This is not a view to be dismissed out of hand--more people died at Antietam that on any other day in American military history. I think about the terror that fell upon black communities in the South, after the Civil War, and I wonder whether it could have all been averted by a more a gradualist approach. Sadly, I don't think so. And yet you see Lincoln (a conservative at heart, no?), a reluctant reformer, doing whatever he can to avoid war, to avoid making the war about slavery (initially), trying to save the Union at all cost.
He isn't wrong. But if you are the slave, that essentially conservative approach will always privilege your master over you. Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless. Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power. Privileging them, privileges their agents.
Two quotes made me think about this today. Here's David Brooks:
Sonia Sotomayor had bad timing. If she'd entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s, she would have been surrounded by an ethos that encouraged smart young ethnic kids to assimilate. If she'd entered Princeton and Yale in the 1980s, her ethnicity and gender would have been mildly interesting traits among the many she might possibly possess.Here's Andrew:
But she happened to attend Princeton and then Yale Law School in the 1970s. These were the days when what we now call multiculturalism was just coming into its own. These were the days when the whole race, class and gender academic-industrial complex seemed fresh, exciting and just.
It isn't the judicial rulings that trouble me so much as her non-judicial opinions and mindset. The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation. I don't think it's disqualifying and I don't see any crude racialism in her rulings, but I do think it shows that for Obama, this kind of racial/ethnic view of the world is so endemic it's invisible to him. And it's off-message for his candidacy and life.Both of these quotes extend a tremendous amount of charity to the agents of power. Brooks assumes that these agents at Princeton and Yale, in the 50s and 60s, would have welcomed the Puerto-Rican Sotomayor with open arms. He presumes that they would have wanted her to be one of them. Andrew presumes that that identity politics, what he calls "a classic mode of victimology," with its "racial/ethnic view" of the world, and its focus on gender, is particular only to Sotomayor and her ilk.
A critique of liberal identity politics is not wrong on its face, but it almost always is unconcerned with the identity politics of power. Thus Sotomayor's focus on her identity as a "wise Latina" pose is seen as the disturbing result of multiculturalism run amok, not having been raised in a country where the tangible mechanisms of white supremacy were in full effect.
It isn't, for instance, the fact that Sotomayor was raised in an era where government-backed redlining was still legal, it's the fact that some students at Yale demanded a Chicano history course that's the issue. Likewise, it isn't the oppressive identity politics practiced by conservatives for the past 30 years that's disturbing, but Sotomayor's response to it. To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing. It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more. It's like in the NFL--it's the second who throws the punch who draws the flag.
Still thinking this through. More later.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Thank you! That comment from Andrew was really bugging me. I'm glad you addressed it.
Me too. Brooks, whatever, he's just not that bright. But Andew is more self-aware than this.
Like others here, I just can't see such a silly comment coming from Andrew considering his background and experience with discrimination. After reading it a few times, along with Andrew's other posts on Sotomayor I cynically think he is using this particular issue as a way of bolstering his objectivity cred regarding all things Obama. Sotomayor is a done deal, nothing Andrew says will say can touch her. But, tomorrow he can say with confidence that he disagreed with Obama on something.
Andrew's also terribly reluctant to support women. I like his writing but some of his commentary on Hillary Clinton and Palin is just...beyond reasonable.
Andrew Sullivan deserves a great deal of credit for some things (his recent series of abortion narratives have done a great job of making an often over-abstracted issue concrete, for example). But just as often he says something that really gets to the core of why I could never be a conservative.
Someone recently accused Sullivan of staying awake at night worrying that somebody was receiving social assistance. Sullivan responded that he was far more worried that someone was receiving social assistance that they didn't deserve.
Which really gets to the heart of what TNC is saying above. Poverty is terrible and all, but the threat of someone, somewhere getting food stamps or social security checks that Sullivan thinks are unnecessary is far worse
Thank you! I read Andrew's post at work and my mouth just dropped. Andrew has written things that I disagree with in the past, but in general I have found him to be pretty evenhanded. But that post about Sotomayor was just utter bullshit. TNC's spot on with this post -- it concisely puts into articulate sentences what I couldn't, and still can't express.
Wait...what? Andrew Sullivan actually wrote this about someone else:
"The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation."
Did his self-awareness alarm not start clanging as he put that down? I like Sullivan, but virtually everything he writes is deeply influenced by his background as a gay, Catholic conservative. It's ok for him to project his identity but not for others? I get that she's a judge and he's talking head, but still...what's good for the goose is good for the gander or it's not.
Brooks point is hilariously historically naive, and it must be intentional. If only Sotomayor had had the good fortune to attend Princeton in the decades that Princeton DID NOT ADMIT ANY WOMEN AT ALL, she would have certainly found it welcoming of all races and genders. The bad faith is palpable; in the fifties and sixties, Princeton was not sure that admitting wealthy east-coast Jews, who were the new category let in the door in the 20s and 30s, was such a good idea.
Sullivan seems convinced that Sotomayor's awareness of her identity is *her* problem, rather than one constructed by the historical position she was born into -- as though, having been aggressively classed, gendered, and raced by normative white maleness, reminded with some frequency precisely what she is not, it's *her* fault that she's aware of her subject position.
I like Andrew's blog and all but that had to be one of the most unselfaware (that isn't a real word is it?) paragraphs that I've seen him write. "The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often", Are we talking about Sotomayor harping on her racial and gender identity or others harping on her racial identity? Aside from a speech on the role of Latinos in the Judiciary I really can't find a fountain of quotes where she takes the matter up all that much. I'll go ahead and make a bet that I can find more qoutes of Gingrich talking about Sotomayor being Puerto Rican than I can Sotomayor talking about her own heritage.
Try "least self-aware". Or just pretend you're German.
To piggyback on this, Princeton was the last..
THE VERY LAST
Ivy to admit Blacks too.
Which is why the attacks on Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis were bogus as hell.
If you've ever been one of the ' only Blacks' at a Majority White University, not a damn thing Michelle Obama said was incorrect. As someone who came later, I could only imagine how it was for the First Lady and her classmates ' back in the day'.
I expected as much from Brooks; he has proven time and time again not to be able to see the forest because of the trees.
Sully's comments, however, are far more disturbing. Sotomayor is anything but a victim. And Andrew knows better.
Princeton was not sure that admitting wealthy east-coast Jews, who were the new category let in the door in the 20s and 30s, was such a good idea.
This is unnecessarily mild. The issue of "what to do about the Jewish men?" tore the campus apart in the mid-50s -- the "Dirty Bicker" of 1958 was the low point. ("Bicker" is the process by which students were sorted into the fraternity-like selective eating clubs, the focus of Princeton's social life for many decades. In 1958 only 23 students did not get offers from any club; 15 of them were Jews.) The article I just linked to contains this quote:
Why, it almost sounds like Affirmative Action, doesn't it? Or maybe "receives consideration" was code for the Gentleman's Agreement.In contrast to the delusional picture Brooks paints, note that Sotomayor got into Princeton in spite of a restrictive quota, not because of a preferential one.
I don't think Brooks is ignorant of that fact. He appears to have chosen his words very carefully. He specifically names Princeton and Yale with regard to the 1970s and 1980s, but when he writes "If she'd entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s," it's the only place he doesn't identify the schools by name.
This may dull Brooks' point, but he would seem to be aware that Sotomayor could have only entered "college" in the 1950s or 1960s, and not Princeton specifically.
Seconded on this: there are plenty of reasons to disagree with Brooks. But it does not forward the argument to mistake carefully crafted prose for ignorance.
I'd tend to guess that Brooks was thinking of his own alma mater as one of the colleges she could have entered in the '50s or '60s. And he would have some evidence behind him -- Chicago is a forbidding, almost fortified, presence on South Side... and it is sometimes brutally meritocratic. But it was also happily and successfully sweeping up the intellectual talent that Princeton willfully neglected.
There's a reason John Hope Franklin taught at Chicago, and a reason why the first controlled nuclear reaction took place under the Chicago stadium.
"Brooks point is hilariously historically naive, and it must be intentional."
I didn't see a winky emoticon.
"If only Sotomayor had had the good fortune to attend Princeton in the decades that Princeton DID NOT ADMIT ANY WOMEN AT ALL, she would have certainly found it welcoming of all races and genders."
Not to worry, they would have just assimilated her into a man.
If there is no struggle
There is no progress
Those who profess to favor freedom
And yet depreciate agitation
Are men who want crops
Without plowing up the ground
They want rain without thunder and lightning
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters
Power concedes nothing without a demand
It never did and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass, 1857
The victimology critique is a weird angle, especially in the case of Sotomayor or someone of her stature. I keep wanting to ask how can she be playing the victim when she's taken one of the hardest routes a person can take, regardless of ethnicity or gender, and succeeded in a field that hasn't traditionally included latinas? Doesn't Brooks realize that the judge's "traits" would only have been "mildly interesting" in the 1980s because of the civil rights movements and emphasis on multiculturalism of the previous decades? Where do these folks think change comes from?
There's this great quote from McNamara in Fog of War where he says "we see what we want to believe." I got the sense from reading sotomayor's speech that she sees her identity as part of her experience. I get the sense from some of the pundits that they believe that her identity is the only thing she sees in her experience. It's a profound difference of emphasis, that doesn't necessarily do justice to the complexity of a person's life.
