Sandra Day O'Connor: A Judge Whose Sangerite Background Meant Nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan

“Tom, people don’t like it when you criticize President Reagan.”

Those words were spoken to me after I had given a presentation somewhere on my native Long Island in the late-1990s by the late Henry King, who was a writer for The Wanderer for many years before my arrival on the pages of that newspaper in 1992.

I explained to Henry that it did not matter to me what anyone liked or disliked about my talks as it was my intention to present the facts about the constant Republican Party betrayal of the pro-life cause, a betrayal that continues among establishment naturalists of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” to this very day and which is even being championed in the name of “pragmatism” by the lavender friendly former President Donald John Trump (see Memorandum to Donald John Trump: The Inviolability of Innocent Human Life is Non-Negotiable). The administration of Ronald Wilson Reagan, who was probably the most likeable and truly quick-witted man ever to serve as President of the United States of America, was filled with phony pro-life politicians, beginning with Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush (see the details in Ricard V. Allen on George Herbert Walker Bush as the Accidental Vice President), and it helped to further institutionalize baby-killing under the cover of the civil law despite all the president’s rhetorical references to the protection of innocent human life, including a book published under his name about the issue. The Reagan record on abortion is not what most people thought it was at the time, and it is not what most “conservative” Catholics now remember it to have been.

Indeed, the late John “Cardinal” O’Connor, who was the conciliar archbishop from March 19, 1984, to May 3, 2000, and a reliable factotum of the synagogue, commented to me as follows when I met with in in October of 1986 while campaigning for lieutenant governor on the Right to Life Party line in the State of New York: "We could have gotten somewhere if the President had moved on the abortion issue as strong as he has moved in support of the Contras in Nicaragua." (This is also the point of a piece published in 2007, Selective Use of Executive Power, which discusses how the George Walker Bush administration used executive power to assert nonexistent presidential prerogatives to prosecute the Global War Against Terror, which is supported by "conservative" "patriots" no matter the moral outrages that take place in its prosecution to make the world safe for America's "only ally" in the Middle East, the State of Israel, which pursues all manner of murderous policies of its very own.)

For all his “conservative” rhetoric, though, Ronald Wilson Reagan was a pragmatist who surrounded himself pragmatists such as Bush the Elder, James Baker, the Bush crony whom Reagan selected as his first Chief of Staff, and Nancy Davis Reagan’s mouthpiece, Michael Deaver. Reagan himself had committed to putting a woman on the Supreme Court of the United States of America whenever a vacancy occurred, which turned out to be when Associate Justice Potter Stewart, an appointee of President Dwight David Eisenhower, retired, whereupon Reagan made good on his promise by nominating Judge Sandra Day O’Connor in spite of the fact that her pro-abortion record as the Majority Leader of the Arizona State Senate was very well known.

The following commentary was written by an academician in 2005 at the time that Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor herself had retired during the presidency of the hapless, uninformed neoconservative war hawk by the name of George Walker Bush (Bush the Less):

It is not surprising that Sandra Day O’Connor emerged as the crucial swing vote in the modern Supreme Court, or that her retirement presents President George W. Bush with a most unwelcome headache. Justice O’Connor’s appointment in 1981 emerged from the same dilemma that bedevils Republicans today. Then, as now, Republicans were torn between the pragmatic consensus politics necessary to govern effectively and the conservative dream of transforming America.

From the start of Ronald Reagan’s administration, ideologues and pragmatists clashed. Conservatives wanted Reagan to use his popularity to advance a revolutionary agenda that would actually shrink government, not just slow its rate of growth and that would undo some of the “damage” caused by the 1960s rebellion in law, culture, bureaucracy, economics and politics. The pragmatists preferred a broad-based, red, white, and blue appeal to the great, elusive American center they considered the key to maintaining popularity and power.

