While the conservatives on the Supreme Court claim to be “strict constructionists” who hark back to the original wording of the Constitution, they are in fact radical extremists bent on overturning the Constitution in ways that threaten our freedoms and physical survival with wanton disregard for the consequences.

In asserting a constitutional right to bear arms in 2008, the Court reversed 219 years of established opinion that the 2nd Amendment only gave the states the right to form their own ‘well-regulated’ militias; it did not give individual citizens the unrestricted right to arm themselves.

Subsequently, Americans have armed themselves with over 400 million guns of every description and inflicted untold carnage on our schools, churches, and shopping centers.

The right to vote has long been an essential democratic principle that has been continually expanded throughout our history to include all men, former slaves and women.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was reaffirmed five times by both Democratic and Republican congresses to prohibit racial discrimination in voting.

Yet the Court presumed to know better and ruled that such protections were no longer warranted or needed, with the result that a number of states that had been prohibited from discriminating against Black voters instantly passed new laws to restrict voting and gerrymander districts to ensure White rule.

The Court also overturned century-old prohibitions against corporations spending unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Ruling that corporations are people, and money speech, the court found that any restrictions on political spending violated the constitutional protection of free speech.

As a result, our airwaves are now inundated with dark money ads whose unknown wealthy sponsors are unaccountable for the lies they spread.

Given the Constitution’s admonition against the establishment of religion and of religious tests for office, the Court has long upheld the freedom of individuals to follow their own religious beliefs while maintaining the separation of church and state. The freedom of religion has protected the right to practice one’s own religion, not to infringe on the rights of others.

Yet now, the court asserts that such religious freedom has become the right of a bigoted few to discriminate against the rights of others.

The Count’s reversal of Roe vs. Wade, counters centuries of English common law that upheld abortion prior to quickening. It has been reaffirmed over the past 50 years by a succession of Republican courts. Supported by a large majority of Americans, its reversal threatens political and judicial conflict among the states unseen since conflict over slavery and the fugitive slave act brought on the Civil War.

And just a few days ago, the Court made perhaps its most dangerous decision yet, overturning environmental regulations long enabled by Congress that ensure clean air and water, restrict environmental pollution, and most crucially, combat global warming, thus totally negating our ability to do anything to ensure our very survival on this planet.

Such actions overturning long-established precedents with a willful disregard for the consequences are far from conservative; it is a radical attack on the Constitution by an extremist minority intent on imposing their ideology on the majority of Americans at any cost.

The radical justices represent a narrow minority who are opposed in these cases by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Two of the deciding justices occupy seats stolen from Democratic presidents, all were appointed by Republican presidents who were themselves elected by a minority of voters, and all were confirmed by senators who themselves represent a minority of Americans.

Such wanton destruction of our rights with a callous disregard for the common good has resulted in undemocratic elections, daily carnage, destruction of the environment, assaults on individual rights, and the elevation of reactionary religious beliefs over all others.

This cannot stand. The Congress can and must overturn the court’s dangerous rulings and reform the court’s membership and terms to restore its proper judicial role. And we must vote in November for congresspeople who will eliminate the filibuster and do this without hesitation. The stakes could not be higher.

Thomas Spear was a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin who lives in Arrowsic.