4um: Why No Affirmative Action for Evangelical Whites? (my title)

Title: Why No Affirmative Action for Evangelical Whites? (my title)
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32796
Published: Jul 21, 2009
Author: PJB
Post Date: 2009-07-21 21:16:49 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 191
Comments: 14

07/21/2009

When Republicans were warned not to give Sonia Sotomayor the drubbing Democrats gave Robert Bork and Sam Alito -- lest they be perceived as sexist and racist by women and Hispanics -- the threat was credible, for it underscored a new reality in American politics.

The Supreme Court, far from being the last redoubt of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in America, reflects the collapse of that WASP establishment, and a rising racial, ethnic and gender consciousness and solidarity.

Consider. In 45 years, no Democratic president has put a single white Protestant or Catholic man or woman on the court.

Six nominees have been sent to Congress by Democrats since 1964: Thurgood Marshall, an African-American, four Jewish nominees -- Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- and one wise Latina woman. Not since JFK put All-American Byron "Whizzer" White on in 1962 have Democrats elevated a white Christian.

What about the Republicans?

Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford nominated seven to the court. All were white, all were male, all were Protestant: Warren Burger, Clement Haynsworth, Harrold Carswell, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist and John Paul Stevens. No diversity there.

And from almost every standpoint, Nixon and Ford failed.

Two of Nixon's nominees, Haynsworth and Carswell, were rejected. Three of the four Nixon appointees who were elevated -- Burger, Blackmun and Powell -- voted for Roe v. Wade, which Blackmun wrote. Only Rehnquist turned out to be a stellar justice, among the best in a century.

Nixon had intended to appoint the first woman, Mildred Lillie of California, but was dissuaded by late resistance.

Ford's lone choice, John Paul Stevens, was approved unanimously, went to the court, turned left and has anchored the liberal wing for 34 years.

With Reagan, nearly three decades ago, Republican presidents became more ecumenical.

His first pick, as promised, was a woman, Sandra Day O'Connor. His second was the first Italian-American ever to sit on the high court, Antonin Scalia. His third was Bork, a Protestant. When Bork was rejected, Reagan chose Douglas Ginsburg, a Jewish judge and colleague of Bork's on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. When Ginsburg was pulled because of a marijuana incident in college days, Reagan went with Anthony Kennedy, an Irish Catholic judge from his home state of California.

Kennedy and O'Connor became swing votes and unreliable as constitutional conservatives. But, on diversity grounds, Reagan can hardly be faulted.

George H.W. Bush chose David Souter, a white Protestant from New Hampshire, who followed Stevens left, and Clarence Thomas, an African-American from Pin Point, Ga. Thomas was savaged, but his counter-charge of having been subjected to a "high-tech lynching" knocked Democrats back on their heels and drove a wedge between party liberals and feminists and Democratic conservatives.

In replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist and O'Connor with John Roberts and Alito, George W. Bush succeeded as no other Republican president since World War II. He had not only tilted the court to constitutionalism, but also replaced two white Protestants justices with two white Catholic justices, one of whom is the second Italian-American on the court.

Where does that leave the court today?

When Sotomayor is approved by the Senate, the court will, in terms of religious minorities, consist of six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant. Ethnically, there will be one African-American, one Hispanic American, one Irish-American, two Jewish-Americans, two Italian Americans and two Anglos.

That is diversity, is it not?

And who is the least represented minority in America on the U.S. Supreme Court? Not Catholics, who have two-thirds of the seats. Not Jewish-Americans, who though 2 percent of the population, have 22 percent of the seats. Not African-Americans, who at 13 percent of the population have 11 percent of the seats. And not Hispanics, who at 15 percent of the population will have 11 percent of the seats.

No, the most underrepresented group of Americans -- nay, the most unrepresented minority, the largest group of our fellow citizens never to have had one of its own sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in the modern era is -- Evangelical Christians.

They are more numerous than Catholics, who at 24 percent of the population have 67 percent of the seats on the court. And, for Republicans, they are a far more reliable voting bloc than Catholics -- not to mention Hispanics, Jews and African-Americans, all of whom voted somewhere between two to one and 20 to one for Obama.

Bush II tried to close the Evangelical gap with Harriet Miers, but conservatives opposed her as unqualified.

Republicans should now be searching for highly qualified Evangelical Christian judges and constitutional scholars, women as well as men -- and, when falsely accused of being "anti-Hispanic" or "anti-woman," ought to reply: "What do you liberals have against white Christians, man or woman, not to have named one in 45 years?"

Everybody can play the diversity game.

"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." - John Jay

"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, "just men who will rule in the fear of God." The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be sqandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws." - Noah Webster

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"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”

I object. When is the last time either side appointed a black Jew or white Muslim or a hispanic Jehova Witness?

I personally think we would be better off with the following on the USSC as opposed to what America has endured the past 90 years...

I wonder if it bothered Rehnquist to sit on the court with a Jew and a black? When he was appointed to the court and moved from Phoenix he put a covenant on his house that it was not to be sold to Jews or non-whites.

So the Republicans nominated nothing but WASP males, the Democrats alone tried to balance this out but the complaint is about the Democrats not the Republicans. And, on top of that, the WASP males appointed by Republicans couldn't be trusted to uphold Lily White politics once they were on the court!

Actually, a piece of the problem is that Nixon, in an attempt to eliminate Jewish candidates, rigged the system. The Jews who had been on the Supreme Court, starting with Brandeis, had been topnotch lawyers and law professors. Nixon narrowed the system by insisting that only judges sitting in lower courts would be eligible for the Supreme Court -- since WASP politics had controlled most of those judgeships, Nixon essentially gamed the system, perpetuating the WASP ethnocentricity for at least a generation. Even the American Bar Association was pulled into this scheme to make it seem legitimate. Even subsequent Democratic Presidents fell into Nixon's trap.

As an example of how badly this worked was Clarence Thomas. Thomas was Old Bush's one and only black appellate judge appointee. When a vacancy occurred on the Supreme Court - Thurgood Marshall - it became painfully obvious that a black candidate was needed. Thomas was the one and only black judge that Bush knew, so Thomas got lofted to the Supreme Court only a couple of years after Bush had put him in the Court of Appeals. There were, of course, tons of high quality black lawyers and black law professors, but by limiting the choices to sitting judges non-WASP choices were very few.

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.

Should a 2nd amendment issue come before the court, I fear a Clarence Thomas or a Scalia far less than Ginsberg and Sotomayer, but that's just me.

The Jews who had been on the Supreme Court, starting with Brandeis, had been topnotch ZIONAZIS.

As the war drew to a close, Frankfurter was among the nearly one hundred intellectuals who signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Free Nations Associations, which aimed to increase American participation in international affairs.[17]

Frankfurter was encouraged by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to become more involved in Zionism.[2] With Brandeis he lobbied President Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration, a British government statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.[2] In 1918, he participated in the founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia creating a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the US.[18] In 1919, Frankfurter served as a Zionist delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.[2]

Ginsberg is the worse on the court. I notice you didn't mention Bushes two picks. In hindsight do you think they were good picks? I think you are wrong about scalia and THomas on the 2nd. I really hope you are too.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it - Thomas Jefferson