Why No Evangelical Justice?
When Republicans were warned not to give Sonia Sotomayor the drubbing Democrats gave Robert Bork and Sam Alito—lest they be perceived as sexist and racist by women and Hispanics—the threat was credible, for it underscored a new reality in American politics.
The Supreme Court, far from being the last redoubt of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in America, reflects the collapse of that WASP establishment, and a rising racial, ethnic and gender consciousness and solidarity.
Consider. In 45 years, no Democratic president has put a single white Protestant or Catholic man or woman on the court.
Six nominees have been sent to Congress by Democrats since 1964: Thurgood Marshall, an African-American, four Jewish nominees—Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer—and one wise Latina woman. Not since JFK put All-American Byron "Whizzer" White on in 1962 have Democrats elevated a white Christian.
What about the Republicans?
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford nominated seven to the court. All were white, all were male, all were Protestant: Warren Burger, Clement Haynsworth, Harrold Carswell, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist and John Paul Stevens. No diversity there.
And from almost every standpoint, Nixon and Ford failed.
Two of Nixon's nominees, Haynsworth and Carswell, were rejected. Three of the four Nixon appointees who were elevated—Burger, Blackmun and Powell—voted for Roe v. Wade, which Blackmun wrote. Only Rehnquist turned out to be a stellar justice, among the best in a century.
Nixon had intended to appoint the first woman, Mildred Lillie of California, but was dissuaded by late resistance.
Ford's lone choice, John Paul Stevens, was approved unanimously, went to the court, turned left and has anchored the liberal wing for 34 years.
With Reagan, nearly three decades ago, Republican presidents became more ecumenical.
His first pick, as promised, was a woman, Sandra Day O'Connor. His second was the first Italian-American ever to sit on the high court, Antonin Scalia. His third was Bork, a Protestant. When Bork was rejected, Reagan chose Douglas Ginsburg, a Jewish judge and colleague of Bork's on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. When Ginsburg was pulled because of a marijuana incident in college days, Reagan went with Anthony Kennedy, an Irish Catholic judge from his home state of California.
Kennedy and O'Connor became swing votes and unreliable as constitutional conservatives. But, on diversity grounds, Reagan can hardly be faulted.
George H.W. Bush chose David Souter, a white Protestant from New Hampshire, who followed Stevens left, and Clarence Thomas, an African-American from Pin Point, Ga. Thomas was savaged, but his counter-charge of having been subjected to a "high-tech lynching" knocked Democrats back on their heels and drove a wedge between party liberals and feminists and Democratic conservatives.
In replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist and O'Connor with John Roberts and Alito, George W. Bush succeeded as no other Republican president since World War II. He had not only tilted the court to constitutionalism, but also replaced two white Protestants justices with two white Catholic justices, one of whom is the second Italian-American on the court.
Where does that leave the court today?
When Sotomayor is approved by the Senate, the court will, in terms of religious minorities, consist of six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant. Ethnically, there will be one African-American, one Hispanic American, one Irish-American, two Jewish-Americans, two Italian Americans and two Anglos.
That is diversity, is it not?
And who is the least represented minority in America on the U.S. Supreme Court? Not Catholics, who have two-thirds of the seats. Not Jewish-Americans, who though 2 percent of the population, have 22 percent of the seats. Not African-Americans, who at 13 percent of the population have 11 percent of the seats. And not Hispanics, who at 15 percent of the population will have 11 percent of the seats.
No, the most underrepresented group of Americans—nay, the most unrepresented minority, the largest group of our fellow citizens never to have had one of its own sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in the modern era is—Evangelical Christians.
They are more numerous than Catholics, who at 24 percent of the population have 67 percent of the seats on the court. And, for Republicans, they are a far more reliable voting bloc than Catholics—not to mention Hispanics, Jews and African-Americans, all of whom voted somewhere between two to one and 20 to one for Obama.