Thanks for your clear words on this. I read that passage from AS this morning and had an attack of "we don't freaking NEED white history month, you dope" and couldn't formulate my thoughts around it enough. The very fact that people have the reaction of "be[ing] more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing" is WHY we need more diversity on the Supreme Court in the first place. Yes, old white men can be empathetic toward disadvantaged minorities. But they don't necessarily see the disadvantages easily, they may not even be aware of their pervasiveness.
.
And as Gavin de Becker wrote in "The Gift of Fear", 'overwhelmingly mens' primary fear on a date with a woman is that their date will laugh at them; women's primary fear on a date with a man is that he will kill her.' (I presume there are similar issues faced by people of other races depending on the local majorities that the majorities never live with.) People who are worried about losing face don't interpret their opportunities and threats the same way as people who are worried about death and dismemberment in the same situation. The fundamental assumptions you use to get through your day are just different. And I would like representation by someone who understands that fundamental difference.
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A commenter here recently linked to a wonderful graduation address (thanks!) where the professor commented that discrimination is like a blanket of snow, even when you see it, you become accustomed to it and must continually shovel it away when it's in your way. It's exhausting work to always be shoveling. And you're always surprised in the spring how much the snow kept hidden.
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We have a female SJC nominee who, unlike Harriet Myers, is not a feint. (Myers, IMHO, was tossed out as someone clearly unacceptable so that Bush could say "but *you* rejected the woman I nominated" so he could eliminate the "um, we need another woman on the SJC" objection and cram his first choice through more easily.) Sotomayor has brains, credentials, experience, and a seemingly levelheaded temperament. Calling her out for responding rationally to victimization, for speaking of how her fundamental assumptions about daily life are necessarily not the same but can be used to good effect, when she's clearly achieved enough to be cut some freaking slack, is pretty appalling. And exactly the reason why she's a good choice.
With that quote, Sullivan is a little too close to stereotypical conservatism: chastising Sotomayor for acknowledging the obstacles her race and gender, then suggesting that any attempt to see the world from a "racial/ethnic view" is dangerous. It would be like suggesting that Sullivan himself address the gay marriage issue from a hetero point of view--and that to view the issue from a gay perspective is playing into victimology.
(the obstacles her race and gender create--sorry)
(and really, the obstacles she faced-- she didn't create any of them.)
Brooks, as usual, struggles to paint Sotomayor as much more liberal than she really is by bringing up the bugbear of *multiculturalism*. This is the kind of stuff Brooks comes up with when he's hanging out at with real Americans at the Applebee's salad bar.
As for Lincoln and the necessity of the Civil War. Yes, other countries were able to eliminate slavery without resorting to war. But it's hard to imagine this happening in the United States. Furthermore, if the North had not won decisively, the two nations probably would have continued to war incessantly for generations, like France and Germany did for so long.
So it was PROBABLY right for us to fight the Civil War, but I'm neither God nor a historian, so I can't say for sure, and it is never a victory when over six hundred thousand people have to die.
(And let's never forget that it still took another century for African Americans to achieve full civil rights.)
The thing that bugs me the most about the current debate about the war is the hagiography. Lincoln was a man, not a saint. He was a very ambitious man who worked for the railroads (probably worse than Big Oil and Big Pharma put together). We must never forget that there was a load of compromisin' on the road to his horizon, just like any other successful politician in a democracy.
The Civil War, like the Iraq War, was *a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.* It was the bloodiest war in history up to that point in time. Was it the right thing to do? The answer to that question is, as Obama noted in a different context, above all of our pay grades.
I agree with everything, but for a minor quibble. Lincoln's legal work was for both railroads and plaintiffs. So, as one historian noted, he would defend the railroads on Tuesday and be suing them on Thursday. But you are right; A.L. was not a saint; he was mortal man--like our current statesman in the White House.
I think there are two legitimate and important questions that need to be asked about the Civil War:
1) Would 'containment' have worked -- i.e. Kennan's strategy with respect to the Soviet Union.
2) If not containment, did the North miss crucial opportunities to strike at the heart of the Southern system? One way of asking this question: would the war have ended quicker, and with less Northern blood spent, had Lincoln chosen Frederick Douglass instead of Stanton to serve as Secretary of war?
More specifically -- why not listen to Southern fears and act on them: promulgate abolition in 1861, actively promote emigration/escape of the slave populations, and/or carry out the implicit threat to support slave rebellion?
Of course Washington would likely have burned (for a second time)... but Philadelphia was a perfectly good national capitol.
"It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more. It's like in the NFL--it's the second who throws the punch who draws the flag."
That's a great observation. I've been in or heard about several situations where someone has expressed racist views and refused to back down on them (ie - not just making a bad joke). Someone else calls them out on it - vociferously, and justifiably so. And who is everyone mad at? The guy who called out the racist - because he's a jerk for, well, I don't know - breaking the rules of decorum?
Ah, the tone argument! Long may it derail conversations and put politeness ahead of simple decency. (Where's my 'sarcasm' tag when I need it?)
Folks in positions of power and authority rarely have a true appreciation of their position. The last few years have given me the most remarkable window into this.
Oh, and Sullivan is a total hypocrite on this issue. He can't get out of the 'rich gay man' box. That's why he talks about how important AIDS drugs (provided by his large employer health plan) have been for him, while opposing Medicaid - which provides those same AIDS drugs for more than 50% of Americans who have HIV.
Thanks for this post! Sullivan spends a lot of time talking about the travel ban on people with HIV (because they have the funds to travel internationally)and how it tears families apart. He expects me to feel sympathy for him, his relationship, the health problems of people like him, but he doesn't seem to extend the same kind of symapthies to people who are born into poverty and have to let their health deteriorate because they cannot afford treatment.
While both Andrew and David Brooks' quotes are preposterous, intelligent people can find a way to abhor evil and also aggressively critique the response to evil if that response happens to be deeply flawed. Lots of conservatives are much more disturbed by victimology than they are by actual discrimination, because they are self-centered and culturally ignorant. Then again, lots of straight white males are uncomfortable with liberal identity politics because it seems to implicitly disinvite them from the party. I'm more concerned about the latter group's reaction than I am about the former.
Brooks is a woefully ignorant man.
Sullivan has tunnel vision that continually condemns his better angels. But the most insulting element of his white, Anglo, male conservatism is always an inability to own up to cultural assumptions that he carries aroung in his bag of privelege while condemning others for having that awareness, of which he is in denial. He is a hard working, largely admirable man, but for self-righteous assumption, it's hard to beat him.
Like many conservatives, it was not George Bush's policies that first concerned him, but his failures. He was shocked at what had become to Rumsfield, Cheney, as if all of a sudden these guys turned out the way they did, and still does not connect the dots between Reagan and Limbaugh.
He finds the Viet Nam war division boring, in part because he does not see it as those who lived through that era have--as a part of the revelation of America's wider historic racial calumny to the younger generation of white Americans. He is a conservative who wishes to ignore history.
Like many immigrants to the US, he is more captured by its future than past orientation, and does not really understand that his own politics were formed by coming of age during the Reagan-Thatcher ascendancy, just as Sotomayor's views arose in the wake of various civil rights movements...so?
Sotomayor's statement raises an issue for him, he'd rather not be aware of. When he raises the idea that Cheney is more enlightened about gay marriage than Obama, he doesn't put the 2 + 2 together that Cheney's view of gay marriage is identity politics, and he ought, as the father of a lesbian woman who has a conjugal relationship, be wiser than someone who has not had the same experience.
This willful ignorance of history is really why someone can look one straight in the eyes and compare Sotomayor's pride in being a Latina woman, with centuries of institutionalized genocide (American Indians), racism insofar as the slavery and jim crow, work and marriage law, forced internment, and foreign policy have been concerned; the myopia is appalling, yet to folks such as Sullivan, it's invisible.
Andrew Sullivan is fundamentally conservative on two issues--economics (19th century-Adam Smith) and social Darwinism (also 19th century), but by and large his social politics is far more liberal than conservative, yet his conservative identity keeps him clinging to a blind side bias, which he repeatedly betrays by statements and attitudes that undercut his own not inconsiderable integrity.
Wow, you really hit it on the nail there. I read Sullivan everyday, and I have a lot of respect for his integrity and his prose. Which is why I can't help but scratch my head when he writes something as dense as he did today.
totally agree with you both. I like Sullivan, and I'd like to think of him as an ideal political opponent. However, he hold very flawed and idealistic views. His take on gay marriage (that it should be passed through legislation ideally) is an obvious, best-case scenario style of thinking. It shows complete ignorance of the Civil Rights movement.
Excellent post, excellent comments. I'm reminded of the old Marxist gibe that conservatives want, eg, capitalism without the suffering proletariat (which makes things complicated and messy). Wanting to free the Slave without disturbing the Master. I experience Andrew as far better than that, despite today's lapse. From another angle, I recall trying to explain to a roomfull of Christianists that, since Matthew blesses "the poor in spirit" (= all of us, in one way or another) and Luke blesses "the poor [period]" (= some, really most, of us) -- we oughtta take care of the poor-period first, the better to be able (morally & practically) to take care of all-of-ourselves....
The Civil War between East and West Germany comes to mind when one asks whether the American Civil War had to be fought, or fought with its historical intensity.
What if, in response to Ft. Sumter, Lincoln had -- immediately -- declared all slaves in all 'former' American states to to be free?
To be more specific: I wonder if we underestimate slaves' dedication to freeing themselves.
Fogel and Engerman argued that slavery was economically viable... but I tend to suspect they (characteristically) underestimated the external costs involved in policing that economic system.
wtf ?
The one that never happened. Certainly it is the conservative point that the Communist societies of Eastern Europe were societies of 'captive peoples.'
