Principled Opposition to Sotomayor Can Prevail

The Sotomayor confirmation hearings can provide an education on the Founding Fathers’ vision, if conservative leaders make it so…

Those of us in flyover country are going to watch closely the performance of Pravda and the Political Class in the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. At this writing, Pravda and the Political Class are telling us that the combination of Sotomayor’s ‘compelling’ personal story plus her ‘two-fer’ status as a Latina woman makes her not only a shoo-in for confirmation but a nomination so beyond reproach that any criticism of her is, ipso facto, racism, which will cost the critic the votes of women and Hispanics in future elections.

We never cease to be amazed at Pravda’s play-them-for-fools regard for Americans. They believe no one will remember that Pravda acted quite differently when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court. His is as compelling a personal story as has ever been known of Supreme Court nominees—if you haven’t read his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son”, you should—but Pravda led the charge to destroy him, as Democrats piled on without any concern whatsoever over losing the votes of black Americans in future elections. The ‘high-tech lynching’ that Justice Thomas endured at the hands of Joe Biden and the Senate Judiciary Committee was despicable.

In their constant misinterpretation of events and general cowardice vis-à-vis Pravda, Republican Senators shy away from any but the most mild-mannered, near-apologetic kind of criticism of left-wing nominees on the grounds that (a) they want to be seen as more civil and mature about these things, and (b) they think that by doing so they are preserving their political viability.

The misinterpretation of events always springs from the failure to understand that the ideological battle between left and right is no less than a battle between the destruction of America under God and the preservation of America under God. “Oh, come on!”, the leftwing seducer says, “everybody loves America, so keep the overwrought rhetoric out of this.” Don’t buy this BS. As Ronald Reagan put it, it’s not left or right, but up or down.

America’s foundational principle is the Christian ideal of individual freedom and responsibility under God. The left denies this foundational principle because first and foremost, the left hates God, or at least hates the idea that anyone or anything outside their ability to control can influence the thoughts and behavior of mankind. They worship at the altar of man and matter. They want to rid the nation and the world of Christianity, or at least render it officially impotent and irrelevant.

In contrast, the founding fathers felt humble in the presence of ‘divine Providence’—hoping to create a system that acknowledged and honored His creation and His laws by establishing historically unprecedented limits on the power of men and government. The founding fathers most assuredly did not view courts and judges as policy makers and inventors of law; they viewed them as fulfilling the need for justice with blindfolded application of the law to any and all people. And the corollary to their vision of a limited government was the belief in and expectation of a moral, responsible, self-reliant citizenry.

Leftist ideologues spotted in Clarence Thomas a man of deep and sincere faith, a man of religiously inspired morals, character, and sense of responsibility, and that was the beginning and end of their evaluation of him. He had to be destroyed. His skin color was irrelevant to the overriding importance of keeping Christian conservatives out of high office.

In Sonia Sotomayor, they see a woman who by her own words shows that she thinks judges can and should make policy—including in ways that redistribute wealth--and that judicial decisions can be better or worse depending on the skin color of the judge. This is the polar opposite of the ideal of the blindfolded ‘lady justice’; it is racist; and it is antithetical to the founders’ view of the role of judges and courts. In ideological terms, this is a judge that believes in the power of men and women to render justice independent of the law; a judge who, whether she acknowledges it or not, is effectively comfortable with judges substituting themselves in the role of God. It shows that even if she is nominally a person of faith, her faith is clearly secondary to her sense of self-importance. This is what makes her qualified in the eyes of the left, and the “Latina woman” aspect is irrelevant except as a convenient bludgeon to use against gutless Republicans.

Americans—and we always use the term “Americans” as freedom-loving human beings, in the sense that Peter Ferrara did in his classic post-9/11 essay, here —do not want this activist philosophy in their judges, and they deplore racism practiced by any race toward any other race. This is a core truth that when confidently articulated appeals to solid majorities of men and women of every race. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin are doing it every day, and the people are with them. This nomination could be stopped cold on these grounds with the strong support of the American people. More likely, however, Pravda will create a favorable though irrelevant poll for Sotomayor. A sample question might be: don’t you think someone with Sotomayor’s personal story deserves a respectful hearing? And the answers to that question will be manipulated into a report that 79% of the people believe she should be confirmed. Beltway Republicans will then roll over on command, American ideals be damned.

But in rolling over, Beltway Republicans are going to find out that they’re not preserving their political viability; they are destroying it. They are adding gasoline to the fires already boiling the tea water. They don’t see it coming, but they are stirring a tsunami of resentment toward the entire Political Class.

We hope to see every incumbent thrown out in 2010, because what’s at stake isn’t a political game. It’s about preserving America.

Paul Gable

Posted May 27, 2009