As early as February 1981, conservatives condemned Reagan’s predilection for, in Howard Phillips’s words, “consensus politics” over “confrontational politics.” The columnist Patrick Buchanan acknowledged the Reagan cabinet appointees’ “competence,” but asked: “where is the dash, color and controversy – the customary concomitants of a Reagan campaign?” In a cabinet of mostly moderate millionaires, the only fire-and-brimstone conservative was James Watt, an Interior Secretary hostile to environmentalists.

A year later, forty-five participants at the Conservative Political Conference would mark the Reagan administration’s first anniversary by signing an eight-page statement complaining of numerous administration “deficiencies” threatening to squander “the opportunity for constructive change presented by the last election.” The biggest complaint focused on presidential personnel, where “credentials” counted more than “loyalty to the values of the Reagan revolution,” resulting in a status quo administration succumbing to “well-organized pressure groups.” The conservatives found the administration still addicted to government spending, too conciliatory and Kissingeresque on foreign policy, and betraying “the social agenda.” Back in March 1981 angry conservatives deemed these “issues of primary importance” after Republican Senate majority leader Howard Baker dismissed them as “collateral issues.” John Hinckley’s attempt to assassinate Reagan later that month, and Reagan’s push for economic reform, distracted the naysayers, temporarily. But by July, when Associate Justice Potter Stewart announced his retirement, many conservatives were seething.

And yet, given how much liberals dreaded Reagan’s first court appointee, conservatives allowed themselves to hope. Reagan, after all, had built his career bashing the Warren Court. Reagan wanted to solve the integrated problems of drugs, crime and permissiveness by restocking the federal judiciary. The foolish, out-of-touch, hopelessly liberal judge was a recurring stock character in Ronald Reagan’s after-dinner, Reader’s Digest-style anecdotes. In Reagan’s demonology “liberal judges” threatened common sense and the social order. Reagan loved recalling a California case involving two narcotics officers with a valid search warrant. They were about to leave a drug pusher’s home empty-handed when one officer approached a sleeping baby, “removed its diapers,” and found the heroin. Reagan would pause, crooking his neck and shaking his head ever so slightly, his wonder checking his outrage, as he added: “The case was thrown out of the court because the baby hadn’t given its permission to be searched.”

President Reagan, however, did not govern as radically as candidate Reagan preached. Reagan’s appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor infuriated conservatives, who doubted her commitment to eradicating abortion and blasted her support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Michael K. Deaver, the image-oriented deputy chief of staff, and a principal White House pragmatist, said the president liked O’Connor’s “kind of moderate approach'' because ''she had not been an activist'' regarding the ERA issue or abortion. Delighting in the man-bites-dog political twist, the Washington Post headline proclaimed: “REAGAN CHOICE FOR COURT DECRIED BY CONSERVATIVES BUT ACCLAIMED BY LIBERALS.”

Conservatives resented the dismissal of social issues as mere moral questions or private concerns. They winced as the White House treated “matters of belief” such as “supply-side economics,” as if they were true, and “matters of fact” … like “the human nature of the human fetus – as though they were matters of mystic belief.” The Reagan “mission” was “to found the political order anew: to bring the American people to the point of judgment, once again, about the moral understandings that finally bind them to one another and establish the terms of principle on which this political community shall live.” Conservatives wanted a crusader not a caretaker.

Reagan often bristled when attacked from his right. Although an affable man who broke bread with critics easily, he often deflected criticism – especially from conservatives – by blaming one particular misanthrope. In this case, Reagan attributed the O’Connor fuss to “one person in Arizona,” Dr. Carolyn Gerster of the National Right to Life Committee, whom he labelled “vindictive.” “I still believe that an unborn child is a human being,” he insisted, although he preferred making such statements in writing or in person but off-camera.

The mixed messages were sincere and strategic. With his high tolerance for paradox, Reagan believed he remained true to conservatism while playing to the center. More cynical aides did not mind some flak from the right. It boosted Reagan’s popularity with moderates and enhanced his effectiveness. Lyn Nofziger told another political operative, Lee Atwater, that “the net effect” of the conservative attacks “might be positive for Reagan.”

