… for the US Supreme Court. Quelle surprise, Judge Sonia Sotomayor gets approved for the highest court of the land in the USA.
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life
Thus sayeth Sonia Sotomayor in 2001. As Newt Gingrinch pointed out, can you imagine the reaction if a white male Bush appointee for the Supreme Court had ever, and I mean ever said:
I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life
The New York Times and Washigton Post would be filled cover to cover with KKK allusions and the nomination would be ‘challenging’ to say the least. But of course this only works one way.
This is yet another useful litmus test on Republican politicians (and indeed anyone who calls themselves ‘conservative’).
Did they implacably oppose Sotomayor? If not, they are indisputably and unequivocally ‘on the other side’, which is to say they are unalloyed statist collectivists and exactly the sort of people who must be driven from the party if it is even going to be worthy of the title ‘opposition’, rather than ‘Obama’s Loyal Cheerleaders’… and until the Republicans can become a meaningful opposition party, it cannot be a alternative that is worth voting for because in truth voting for such a party is just voting for more of the same, just in a different wrapper: a toxic illusion of choice.
Now is not the time for Republican unity, it is the time for for the party to tear itself apart and put a great many people to the political sword without remorse or pity… starting with nine US senators.
Mother knows best.
There are many reasons to oppose Sotomayor, but the wise Latina statement is the least among them. The Ricci case is a better reason. It is sometimes said that, in Ricci, she only followed the rules and it was not her place to change them. True. But someone, somewhere, should have at least asked, “Had you been on the Supreme Court when Ricci came up, how would you have voted.” After all, it was a very close decision.
I think I know how she would have voted, and frankly, it makes me retch.
Once Obama was elected, it was obvious that people like this would end up on the supreme court. People who supported and voted for Obama and who are now surprised deserve exactly what they get.
Of course, the rest of us get it to.
If one logs into Samizdata and looks at old posts that are listed as “draft” from several years ago (which, alas, only my fellow contributors can do)., one will find an unfinished post from three or four years ago in which I express my contempt for people like David Brooks (and my contempt for David Brooks in particular) for precisely this reason. Of the pieces that I started to write and never finished (and there are a few, although the ones I did finish are much more numerous) this is the one that in retrospect that I regret not finishing and posting the most. It is nice, in certain contexts, to be able to say “I told you so”, and I cannot quite do this.
There are repeated racist statements and repeated racist judgements (and efforts to prevent cases even getting before the courts).
Even John McCain (a man who pandered to La Rasa and other racist hispanic groups – and also is on record as saying that he would vote for any qualified candidate for the Federal Courts regardless of their judical philosophy) was shocked by S.S. and voted against the person.
However, it is not just racism – or sexism (or “classism”).
Sonia S. also supported Kelo (i.e. State and local governments being able to steal private property and give it to politically connected developers – in the hope of higher tax revenue).
And Sonia S. has repeatedly stated that she does not regard the Second Amendment as a fundamental right that limits the power of State and local governments.
In a sane country Sonia S. would (with the above ignorance of basic constitutional law) would not even have graduated in law (regardless of having been admitted to college to fill a quota – as she herself admits, indeed boasts of).
The person can not be considered a lawyer (as she knows nothing, and cares nothing, about the basic principles of law) and now she is a Supreme Court Justice.
“It is a funny old world”.
Worse “Shock, horror! Another judicial activist collectivist…”and racialist.
The US takes another small step on its way towards irrelevance.
Mr Jennings you are a man with high standards.
Just do what I do – bang the thing out (spelling errors and all) and leave it to other people to fix the mess (if they feel like doing so – otherwise they can simply post it with a warning note “done fast without checking”).
Of couse I am only half serious – but postings are not books, the idea is to get the message out fast (in the example you give, to warn people that David Brooks is no more a “conservative” than I am a Vogon) not to be a polished piece of prose that can stand for all eternity.
As for Comrade Barack.
Hillary Clinton is a collectivist – but the person had a Republican father and briefly (first year in college) was a Republican herself. Also Hillary married Bill – a man whose “heart is on the left” but who was quite prepared to be involved with relatively moderate Democrats such as the Democrat Leadership Council.
So Mr Brooks might have had a case had he said “one can not just judge Hillary by her speeches and her voting record, there is a chance that…..”
But Barack Obama is a simple case – born to collectivist parents (three hours of political indoctrination per day before he even went to school) and he has spent his entire life in leftist universities and in Marxist and semi Marxist “community organizations” and charitable trusts controlled by Marxists.
So one did not just have his (far left) voting record to go on – one had his whole life.
Anyone who claims that they did not think Barack Obama would be a far left scum bag in office is either someone who did not even do five minutes of background research on the man – or is a liar.
It’s not even that famous quote, it is her association with La Raza which should have rendered her totally beyond the the pale for any appointment at all.
As to the rest, well, she will be associating with some fine legal minds now. Maybe she might learn something.
Hah.
Sotomayor is quite bad in many ways, Bu Obama is in the White House and his party has a majority in the Senate, so Republicans cannot prevent Obama from putting anyone he likes on the Court.
There is a tradition that the President should have largely unfettered discretion in judicial appointments: any nominee that has appropriate credentials and is not corrupt should be confirmed. True, the Democrats broke this tradition in the case of Robert Bork, and again in the cases of Roberts and Alito. Turnabout might seem fair play – but it is still worth preserving. Professor Eugene Volokh, a libertarian, wrote that while he disagreed with Sotomayor, she was qualified and should be confirmed.
Finally, there is the question of choosing one’s battles. It was not possible for Republicans to stop Sotomayor; and all-out opposition to her could be portrayed as racist or sexist. Republicans must conduct themselves with one eye cocked at the hostile news media, which will happily collaborate in Democrat smear campaigns.
No, and much as I admire Eugene, he is wrong. As long as you keep quixotically playing by rules other other side care nothing about, expect to lose and lose and lose again. This is not a gentleman’s game, so stop acting like a gentleman and start seeing your opponents as a rival gang, because that is closer to the truth.
The Republic is not so much dead as un-dead and the sooner you get your head around the fact it has been un-dead for more that half a century now, the sooner you can fight the correct fight (and frankly that has to happen outside of congress before it can happen inside of it, something the other side have known for a long time).
Polarising the political scene is not just desirable, it is absolutely essential and that means throwing spanners and being as obstructional as possible at all times. Smashing the myth of consensus is a prerequisite to becoming a meaningful opposition movement and that means never ever ever voting for your enemies and to hell with tradition.
Interesting propaganda technique from poor-word-chooser Sotomayor. Concoct a positive but racist, stereotyped assertion based on the inane belief that mere experience confers wisdom, with the manifest purpose not only of basely building rapport but of arrogantly aggrandizing herself. Repeat as necessary. Where could we possibly have seen such techniques before? Race ipsa loquitur.
Now as to the belief that Sotomayor is not wise, since she made her bones in government, her wise-ness apparently cannot be denied.
(The definition of Latinoamericano is rather vague and, if organizations like La Raza are any indication, can be taken as referring to a cladistic/racial rather than a mere ethnic category, permitting an interpretation of its use as racist rather than merely bigoted.)