Bush II tried to close the Evangelical gap with Harriet Miers, but conservatives opposed her as unqualified.
Republicans should now be searching for highly qualified Evangelical Christian judges and constitutional scholars, women as well as men—and, when falsely accused of being "anti-Hispanic" or "anti-woman," ought to reply: "What do you liberals have against white Christians, man or woman, not to have named one in 45 years?"
Everybody can play the diversity game.
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"The Supreme Court, far from being the last redoubt of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in America, reflects the collapse of that WASP establishment, and a rising racial, ethnic and gender consciousness and solidarity."
The sad truth is the WASP establishment simply destroyed themselves. They have no one to blame but themselves. They embraced the soul destroying, modern gospel that they themselves seemed to have had no small part in authoring. And Mr. Buchannan should not crave more WASP's on the court, as they are the ones who unleashed the torrent of unconstitutional decisions. Their complete body of decisions have left America a shell of its former self. Soon the bastard chic will hatch and consume the shell. There will be nothing left then.
The Catholics on the Supreme Court don't count as "white Christians?". Or is the point simply that "liberals" haven't appointed these (presumably Christian) Catholics? Having lived this last decade in the midst of prosletyzing (to and past the boundary of politeness) Evangelicals eager to turn me from a Catholic to what they consider "Christian," I am perhaps too easily irritated by such a formulation.
Two other puzzlers. If there be no religious majority (save the altogether too nebulous "Protestantism" which lumps together High Church Anglicans with snake-handlers)how can Catholics or Evangelicals (still a rather lumped-together term) be minorities? Second, just because one can play the diversity game doesn't mean one ought to.
Sam Bass,
As a Protestant, I agree with you and must apologize for my fellow Protestant evangelicals. I do believe Catholicism to be a strange faith, and if I ever meet and befriend a Catholic, I will attempt to get him or her to see the Protestant side of things, but in a respectful way. I would never stoop to the level of haughty, sanctimonious, and ignorant Puritanical self-worship that many of today's Protestants do, as it is becoming a popular belief in Protestant circles that Catholicism is not even a form of Christianity. An intellectually clueless and uneducated assertion, of course, as that would be the same as Americans saying to Englishmen that they are not true Englishmen, Americans are.
However, I think Pat's point was that America is a creation of white Protestants, that it is the most American form of Christianity, while Catholicism is more European. And having fallen prey to the Marxist creed of WASP self-hatred, they have single-handedly destroyed the country their ancestors created. Consider that the last two WASPs on the Court, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, are the most liberal on the Court, more so than Clinton's two Jewish nominees.
"Everybody can play the diversity game."
Yeah. But give me one good reason why anyone should.
Touche`, Mr. Higdon.
In another post, PJB quotes Garet Garett:
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”
This is obviously quite true of the "Conservative Movement," which one commentator on Taki's Mag liken to "whoring," with David Keene in mind. However, I think I would rather have a greedy whore such as Mr. Keene representing a political movement than trojan horses, such as neocons or even worse, so-called conservatives posing as the neocon alternative, paleocons (of course, Mr. Keene possesses all of those vices). That group would include "Palinistas," On Takis Mag, Paul Gottfried asks: "Am I hallucinating; or has Neocon Central, that is, FOXNews and its NY Post-affiliate, been working overtime to secure the presidential nomination of Sarah Palin?" He then points out that, "For the American Right, Sarah may be the ultimate Trojan horse." Then, in contrasting Mark Sandord to Palin; "And unlike Sarah, he has not announced his neocon approach to the Middle East by placing an Israeli flag on the wall of his office, just behind his desk."
