The American Spectator

Steve| 7.14.09 @ 6:42AM

Bravo, Mr. Lord. The hallmark of the Left has always been to judge people by group affiliation (economic or racial) rather than as individuals. As you so aptly note, the trend continues. Thanks for introducing me to yet another "progressive" bigot.

Edward Finglas| 7.14.09 @ 8:56AM

This is the kind of preposterous overstretch of an argument that I find objectionable in our friends on the left. The author's observations on McReynolds are more or less true, but to paint all liberals and progressives as racists, at all times, is ridiculous, and I believe the author knows it. Although I seldom agree with their methods, and I am constantly annoyed by their sanctimony, I am will to concede that most liberals act from decent enough motives.

John Navratil| 7.14.09 @ 8:59AM

Of course the left groups people by race and other attributes. It is their collectivist "gene"; that gene which is antithetical to individual liberty.

The left which has no use for cultural dogma and can solve all problems from first principles if only the right people are studying it likewise has no need for the individual. Trying to solve a problem for 300 million individuals is tough and unnecessary when there are only a handful of labelled groups to consider.

JPousson| 7.14.09 @ 9:00AM

Obama has nominated a Supreme Court Justice who is just as America-hating racist at her core as is he.

The Republican Party will, once again, cave in to the racists in the Democrat Party and allow racism to be enshrined in our nation's highest court.

How befitting that So-low-liar's ample rear end will fit into the same chair that cradled the flabby rump of that empirical racist, McReynolds.

Once again, it is clear to anyone with half a brain that the true home of racism in the modern United States of America is rightfully the despicable Democrat Party.

John Navratil| 7.14.09 @ 9:24AM

Mr. Finglas,

I agree with you that "most liberals act from decent enough motives." However, these motive, while sincerely held are in conflict with self determination.

Thomas Sowell devoted "A Conflict of Visions" to this topic. He concluded (I hope I do Sowell justice) that, in broad brush, one is either motivated by self-determination based on personal responsibility and a recognition that cultural norms were behaviour patterns distilled from experience and which provide a practical body of knowledge even if not fully understood, OR one is motivated to modify society to advance all people, the individual is of reduced importance and culturals dogmas may be freely discarded if they do not provide any practical benefit to the solution being proposed; a proposal neatly summarized by a quote of Saul Alinksy: " 'Does the end justify the means?' is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, 'Does this PARTICULAR end justify this PARTICULAR means?' "

Unfortunately, these distinct motivations are in fatal conflict with each other as may be observed in the extreme polarization we observe today.

Jeffrey Lord| 7.14.09 @ 9:28AM

Edward..

"I am will to concede that most liberals act from decent enough motives."

The problem with this is if you were a slavery supporter in 1832, or a segregationist in 1914...you believed you were in fact acting out of "decent enough motives." People who judge others by race are all too often thought of as Bull Connor with the police dogs and fire hoses, snarling and foaming. In fact, lots of these people are as pleasant and smiley as can be...they just believe if you are...black, white, Hispanic, Asian - you fill in the blank - you are for reasons X,Y or Z inferior. Sotomayor clearly believes this to her core. The other night actor Jamie Foxx blurted out that Michael Jackson was "ours." "Ours"? I have MJ music. So, obviously do one heck of a lot of people all over the globe. But to Foxx he was "ours." Very revealing. What white person stood up when John Lennon died and said he was "ours" in the racial sense? No one that I can recall. Our friends on the left really do think this way - and have profited from this game politically right from the get go. It's more than time to stop it.

The Bishop| 7.14.09 @ 9:48AM

Thank you, Mr. Lord, for a poignant lesson from history. Unfortunately, there is no national political figure with the moral courage to make these points on a national stage. The decline of our nation is much steeper than I had originally envisioned.

Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 11:28AM

The Bishop:
Don't despair, yet. The people of this country are still made of sterner stuff. Remember that Harry Truman said never underestimate the American people. For all his faults, he understood what our history had instilled in us.

Liberal Reader| 7.14.09 @ 11:46AM

Mr Lord,

Race and racism are the central theme of American history. "Symbols" are everywhere we look.

When Ronald Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and told the cheering crowd he believed in "states' rights," he was making a symbolic appeal to southern whites who felt offended by desegregation and the consequences of the civil rights movement.

The Republican party -- much to the horror of many, many well-meaning conservatives, including George H W Bush -- began appealing to southern whites in these ways in the 1960s and only recently has this appeal lost its effectiveness.

