“…Liberals are in no mood to believe this, but I think it is possible that the Kavanaugh Court may give everyone a chance to step back from the political cliff. This isn’t an appeal to rediscover the political center. It’s an appeal against flying irrevocably apart.
The Democratic opposition to any Supreme Court nominee from Mr. Trump in 2018 has been about virtually one thing: the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. That was 45 years ago. And that is about the time the culture wars began in America. There have been casualties since then, a lot of them. (Over 60,000,000…
…and counting!)
Whatever one thinks about Roe, the court for the first time involved itself in a subject that for many Americans was profoundly and overwhelmingly moral (some might cite Engel, the 1962 decision banning school prayer). Through the 1970s and ’80s the religious right emerged as a politically active opposition to America’s cultural direction. But its rise produced a more powerful, media-driven counter-movement of aggressive secularism.
More than ever before, many matters that entered American politics, such as racial preferences or various disputes over free speech, were rerouted away from legislatures and into the judicial system, with both sides contending that the opposition wasn’t merely wrong but immoral.
The Obama presidency expanded the alternative battlefield. Explicitly identifying its impatience with the legislative branch, the Obama White House ordered administrative agencies to execute contentious policies affecting sex and race.
The Supreme Court, in its 2015 Obergefell decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, established gay marriage as a protected right. In a recent essay on these pages, Walter Olson made a definitive argument that this decision will survive in a conservative Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade will survive, too, not least to avoid social upheaval. (Which is a poor reason to uphold bad law.)
Shortly after the Obergefell decision, something else of cultural and political significance happened. Within months, the left began to agitate for transgender rights, another moral claim whose substantive meaning is a mystery to most Americans. (No, we recognize it as another Socialist scam!)
Liberals remain incredulous at Mr. Trump’s election. But nearly half the electorate voted for him, and among the reasons is that today a lot of people—across all income classes—feel they are really being jammed by the culture. Progressive jurisprudence had a lot to do with this. Liberals won their share of court decisions, but at a price: The courts in America became an agent of social discord.
It would be good for the country’s stability if a Kavanaugh Court disincentivized the left from using the courts to push the far edges of the social envelope. (Or any social issues at all!) This is not about turning back the clock. It is about how best to resolve bitter social and cultural disputes in the future. It is about no longer using the courts to make triumphal moral claims against the majority.
In the Kavanaugh Court, extending rights claims beyond their already elastic status is going to require more rigor than appeals to a judge’s personal sensibilities or a theory of social organization developed in law journals.
Advocates for social change involving race, gender, identity and such will have to convince representative majorities, elected by voters, to agree with their point of view. Unlike in the past four decades, the high court will more often weigh in after, not before, the political process has happened.
The United States needs to settle down politically. Some day the sitting president may see the value in that for his own legacy. This nomination is a good start. A Kavanaugh Court will provide the country with a needed pause.“
Though we agree with much of what Henninger writes, we cannot help but offer our objections as noted.
Meanwhile, those opposed to whoever Trump nominated still can’t seem to get their facts straight…
…largely because they don’t deal in facts.
Speaking of who refuse to deal in facts, they’re the subject of Victor Davis Hanson’s latest commentary at his Private Papers, as he details…
“…Does the white Appalachian coal miner in West Virginia really have an innate leg up on the Punjabi immigrant exec in Silicon Valley on the basis of his appearance? Yet somewhere along the line in a supposed racist America, being a white male in Fayette County, W. Va., did not innately trump being a techie immigrant from Mumbai in Menlo Park. Does multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey have less privilege and opportunity than a white cook in Provo, Utah?
Does the recently arrived undocumented immigrant who has lived his entire life in the Mexican state of Oaxaca become eligible for career and job enhancement because he does not superficially look like the out-of-work lathe worker in southern Ohio? Is the theory that the minute the immigrant crosses the border to the U.S. from his formerly racist society, his children will become eligible for federally mandated advantages on the reasoning that from now on, they will face racism as a non-white in the country to which he fled in order to avoid racism in the country of his birth?
Federal statistics reveal that in terms of average median household income, those who loosely identify as Asian are far wealthier ($80,720 per year) than whites ($61,349). Do they enjoy “Asian privilege” of having on average $20,000 more as a family to spend each year than whites?
More specifically, the top three ethnic income groups in the United States are not categorized as “white”: Indian American ($110,026), Taiwanese American ($90,221), and Filipino American ($88,745). What sort of non-privilege allowed them to vastly outdistance their supposedly racist white-majority hosts — superior education, smarter professional choices, more cohesive family structures, all of which somehow trumped their outward appearance?
In terms of the most indigent counties in the United States, four of the five poorest have overwhelmingly white populations. That might suggest not only that the term “white” is increasingly undefinable, at least in terms of status, class, and privilege, but that “white” includes a vast array of disparate cultures and experiences that make impossible any conclusive idea of white-privilege solidarity.
In many ways, the greatest polarization in the country today is along class, not racial, lines, especially between lower- and middle-class whites and rich, coastal-elite whites — as we were reminded by Hillary Clinton’s recent disdain shown the “deplorables” and “irredeemables.”
One of the strangest elements of the American obsession with superficial appearance is the habit of very well connected and affluent whites faulting poor whites for their “white privilege.” It has become a sort of rite-of-passage virtue-signaling in which rich, white college students at tony universities damn white privilege and the supposedly racist, nativist, xenophobic, and sexist Trump Neanderthals. With this, they establish their spiritually pure fides or, more practically, earn a sort of insurance policy in case the all-seeing eye of the diversity tower turns its focus on them someday.
