slavery), Fourteenth (defining citizenship), Fifteenth (banning racism), and Nineteenth (banning sexism) Amendments. Aren’t these amendments, intended to bring fairness and inclusion to all citizens, “woke”?

Thus, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra illustrates his apparent true intent: restoring our pre-amendment system of government to a system controlled by white, Christian, wealthy, (slave-owning?) male landowners.

Trump’s populism is not republicanism or democracy, it is a fanatical and narrow form of nationalism, yet no elected Republican has the courage to oppose this? All of us would do well to read our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and Bill of Rights/Amendments.

As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia has been purported to state, “it means what it says.”

Terry Lamphier, Grass Valley