Upon occasion, U.S. Supreme Court justices are wont to take the public platform to hold forth on questions of law, even those at issue in cases on their way to the high court. One justice in particular, Antonin Scalia, is not hesitant to say to whom it may concern that he takes a dim view of same-sex marriage, thinks it silly, countercultural and certainly against the teachings of his church.

If the argument against gay marriage is that a particular religion says it's evil, doesn't the First Amendment make clear that no single religion gets to make public policy, especially (with the 14th Amendment in mind) one that is on the face of it prejudicial and exclusionary?* Beyond that, a thing deemed countercultural or silly doesn't make it ipso facto unconstitutional. If it could, what would stop a rogue legislature from enacting laws prohibiting marriage between Inuits and Cajuns or Methodists and Zoroastrians?

Meanwhile, if Mr. Justice Scalia can marshal four other justices to join him in ruling against proponents of gay marriage in cases from several states soon to reach the docket on appeal, it might be that finally no constitutional right -- even under the 14th Amendment -- will be found for gay or lesbian couples to marry.

That five Americans could make that kind of decision for 300 million people, especially with more than a hint of sectarian meddling into the bargain, would be out-and-out anti-democratic. Never forget the court's convoluted 5-4 decision to appoint George W. Bush president after he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by nearly half a million ballots.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is one among 435 members of Congress variously representing that aforementioned 300 million Americans. Under House rules, the Speaker has absolute power to control what will or will not come to a vote. One person of 435, one person among 300 million in effect gets to say what the law is by declaring what it will not be.

One of 100 U.S. Senators merely by having an underling deliver a particular slip of paper to a senate clerk can block consideration of a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court. One among 100 among 300 million.

These much regarded parliamentary "rules" are anti-democratic and do not represent the civic values that supposedly undergird American political life. Such rules as they are routinely applied only encourage the shoulder-shrug of those who say with increasing credibility that it does little good to go to the polls on election day because their individual votes count for nothing.

All this makes Washington, D.C., resemble nothing so much as a gated community through the portals of which the riffraff are firmly denied entrance. A person without connections in the system must dangle a credible offer of significant money for the never-ending campaign to get three minutes on the phone with Sen. Foghorn Leghorn, but initially more likely with an aide who just graduated with a political science degree from a college in Leghorn's home state.

It's not as if anyone can expect national affairs to be conducted in town-meeting fashion. Yet the relationships many of the 535 members of Congress have with their constituents are in name only, in part because Congress is serving party ambitions - or those of big-bucks donors -- rather than the People. The political calculation comes down to how obedient incumbents can get re-elected and uncooperative ones broomed to guarantee allegiance to some pharisaical tenet of party theology.

What workable remedies exist for this sorry situation are not, I am sorry to say, in sight. Those in power and the party machines and money behind them are not about to alter their ways of doing business. Too much power, privilege and personal wealth are at stake. Which is to say that those like John Milton, whose self-designated fate was to only stand and wait, need to find their way beyond the handicap of being marginalized by power. The national handicap, however, is less the blindness from which Milton suffered than it is lethargy brought on by a low-grade discouragement that so few can make their voices heard amidst the din of self-serving governance.

It may still be relevant to observe that, against steep odds, a biracial man often accused of being a foreign-born socialist was elected President of the United States -- twice -- by people who believed that "Yes, they could."

It is seems clear to me that such a thing will not happen again, certainly not in my lifetime. The bar has been raised ever higher and ingress to the corridors of power more restricted. An A+ in civics coupled with the most eager interest in things is to no avail. Just send money, and then shut up.

Whenever in this series my rhetoric has hinted at the possibility of revolution, several of my most liberal readers, mind you, have written to chide me, saying there will never be a revolution in America. They're probably right. Perhaps they're satisfied with conditions or simply inured to them. I can't see why. I suppose they may agree with the New York Times' Ross Douthat, that tireless champion of the Right, who has recently written that there is no plausible alternative to the oligarchic, plutocratic regime which obtains in the United States today.

Douthat to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't want Mr. Justice Scalia or Speaker John Boehner or any U.S. Senator to have or to wield the power each has inherited from the long-established systems that make Washington, D.C., such a national difficulty.

How long and through what must America wait to see such contradictions of democracy corrected? "How long?" asked Martin Luther King Jr. concerning related atrocities. "Not long," he said. Another way of saying, "Enough already."

*The First Amendment forbids Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, meaning that the nation is for all intents and purposes a secular entity in which religions of whatsoever kind may vend their ideas and teachings in the open market place. In no way, however, may a religion act as if it were established, i.e. privileged above other religions directly to affect the making of public policy.