The interesting thing is just how concerned their ruling elites were that their people would vote with their feet.
Which raises the question: would a Cold War between North and South have ended in the same way?
I just found it hilarious that Sullivan can say of Obama, "this kind of racial/ethnic view of the world is so endemic it's invisible to him." The dominating force in any culture (in ours, it's white, male, heterosexual, Christian) doesn't see things through a racial/ethnic/gender lens. No, no. It's everybody else that insists on focusing on these things.
Posts like this are why I love reading this blog. Thanks, TNC.
I'll say it again:
Brooks and Andrew Sullivan are still quoting SHELBY STEELE as someone people ought to listen to.
So, what the hell do they know about multi-culturalism.
Multi-culturalism means to me that I had 2 roommates from freshman year in college; women I'm still friends with to this day.
One is child of Greek Immigrants. She is a Republican. She worked high up for a GOP Senator. We don't agree on politics, but when my father died, she held my hand. When my sister was undergoing breast cancer treatment, she called her doctor cousins and made sure that I knew every possible new treatment that was available, and was even the one who suggested the name of my sister's ultimate surgeon. When my mother died, she not only called, but flew and stayed with me for a few days after the funeral, leaving her own husband and children. Yes, she voted for Bush twice, but never in the years that we've known one another has she ever let me down.
The other one is a daughter of Colombian Immigrants, via Syria- An Arab Christian.
Yet, we have celebrated the ups and downs of one another's lives since the moment we met that freshman week.
My other three oldest friends in the world are a Sistafriend, a Jew (I attended her Bat-Mitzvah) and a daughter of Vietnamese Buddhists.
Each of these women have personal characteristics that are similar, yet, I respect their cultures and traditions.
THAT is what multi-culturalism means. It means that the community that nutured and supported you is worth something. That it has meaning. That it is valid. That the Black neighborhood I grew up in, whose vaules and traditions cradled me until I left to go to the Ivy League, is as valid as anyone else's.
Brooks and Sullivan would prefer their Non-Whites to be of the Shelby Steele, Unca Clarence mold. And, Sotomayor says, ' No Thanks' to that.
Excellent post, rikyrah!
What Sullivan and Brooks seem not to understand is that non-white, non-males who achieve high levels of success in America have already assimilated the values of the "white male culture". Otherwise, they would not be hired/promoted by top law firms, allowed to run Fortune 500 companies, etc. Unless your success is based exclusively on your "minority" culture (hiphoppity rapster) you must be fluent in multiple cultures - as Sonia Sotomayor is, as Barack Obama is.
Its also been said that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.
Not to blunt any thoughtful consideration of the Civil War, but the modern American understandings of conservatism and liberalism are square pegs applied to these historic round holes.
Lincoln was an unalloyed Whig. For modern Republican counterparts, see the Ripon Society. Never heard of it? There's a reason why.
There's also a reason why partisanship gets a bad rap these days: its hollow. See Brooks and Sullivan for leading examples why.
On that same point, here are some graphics I found fascinating: charts of american political parties since the beginnings, with the issues they focused on. (You can zoom in to see the details). "Conservatives" and "Liberals," and particularly "Republicans" and "Democrats" as we know them, are extraordinarily modern creatures.
http://www.historyshots.com/parties/
http://www.historyshots.com/parties2/
I like Andrew, but really........
citizenE, you hit the nail on the head.
Andrew? We await your reply.
I give him credit, he normally does respond to valid criticism. But yeah, totally agree
You might be interested in Alyson Cole's book, "The Cult of True Victimhood," which looks at anti-victim politics since the late 1980s. She argues that "victimhood" has become an all-purpose term of ridicule that is meant to undercut progressive politics--by framing group claims in politics as matters of personal pathology and individual weakness. As she points out, the volume of invective directed at people for being victims is oddly out of proportion to the actual number of people who claim to be victims.
Mr. C.
When you say that “Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power” I have to disagree. The past does not belong to those with power any more than the air is the property of the birds that fly in it. The past, together with its institutions and traditions is the common property of all men and women. At various points in time those traditions have privileged the powerful over the weak, but those same traditions and institutions have also stood for social justice, for the rights of humankind, and for the freedom of the weak and powerless to stand up to authority when that authority is seen to be overbearing.
The same nation that defended slavery and Jim Crow also gave us William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech. The same Harry S. Truman who privately used the N word all his life was the same man who integrated the Armed Services. The same Catholic Church that sat by while the holocaust was under-way is the same church that has opportunities for poor people to go to school for centuries. The same Lyndon Johnson who rammed the Civil Rights Act through congress is the same man who voted against every piece of civil rights legislation until 1957. The same system of slavery that perpetuated grave injustices against people also gave rise to every form of music that we think of as quintessentially American.
No offense but I have come to expect more nuance from you. There isn’t any hard and fast rule that says that conservatives are always on the side of the powerful, and that liberals are always on the side of the downtrodden. Life is much more complex than that. At base the human condition contains within itself both the capacity for great good as well as great injustice. The history of our institutions, traditions, and our past reflect do not reflect the victory of the powerful over the powerless as much as they reveal the complexity, of human life. Our lives as they are lived do not contain within themselves a system of Manichean dualism where the forces of light are constantly at war with the forces of darkness. People do good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons. We are in short a damn mess and our institutions, traditions, and history reflect if anything the fallibility of human nature.
What a bunch of new age gunk. I believe I can easily sum up your post thusly,
"Sure, we had centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, oppression, bigotry, poverty and subjugation--but at least we got jazz!"
The point TNC was making wasn't that conservatives were always on the side of the powerful per se, but that as a political philosophy, it erred on the side of caution at the expense of others. In other words, there was no fierce urgency of now--but of never. That was the history of my beloved Southland and of much of 20th Century conservatism.
After Brown, a young man by the name of William Frank Buckley, Jr. condemned that decision in the recently created National Review on the grounds that it would wreck havoc on the South. Never mind the harm it did to African-Americans. His worry was, as a conservative, the damage it could do to the Southern Way of Life.
So, say, Richard Russell, a liberal guy as far as domestic policy goes, the man who proposed in the US Senate, the school lunch program that feeds millions of kids a day, can also be the Senator from Georgia who blocks every civil rights bill that comes his way. Even an anti-lynching bill was too much if it should disrupt the Southern Way of life! That is conservatism. Things must handle themselves, even if it should not necessarily be fair. Order comes before reform. (Interestingly, he also taught LBJ everything he knew! Irony is a devil!)
The point is conservatism, rightly or wrongly, has been the shield under which racists and non-racists alike could hide their prejudices all under the name of "tradition." So, a man like Barry Goldwater, a libertarian conservative, can oppose civil rights on the grounds of state's rights, but in so doing, giving bigots the cover they needed to justify breaking with the Democratic Party and laying the groundwork for Nixon's insidious "Southern Strategy" that Reagan would polish to its current perfection. (He kicked off his '80 campaign in Philadelphia, MS. His topic? State's rights. Wink-wink-nod-nod).
I am not quite sure what your human nature argument has to do with political history, but my guess is it is a sorry attempt at playing Hannah Arendt. You're no Dr. Arendt. And there is nothing historically unsophisticated in TNC's post. It's all true.
That wasn't the point. The human nature argument was the point. Conservatism has no innate right to our traditions, our instututions, or our past. As human beings we get to choose which parts of our traditions we emphasize. The conservative tradition is only part. There is also a long history of a liberal humanist tradition which has stood for extension of human rights, the rights of the weak against the strong, and the common humanity of everyone. That's what I was trying to get at. Sure slavery and Jim Crow are part of our heritage but so are William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Dubois, and Malcom X. In simple terms we can either emphasize our weaknesses or emphasize our strengths.
It seems to me that you are bothered that they are more concerned with the victimology that is occurring today than the victimization that caused it. I'm sure Brooks and Andrew are deeply bothered by the victimization that caused Sotomayer's victimology, but the fact is that the cause (victimization) is not ongoing, whereas the unfortunate effect (victimology) is. Is it wrong to focus on existing problems that stand to cause more problems rather than their 40 year old causes from which they have become disconnected?
Really? REALLY?????
I think this perception is part of the problem.
While a great deal of progress of dealing with oppressing forces have been made, thinking that they have been dealt with or not still causing problems is more than a bit naive.
And, of course, for Sotomayor and others her age (eep!), the separation is far from distant; when she began to form her opinions, the forces were immediate and present.
Shhh ... but we're in a post-racial society! (wink wink nudge nudge)
No, a young latina growing up today is not being raised "in a country where the tangible mechanisms of white supremacy were in full effect", nor are the agents of power at Princeton in Yale as they were in the 50s and 60s, nor is government backed red-lining legal. That's not to say that she wouldn't experience racism, but she wouldn't experience the agents of power that Sotomayer's victimology was formed in response to. We don't have to be in a "post-racial society" to understand victimology as a consequence of a time when our country was vastly more racist then ours today.
Let's see... what, again, was the baseline GOP argument from the moment Souter announced his retirement? Ah, yes: that Obama would choose a minority instead of someone better qualified.
Because obviously a minority couldn't possibly be The Best Man (ahem) For The Job.
And racism (and sexism) are so 40 years ago...
so if these issues are not ongoing - discarded decades ago, why are we even talking about this? santomayor is not the one who has been harping on these issues - not in her personal life (with the exception of one wildly misquoted speech) and most certainly not in her judicial record. it is all the old white dudes that seem to be doing back flips over her identity as a latina woman. not her. not obama. obama characterized her story as uniquely american - not uniquely latino. that's what makes the establishment so mad - that this is an american story that doesn't read like "catcher in the rye" or "our town". it depresses me that someone who is as successful and accomplished as this woman is reduced to a stereotype and now a victim. i expect if from newt or rove. but from brooks and sullivan? it is absurd.