Donald Trump rode to victory in part on the furor of voters in the Midwest and rural states who were derided for their privilege (though they did not seem to have much) by those who most certainly did enjoy privilege.
Do not underestimate the Trump voter. When they channel-surfed cable news, or heard of the antics that took place on college campuses, or saw street-theater demonstrations on television, they boiled at the idea that they had often worked at minimum wage, saw their jobs outsourced, never discriminated against anyone, and yet were being damned by smug youth who in a few years would draw on their college B.A. cattle brand, their parents’ lobbying, and the good-old-boy network of being rich, white, and from the proper zip code to inherit their rightful place in business, investment, politics, entertainment, the media, or the university. Google all the rich, white, privileged pundits who at one time or another, both in jest and in all seriousness, have called to deport the deplorables and in their stead give amnesty to illegal aliens or import “better” people from abroad.
In sum, the terms “diversity” and “white privilege” have now been stretched to denote so many things, and yet they encompass so many paradoxes and contradictions, that they have become words that mean nothing much at all. (As evidenced by the following meme, which demonstrates an ignorance of reality truly awesome to behold.)
How odd that the current revolutionary mode is to keep these reactionary Byzantine classifications and programs that no longer sync with reality, and to damn as reactionary the truly revolutionary act — which would be to start treating people as unique individuals whose appearance is a secondary consideration.“
…was a Phys-Ed teacher who started a monumentally-successful football program at Rush-Henrietta Central Schools in Upstate New York, eventually becoming Athletic Director. Though we weren’t wealthy in what the world values, even Jeff Bezos would envy what we possessed of that which is most valuable. And none of it involved “White Privilege”.
Which brings us to the MSM Bias…WHAT Bias?!? segment, also courtesy of NRO, as Charles W. Cooke relates how…
NBC’s Capitol Hill Reporter Demonstrates Why So Many Dislike the Press
Every time I criticize the mainstream press, I am treated to a saccharine lecture on how wrong I am to cast aspersions about America’s most valuable profession. “You don’t understand,” I am informed. “These people are diligent, and hard-working, and thorough, and they move heaven and earth to get the story right. Occasionally, they make mistakes. But they feel terrible when they do, and they move quickly to fix it. They don’t deserve your disdain.”
But they do, so often. And here is a good example of why that disdain is so forthcoming:
Gosh, what a bombshell story! And the day after the nomination, too! Given that this has the potential not only to dominate the news cycle, but to filter down into the rhetorical arsenals of everyone who opposes Kavanaugh, one can only assume that its progenitor did her homework, right? After all, she isn’t some random; she’s a Capitol Hill reporter for NBC, and worked previously at CNN and in public radio. She knows how important it is to ensure that her story is solid. It would be absurd if her attitude were, “not sure about this one, better send it around the Internet just in case.”
Oh:
At best, this is extraordinarily irresponsible. At worse, it is malicious. Since Trump won the election, our national conversation has been marked by this approach: First, a “journalist” will present an exciting story as fact; then, to rile up the reader, they will inject some high-octane editorializing — perhaps an “in other words…” or a “this is not normal” or an “in 2018!”; and, finally, they will present the real story — or, in this case, admit that they are relying on “one source” and don’t actually “have any info” on whether it’s true or not. And then they will sit back and watch the initial claim go viral, and, if they are called on it they will refer their critics to the caveat they added afterwards.
The point here is not that Caldwell is necessarily wrong. I am skeptical myself, and Leonard Leo has categorically refuted the charge, but it’s certainly possible that we’ll see more of this story. The point is that this isn’t journalism. Because she did no research, Leigh Ann Caldwell has allowed herself to be used as a laundry service for political rumor-mongering. Whether deliberately or not (most definitely deliberately), she’s become part of a partisan fight. Irrespective of whether she wanted to (she decidedly wanted to), she has made herself a mouthpiece, not an arbiter. “I heard a rumor” is not good enough. It’s not professional. Do better — or quit complaining about your cavilers.
UPDATE: And here’s the inevitable backtrack, once the rumor has spread and the usual suspects are drawing sweeping conclusions from it:
Sorry, but Cooke gives Caldwell and the rest of her ilk the benefit of the doubt we adamantly refuse to grant them, as our comments in green above clearly indicate. And which is why we wouldn’t piss on most journalists were they on fire.
Turning now to The Lighter Side:
Finally, we’ll call it a week with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, and this intriguing tale from The Sunshine State:
“…Earle Gustavas Stevens, 69, was arrested two weeks ago for driving his Mercury Grand Marquis while under the influence. The Vero Beach resident, now free on $1500 bond in advance of a July 31 arraignment, was nabbed after a driver called 911 to report that Stevens’s car repeatedly tapped her bumper while they were in a McDonald’s drive-thru lane.
When a sheriff’s deputy contacted Stevens, he reeked of alcohol, was slurring his words, and had ”red and glossy” eyes. On the Mercury’s passenger seat was a bottle of Jim Beam, from which Stevens admitted he had been drinking.
Asked if he was drinking in the auto, Stevens replied, “No.” He then explained he was enjoying the bourbon at “Stop signs.” The deputy further noted Stevens’s distinction when it came to drinking while driving: “He further explained that he was not drinking while the car was moving and only when he stopped for stop signs and traffic signals.”“
While we give Mr. Stevens credit for originality, particularly under the influence, we doubt, this being his third offense, any judge will see fit to grant him leniency.
Magoo
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.