Despite his pure ideological pedigree, Reagan abhorred divisive issues and messy, emotional debates. Reagan had mainstreamed conservatism by making it more upbeat. American conservatives were traditionally cranky – sometimes cranky and fanatic, like the John Birchers; sometimes cranky and hysterical, like Senator Joseph McCarthy; sometimes cranky and austere, like Senator Robert Taft; and sometimes cranky and elitist, like William F. Buckley. On the other hand, Reagan’s conservatism spoke to the American id not the American superego. His conservatism was one of growth not restraint; of self-indulgence not self-sacrifice; of prosperity not propriety. This message resonated with America’s increasingly consumption-oriented and hedonistic leisure culture, enhancing Reagan’s appeal – and impact.

In appointing O’Connor, Reagan fulfilled a campaign vow to appoint a woman to the bench, mischievously confused liberals by striking a blow for gender equality, and avoided the kind of divisive ideological fight he ended up losing over Robert Bork six years later. The man who delighted in complaining about idiotic judges did nothing to solve that problem on the Supreme Court level with this appointment. Yet, by appointing the more moderate Justice O’Connor for the highly publicized Supreme Court spot, and ending up with a swing voter who perpetuated much of the Warren Court status quo, Reagan may have advanced his judicial revolution nevertheless. By dodging a bruising Supreme Court battle until the twilight of his presidency, Reagan was able to appoint dozens of young conservatives to lower courts under the proverbial radar – and transform the American judiciary overall. (Why Ronald Reagan Picked Sandra Day O'Connor--And Why George W. Bush Might Want to Follow His Example.)

Although President Wilson Reagan may have appointed “dozens of younger conservatives to lower courts under the proverbial radar,” the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor was a betrayal of many of the voters who had voted for him in 1980, and I, for one, said to anyone who would listen, principally to those in the courses I was teaching at the time at Nassau Community College, that O’Connor's nomination would solidify the horrific decision of the United States of America in the case of Jane Roe v. Henry Wade, January 22, 1973, for decades to come. One of the first duties of an elected official is to stop the shedding of innocent blood, and Ronald Wilson Reagan, who supported “exceptions” to absolute inviolability of preborn life almost until the very end of his presidency when, according to one pro-life leader, he came, at least privately, to reject such “exceptions,” failed this cause badly with the Judge O’Connor’s nomination.

Sandra Day O’Connor was an acolyte and protégé of the pro-abortion United States Senator Barry Goldwater, whose first wife, Peggy Goldwater, had worked closely with none other than Margaret Sanger to establish “birth control clinics” in the Grand Canyon State:

Margaret Sanger, the notorious and pioneering president of the American Birth Control League, came to Arizona from New York during the early 1930s for the same reason as many other new arrivals during this time—to improve a relative's health. Her grown son suffered from respiratory illnesses, and doctors recommended Arizona's dry, warm climate. Sanger quickly began working with local volunteers to establish birth control clinics in Tucson and Phoenix. In 1934, Tucson volunteers leased a small house in a Tucson barrio for $25 a month, and hired a practical nurse to staff Clinica para Madres [the Mothers' Clinic]. Fees charged were never greater than $1, and many women paid nothing for services. Many of the early clients were Mexican American. Despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church, this clinic remained open and eventually became Planned Parenthood of Tucson. Sanger and other volunteers organized dhe Mothers' Health Clinic in Phoenix in 1939. Like the Tucson clinic, it was staffed by a volunteer doctor and paid nurse. Sanger worked with Peggy Goldwater, Maie Heard and other prominent women to found this clinic, which became a Planner Parenthood clinic in the 1940s. (Sanger, Margaret - Arizona Women's Heritage Trail.)

Barry Goldwater, who died on May 29, 1998, at the age of eighty-nine, supported his wife’s efforts with great enthusiasm:

She [Sanger] became known as a great party giver, specializing in curry and mariachi, and the world's rich and famous regularly made the trek to her home. Eleanor Roosevelt came to tea; John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife, Martha, to a party; Frank Lloyd Wright to dinner. Ansel Adams took photos of her in her Elm Street garden and declared "at least one of the photographs was about the best thing of its kind that I have done .... The small figure in the garden is simply swell."