The same reply to your comments applies to Fox Paladin above:
Criticizing affirmative action and victimology, and finding them racist and ethnocentric, is not racist per se.
When a policy or philosophy makes race a consideration for individual promotions or rewards, then the defenders of that philosophy or policy can't be defensive when people wonder whether race has been considered when a promotion or reward has been given.
This reminds me of this recent Malcolm Gladwell piece from the New Yorker. It's a discussion about how the Davids in life beat the Goliaths and it gets down to the point about how the rules that are in place always favor Goliath, so David needs to change the rules. A long read, but a great one.
Stupid non-knowledge of HTML. Here's the article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?yrail
This is a really excellent post. Another example: the constant efforts to find and punish leakers during the Bush administration, rather than deal with the things they were leaking. CitizenE's point about Cheney's perspective on gay marriage is also a great example of identity politics. It's a major reason the gay rights movement has progressed so much recently -- as more people were able to come out safely, more people who weren't gay all of a sudden found that they knew people who were.
One small addition to the point: if you don't see the first punch, then the second one really isn't fair. Conservatives in the US have an individually-oriented perspective that blinds them to the big first punch -- structural inequality. When you couple that with the US frontier leitmotif of "rugged individualism" (or if the two are the same thing), you have a narrative that persists over a long period of time. And it persists particularly in contrast to collective/communal perspectives like "identity".
i'm my opinion this post is pretty much the most spot-on brilliant thing you've written.
Well, today.
Wow. Just wow.
I was not expecting to read a post today that explains better than I ever have my own uncomfortability with defining myself as a "conservative."
I, too, feel like any lefty credentials I may have earned as a younger man have been burned by my slow and painful march toward maturity. Yet I haven't been able to capture what about my own beliefs won't allow me to fully associate myself with Mr. Sullivan's brand of conservatism. And don't get me wrong, I find myself agreeing with his perspective on an overwhelming majority of issues.
But Sweet Jesus, you took it deep on this post. This was some Ryan Howard dead-center over the batter's eye moonshot stuff.
Thank you for writing this (and all of your posts), Mr. Coates. It's truly fascinating to watch thoughts shape and polish themselves in real time over the Intertubes, no?
Interesting for you to mention the civil war period. On your recommendation, I just started reading Capitol Men and, together with other readings on Reconstruction, I find myself thinking that the Republicans (called "Radicals" at the time) overreached, and that overreach may have partially accounted for the utter failure of reconstruction. It set the table for 100 more years (at least) of institutionalized discrimination.
I, like you, couldn't consider myself a conservative for the same reasons you outline--basically, a lack of empathy for victims of the power paradigm--but I do think that without temperance with respect to advancing liberal ideals, you can end up exacerbating the plight of the victims instead of alleviating it. What if Lincoln had lived and the Republicans in congress had taken a less stringent approach to Reconstruction? Would we have been willing to endure a decade of transitional slavery (or something) in order to lay the groundwork for a more lasting freedom, as opposed to doing the right thing now even if it helps bring about a fatal backlash?
It's for this reason that I'm giving Obama more leeway (on DADT, gay marriage, Afghanistan, Guantanamo) than my progressive instincts tell me I should give him. He's playing the long game. He knows what can happen when you're lead by blind ideology. It's no wonder, then, that Lincoln is his guiding example.
Is 'transitional slavery' the only solution here? It certainly wasn't required for the Marshall Plan. (Special bonus: the Marshall Plan wasn't morally abhorrent.) The way I've always understood it is that the Republicans were more interested in punishing the South for their rebellion than rebuilding the South for the good of the nation. I don't think it was so much overreaching as not giving a damn about the people who were affected. (Much as everyone supporting the slave system acted in the days before emancipation.)
TNC, you didn't know it of course, but you straight out spoke for me! I read AS everyday, and when I read that post you cited, I was at a loss for words, and even if I could find the words, I would never be sure he would be made aware of anything I could come up with. I know he reads you at least (since he links to you occasionaly). You are so spot on.
Additionally, I don't know how someone who is supposedly steeped in racial victimology, could rule in favor of a white supremacist, which is what Sonia did.
Hilzoy did the reading regarding the Pappas NYPD case, to which I am referring to:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/05/sotomayor-the-record.html
key quote: "where political correctness was plainly on the side of the majority, Justice Sotomayor was in dissent"
Good thoughts. However - human nature does not distinguish between right or left. Liberal or conservative. I am thinking of Malcolm as usual. The wolf who shows his teeth and the fox who smiles at you but has the same appetite. JFK was not Malcolm's man - for the same good reason that you have outlined above.
(Replying to: rickhavoc)
Whigs, tracing back to Federalists. Northern & Southern. Northeren were Unionists, Republicanism an option. Southrerns divided between Planters & Unionists. When the War came, Southern Whig Unionists had it hard, but many held their ground for the Union & let slavery go. Some became Republicans during/after the War. The War a great test for conservative Federalists/Unionists -- Lincoln passed the test, but so did many Southerners. Not enough, but not nothing. In any case, your Ripon reference a salutary reminder that "good Republicanism" was only the norm for a short while...
I just read TNC's review of Shelby Steele's book on how Obama couldn't be elected and noticed this line: "...you'd have to imagine a black America that woke up, every morning, thinking only about welfare and affirmative action." People stuck on racial and identity politics seem to see certain groups as stuck on very narrow didactic issues, unable to think more broadly. It's an incredibly unrealistic view.
And if I'm understanding ao properly, there is a distinction between victimology and victimization; ao notes "that the cause (victimization) is not ongoing, whereas the unfortunate effect (victimology) is." So, Racism is not ongoing, but being seen as a Victim of Racism is. Discrimination is not ongoing, but Playing the Race Card is. Or I suppose this can be interpreted that you are only attacked once, but the resulting fear lingers. If that's the meaning, isn't there a difference between being a victim of racism (or sexism or homophobia) one time and being a systemic victim of a society that daily limits your freedoms?
"Or I suppose this can be interpreted that you are only attacked once, but the resulting fear lingers."
This comes close to what I mean, except I mean to say that you are victimized in one time period, and the resulting fear lingers into another time period.
"If that's the meaning, isn't there a difference between being a victim of racism (or sexism or homophobia) one time and being a systemic victim of a society that daily limits your freedoms?"
Yes, I think this is true. And would say the kind of oppression that happened to Sotomayers in her youth was of a systemic kind rather than a one time incident.
The important distinction with Sotomayer though is not between the two types of racism you highlight, but the kind that is systemic and occurring and the kind that is systemic and occurred. Say what you will about our society today, whatever systemic racism exists today is vastly different than that which Sotomayer experienced. Her victimology is a response to the past, which is vastly different than the present.
A young latina born into todays world has far less reason to respond to society with victimology.
Very thought provoking! I'm a minority and I live in a very conservative area of Northern Virginia. I work for a Police Department and I'm married to a police officer. I have voted for republicans many times - yet with all things equal, I will always pull the lever for a progressive.
I've had to explain why I live where I live. I could just as well move to Maryland which is much more liberal - but I don't want to raise my kids in an area with mom and pop liquor stores or slot machines in grocery stores.
I've had to explain in department diversity meetings that while there are a hand full of officers (and they are all white!) that I would want to respond to my own personal emergency; I dont want any of them to meet up with my two sons when they are teenagers and I never want my husband to work in undercover narcotics.
Death by suspicion occurs a lot - mostly to young black men who are driving late at night, reaching for a cell phone or a wallet or are police officers who aren't wearing a uniform.
I am a conservative but I know the power structure is not just. Everyday kids excell in the poor performing schools they are assigned to, but when it's time to go to college they are told that their hard work is not equivalent to someone who had the opportunity or the good fortune to go to a school in another school system. Simply being born in another state can determine your lifespan.
I believe in personal responsibilty but I also believe we are responsible to others. I believe that, like Sotomayor, being proud of your life story and believing a person like your self has a unique contribution to make does not mean that you are dismissive of others input.
I have struggled with the conservatives. Are they racist, sexist, classist or simply afraid of chaos? Why is it appropriate for them to live in the paradigm of "this is the way it's always been" but I can't point out the flaws of that system?
"Everyday kids excell in the poor performing schools they are assigned to, but when it's time to go to college they are told that their hard work is not equivalent to someone who had the opportunity or the good fortune to go to a school in another school system."
Would you care to substantiate this claim somehow? It sounds bogus to me. Most colleges would drool over the chance to recruit a talented, non-Asian minority kid from a poor background.
Personally, I am not a big fan of compartmentalizing ourselves into such neat packages.
Really, I think this post is an example of why we shouldn’t use conservative, moderate, or progressive as nouns. They should be modifiers, they should describe our perspective or tendencies in general terms, but the words shouldn’t take the place of those nouns that reaffirm our individuality (e.g. person, man, or woman). We are people, after all, and people change their minds. They hold more than one perspective throughout life. Or they at least have the capacity to do so.
I don’t know what it means to be A conservative. From your examples, TNC, you seem to characterize conservatism as a kind of pragmatism, a sort of timid or otherwise compromised idealism, and I find that definition to be a bit limited. There’s something to it, I suppose, but then you leap to this:
“To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing.”
