The Alito Household’s ‘Enchantment to Heaven’

There isn’t a actual antecedent in American historical past to the scenario surrounding Justice Samuel Alito.

To recap, we realized final week that within the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the USA Capitol — the fruits of an effort to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election and preserve Donald Trump in workplace in contravention of the Structure — a member of the Alito family flew an inverted American flag on a pole on the garden of the household’s dwelling in Virginia. The flag, a conventional image of naval misery, had been repurposed by the intense proper as an emblem of the motion to “Cease the Steal.”

Justice Alito instructed The New York Instances that his spouse was accountable — that she flew the flag in defiance of a neighbor’s provocation. Fox Information later reported that the provocation was an indication blaming the Mrs. Alito for Jan. 6. If that’s true, this makes the selection to fly the flag even stranger.

Essentially the most noteworthy a part of Alito’s try to elucidate the flag, nevertheless, was what he didn’t say. He didn’t condemn the flag or disavow its which means or distance himself from the insurrectionists. He solely stated that he wasn’t in charge.

That is the place the scandal stood till Wednesday, when one more story dropped in regards to the Alitos, a house and a flag. Final summer time, as proven in images obtained by The New York Instances, the Alitos flew an “Enchantment to Heaven” flag from their trip dwelling in New Jersey. This flag, just like the upside-down stars and stripes, was additionally carried by Capitol rioters on Jan. 6. The phrase “attraction to heaven” was utilized by the Enlightenment thinker John Locke in his “Second Treatise on Authorities” and refers to a proper of revolution.

And the place the physique of the individuals, or any single man, is disadvantaged of their proper, or is below the train of an influence with out proper, and haven’t any attraction on earth, there they’ve a liberty to attraction to heaven, at any time when they choose the reason for ample second.

The slogan was in circulation throughout the American Revolution, invoked by Patriot leaders as they pushed for independence. Extra just lately, it has been adopted by the intense proper as an announcement of resistance to the political and social order of the fashionable United States. They declare a proper to revolution and, on Jan. 6, they acted on it.

If flying considered one of these two flags was sufficient, alongside along with his sympathetic posture towards the insurrectionists in current oral arguments, to boost suspicions about Alito’s allegiances, then flying each is as shut as we’ll possible get to clear affirmation that he stands, ideologically, with the women and men who tried to overturn the Structure for the sake of Donald Trump.

I discussed, at first, that there was no antecedent for this example in American historical past. And there isn’t. Though there have been a number of present and former slave house owners on the Supreme Court docket throughout the secession disaster of 1860, just one — John Archibald Campbell, an appointee of Franklin Pierce — resigned his place at first of hostilities in April 1861. Even then, he opposed secession, though he would ultimately be a part of the Accomplice authorities as assistant secretary of struggle.