Because of our history, it is difficult to manage arguments about reverse-racism: historically, "racism" has been a powerful system of affirmative action for whites. It is a system of white supremacy. How do you balance the history of racism on the one hand with -- say -- court decisions like the Ricci case that seem manifestly unfair on the other?

The answer, I would argue, is NOT to simply erase history and the gross violations of human rights that constituted the Jim Crow south and slavery, and say that from now on, ANY decision based upon race is "racist." The abstracting of public discourse on race from history is fundamentally racist because it encourages us to forget the millions who suffered an organized system of white supremacy.

The firefighters in Connecticut, and many other people, were treated unfairly. Their achievements were not fairly recognized because the city feared litigation. Sotomayor's reading of the statute was not "racist."

At some point I think "conservatives" need to question their own rhetoric and decide whether or not it accurately reflects reality. Is Sotomayor really comparable to the Grand Dragon of the KKK, as Tom Tancredo suggested? Is she a "racist" in the way that people were who approved and supported a system of making blacks second class citizens, vulnerable to every form of abuse an injustice, for a century following their three centuries of enslavement?

"Conservative" once had the connotation of characteristics we associated with good decorum: civility, restraint, rationality.

Maybe try that out again. The rodeo-clownification of the right is already well under way, but there's always opportunity in America.

bobmontgomery| 7.14.09 @ 12:31PM

See also Thomas Sowell's piece on 'disparity' and 'equality'.

L. Ross| 7.14.09 @ 1:07PM

Liberal Reader

What is NEW about REPUBLICANS| 7.14.09 @ 1:24PM

A RACIST PARTY WITH A RACIST STRATEGY: THE REPUBLICANS

When President Johnson helped pass Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s he commented that: "Well, there goes the South." He meant, of course, that now the South would become Republican as they now saw the Democrats as the party standing up for the blacks.

Following the Civil War, the South defeated what little there was of Reconstruction when in a contested presidential election the Republicans under Hayes agreed to pull out Federal troops from the South in exchange for Hayes being president. After the troops wee gone, the whites took back any remaining outstanding power that blacks had and placed blacks in a new type of slavery: this one an economic slavery through the share-cropping system.

Southerners have traditionally dominated American politics to a greater extent than their proportional representation entitled them, because, although they were largely members of the Democratic party (because the South was poor), they could quickly shift their weight to the Republican party to pass conservative legislation or to block liberal legislation. They voted virtually as a block and this ability gave them legislative power. Southern Democrats were pretty solidly racist and voted to keep the racist system in place.

Following the Civil Rights legislation, the South temporarily lost some of its legislative power as its voters and politicians switched inexorably to the Republican party. This, of course, has made the Republican party even more conservative and racist than it had ever been following the death of Reconstruction.

The South also changed its religion. As the former Democratic South changed it allegiances in politics, so did it also start to change its allegiances in religion. In the days of the anti-slavery movement, when the Anglican ministers in the South would not support racism and pro-slavery sentiment, the South changed its religions to the more personal, evangelical religions whose ministers did support racism and slavery. An insistence on maintaining a racist structure leads also to an insistence on racists values and hence racist religions. Similarly, today's Southerners are abandoning the more staid evangelical religions for the highly personalized religions characterized by the phrase "born-again Christians." Whereas, many a Methodist or Baptist preacher would not now condone racism, the Southerners don't have to worry about this with their new preachers of born-again religion.

L. Ross| 7.14.09 @ 1:40PM

Liberal Reader:

A couple of thoughts. An appeal to "States Rights" does not mean that Ronald Reagan was promoting racism. What it does mean is that Ronald Reagan was promoting less federal government intrusion into affairs that should be decided locally, the fact that you instantly read it as a hidden appeal to racist whites tells me a great deal about how you think.

With the notable exception of David Duke, I cannot think of any Republicans with the kind of racist credentials of say Robert Byrd, and David Duke went down to resounding defeat. Robert Byrd is still polluting the senate.

I understand how wrong it is to attempt to erase history, and no one in the Republican party is suggesting anything like that. However, are you willing to consider a few questions.

1. Is there a limit to how many Decades we should be "looking out for the historically disadvantaged"? If so, what is the limit? I mean, as things stand now, we are in the fifth decade of afirmative action. I submit to you that all of the people who suffered under slavery are dead, the vast majority who were alive for Brown vs. the Board of education are dead, and the majority of people who suffered before the Voting Rights Act are dead. What we have now are generations of people who feel they are entitled to preferential treatment based on suffering neither they, nor their parents have ever experienced.

