Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPS
If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the U.S. Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealth and a bow tie. He also thinks that Shakespeare's plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. But then, so does Antonin Scalia. The other WASP among the nine, until he announced his retirement—thus paving the way for Sotomayor's nomination—is David Souter. The two WASPS have been the most liberal members of the court.
There were desultory calls for President Obama to preserve the WASP quotient on the court by picking another white Protestant, but Sotomayor fulfilled other, more pressing quota requirements, being a woman and of Puerto Rican ancestry—prospectively making her the first Hispanic member of the court (unless you count Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese ancestral background), thus delighting America's fastest growing ethnic group. Hispanics are the great brown hope of the Democratic Party and the real estate industry (more or less coterminous), since they represent 14 percent of the population but 25 percent of the live births, thus responsible for the fact that the United States is the only Western industrialized nation with a fertility rate above the 2.2 percent replacement rate.
Since WASPs are allegedly busy running America from their clubland bastions in Manhattan and the Skull and Bones premises, they haven't had time for procreative duties and scant opportunity either, since their leathery spouses spend their evenings going to charity balls and their weekends in the Hudson Valley or outside Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pruning their roses. The WASP replacement rate is abysmal and their traditional claim of being America's ruling class is under relentless pressure from Jews, whom all WASPs, after a couple of dry martinis, invoke as running not just America but the entire world. So these days, WASPs sit resignedly in their libraries reading histories of WASP clans like the Whitneys, the Rockefellers and the Harrimans, or watching reruns of CIA movies—the last genre dedicated to the thesis that ruthless white upper class Protestants run America.
Actually the WASPs fought their decisive battle for power early in the last century, when they realized that the streams of immigrants pouring into the New World from Czarist Russia or Catholic countries like Italy and Ireland would in the not-so-long term alter the nation's ethnic balance and challenge their supremacy. WASPs fought back with the program of population management known as the Eugenics Movement, eloquently defined by a great WASP hero, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, who declared in a famous court ruling in 1928 that "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind ... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
Starting around 1910, state after state adopted sterilization laws targeting the non-WASP ethnic strains. Other legislation sought to beat back genetic attrition. The 1924 Racial Integrity Act of Virginia rendered it illegal for blacks and whites to marry and reproduce. By the end of the 1920s, 39 states had adopted legislation prohibiting the marriage of "feebleminded" people. There was a building boom in institutions designed to house the insane and "feebleminded" around the country. The Minnesota Institute for Defectives had the responsibility "to keep the persons entrusted to our care until they are past the reproducing age." Between 1880 and 1929, on one historical account, WASP eugenicists were able to increase the number of unfit imprisoned in asylums four-fold: from 31,973 to 272,527 people. Hitler and his associates followed the WASPs' diligent efforts at ethnic cleansing with keen attention and delightedly studied the statutes WASPs rammed through Congress, most notably the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively barred immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Ironically, the Immigration Act spurred settlement in Palestine, which most Jewish emigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe had previously spurned in favor of the United States, thus blazing the path that has led to AIPAC and Avigdor Lieberman.
In 1927, the United States became the first eugenic nation when the Supreme Court upheld the decision to sterilize the unfit in Buck v. Bell by an 8-1 majority. The composition of the Court at this high point in the WASP counter-attack was as follows: Episcopalians: George Sutherland (Vt.); Edward T. Sanford (Tenn.); Harlan Stone (N.Y.); Willis Van Devanter, (Wyo.). Unitarians: Chief Justice William H. Taft (Conn.); Oliver Wendell Holmes (Mass.), who wrote the majority opinion, quoted above. Mainline Protestant (Disciples of Christ): James McReynolds (Tenn.), a fervent anti-Semite who refused to speak to his fellow Justice Louis Brandeis, for three years. Jewish: Louis Brandeis (Mass.). Catholic: Pierce Butler (Minn.), the sole dissenting vote.
The WASP struggle for continued supremacy crested legislatively in the 1920s, even though compulsory sterilization continued for many decades. Now 80 years later, we have just one lonely WASP, Stevens.
The right is trying to claim that Sotomayor is a reverse racist, but this, like almost everything the right says these days, is not gaining any traction with the general population, though CNN is giving it relentless play. What the right can't do is claim that Sotomayor is any sort of radical. She's not. Her decisions have generally been pro-business and she owes her career on the federal bench to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who nominated her to the Appeals Court. Moynihan was of Irish descent, but he famously adhered to the WASP belief that an inherent "pathology" disfigured the black family in America.
WASP dominance is on the way out—but their social priorities are safe in the hands of the Catholics and Jews on the Court, and when it comes to the class war, Ms. Sotomayor is no boat-rocker, any more than the president who has nominated her.
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Not mentioned in Mr. Cockburn's canon of 20th century American eugenicists is Margaret Sanger-- founder of a certain organization known by its disparagers as "Planned Barrenhood." Of course, Sanger--to my knowledge--was never considered for a seat on SCOTUS. Nor do I know her ethnicity, not that it matters. Her lethal legacy of preventing and destroying children transcends any individual accident of her own birth. Her racism transcended the worst that Sotomayor has been accused of.