I was taken to task on another post on this site when I speculated that perhaps senility would explain PJB's infatuation with Sarah Palin. What else could cause such an informed and wise commentator as PJB to become such a Palin promoter, even though she stood against everything that PJB fought the last 20 years. Unfortunately, the revolution within conservatism which passed by in the night (the "W" reign?) has infected all fields of thought within "conservatism;" first in its adoption of Militarism as its fundamental principle but also, as a necessary corollary, "unitary executive theory," as enunciated by "conservative" jurists such as the four held up by PJB. These four would be "conservative' if they were Prussian or Russian jurists, but not in the Anglo-Saxon tradition are they conservatives. These same four held that a Republican President, Dubya, in the name of the uniitary executive, could unilatorily suspend Habeas Corpus, a modern legal innovation only going back nince centuries. It was left to Justice Kennedy to hold the pass in defending a right that every anti-abortion, or 2nd Amendment advocate should be thankful for. Habeas Corpus could well be the "right" that prohibits a hostile administration from labeling "conservatives" such as these as unlawful enemy combatant, and detaining them indefinitely. In their eager embrace of authoritarianism these last eight years, conservatives have demonstrated why they deserve to be called the "stupid party." Because following the failure of these last eight years, it was inevitable that power would pass to their opponents. Yet they eagerly advocated every tool of governmental oppression that this nation once fought. Conservatives may one day appreciate the wisdom of the founders in crafting a system of checks and balances, even if it will be too late. So, going back to PJB's theme here; why not Sarah Palin as a Supreme Court Justice? She is sufficiently learned in the law where she too would support the suspension of Habeas Corpus like the best of conservatives.
Previous post should read: she stood for everything that PJB fought the last 20 years.
Being the first to disclaim any personal immunity to bad writing habits, I take this occasion to commend most who comment in these pages for thoughtful, well-constructed and effectively self-edited contributions.
Among other rhetorical assets, I appreciate these fundamentals: correct spelling and syntax; subject-verb agreement; well-organized subdivision into coherent paragraphs.
I have posted before my suggestion that, at the very least, any poster review and edit his comments before submitting. When the subject matter is particularly sensitive or potentially inflammatory, sleeping on one's comments before submitting would be an extra measure of prudence. At the very least, submit nothing older than a second draft.
We all suffer in some measure when such care and precautions are not observed. As readers, we labor to get through what might indeed by a stellar contribution, were it not submitted in single-draft haste. As for writers who carelessly submit, they pay with damaged credibility.
Having paused for this "public service announcement," I now encourage all to resume the thread already started on PJB's latest, above.
I beg to differ, Mr. Buchanan. The most under-represented (indeed, unrepresented) group in the country are Southerners, the people who founded the country.
It's interesting to note, in re: Mr. Wilson's comment, that originally the U.S. Constitution skewed somewhat Southern (e.g. the 3/5 representation rule for slaves) and, indeed, Southerners held the majority of seats on the Supreme Court up until the time of Dred Scott. This was in spite of the South only possessing 1/3 of the total population of the U.S.
That they are completely unrepresented today (if we are going to accept the leftist fiction that the Judiciary is, or should be, a representative branch) is nothing short of criminal.
Although, contra what I just posted, I would argue that Justice Thomas is a Southern vote on the Court.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasnt Chief Justice Vinson the last Southerner on the court?
And I must add: We, the 'WASC' minority will probably be the next group to implode.
Maxwell @11:
Lewis Powell of Virginia (on the court from 1971-1988) was the last Southerner.
@13
And what a sheer embarrassment to the South he was.
Mr. Buchanan said Justice Clarence Thomas is from Pin Point Georgia. Does that not qualify him as a Southerner? He seems to have more in common with the South than "the last Southerner" Lewis Powell mentioned above. Surely race is not a factor in qualifying as a Southerner.
Surely race is not a factor in qualifying as a Southerner.
If you're talking geography, then, no, race isn't a factor. If you're talking tribalism, it sure as heck can be.
Sorry, folks; it was my first time out trying an html tag.
I would say that Justice Thomas is a Southerner, which accounts for his many good qualities, but he does not represent the South in the way Mr. Buchanan defined the issue.