2. Do you believe that equality of opportunity equals equality of outcome? And if so, why? No one is suprised by the racial disparity of professional sports, be it golf, football, swimming, basketball, tennis, etc. Nor does anyone cry racism, even though pro sports are typically not ethnically diverse. Yet, in everything else in life, if "racial balance" isn't attained, the cry of racism can be heard. It is interesting to me that people who embrace "cultural diversity" cannot grasp that maybe, just maybe, people from different cultural backgrounds may not be drawn to different career fields at precisely the same ratios. Heck, take a look at any recent Scientific American, and look at the authors. Most of the recent work being done in science is not be done by anglo/saxons, that's for sure.

What I'm trying to say is that Jeff Lord may have overstated his case a bit, but his central question is certainly still valid.

"Is it beneficial to the nation to appoint someone to the Supreme Court for life who believes that her racial heritage can and should have an impact in her decision making process, or is it time to appoint someone who believes that race is irrelevant and the law should treat all races equally?"

Jeffrey Lord| 7.14.09 @ 3:05PM

What is New about Republicans...

"When President Johnson helped pass Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s ..."

Stop here. Why did this have to be done? Everything in this legislation was passed and resolved with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendmendments to the Constitution, plus the Civil Rights bills of 1866 and 1875. Why did this have to be done all over again 100 years later? Because your side went out of your way to undermine all of these, using judicial activism on the Supreme Court plus a lot of help from the group known by history as the "military force" of the Democratic Party - the Ku Klux Klan.

Then you say this:

"Following the Civil War, the South defeated what little there was of Reconstruction when in a contested presidential election the Republicans under Hayes agreed to pull out Federal troops from the South in exchange for Hayes being president." Agreed? Who, exactly, was pushing the GOP to do this? Why...in so many words...your side! I find it amazing that your party pushed...and pushed..and pushed...to get those troops out of the South...and now it's the GOP's fault because it said OK?

The point here, really, is that whether it was 1800 with Jefferson or 1828 with Jackson or 1876 with Sam Tilden or 1912 with Wilson or 1932 with FDR or 2008 with Obama...race trumps all on your side. You are obsessed with dividing Americans by race (and these days by gender and sexual orientation to boot.) It should not matter if the entire Supreme Court were compsed of 9 Latinas - what matter's is what's in their heads, not what they look like. We have a fundamental disagreement here and have had it since the inception of the GOP in 1854. Even more telling is the anger your side has towards Justice Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Sarah Palin etc...because they match your race/ethnic/ gender obsession ...but think otherwise. hence the need to try and destroy them. As a Senate Democratic memo once said of Estrada...he's "dangerous" because he's "Latino."

And doesn't think the way the white guys running the Democrats in the Senate think all Latinos should think.

Christopher Scott| 7.14.09 @ 3:48PM

There is one big difference between Justice McReynolds and Judge Sotomayor: competence. Justice McReynolds was an excellent lawyer who had real world experience.

Justice McReynolds' racial views were not out of the mainstream for the time he lived in. (Unfortunately, Judge Sotomayor is well within the mainstream of legal thought now. In fact, her views are shared by practically all of the Democratic Party's elite and a small, but extremely influential, portion of the Republican Party's elite.) It is extremely unfair to hold someone who lived four generations ago to our modern standards on racial views.

I am a tax lawyer so I have particular interest in tax cases determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. I find Justice McReynolds' tax case opinions remarkably well written and succinct. This is a difficult area of the law to understand and he managed to both understand it and then hand down a coherent rule for the rest of the country to follow. This is no easy task. He also understood better than most people of his time that the New Deal was counterproductive and largely unconstitutional under pre-existing judicial precedent. His was a first class mind who understood the dangers of expanding government in the 1930's and he deserves to be remembered well even if his racial views are pre-modern.

Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 4:19PM

Liberal Reader:
Let's see. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965 became Law because of 1. Democrats or 2. Racist Republicans. States rights were enshrined in the mmm... 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights in oh...1791. Who ran the Jim Crow system across the South? 1. Democrats or 2. Racist Republicans. Last question. Who instituted the re- enslavement of blacks in America? Was it 1. LBJ, 2. Democrats, or 3. Racist Republicans Answers to all the above: Republicans are Racist! Easy test, eh?