Peggy and Barry Goldwater, pioneers for birth control in Phoenix, were friends, Logan Rothschild said, though Goldwater once joked to her that "Margaret Sanger didn't like him very much--Peggy was always expecting another child when they met up." (Margaret Sanger: Tucson's Irish Rebel.)

This is what Sandra Day O’Connor learned in her formative years, and it is why both Howard Phillips, the founder of the Conservative Caucus Foundation, and Judie Brown firmly opposed O’Connor’s nomination. Each went to great lengths to O’Connor’s completely pro-abortion record.

Although I disagreed with the late Mr. Phillips's support for the philosophy of the founders of the United States of America and his Calvinist view of the world, his work exposing the fraudulent nature of various "pro-life" Republican administrations was admirable and stands the test of time on its well-documented merits:

Let me put this into context. People say you can't tell how a Supreme Court nominee will turn out once on the bench. I respectfully disagree. In most cases, it was very clear. I opposed the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor because it was very clear that she had a pro-abortion record in the Arizona state senate and as a judge in Arizona. She was also allied with Planned Parenthood. I opposed David Souter because I read his senior thesis at Harvard in which he said he was a legal positivist and one of his heroes was Oliver Wendell Holmes and that he rejected all higher law theories, such as those spelled out in our Declaration of Independence. In addition, he was a trustee of two hospitals: Dartmouth Hitchcock and Concord Memorial. He successfully changed the policy of those two hospitals from 'zero abortion' to 'convenience abortion.' I testified against Ruth Bader Ginsburg because her record was clear. She saw the Supreme Court as a Supreme Legislature. She was on the far Left of virtually every issue. Yet, only three members of the U.S. Senate voted in opposition to her confirmation. Only eight voted in opposition to Breyer. With respect to Judge Roberts, I'm in the midst of an extensive and intensive study of his record. Several things become clear, although I'm not ready to reach a final conclusion. It is clear that while he claims to have no overarching judicial philosophy he does have a point of view on most of the big issues. But that point of view is overshadowed by his pragmatism and his desire to stay within what is perceived as the mainstream. (Flynn Files - Howard Phillips Interview Part I.) 

Wasn’t that an accurate observation of John Glover Roberts eighteen years ago? Remember, he voted retain Roe v. Wade in the case of Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Clinic, June 24, 2022. Howard Phillips was right about Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. He was right about David H. Souter in 1990, and he was right about John Clover Roberts, Jr., in 2005.

Here is a brief excerpt from the late Mr. Phillips's actual testimony against Ronald Wilson Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981:

As an Arizona State Senator, she voted twice for abortion on demand through the ninth month of pregnancy; she co-sponsored a proposal to permit abortion without parental consent; she promoted ERA; she opposed the Human Life Amendment; and she failed to oppose abortions at a taxpayer-funded facility." (The Supreme Court Watch - A Public Service of The Conservative Caucus.) 

Judie Brown, the founder and President of the American Life League, similarly testified against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination in 1981, also documenting O'Connor's solid pro-abortion record as the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. Anyone who claims that they were "surprised" by O'Connor's opinions, summarized below by a pro-abortion organization, is dealing in a world of fanciful delusions. Howard Phillips and Judie Brown documented Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record openly and publicly. The documentation provided by Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Brown meant nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan or Attorney General William French Smith or to the "pro-life" Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee or in the rest of the United States Senate.

Here is that summary of the retired Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record a found on a pro-abortion website:

Justice Sandra O'Connor has played a very influential role on the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. In both Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), O'Connor's single vote in support of a woman's right to choose ensured the survival of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O'Connor, with Justices Kennedy and Souter, wrote the controlling plurality opinion in Casey which upheld a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion in a case many feared would overturn Roe v. Wade:

"After considering the fundamental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed."

"Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code."