I wonder if, upon reflection, you’re going to continue to think that’s a fair characterization. For one thing, I don't get this idea of purity (i.e. a one true conservatism), and if I did, I think it would be reflective of the better traits of conservatism, rather than the worse ones. Do you honestly believe that to be “truly” conservative, one must be concerned with the rights of the oppressor over the oppressed? You don’t think that would be better understood as a distorted form of conservatism? You don’t think a person can hold to truly conservative ideals and be a reformer?
Maybe I am misunderstanding. Do you think conservatism is more an attribute of ideas or of temperament?
I suspect TNC will take heat for so defining "conservatism," perhaps in its worst light, as opposed to its more edified forms. Bumping present day conservatives into the pro-slavery camp of the 1860's and the anti-civil rights side of the 190's won't help lead to confident, thoughtful dialogue. It's gray and more mixed up than that.
Eric Hoffer, who by the way is a hero of the conservative movement for his powerful critique of mass movements, wrote of conservatives:
"The differences between the conservative and the radicals seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change."
Another formulation I've seen highlights the notion that conservatives look inward to their own character and behavior for solutions while liberals look outward and seek to change others' behavior. Which bring us back to Hoffer, Reagan's 1983 Medal of Freedom winner: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
Like I said, I tend to reject the whole formulation out of hat. I tend to think these categories are established to reaffirm a sort of tribal dogma which is inherently conservative regardless of the tribe’s particular political perspective. TNC began this post by saying that he’d been pondering why he isn’t “a conservative.” The implicit recognition in that statement is that he understands himself to be a member of some tribe other than conservatism, that he had once upon a time rejected conservatism in favor of something else (i.e. progressivism or liberalism). And to me, the whole post seems like an argument constructed around a conservatism defined by “a progressive” to justify his progressivism. Therefore, it’s unsurprising to me that TNC’s “true conservative” (a formulation he admits is not as precise as he would have preferred) is a moderate or liberal person who either lacks the sense of urgency toward social change with which progressives tend to identify, or actually will, in fact rationalize the propping up of an evil injustice out of a fear of consequences that come with any kind of reform. This is the view of a conservatism through progressive lenses. It is not a rebuke of conservatism. It’s a defense of progressivism, and of activism. It’s TNC explaining why he thinks he’s a member of the tribe he’s chosen, and has almost nothing to do with the tribe he’s rejected.
As for Hoffer, I’m not sure I trust the view of conservatism through a self-identifying conservative's eyes any more than I do a progressive's take on the subject, but at least the conservative is seeking merits whereas the whole point of TNC’s line of thought seems to be identifying what he would perceive to be fundamental inadequacies.
The short version of TNC's treatise is to say that conservatives are otherwise principled individuals who are at times either too cowardly or too corrupt to accept the need for reform. By that definition, I'd say that just about everybody is a conservative. It's just a question of what's being reformed.
That just took it to another level. Not that you should care, but I am very impressed by the clarity of thinking there.
By your estimation, TNC is not genuinely starting from first principles to reason his way to a conclusion as to whether he is a conservative or a liberal. He's defending his old choices. I think TNC is a pretty self-aware, intellectually adventurous sort of guy. But even for him, maybe it's just too repulsive to truly entertain the possibility that from rational deliberation, he could end up political bedfellows with Rush Limbaugh, Krauthammer and George Will.
The absolutism of that statement goes too far. Especially the use of the word "true."
I read Sullivan's The Conservative Soul, which I thought was really beautiful in many ways. But I thought the top of my head might explode by the time I got to the end his entire treatise on why the government should secure our life, our liberty, and then leave us alone to pursue our happiness ... and there was NO analysis of slavery or institutional racism. To Sullivan, apparently the New Deal and progressive taxation are the greatest affronts to liberty ever perpetuated by the US government, but slavery? Institutional racism? Not a word.
I sometimes roll my eyes at white liberals who spend all their time "unpacking their backpacks of white privilege," but I know I live in a bubble. Sully wouldn't know white privilege if it hit him in the face, so how can he possibly critique it? Except he's a smart boy, so it starts to feel more and more intentional, his failure to look at his privilege.
Sullivan's an immigrant, Brooks is Jewish. Both of their responses to Sotomayor reflect their biography.
That said, Brooks' phrasing suggests he was assuming Sotomayor would have attended the University of Chicago or CCNY in the 1950s or 1960s.
And, with all due respect, this assumption is much less implausible. Would the Chicago or CCNY have accepted Sotomayor with open arms? No, but she would likely have done well at either of those institutions.
As to Sullivan... his argument regarding Sotomayor is of a piece with his argument regarding gay identity and gay assimilation -- indeed he seems to be availing himself of his own tepid support for Sotomayor as a way of forwarding his argument for "out" gay assimilation.
I have to say that this is how I read both of the pieces. As characterizations of Sotomayor as being as much a product of her generation as her gender and ethnicity. It happens to be a generation older than both Brooks and Sullivan. These guys, are more moderate than they are "true" conservatives (I don't care what either of them say), and I tend to view their arguments here as being in favor of a sort of conservatism of temperament. Another, in the long line of arguments against what they view as a polarization embraced by those who came of age in the 60s and early 70s. An argument not in favor of forgetting the obstacles of the past, but in favor of moving on from them. That's how I read them anyway.
The generational aspect is a particularly good point.
Great, great post.
I sent AS this e-mail when I read his Sotomayor quote:
As an avid reader of your blog, I have a hard time seeing a difference between Sotomayor's "consciousness of her identity" and the consciousness of your indentity as a gay man, or a Christian, as it informs your reactions to the world. Which are two reasons I read your blog. What has she said that indicates the "victimology" meme?
I sent him an email, and as usual you(TNC) you put it in a way that is beyond my capability. I could not agree more. The entrenched in victimology line was baffling, but what got me was his assertion that Sotomayor has been harping aggressively on her race and gender. Based on what? A speech given 9 years ago?
At any rate, thanks for saying it much better than I could.
TNC,
Your reference to Lincoln as a reluctant reformer, which is undoubtedly true for most of his career, reminded me of his words from the the Second Inaugural, at the very end of his life:
"Yet, if God wills that [the war]continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether""
In the evolution of his thinking, I think Lincoln came to the place where you are, that systems of inequity that go so bone deep as slavery are not always subject to a gradual reform, and that a disease can be worse than a cure. Still, as you say, 600,000 people shot and blown up is a lot of people shot and blown up. I don't think it a bad thing for some in the political discourse to have the conservative temperament of trying to avoid such a thing, even at the cost of allowing evil to continue longer.
None of which, by the way, excuses Brooks or Sullivan, neither of whom seem to have a sense of empathy for what her life experiences really were.
I basically agree with this--which is why I said it isn't to be dismissed out of hand. The Civil War casualties are very bracing.
More on Lincoln and race
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750
Sullivan frequently backs up what he says. Here, not so much.
"Constant harping" strikes me, like others above, as simply false.
We've got the one speech, where she was invited to discuss the implications of her identity and she accepted the invitation, and she actually pushed back fairly hard in favor of striving to merge multiple perspectives in pursuit of best-possible approximations of objectivity.
I've been reading steadily, and I don't recall any other examples.
I think Sullivan's reading Judge Sotomayor either through his experience of other people or through other people's distorted description of her work.
If he's got sustained evidence that there's "harping," rather than discussion of legitimate issue, and that it's "constant" rather than occasional, he should post it.
If he doesn't, he should take it back.
We're talking about a serious woman, with serious credentials, aiming for a serious role. For a couple of days, he could give her real record half the attention he put on Palin. If he doesn't, after that cheap shot, he's the one who isn't serious.
Loved your post TNC, but I think most commenter aren't being very generous and assuming the worst motives and intelligence of Brooks and Andrew. If you've read any of Andrew's book he has a much stronger critique of victimology and while I don't agree he makes a strong case. Reading Brooks I think he is generalizing (which is not surprising with a short column) to try to make a point clear not necessarily being historically accurate. I hear him saying that the first wave of minorities in college had one kind of general mindset and then the latest had another and the one Sotomayor belong to had a third. Which is probably true. He then talks about how that effected her and how she is seen... very not controversial if you ask me.
Anyway, my two cents,
Gully
If you've read any of Andrew's book he has a much stronger critique of victimology and while I don't agree he makes a strong case.
I have read a great deal of Sullivan, and have always taken offense at his definition of ' victimology'.
I am a self-aware, well-educated Black woman.
Under Sullivan's definition, I submit to 'victimology'.
My main problem with Sullivan, is that he either ignores the depth of the Black experience in America altogether, or minimizes the long-terms effects of said experience, when he even acknowledges it.
He wants his non-Whites to be of the Shelby Steele, Unca Clarence variety.
He's not comfortable in the least with Black folks that aren't, who aren't remotely , nor do they consider themselves ' victims'.
I consider myself a thinking Black woman in America that actually knows and comprehends American history.
I probably agree with you generally (I'd have to go back and reread his arguments more, but I do remember liking his critique of Queer thought) ... of course being British puts a roadblock to his understanding of black America bigger than your average American. I think he probably makes the mistake of paralleling gay issues with to many other minority issues (particularly the very unique circumstances of blacks in America). But some commenters (not necessarily you of course) are making the same mistake when acting like his views make no sense at all, when in some cases (gay culture?) they might be strong.
Brother Coates.
Sir Edmund Burke --the architect of the ideological underpinnnings of Conservatism identified Freedom/Liberty at the core of his philosophy. In this vein,there were conservatives who were opposed to slavery and would've have been pro-Civil Rights in the 1960's. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are two in the classic mold. Maximizing freedom/liberty is a central tenet of Conservatism.