Liberal Reader| 7.14.09 @ 5:17PM

L Ross and Richard Baker --

Since both of you offer a similar catechism in the school of thought that assigns Republicans the honor of eternal friendship with black people, and Democrats the eternal scandal of racist bigotry, I'll offer a response to both at once.

Richard, there's no such thing as an "easy test" when it comes to American history, particularly on this issue.

The Democratic party indeed supported segregation, although more liberal Democrats from the North were opposed to it.

And Republicans -- particularly northern Republicans (remember when New England sent Republicans to the House?) -- did participate in important ways in desegregation.

For decades many blacks registered as Republicans -- including, I believe, MLK -- if only out of protest against the Democratic party's past.

However, as you both know, being men, and not children, the world changes, and in the late sixties the Republicans made a concerted, planned, premeditated appeal to southern whites who felt resentful or uncomfortable with desegregation and the direction in which the country was headed in general on the topic of race.

Since then, most white racists have fled the Democratic party, and I'm sorry to say, some have found a home in the Republican party -- although I think many have just dropped out of mainstream politics.

I don't think you can say in good faith that the Democratic party today is a racist party. The notion is ridiculous.

L Ross, I do believe in equality of opportunity, and I think -- in the end -- that the Supreme Court's decision on Ricci was just and good.

It should be noted, however, that the Supreme Court devised a NEW TEST for understanding the law at issue. The circuit court did not enjoy that ability, since it is the prerogative of the SC alone.
Sotomayor's decision, in other words, was not somehow rebuked by the high court as "racist." Indeed, if she had decided otherwise, she would have been guilty of legislating from the bench.

The way mainstream American society is addressing the issue of affirmative action seems eminently good to me in general: affirmative action is slowly being phased out, as minorities strive for and enter the middle class in larger numbers. This was what was intended in the early-eighties, and while it may have gone on too long, it's being addressed responsibly in legislatures and in courts.

Hurling foolish accusations of racism at Sotomayor has contributed nothing to the national debate on the issue, naturally. While such idiocy is good for Hannity and Limbaugh, I wish to God there were a place I could go to read and learn about conservative opinions that refrained from that kind of debased and stupid rhetoric.

MikeN| 7.14.09 @ 5:23PM

Does "Latino" include the feminine?

Rep is dead thank god| 7.14.09 @ 5:28PM

L ROSS: said
1. Is there a limit to how many Decades we should be "looking out for the historically disadvantaged"? If so, what is the limit? I mean, as things stand now, we are in the fifth decade of afirmative action. I submit to you that all of the people who suffered under slavery are dead, the vast majority who were alive for Brown vs. the Board of education are dead, and the majority of people who suffered before the Voting Rights Act are dead. What we have now are generations of people who feel they are entitled to preferential treatment based on suffering neither they, nor their parents have ever experienced.

L Ross, try telling the JEWS that, people in the gas chamber are dead, so don't worry about it.

L Ross. You should tell the family of the troops whose son's and daughters coming back dead from Iraq the same thing don't worry they are dead. No doubt that is what the Republican Party thinks and that is why they are out of office I hope they never get back in.

You Racist scum.

Bob| 7.14.09 @ 6:31PM

Jeffrey -- I find it interesting that the party you believe is less racist, i.e., Republicans, is a party primarily of white southerners. If it is less racist, shouldn't it attract people of color?

Normally, I look for supporting data to a statement. I don't think either party is racist -- that is a strong word. Nor do I think that Sotomayor is racist. I do believe the Republican party has a bias for whites given its composition. That is prima fascia evidence. Basically, conservative policies, which favor ideologies of the past, appeal to whites more than people of color.

If the Republican party is to remain relevant, it must appeal to a broader audience. Republican leaders need to develop conservative actions that appeal to blacks, Hispanics, and for that matter, Jews. One of the major problems is the control of the party by evangelicals, a primarily white group that operates by belief rather than reason.

The race issue, on both sides, is rather bogus. I don't believe most conservatives are racists -- they just know very little about other communities because they don't spend a lot of time living in those communities.

If you really want to learn what it will take to grow the Republican party, live in Compton or the hispanic area of Tucson for a year and then let us know about the race issue.

Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 7:43PM

Liberal Reader:
Just because the Democrats were able to fool the blacks into believing them doesn't mean that they weren't fooled. The Republicans don't cater to them because of the old saying "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". Considering all the mindless insulting to come the Republicans' way, why should they cater? Regardless of the history, if blacks want to be fooled then they should thank LBJ for the War on Poverty and all the good things that it's done them. What's fair is fair, right?