While Justice O'Connor's opinions have changed in the way abortion cases are analyzed, lowering the standard of review from strict scrutiny to an undue burden analysis, she has prevented the conservative members of the Supreme Court from destroying the central provisions of Roe.

In Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), the Court's most recent decision concerning abortion rights, Justice O'Connor joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion affirming Roe and Casey:

"...[t]his Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. We shall not revisit those legal principles."

In Hill v. Colorado, Justice O'Connor voted uphold Colorado's law creating a buffer zone around health facilities. Inside the 100-foot buffer zone, a patient cannot be approached within eight feet without consent for the purpose of leafleting, displaying a sign, or engaging in conversation. (National Abortion Federation: O'Connor's Legacy.)

Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, an appointee of George Herbert Walker Bush whose pro-abortion record was documented Howard Phillips as per the evidence presented just above, joined Reagan appointee Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s plurality opinion in in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v William Casey, June 29, 1992:

Although Roe has engendered opposition, it has in no sense proven unworkable, representing as it does a simple limitation beyond which a state law is unenforceable. P. 835.

(e) The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed. Pp. 855-856. (Text of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.)

Here one can see how contraception, which was pushed a century ago by the likes of Margaret Sanger (see Planned Barrenhood: Evil From Its Very Inceptions) and received “theological” justification from the Anglican sect in 1930 and from the “Federal Council of Churches” in the United States of America in 1931, altered the nature of family life, modeled as it should be after the Holy Family of Nazareth, that it became an accepted fact of life in the Twentieth Century that it is both natural and commendable for married women to leave the domestic hearth to fulfill their career goals, if not eschew marriage altogether in the achievement of worldly success and power as they conduct. Such women have no time for children, which is why the surgical execution of children, Kennedy reasoned—with O’Connor and Souter concurring, must be available because there are times when the best laid plans of wives and fornicating women to thwart the natural end of conjugal relations “aft gang agley” (“oft go astray”).

Mind you, I am not disparaging women who have had to use their education and talents to help support their families. No, I am only noting the fact that the “world” has disparaged the self-sacrificing mother who stays-at-home to raise her children to be canonizable saints.

Ronald Wilson Reagan’s desire to cater to “moderate” women voters forty-two years ago was not act of statesmanship and Sandra Day O’Connor’s career as a politician and jurist was based on a firm and unequivocal rejection of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as having any relevance whatsoever to public life and jurisprudential decision-making. Such must ever be the case when men do not fear just judgment of Christ the King of their immortal souls when they die and thus treat any concept of a “higher law” as nothing than an esoteric theory that has no relationship to the “real world,” which ignores the fact that the true world of reality is that presented to us by Holy Mother Church: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

18. When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall — namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

19. When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call “civil,” and “independent,” and “free,” namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

Pope Leo sounded similar themes in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, and in Tametsi Prospicientibus Futura, November 1, 1885:

But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation -- that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.

There is no naturalistic, electoral, political, or legal way out of the mess in which we find ourselves. We are witnessing the manifestation of the perfection of the inherent degeneracy of the founding principles, a degeneration that includes social decadence and nihilism. Sandra Day O’Connor was just another exemplar and victim of the Judeo-Masonic myth of a just civil order absent Christ the King and His true Church.

We are eyewitnesses to the process of a disintegration of a social order that is premised upon one Judeo-Masonic lie after another, which is all the more reason for us to spend time, if at all possible where you live in this time of apostasy and betrayal, before the Blessed Sacrament and by uniting ourselves more fully to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Which beats for us with such love in the Adorable Sacrament of the Altar, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

As we pray for the conversion of everyone in this country, especially for those who believe in the shibboleths that have given rise to needless divisions and bitterness among men, let us surrender ourselves now and always to the Most Holy Trinity and be ever reliant upon the intercessory power of Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to effect the conversion of men and their nations to the Social Kingship of her Divine Son as the fruit of her Fatima Message and the Triumph of her own Immaculate Heart.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!   

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chrysologus, pray for us.

Saint Sabbas, pray for us.