In this light, it can be more precisely said that you are not a Conservative (as is practiced) because you are not a racist or hypocrite. By being for Emancipation and Civil Rights you are indeed Conservative in both ideals and practice. Modern and yesteryear Political Conservatives espouse Freedom for whites and tyranny (authoritarianism) for blacks. If you back freedom from King George's tyranny or India's freedom from British Rule--as Burke did--then you are compelled to be for Emancipation or Civil Rights if you are a honest and consistent Conservative.
Sotomayer. If Brooks can identify himself as Jewish and advocate (justly) for his heritage's causes (Israel's right to exist and be free from attack) and Andrew Sullivan can identify as Gay and their freedom to Marriy then Sotomayer can use her identity as a motivation and lens through which to administer justice.
In my mind, the core question is not why are you not a Conservative but rather why do these so-called Conservatives continue to hate freedom for Non-whites?
I wouldn't limit it to "these so-called" examples.
It looks to me like the natural angle for the Republican party is "do for self," aiming for military security, low taxes, and lots of freedom--heavy freedom for families and churches to hold to their cultural base.
Then Democrats could be reactive or proactive on when the system needs more a stronger referee and when there's a specific reason someone needs a greater government boost than that. That kind of Rs would make the Ds work for their victories, and make sure they lost enough elections to keep them honest.
If they did that, they'd have a serious shot at more than a few commenters here. If they didn't win us over, or win TNC over, they'd almost certainly make us notice lame D thinking and demand that they shape up.
But instead, the Rs keep wandering off into the hateful and stupid stuff. There's something systematic in the hating freedom for others, and succes for others, and not taking the option that looks like good policy and good politics instead.
Why is indeed the right question?
My position on conservatism, which was formed in part by reading Andrew Sullivan, is that conservatism says you should stick with past practices unless you have a really good reason to change. You don't have to stick to past practices ALL the time, but you do need some valid justification for change to counterbalance the disruption and unpredictability that serious change always involves. You need a benefit sufficient to justify the cost.
Once you accept racism as a valid reason for change, there's no particular incompatibility between conservatism and anti-racist positions. However, a conservative would probably pursue anti-racist policies in ways that feel conservative... through churches, for example, rather than by marching in the street.
I really hope Andrew starts applying that to sexism as well. I've never had any sense that he was a racist, but sometimes his positions on women tick me off. Perhaps he needs to meet a wider range of women to realize that we're as hard to categorize as men.
M.C.
Your conception of Conservatism is a bit off. Not sure where Andrew takes Conservatism sometimes. I commend Sir Edmund Burke to you. What you are "conserving" is man's liberty and freedom which are the Natural rights man is born with--granted to him by God. The definition you proferred is "traditionalists", preserving society and its institutions --quite often at the expense of man and his freedoms.
No one is born a racist individual or destined to build/rule a racist/sexist institution, each society and its culture/mores shapes individuals in that way.
As far as Andrew and women. That ship has sailed.
How does your reading of Burke square with his position on the French Revolution?
I don't think there's an impossible contradiction there. Burke has a strong traditionalist streak, but he cites back to traditions that promote liberty. He would presumably reject traditions that promote the opposite of liberty.
And that leaves us with a pretty good, common-sense take on conservatism. If the solutions that past generations have come up with work well and are just, stick with them. If they do not work well and/or are unjust, change them. But be careful that, in attempting to change them, you do not make things worse. Revolutionary movements often get out of hand, and complete lawlessness is the worst of all possible worlds.
M.C.
Your take on Burke and The French Revolution is spot on. The only observation is that Burke advocates order because it is a preferable mode of protecting liberty, not because it is more just. Amorphous social structure and institutions lead to power vacuums and the rise of tyrants which was his problem with the French Revolution. Historical events proved him right.
Although critics will point out that some great literature and philosophy emerged from the period.
But asking if that byproduct was worth it would be like asking if Vietnam was worth it because of all the great music produced during the 60's.
Doubtful.
"It seems, to my mind, to be an authentic conservative in the 1850s is to perhaps recognize slavery as evil, but oppose doing anything about it that might upset the planters."
I disagree. By the 1850s, the southern planters were presenting new demands, including the right to take their slaves into free states without being forced to free them. They were also trying to extend slavery into all the territories. A conservative (like, for example, many of Stephen Douglas's followers) could resist demands like these even at the cost of upsetting the planters. In fact, Douglas himself was denounced as a traitor by his former Southern supporters for being insufficiently enthusiastic about expanding slavery. An "authentic conservative" position in the 1850s would not be an abolitionist one, but would also not favor enacting all the wishes of the Southern slavocrats.
interesting point
I think people somewhat misunderstand Andrew (although I may myself - speaking on the beliefs of others is always rather risky)
Generally what Andrew seems to oppose is the "trumpeting" of identity, the urge to have ones identity set one self apart from society, rather than being an individual who happens to be X.
This viewable through his longer term views about gay marriage, he has generally supported the institution of marriage for homosexuals since before (at least in his view, I'm not enough of an expert to state authoriatively) it was goal of a mainstream gay movement. When others did not seek out marriage because they saw it as an institution of the mainstream. He pushed for it.
Andrew generally does not want identity to define individuals (which in itself is somewhat of a paradox; but we all live with paradoxes) See "Virtually Normal"
Hence Andrew tends to be more opposed to individual who he sees as putting as their identities first; he would rather have people see themselves as for example a Judge, "who happens to be" Puerto Rican, rather than a Puero Rican Judge. Now this doesnt mean one denies that ones indenities influences ones viewpoints, he I think would certainly admit that being a gay catholic influences himself, but he [views himself] as not being defined as a gay catholic.
Ultimately myself I'm not sure where I come down on this debate, I think (and in trying to explain it, I did) make it seem binary, that you are on one side of the debate of identity or the other, when its more of a continuum. Assertive identities is ultimately going to be necessary for a group that others identifies as a group to break out of maltreatment and discrimination. However it can also go too far, and become too consuming of individuality.
That sounds like a very sturdy analysis of what Sullivan sees as good and bad ways to carry one's varied identities.
But what basis does he have to say Judge Sotomayor disagrees with him, or conducts her public life in a way that doesn't meet his standards?
It's a fair argument if it's based on truth about the judge's work and the woman's actual practice.
It's a tiresome, embarrassing waste of time if it's based on anything else.
By Sullivan's own principles, she deserves to be seen and addressed for her own words and deeds, not for other people's projected fears and fantasies of things she hasn't said or done.
While I certainly take your point as to what you think Andrew is trying to say, my primary problem with this charitable interpretation is that it seems at odds with the facts of the specific case in question. In particular, Andrew is quoted as saying that the following bothers him "The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively." As a generalization, sure this could be bothersome, but it doesn't seem to match up well with Sotomayor in particular. Andrew's statement would suggest that Sotomayor is talking about her identity ALL the time, when, so far as I'm aware, she made one speech discussing it, including the possibly ill-phrased "wise Latina" statement. Andrew further acknowledges that her judicial rulings don't seem especially swayed by race or gender, so why the rather harsh language and accusation? The media has certainly been harping on her race and gender, but she, herself, not so much. If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it.
As far as your statement regarding identity versus occupation, you may very well be right as to Andrew's views on the topic. But it presupposes the concept that identity can be effectively divorced from how you approach one's job. This seems quite plausible if you're, say, a mechanic, but substantially less clear when your job directly involves aspects of identity. Sotomayor's entire Latina speech was about the impossibility of such as a judge - not putting identity before occupation or vice versa but merely acknowledging that the two are intertwined and that one will of necessity inform the other. Given that her rulings seem objectively defensible and not overly swayed by identity-politics, this whole controversy seems like a mountain made out of a molehill.
Which brings me to the other reason that Andrew's post struck me - it seemed to put it mildly, incredibly un-self-aware. While I generally greatly enjoy Andrew's blog and his thought processes, he views many, many subjects through his own identity filters which do not always seem to be backed up by especially objective analysis. His discussions on health-care frequently irritate me because he is so entrenched as an HIV-positive, British expat with a beef towards the UK health care system. His reaction towards health care reform in this country subsequently comes across as more emotional than analytical (I still don't know WHY he hates UK health care) and, frankly, identity-based in origin.
It really is about one sentence, isn't it?
One [expletive deleted] sentence.
May God have mercy on them, and the electorate no mercy at all.
Yep. Kind of ridiculous, huh? An entire lifetime of decisions, words, and actions boiled down to one lousy sentence. Personally, I give her the benefit of the doubt on it considering that her actions don't correspond with the potentially troublesome viewpoint espoused in that single sentence and given the context of the speech. I guess I can understand why others don't, but really? You've never said anything that has been misconstrued or didn't, on reflection, express your thoughts accurately? Really?
No surprises with much of the Brooks and Sullivan stuff, but I find it MIND-BOGGLING that Brooks would so casually and enthusiastically refer to the possibility that Sotomayor would have been "assimilated" had she attended an Ivy League school earlier. This is written with complete ignorance of the fact that assimilation is an incredibly painful experience, one that leaves people feeling disconnected from their cultures, while simultaneously rejected from the larger society. I can think of few things less painful than being a Latina woman being pressured to assimilate into an elitist, classist, and racist academic culture which totally renders you invisible. Brooks needs to know that this is what made identity politics so attractive to many people; the idea that they didn't have to stand for this sort of thing.