Liberal Reader| 7.14.09 @ 8:38PM

Richard Baker --

Why do you insist that blacks have been fooled? Why isn't it possible for you to admit that they favor the policies and platform of the Democratic party?

I think the defensiveness among conservatives, and their rather stubborn insistence on the "bigotry" of liberals, bespeaks a guilty conscience.

Vincent Chiarello| 7.14.09 @ 9:27PM

Liberal Reader,

Your words: affirmative action is slowly being phased out...
indicates that you are terminally clueless about the current expansion of affirmative action programs that now exist in government and private industry. You are caught in the bind that sees the inherent inequality and illegality of "affirmative action" on the one hand, and the need "to do something" on the other.
The most recent pronouncement by the Superintendent at the US Naval Academy that this year's entering class would "be the most diverse" in the Academy's history is one such example of your nescience in this area. A professor at the Academy who was on the Admission Board blew the whistle about the open discrimination that now guides appointments to that institution. I was a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) for nearly three decades, and the once vaunted State Department has become another USG agency, such as the Department of Transportation, in part because of affirmative action. (For my experiences in the testing of potential FSOs, see: www.vdare.com for June 10.)
As to the end of "affirmative action," Justice O'Connor, wrote in Grutter, "one may hope, but not firmly forecast, that over the next generation's span..." affirmative action will no longer be necessary. The simple fact is that the race hustlers will not permit the goose that lays that golden egg to die.

Liberal Reader| 7.14.09 @ 10:15PM

Vincent --

I have no doubt that some of your complaints about affirmative action are valid and important, and I believe it has manifestly gone too far in many areas of society.

However, you seem to ready to accept simplistic, reductive characterizations of affirmative action and people who support it, when in fact it is complicated.

We are a nation who -- in the modern era -- enslaved human beings in huge numbers. Southern plantations are known to have contributed ideas to people who less than a century later, built concentration camps in Europe (see Rubenstein, Cunning of History).

I think that it wouldn't kill you to attempt to understand affirmative action and its supporters with a tad more generosity. I'm not saying you should abandon your overall philosophy on these matters, but again you talk about these people as though they are members of a mafia organization, and I think that's not fair and not accurate and not even all that interesting as rhetorical ornament.

Liberal Reader| 7.14.09 @ 10:29PM

We've strayed pretty far from the specific decision Sotomayor made in the Ricci case, which seems to have been dictated by precedent and very well decided.

In general, charges of "reverse racism" seem actually to be a form of moral relativism, something "conservatives" ostensibly abhor.

The notion that a person who supports a vast legal, social, and economic apparatus designed to enforce white supremacy or white privilege -- a person we call a "racist" -- is morally no different from a judge who makes a tough call (in unanimous agreement with the panel she's sitting on) interpreting an unclear law is also a "racist" is just not acceptable as reasonable political discourse.

Perhaps part of the problem is the endless search for labels that is happening on the right. Are liberals "socialists" or are they "fascists," or "statists," or "communists" or "terrorist sympathizers"?

Why not just deal with the issues and make your case?

Sotomayor, as any clear thinking rational adult can see, is no "bigot" and she's no "racist." There seems little hope that any amount of intellectual labor can compensate for the debasement of political discourse that has occurred when people can so easily fling accusations like that around.

Vincent Chiarello| 7.14.09 @ 11:21PM

Liberal Reader,
You write: I believe it has manifestly gone too far in many areas of society.
It would be churlish of me to ask how you can rationalize what you've written with your further comment:
However, you seem to ready to accept simplistic, reductive characterizations of affirmative action and people who support it...
Personally, I don't understand why a legal evaluation of the goals and objectives of affirmative action is complicated: either they are within tolerable limits of what is permissible in a society in which "equal protection of the law" applies to all, or they are not.
FYI: I was in the courtroom when Ricci was argued before the Supremes, and my opinion then was one vote would decide the case. Obviously, 4 Justices believe, with you, that it's complicated, so Justice Sotomayor will fit in nicely with that group, of that I have no doubt.
Further, what is palpably evident to me in your defense of affirmative action is your willingness to accept guilt, and probably white guilt at that, for the actions of people you or I never knew or dealt with. Does that make me less of a practicing Christian?
My grandfather's arrival from Sicily does not, in my view, make him an accomplice to slavery or its aftermath. Your readiness to include me and my forebears amongst those "guilty" of what happened in another time is, in my view, the height of historical chutzpah.
Finally, I did find amusing your rhetorical flourish: but again you talk about these people as though they are members of a mafia organization. My grandfather - and Justice Scalia's father - would have loved that one.

