Let’s skip worrying about democracy in Ukraine, Crimea and Russia for a few minutes. And concentrate on democracy right here in America.

Yet another federal judge overturned state laws banning the absurdity of same-sex “marriage,” in this case in Michigan. AP reported:

“Federal Judge Bernard Friedman on Friday overturned Michigan’s constitutional ban, the latest in a series of decisions overturning similar laws across the country.

“Two Detroit-area nurses who’ve been partners for eight years claimed the ban violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution. Nearly 60 percent of state voters in 2004 approved a constitutional amendment that recognizes marriage only as between a man and a woman.”

For now, at least, an appeals court in Cincinnati halted Friedman’s order. But we all know how these things will turn out.

One of the first political campaigns I got involved in was Proposal B in Nov. 1972, back when I was 17 and couldn’t even vote yet. It would have legalized abortion in Michigan. We young pro-lifers campaigned hard against it, arguing in school and distributing flyers. It was wiped out, 61 percent nay, 39 percent yea. Although Michigan was much more of a labor state then  – mainly private unions like the UAW, not government unions – it was “socially conservative,” to use a phrase invented later.

These folks included large numbers of Poles and other Eastern European Catholic immigrants; “Catlik” German farmers; German Lutheran factory skilled workers; both black and white migrants from the South, largely Protestant, who drove North to work in the factories; TULIP Dutch Reformed Calvinists in the tulip area around Grand Rapids and Holland; and other conservative Protestants.

It didn’t matter. Two months later, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the baby abbattoir all the way with the preposterous, illogical and unconstitutional Roe vs. Wade decision. In his dissent, Justice Byron White, a Democrat appointed by JFK, branded it “raw judicial power.” The “Jane Doe” in the case’s name turned out to be Norma McCorvey, who had her baby before the case came to trial, then later came out as a pro-lifer, claiming the pro-aborts had manipulated her.

A recent book, “Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade,” detailed how the whole case was a sham from conception to the decision on Jan. 22, 1973.

If Americans had been the people they were when they stormed the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, the seven Roe majority “justices” would have been impeached by the House, removed from office by the Senate, then tarred and feathered and ridden out of the country on a rail like the Duke and the King of France in “Huckleberry Finn.”

Almost two centuries ago, Alexis de Toqueville’s “Democracy in America” famously described how Americans voluntarily formed local church and fraternal organizations to solve problems and socialize, the local governments small and the federal government hardly noticed except when the mail arrived. A modern de Toqueville would report on how Americans now are controlled and cowed by federal overlords, such as “Judge” Friedman, with liberty reduced to which of 1,000 cable TV channels to click to.

The recent Crimean referendum had more relevance than any vote in America in at least 50 years.