And this is why I can't be a conservative. I just can't live in a world which is blithely ignorant (or dismissive) of other people's experiences, a world which broadly assumes that the experiences of dominant groups are the last and only word.
TNC, a question: you've explained why you are not a Burkean conservative. But you may be aware that Burkean conservatives are more or less gone from modern conservativism, and the few that remain are typically white democratic constituencies (e.g., the UAW, "preserve our obsolete auto industry, change will be dangerous").
What are you reasons for not being a member of either of the modern political movements bearing the label "conservative"?
By "modern conservative", I mean either the christian nationalists (e.g. Bush) or libertarian lite (e.g. Ron Paul). I'm guessing you dislike the former since you don't share their nationalist identity, but what objections do you have to the latter?
I'm late to this thread. But Andrew Sullivan is, fundamentally, a misogynist. It's a strain that shows up again and again when he talks about women. His use of the word "harping" in the quote offered by TNC is a great little nugget. There's lots of that in his writing. Andrew Sullivan can be right on issues and wrong on issues. He is a good writer and he has a talent for putting together an interesting blog. But he is NOT emotionally self-aware about many things, women being high on that list. In fact, he can be quite reactive, mean and petty when writing about women, and a sloppy thinker too.
so if these issues are not ongoing - discarded decades ago, why are we even talking about this? santomayor is not the one who has been harping on these issues - not in her personal life (with the exception of one wildly misquoted speech) and most certainly not in her judicial record. it is all the old white dudes that seem to be doing back flips over her identity as a latina woman. not her. not obama. obama characterized her story as uniquely american - not uniquely latino. that's what makes the establishment so mad - that this is an american story that doesn't read like "catcher in the rye" or "our town". it depresses me that someone who is as successful and accomplished as this woman is reduced to a stereotype and now a victim. i expect if from newt or rove. but from brooks and sullivan? it is absurd.
"Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless. Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power. Privileging them, privileges their agents."
This is true with respect to long-standing traditions, but with respect to powerful institutions versus the powerless, you're presenting something of a false dichotomy between conservatives and liberals. Liberals often side with teachers unions, for example, over inner-city parents who seek vouchers for school choice. Liberals often also privilege Wall Street firms and big business over entrepreneurs. They also privilege alumni of elite schools over smart folks from less well-connected backgrounds.
Consider this: there's a banker in Texas who didn't lose a dime during the financial crisis, because he saw the nonsense for what it was and kept his powder dry. His bank has profited while others have sought government welfare. He's a self-made billionaire. But he happens to be a Michigan State dropout. His name is Andy Beal. Don't you think this is the sort of guy the President ought to be tapping for economic advice, instead of the Ivy League grads who lost billions on Wall Street? Beal may have money, but he doesn't have any pull, since our current liberal President adheres to the status quo of privileging established Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs despite their failures.
Hear hear. You are describing Limousine Liberal, and not everyday middle class liberal. I can't stand having those ivy leagues bloodsuckers managing the economy when they created the current fiasco. Obama is not reality a revolutionary , just someone that came up into the system. Hopefully he will smell the coffee and wake up.
Dude, you said:
"Likewise, it isn't the oppressive identity politics practiced by conservatives for the past 30 years that's disturbing, but Sotomayor's response to it. To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing. It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more."
You've had a lot of smart, astute and blunt observations in your day, but that one tops them all.
"It seems, to my mind, to be an authentic conservative in the 1960s would be to recognize that segregation was also evil, but resolve to nothing about it which might upset its supporters."
Actually, if National Review is the bellweather of "authentic conservatism" in the '60s, I don't believe there's any evidence they thought segregation was "evil" - a temporary arrangment perhaps - but as late as 1957 they famously editorialized:
The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage...
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. (end clip)
Barry Goldwater is likely a more complicated case, wherein a dogmatic anti-federal ideology overcame what was no doubt his real "discomfort" with racism. The NR editorial is pretty openly racist and, frankly, not very "conservative" in the sense of alleged conservative concern with Constitutional rights.
Uh..."advanced race" not "ace"
"To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing."...that was spot on!
Andrew is getting raked over the coals for what he wrote, and rightly so. There's something about his tone when writing about women that is offputting and at times unbearable. It's like he's writing about some exotic species that he's heard about but never seen. Andrew just loves to make other minorities look wimpier and whinier than him. Because he managed to make it in America, and is doing well despite being HIV positive, gay, Catholic, and a Burkean conservative lost in a sea of Palins and Kristols, everybody else should stop whining and make it on their own, too. This is the basic tenet of so many conservatives: I'm doing fine, so why aren't you? For anybody who recognizes that some victims actually are victims, and that some people actually could use some help from other people, the "I walked ten miles through snow to school every morning!" shtick is the very thing that makes conservatism so unpalatable... when it's not busy being utterly disgusting.
To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing. It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more.
This is hitting the nail on the head. And when I asked, "But why?" I remembered that you answered that question, too:
Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless. Institutions, traditions and the past belong to those with power. Privileging them, privileges their agents.
I'd be a liar if I said that I don't do what I can to hold on to my little bit of power. And a bigger liar if I said I wouldn't if I had a lot more. No one wants to give up power. It's a tough world out there. Power can provide a nice buffer and give you at least the illusion of more autonomy. But giving it up needn't be entirely bad. I bet life is a little more relaxing on a number of levels for the once-powerful. Look at the post-empire British.
Sullivan regularly went out of his way to shine a light on every dopey utterance offered by candidate Hillary Clinton ("let the conversation begin," etc.). in re fatuousness, Clinton was undistinguished from her competition, yet Sullivan reserved his sneers for...the lady. Not that it was obvious or anything.
Then again, Hitchens became and becomes completely unhinged at the mere mention of the word Clinton (Hill or Bill), so maybe its a know-it-all Brit thing.
"It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more."
I'm definitely not a conservative -- but I think one might respond that certain responses to evil are to be abhorred. Your examples are very good, but one could reply with examples such as the Bush administration's over-reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- which were evil, but perhaps their response was as well. Or maybe the atomic bombing of Japan -- a response to the evil of aggression, but perhaps not the right one. If someone criticizes these two actions, we understand that they are not attempting to excuse the initial crime.
Certainly there are bad people who really don't care too much about the suffering of slaves during the civil war, or racism in the 60's, and so oppose the responses to them. But if you imply that criticism of responses also implies an indifference to the actions that caused those responses, then you'll get some people who will disagree -- and they're not limited to conservatives.
I think a thoughtful response would be that if the response is a greater evil than the original or is obviously more evil than other responses to the original that would be comparable mitigants to it, then certainly that's a perfectly reasonable response.
But, as I see it, most of the 'victimology vs. victimhood' stuff we're talking about here does not even come close to those criteria. It's trying to remove the mote from your brothers eye before removing the beam from your own.
Andrew may be gay, but nevertheless, he sees the world through his own experiential prism -- white, male, British.
Sorry long quote from Sullivan:
"Shelby Steele calls the Sotomayor selection "a crude form of racial patronage." ...
I must say that, to my mind, Steele has a point. It isn't the judicial rulings that trouble me so much as her non-judicial opinions and mindset. The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation. I don't think it's disqualifying and I don't see any crude racialism in her rulings, but I do think it shows that for Obama, this kind of racial/ethnic view of the world is so endemic it's invisible to him. And it's off-message for his candidacy and life. But, hey, maybe he feels Scalia needs to get as good as he gives."
Sullivan is felony guilty of a "constant, oppressive consciousness of her [his] identity - racial and gender [sex-partner preference] - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her [his] generation" view of the world himself.
When muddled thinking destroys the meaning of a word, such as "conservative", and a futile attempt is made to redefine it, it does not bode well for the foggy bottoms.
The great "conservative" Buckley voted for Obama after all.
I think the limousine liberal is somewhat apt, but not exactly right. Dave is describing not them as much as he's conflating liberals with Democratic politicians. Just because politicians play with those folks does not mean ordinary progresssives/liberals would choose them to run the show.
Blah, meant to the DaveinHackensack/SomaliCanuck exchange above.
While i'm hear again, this kind of post is why I come here, TNC. I see things like Andrew's post and it bothers me but I can't always articulate a great response, but you take it down clean.
A great post. I enjoy reading Andrew though I don't share his conservative views. I am taken aback, however, by his attack on Sotomayor's ethnic identity. Andrew, as a gay man with HIV, does not hesitate to illustrate his group identity. For myself as a blue-collar Catholic boy growing up in the 1950s in the urban Northeast, I was made constantly aware that I belonged to a despised minority. A few years before Kennedy was elected president, the plum assignment in the U. S. Navy was to atomic submarines; the admirals in charge boasted publicly that the crews were the cream of the crop: no Catholics, no Jews, (of course)no Blacks. Only WASPs. The U. of Pennsylvania, Ivy League, was caught by Bnai Brith in a scheme to limit Jewish enrollment. I could add that graduation from a Catholic high school was an obstacle to admission to an Ivy League college.
Andrew lacks American context, as has been pointed out in these comments. Surely, he is acquainted with 'victimology.'
My problem with victimology is not that it irritates rich white males. My problem is that many people who take it up anticipate more problems than actually occur, and therefore limit their own horizons. It's a bit like the people who thought Obama couldn't win because of the racist vote and voted for someone else in the primary. The victim position can become self-fulfilling.
I've found this over and over again myself. I thought I couldn't do things because I was female, or because I don't come from money, or some other limitation like that. But then I went and did them anyway and found no significant obstacles besides the ones in my own head.