Rufus Choate| 7.14.09 @ 11:47PM

Liberal Reader,
The moral collapse of the Black family coincides interestingly with the ascendancy of the support of democrat political representation Any explanation would be appreciated. You are simply cutting and pasting Howard Zinn quotes.

JimE| 7.14.09 @ 11:53PM

Liberal reader and bob, both of you are intellectual morons with no understanding of anything except from what your controllers have
conditioned you to believe. How much are you paid per post?

Jeffrey Lord| 7.14.09 @ 11:54PM

Bob...

"If it is less racist, shouldn't it attract people of color? "

No. It should attract people, color is unimportant. If you wish to be treated in a certain fashion because of the color of your skin you will gravitate to the party that treats people in a certain fashion because of the color of their skin. That would be the party of my friends on the left. There are those who look at Barack Obama and see a black president. I am among those who look at Barack Obama and see The President. The latter category is the future, as America is not about race but an idea - and the idea is colorblind. Dividing people by color (or gender, sexual orientation, religion etc) is a)wrong b)part of a wretched past we should learn from and c) exactly the world our Taliban/Al Qaeda buddies want to force on the entire planet. Thanks, but no thanks!

attorney directory| 7.15.09 @ 3:54AM

Very nice information. Thanks for this. I would love some feedback on my site immigration attorney when you got time.

cerebral palsy| 7.15.09 @ 3:56AM

I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Please come visit my site birth injury when you got time.

Nick| 7.15.09 @ 11:53AM

Bob,

Here's some supporting data for ya':

Until recently, you thought that blacks had 3/5 of a vote under the original U.S. Constitution.

This data supports the fact that you are an ignorant pseudointellectual who has no idea how this Constitutional Republic is supposed to function.

This is also why you RINO's are only interested in what is pragmatic, not what is constitutional and proper.

Steve| 7.15.09 @ 12:19PM

Nick: You misunderstand the 3/5 clause of the Constitution. The heavily populated slave states wanted slaves counted as full persons for representation so they could have more representatives. The states that had fewer slaves did not want slaves counted at all for representation because they were not truly represented in Congress. The compromise was to count slaves as 3/5 of a person for representation. Free Blacks were counted as full persons. The 3/5 clause had nothing to do with voting. It also had nothing to do with whether Blacks were less than human or as some say 3/5 of a person. You might say, as I do to my History class, that the 3/5 rule was one of the first victories for anti-slavery forces in the U.S.

Nick| 7.15.09 @ 12:25PM

Steve,

You seem to misunderstand what I wrote.

Try again.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe| 7.15.09 @ 3:07PM

"In the case of Obama and Sotomayor, it is critical to understand they think this way not because one is a black man and the other a Puerto Rican woman. They think this way because, just as was true of Wilson and McReynolds, they are people of the left."

That has to rank among one of the most idiotic things I have ever read on the Internet.

We could use a fine man like McReynolds on the Supreme Court today. Although he was unnecessarily rude to that Black barber, I'll grant.

PCP Smoker| 7.15.09 @ 6:54PM

Nailed it. Great piece.

Richard Baker| 7.15.09 @ 6:58PM

Steve:
After the nonsense of Jesse Jackson saying that the Founders couldn't count to 1, I was glad to see that I'm not the only one who knows the reason for 3/5ths. If the Founders hadn't done that, slavery would have overwhelmed any attempts to bridle it in the Congress and the country wouldn't have gotten started. Attaboy!

Occam| 7.17.09 @ 10:49PM

With few exceptions (Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, and Ron Paul being the most significant), the majority of Conservative Writers/Theorists/ Publications in this country are philo-semitic: The American Spectator, Human Events, The Washington Times, and NR being most notable. The primary left wing publiations are antisemitic: (defined as suporting actions that endager Jewish lives) The NYT, Mother Jones, The Nation. One may quibble about the NYT, but you show me a supportive article in The Nation or Mother Jones---I've NEVER seen one in the last 30 years.

Re: Bob| 7.18.09 @ 1:15PM

I believe the Republican party attracts people of all colors who are betting on the rewards of hard work, education and effort. Speaking from Detroit, I see too many people who don't want to put out any effort.
Take a deep breath, throw off your preconceptions, biases and assumptions and take a read:
http://factreal.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/facts-why-vote-against-sotomayor/

big and tall| 8.2.09 @ 10:51PM

Very good read