Wish we could blame Sanger on the WASPS or the Jews or whomever, but she was in fact a renegade Catholic.
I knew Chronicles was in complete decline when I saw Alex Cockburn's first column a few months ago. The paleoconservative ire at the necons and the GOP have driven them into absurdities; into alliances with marginal malcontents. Taki has Raimondo; Chronicles Cockburn. The worst thing about battles, whether military or political, are the alliances one must form against the common enemy. Those alliances, as history aptly teaches, can raise the price of victory beyond that of defeat. Chronicles will not survive this decline. I'm sorry to see that.
@3
How is Raimondo an enemy? Sure he may be a homosexual but his writing is interesting.
Lil' Al is loony. How can Al reasonably claim Barry O is not a "boat-rocker" in the class war? Hell, he's the captain of the hate boat!
I believe the "Shakespeare" plays were written by the Earl of Oxford, too, because Joseph Sobran has written a very original and convincing book about it. Then, Mr. Cockburn continues: "WASP dominance is on the way out—but their social priorities are safe in the hands of the Catholics and Jews on the Court, and when it comes to the class war, Ms. Sotomayor is no boat-rocker, any more than the president who has nominated her." I beg to pardon Mr. Cockburn's description of the Catholics on the Supreme Court Bench: They are purely nominal. We really are not safe anymore.
Obama is a disciple of Saul Alinsky, an agitator of the greatest degree. A revolutionary in which truth and morals were absolutely relative. As a consequence of the November election, we have a liar-opportunist for a president, who claims to be concerned about our interersts. What's new, for the naive, that is? Enough people are addicted to television, MTV, main stream news, printed newspapers, and the local army general to accept the lies. Its all a Seinfeld joke, folks. Forget the meaning of life while the jugglers are in charge; forget reality as long as Christ the King is ignored, downplayed, and cursed. Of course, this result we can thank that a...... Abraham Foxman and the ACLU for, as well as the cowardly, so-called Catholic bishops of the U.S.
Which November election and which liar-opportunist for a president? Better yet, which November election produced a principled truth-teller for President? Any in the last couple of generations?
WASP's interests being protected by liberal Catholics and Jews? That is a laugh!!!!!!!
@ 4
I did not say Raimondo or Cockburn were my or anyone else's enemies (I try not to think in those terms about politics). I said paleocons will make dubious alliances to fight their common enemy, the necons. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, e.g. Soviet Union.
#9 - The interests of the WASP ruling class are the same as those of the liberal Catholics and Jews who have been admitted into their ranks and groomed for high positions. These interests are mainly to establish their rule over the entire globe employing whatever modern ideology suits them at the moment. Cockburn is on to something here, although there is much more to be said than is possible in one essay. Depopulation is important to the rulers since hordes of poor uneducated subjects are of no use to them. But since educating kids is a hassle, their own population is under pressure as well. As other groups get WASPified and admitted into the ruling class, their population also comes under pressure. For example, although the Catholic hierarchy, especially at the top, maintained a hard line against contraception, eugenics, and similar abominations, the rank and file bought into it as much as the WASPS did. The same can be said of most Jews, other than the most zealous of the Orthodox.
Kirt,
I think your post is helpful in understanding Cockburn. He is a serious writer but somewhat cavalier in this essay. The Chronicles folks by and large recognize truth and see conversation and writing as an honest craft to arrive at truth.( It is the ancient understanding as opposed to the modern understanding that wisdom is in the encyclopedia or library.) What Cockburn illustrates in this essay is that words, liberal,conservative, Catholic,White Anglos Saxon Protestant, Jew, have more in common today, the way they are used and in light of the leveling effect of egalitarianism,than they have differences. In other words, understanding truth or seeking it in ones particular upbringing or faith is of little to no importance to most people today and this fact is represented in the current make up of the Supreme Court. Catholics have little to offer today compared to their Protestant and Jewish friends and vice versa. We have become everythng, and therefore nothing, in our faiths and practices. (or works and faith) Chronicles is a magazine that calls for for more seriuos reflection than one will find in the constant flux and hype of the modern medias of education --- Colleges,Journals,Television News and simple conversations on the street. If one is offended by Alexander Cockburn's comments, one can find their corrective on other threads of Chronicles such as TJF's commentary on St. James Epistles. There is a reason why lady philosophy appeared in tattered clothes to Boethius during similar times, folks had taken a piece of her garment and abandoned her for other lusts, mistaking a mere piece of the truth for the whole. Good for Chronicles for attempting something more serious by including men like Alexander Cockburn on their blog.
@8: Kirt, excellent point; touche.
Who is the second Jewish judge? Breyer?
Robert @ 12
Your words - most profound:
"...folks had taken a piece of her garment and abandoned her for other lusts, mistaking a mere piece of the truth for the whole."
Is that not what the "emergent culture" also known as the "anti-culture" does to all things it touches? People, even Christians, want the Peace of Christ without making Him Lord of their lives? They want that of others which they need or desire but do not want a commitment to the person in the intimate and lasting bond of marriage or friendship. Thus have faith, marriage and friendship been degraded to be the mere objects of consumption.