This isn't to say that there are no obstacles in life, or that people shouldn't be aware of potential pitfalls. But it's possible to go too far and turn regular, surmountable problems into The End of the World. In my experience, more women (particularly young women who have been to college) get hung up by that than by anything men do.
Andrew Sullivan hinted at the truth that just about everyone knows, but no one is allowed to speak forbidden truths:
Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to the Supreme court solely based on her belonging to official "victims" groups:
She is an oppressed woman.
She is an oppressed Latina
Though Puerto Rican - with full US citizens rights coming from the island with beautiful weather, beautiful beaches and NO INCOME Tax (blue collar workers in Youngstown Ohio can only dream of such things) she's supposed to represent the struggles of all oppressed, colonial, non White, third world people of color.
jdkennedy takes it a bit further and actually goes for "The Full Monty" and presents American history as the story of evil, rich WASPs oppressing Blacks, non Whites, Catholics and Jews - for Jewish Americans would supposedly have high numbers of service men serving on US nuclear submarines if it wasn't for evil racist WASP keeping them out forcing them to do what:
Slave away as the OJ Simpson legal defense team?
Come on folks, this tired multi cult fairy tale of evil White Protestants oppressing everyone else in America and the world is getting tired, actually it was tired and boring in 1975, yet we are still pushing these lies 30 years later.
Check out crime statistics, note who and who is not allowed to form avowed racist, identity pressure groups in the USA:
Black Congressional Caucus, Black Entertainment TV, Black everything
National Council of La Raza - THE RACE
AIPAC, ADL
And for those idiot still moaning and groaning that America is the most sexist, homophobic nation on the earth - please do some research on women's rights, gay rights in Saudi Arabia or any Muslim nation. Or for that matter, note the % of women legislators, women judges in Spain, Latin American countries - and note that these Hispanic countries are not all poor, the richest man in the world is Mexican, though he would probably qualify for preferential treatment in the USA under affirmation action as an "oppressed" victim.
Yes, under this warped multi cult, victim cult - the richest man in the world -Mexico's Carlos Slim qualifies as an oppressed minority.
Maybe Obama will nominate Carlos Slim as the next Supreme Court Justice.
So, the Supreme Court is not to show signs of the diversity of America, is only for white males? And, here I thought, the only requirement was that the nominee be a graduate of an Ivy League law school.
Amazing how easily threatened these conservatives are by non-white, non-males. And angry, too.
Some members of minority groups have played the victim card, true, but these have been mostly fringe types and very obvious. I don't think that Sotomayor has done this, but her mentioning ethnic identity waves a red flag to some for reasons that it is no longer possible to state publicly--as the gingerly statements of Republican senators so clearly illustrate.
So, the Supreme Court is not to show signs of the diversity of America, is only for white males? And, here I thought, the only requirement was that the nominee be a graduate of an Ivy League law school.
Amazing how easily threatened these conservatives are by non-white, non-males. And angry, too.
Some members of minority groups have played the victim card, true, but these have been mostly fringe types and very obvious. I don't think that Sotomayor has done this, but her mentioning ethnic identity waves a red flag to some for reasons that it is no longer possible to state publicly--as the gingerly statements of Republican senators so clearly illustrate.
So, the Supreme Court is not to show signs of the diversity of America, is only for white males? And, here I thought, the only requirement was that the nominee be a graduate of an Ivy League law school.
Amazing how easily threatened these conservatives are by non-white, non-males. And angry, too.
Some members of minority groups have played the victim card, true, but these have been mostly fringe types and very obvious. I don't think that Sotomayor has done this, but her mentioning ethnic identity waves a red flag to some for reasons that it is no longer possible to state publicly--as the gingerly statements of Republican senators so clearly illustrate.
jdkennedy writes:
"So, the Supreme Court is not to show signs of the diversity of America, is only for white males? "
I made no such argument.
Instead I think judges, like other important jobs should be given/elected to qualified individuals who can to do their job well and not give important positions to individuals simply because they belong to some officially designated PC "victim group".
Also, I don't think that "diversity" is grounds for giving any unqualified person a job in any field.
Would you like to get on an airplane and find out the pilot flying the plane was given the position because she was a "New York - a rican" and she passed the job interview by saying that she strongly felt a Puerto Rican/Latina woman could do a better job of being a pilot than White men because of her Hispanic life experience and her feelings?
Would you like to go under the knife for open heart surgery for some similar affirmative action, diversity surgeon?
I feel America is on balance a good country, think our record of being the longest running, successful Constitutional Republic is something to be proud of - I much prefer America, with our true American history to say Zimbabwe, Haiti or the Sudan.
I also really like many things about the US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights.
I get really upset when certain folks who go to certain East Coast universities and graduate law schools start making up laws and thinking that certain groups of Americans, divided by race, gender, sexually orientation are entitled to rights and privileges that other Americans - most specifically poor and working class White Americans are not.
Let's just face the facts:
Sonia Sotomayor is an affirmative action appointee, she is completely unqualified to be a Supreme Court Justice, the only reason she was nominated for this very important position is that she fits into some official designated "victim" groups and many true believer liberal/Leftists think she will just vote on legal issues to support Liberal/Left positions.
Sonia Sotomayor is an affirmative action appointee, she is completely unqualified to be a Supreme Court Justice, the only reason she was nominated for this very important position is that she fits into some official designated "victim" groups...
These claims are not supported by the record, no matter how badly anyone wants them to be. Judge Sotomayor meets the traditional bar for a Supreme Court justice (with room to spare); Presidents appoint people with whom (they believe) they share a viewpoint; past nominations (some successful!) have relied on rank cronyism, which is nowhere in evidence here.
One can cherry-pick opinions from any judge (John Marshall, Roger Taney, Felix Frankfurter, Antonin Scalia) that are just plain wrong. Claiming that those opinions define the judge is like taking a team with a 20-4 record, looking only at the losing games, and calling them 0-4.
jack ellis, the bile in your brain is blinding you to reality.
You can like or dislike Sotomayor, but to say she is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court is just not true.
Saying it a bunch of times does not make it true.
Conservatism, with its belief in institutions, traditions, and the past, will seemingly always privilege (perhaps inadvertently) the powerful over the powerless.
This is very wrong. If this defines conservatism, or the political right, then I am not a conservative.
The powerful use government to their own ends. Big business has little problem with big government. Big government gives them bailouts, subsidies, and regulations that help stop other firms from competing. The established interests detest the rough and tumble of the free market where they are in perpetual danger of being dethroned.
Now, maybe you are speaking more towards social conservatives, of which I do not count myself as one. But on economic grounds I am a conservative precisely because I want to see change, dynamism and the status quo constantly challenged.
Doing ok until "It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more." That is to overstate the conclusion because not all the aspects have yet been addressed, specifically the implicit assumption that there is only one proper response and/or that the response will always make things better.
How about "The Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't", or more precisely "The cure might be worse than the disease". Does that highlight the missing aspect?
I've seen very little evidence that Sotomayer is race obsessed. However, her opponents certainly seem to be.
Rachel writes:
"I've seen very little evidence that Sotomayer is race obsessed."
Then how do you explain her joining the National Council of La Raza (La Raza translates as THE RACE"?
Seems to me someone who joins an organization called La Raza - THE RACE, might have some strong interest or yes and obsession with race.
But, then again, maybe it's me. When I learn that someone is avowed member of the Gambino Crime Family, I conclude that the guy might be someway involved with Italian organized Crime.
Same goes with Black African Americans with long rap sheets who flash gang symbols for an organization called
The Black Gangster Disciples.. "Black", "Gangsters" - these words convey certain things to me - but hey maybe it's just me.
Here are some good comments on Sonia Sotomayer - her whole academic and judicial careers were based on obsessions with race - her race being "Hipanics", "Latinos".
"Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico," writes reporter David Kirkpatrick, "has championed the importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career."( Sotomayor’s Focus on Race Issues May Be Hurdle, May 29, 2009 )
At Princeton, she headed up Accion Puertorriquena, which filed a complaint with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare demanding that her school hire Hispanic teachers. At Yale, she co-chaired a coalition of non-black minorities of color that demanded more Latino professors and administrators.
At Yale, she "shared the alarm of others in the group when the Supreme Court prohibited the use of quotas in university admissions in the 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke."
Alan Bakke was an applicant to the UC medical school at Davis who was rejected, though his test scores were higher than almost all of the minority students who were admitted. Bakke was white.
After Yale, Sotomayor joined the National Council of La Raza and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. Both promote race and ethnic preferences, affirmative action and quotas for Hispanics.
But why should Puerto Ricans like Sotomayor, who were never subjected to slavery or Jim Crow—their island was liberated from Spain in 1898 by the United States—get racial or ethnic preferences over Polish- or Portuguese-Americans?
What is the justification for this kind of discrimination?
Like Lani Guinier, the Clinton appointee rejected for reverse racism, Sonia Sotomayor is a quota queen. She believes in, preaches and practices race-based justice. Her burying the appeal of the white New Haven firefighters, who were denied promotions they had won in competitive exams, was a no-brainer for her."
P. Buchanan
Looks like Andrew took to heart the comments on this post, and has posted a mea culpa. Props to him for that.
SIR - I commend to you the Gladwell piece in the New Yorker that basically applies your first-paragraph criticism to Atticus Finch: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell
There seems to be a strong American streak of a "progressive conservatism" that would like equality, justice, fairness, et al - but not at the expense of disrupting the social order. Indeed, as you and others have put it better than me, the crime itself is not as bad as the crime of calling attention to it (see also "shrill" as the highest of epithets in political discourse of recent years past).