Leonard Leo

By Leo Gura - April 7, 2024

This interview gives you a look into the mind of how the American right-wing are corrupting the court system by stuffing it full of religious fundamentalist Christians.

Leonard Leo is a powerful fundamentalist right-wing backroom deal-maker who’s had a profound influence on the judges elected to every court in America, including the Supreme Court. Basically, every judge elected by Republicans doesn’t even get considered until Leonard Leo personally vets him/her for ideological “alignment”, which a euphemism for Stage Blue Christian fundamentalism.

I want you to get inside the minds of such people to see how they see the world and how they rationalize their political manipulations.

To be fair, there can be valid disagreement and difference of perspective when it comes electing judges and legal philosophy. And the left-wing can also be guilty of trying to stuff their of ideologically aligned judges into the court system. I’m not simply saying that we should elect as many liberal judges as possible in a tit-for-tat political game. The problem is that our court system is being corrupted by the appointment of ideologues through an elaborate and elitist system of backroom deal-making. In order to be a highly developed nation America needs an impartial and unbiased court system, which is only possible if we elect openminded, non-ideological, non-political judges. But people like Leonard Leo are running sophisticated backroom schemes to make sure that every judge put up for nomination is a Christian loyalist. They call this “alignment”. This is grossly undemocratic because a handful of little-known elites like Leonard Leo have a massively disproportionate influence over the legal system. They use their dark political connections to skew the legal system in ways that favor themselves, their families, their businesses, their ethnicity, and their religion. Regardless of whether you hold left or right positions, such a system is corrupt. If the left did this (and to some extent they do), it would also be corrupt. Because judges are not being evaluated on their intelligence and impartiality but on their alignment to one ideology or another.

Most Americans don’t even know that there is this silent, secret war going on to manipulate and skew the entire legal system. Billionaires, lobbyists, businessmen, and religious fanatics are corrupting the American legal system to favor themselves and their friends at the cost of everyone else. This is one of the most despicable and insidious forms of corruption, and yet it’s all happening out in the open and isn’t even considered a crime.

The most important criteria for electing judges must be: truth, non-bias, non-ideology, non-partisanship, openmindedness, and consciousness. A system for electing such judges is a meta-priority that trumps everything else. No one should be allowed to manipulate this system through backroom deals and politicking. One of the worst impacts of the Trump presidency on American democracy is that he deepened and normalized the corruption of American courts. This is the kind of subtle thing which most voters and political laymen do not even think about when they say stuff like, “Trump and Biden are equally bad.” It is critical that America develops a more democratic system for the election of judges. That doesn’t mean that judges should be directly voted on by the public, as that would introduce all sorts of undesirable political pressures, but we need a system that cannot be manipulated by elites like Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo’s approach is fundamentally anti-democratic and undermines the separation of church and state by over-representing his religion in the legal system.

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