Joe Sobran once quipped of the Supreme Court itself, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
The essay started off delightfully un-PC but trailed off toward the end. But Cockburn, as an irreverent leftist, can say things and get away with it that many conservatives would never dare to say. And he is on to something. The fact is that the self-interested particularism and identity politics that both the WASPs and Catholics were practicing was long taken for granted. I certainly do not agree with eugenics, but whole-heartedly support immigration restrictions. What is remarkable about this is the complete loss of nerve of our former Anglo elite. They have not just been beaten out, but have essentially declared surrender. To me this remains to be satisfactorily explained. (Was it loss of faith?)
Not only have the Anglo elites seemingly given up, but they have “identified with the enemy” so to speak. Urban Anglo elites in the North East side with the party of non-Anglos who are allowed to openly practice the type of identity politics that the Anglos would be run out of town for if they tried. (See Sotomayor.) These groups routinely demonize Anglos as the source of all ills, but apparently make more comfortable bedfellows for the urban Anglos than do us yahoos in flyover country. Someone please explain this to me. What is it? Their daughter’s might not be able to kill their unborn kid if they get knocked up if us yahoos are in charge? It seems to me that there should be a natural affinity between urban elites and flyover yahoos that could form a pretty powerful political coalition. I think Austin Bramwell recently suggested as much.
Very good points, Mr. Phillips. The old New England Anglo elites have surrendered what they ran for three centuries. Families like the Lodges and Saltonstalls presumably live on trust funds and what connections they still have. The vigor is gone. Perhaps Jack Kennedy's defeat of Henry Cabot Lodge was beginning of the end. Like Mr. Phillips, I would appreciate an explanation of the decay and demise of the New England WASP elites.
Just one small correction: George Sutherland was from Ut. (Utah), not Vt. (Vermont). He had an interesting life story: He was born in England; his father was converted by a Mormon missionary and took the whole family to Utah, then when he got there he realized that Mormonism was made up and reverted to Episcopalianism. Sutherland the son managed be elected Senator from Utah despite his non-Mormonism (which could probably not happen today). He was a conscientious justice, as were several of his colleagues on the Court of that era, but the eugenics fever infected many otherwise good men in those days.
The tenor of some of this discussion is an urgent reminder of what happens to people who think exclusively in terms of movements and coalitions. One cannot, apparently, read or post an interesting syndicated column without making an ideological or strategic statement or exhibiting symptoms of decline. I suppose that as a Christian, I should not be reading Baudelaire or Camus. What a sad little interior life this would mean and clearly does mean. The whole problem with the -so-called American so-called Right is the tendency to to retreat into conspiracy theories and ideological rigidity. The object is hardly ever the truth but some strategic move that will build a movement or sect. This was true of NR from the beginning, and most conservative publications and groups have followed suit. TS Eliot saw this and warned Russell Kirk against WFB and his propaganda sheet.
As for the Earl of Oxford, I can truly say there is absolutely nothing to the argument. My friend Joe Sobran's book is not only not original--derived largely from Charlton Ogburn--but it does not raise questions that a serious scholar would consider. I once spent two years studying authorship questions for an article I was writing on the disputed authorship of the Prometheus Bound. Please believe me when I say that Sobran, as I have told him repeatedly in conversation, does not even understand how to begin to approach these questions. Alex Cocburn's amusement is fully justified.
I would pay a nice sum to see Joseph Sobran and David Allen White debate the authorship of the Shakespeare plays. By the way, Captain Check asked about Dr. White's professional status a couple of months ago. After the Ascension Day Mass az few weeks ago, he told me that he had been happily retired from the Naval Academy since last December. He seems not to miss Annapolis very much and was defintely not going to attend the Academy's Commencement festivities highlighted by the flying of the Blue Angels and graced by Mr. Incredible himself, Barack H. Obama.
While Cockburn might be a parlor pink, he at least has a vision of smaller government than the trotsyite neocons who have glommed on to the GOP. As for the paleos, well, there are many differences among them too. Not all paleos garden, live in suburbia, avoid political office, etc. What's important is to call out the loaded dice and stacked decks of cards that are put before us. The paleos must read the paper between the lines, parse the lies, and spread the word.
TJF: "TS Eliot saw this and warned Russell Kirk against WFB and his propaganda sheet."
Interesting. I've read Kirk's biography of Eliot, and knew they were close, but never came across this telling piece of information.
Cockburn: "What the right can’t do is claim that Sotomayor is any sort of radical. She’s not. Her decisions have generally been pro-business...."
Yes, even 20 years ago this would have been false, but today does membership in La Raza and Accion Puertorriquen even count as "radical"? And being pro-business? La Raza is pro-business; one of their biggest donors is Wal Mart.
Kurt,
I meant your atypcial WASPS, ie middle class. Liberals have declared war on middle class WASPS for sure.
The problem with identity politics is that it deems good or workable ideas less important than the ethnicity of the person who utters them.
The whole objectable issue with Sotomayor is not her race or background but her belief that people of a certain ethnicity, life experiences, etc., are more qualified to apply the law than people of another identity.
Much of the discussion here (and the essay) supports her thesis.