Taken out of context

Columns

June 4, 2009

By Thomas Sowell Picayune Item Thu Jun 04, 2009, 09:10 AM CDT

In Washington, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a “clarification” when people realize what was said. The clearly racist comments made by Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Berkeley campus in 2001 have forced the spinmasters to resort to their last-ditch excuse, that it was “taken out of context.”

If that line is used during Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings, someone should ask her to explain just what those words mean when taken in context.

What could such statements possibly mean — in any context — other than the new and fashionable racism of our time, rather than the old-fashioned racism of earlier times? Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.

Looked at in the context of Judge Sotomayor’s voting to dismiss the appeal of white firefighters who were denied the promotions they had earned by passing an exam, because not enough minorities passed that exam to create “diversity,” her words in Berkeley seem to match her actions on the judicial bench in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals all too well.

The Supreme Court of the United States thought that case was important enough to hear it, even though the three-judge panel on which Judge Sotomayor served gave it short shrift in less than a page. Apparently the famous “empathy” that President Obama says a judge should have does not apply to white males in Judge Sotomayor’s court.

The very idea that a judge’s “life experiences” should influence judicial decisions is as absurd as it is dangerous.

It is dangerous because citizens are supposed to obey the law, which means they must know what the law is in advance — and nobody can know in advance what the “life experiences” of whatever judge they might appear before will happen to be.

It is absurd because it flies in the face of the facts. It was a fellow Puerto Rican judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals — Jose Cabranes — who rebuked his judicial colleagues for the cavalier way they dismissed the white firefighters’ case.

On the Supreme Court, the justice whose life story is most like that of Sonia Sotomayor — Clarence Thomas — has a very different judicial philosophy from hers.

The clever people in the media and elsewhere are saying that “inevitably” one’s background influences how one feels about issues. Even if that were true, judges are not supposed to decide cases based on their personal feelings.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that he “loathed” many of the people in whose favor he voted on the Supreme Court. Obviously, he had feelings. But he also had the good sense and integrity to rule on the basis of the law, not his feelings.

Laws are made for the benefit of the citizens, not for the self-indulgences of judges. Making excuses for such self-indulgences and calling them “inevitable” is part of the cleverness that has eroded the rule of law and undermined respect for the law.

Something else is said to be “inevitable” by the clever people. That is the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. But it was only a year and a half ago that Hillary Clinton’s winning the Democratic Party’s nomination for president was considered “inevitable.”

The Republicans certainly do not have the votes to stop Judge Sotomayor from being confirmed — if all the Democrats vote for her. But that depends on what the people say. It looked like a done deal a couple of years ago when an amnesty bill for illegal aliens was sailing through the Senate with bipartisan support. But public outrage brought that political steamroller to a screeching halt.

Nothing is inevitable in a democracy unless the public lets the political spinmasters and media talking heads lead them around by the nose.

The real question is whether the Republican Senators have the guts to alert the public to the dangers of putting this kind of judge on the highest court in the land, so that they will at least have some chance of stopping the next one that comes along.

It would be considered a disgrace if an umpire in a baseball game let his “empathy” determine whether a pitch was called a ball or strike. Surely we should accept nothing less from a judge.

(To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.)

Text Only

Columns

Health Care fund may hit zero
A new Republican governor and new Republican legislative leadership now face the same task that has confounded their Democratic colleagues when they had the reins of state government — finding a way to pay for Mississippi’s massive Medicaid program.

February 8, 2012
Komen backlash wrongheaded
To hear much of the American media tell it, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast-cancer charity that recently cut its ties with Planned Parenthood before (sort of) backing down, should simply be no more.

February 8, 2012
Voting rights attack is un-American
When this country was founded, only white men owning property could vote. Since then, the franchise has gradually expanded to include blacks and women, the poor and the young. Poll taxes and literacy tests have been abolished. A firm national principle has been established: Every vote should count, and count equally. Until now.

February 7, 2012
Size of Universe is unimaginable
I stumbled across an interesting video on YouTube produced by Tony Darnell, entitled "The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Picture Ever Taken." It is, to say the least, a very thought-provoking video and has to do with our place in the Universe.

February 7, 2012
Numbers suggest priorities
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
As the new Republican majority controlling state government claimed victory by passing the Children’s Protection Act with ease in the House, it’s clear that even more fundamental — and more politically difficult — challenges loom down the public policy road.

February 4, 2012
Romney has Massachusetts problem
By Byron York/Syndicated columnist
Mitt Romney was born and raised in Michigan and has ties to Utah. Yet he chose to make his career, both in business and politics, in Massachusetts. Nearly every political problem Romney has today, at least those involving his policy positions, stems from that one decision.

February 4, 2012
Woman escaped killing machine
By Nat Hentoff/Syndicated columnist
A survivor of Robert Mugabe’s relentlessly brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, Patience Mhlanga would like you to know what it was like to grow up in grinding fear there. She escaped, but her story tells what so many others are still undergoing in that hellhole that the rest of the world allows to continue:
“Growing up in Zimbabwe, I learned the meaning of persecution early. My father was a strong supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and the supporters of Robert Mugabe threatened to kill our family for my father’s views.

February 3, 2012
Restored restaurant signals renewal
By Bill Crawford/Meridian Star columnist
Choctaw tribal chief Phyliss Anderson restored and reopened Phillip M’s at the Pearl River Resort last week. She also signaled her intent to renew the economic policies so successfully implemented by the restaurant’s namesake.

February 3, 2012
Woman escaped killing machine
A survivor of Robert Mugabe’s relentlessly brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, Patience Mhlanga would like you to know what it was like to grow up in grinding fear there. She escaped, but her story tells what so many others are still undergoing in that hellhole that the rest of the world allows to continue:

February 3, 2012
Restored restaurant signals renewal
Choctaw tribal chief Phyliss Anderson restored and reopened Phillip M’s at the Pearl River Resort last week. She also signaled her intent to renew the economic policies so successfully implemented by the restaurant’s namesake.

February 3, 2012
More Columns Headlines

Columns

Search Results

Taken out of context

Site Map

Contact Us