October 18, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Feminist
Totalitarianism, Justice Kavanaugh, and Our Eventual Gulags: And a Column by
Christopher DeGroot
Friends,
Yes, the
November 6 election is only nineteen days away…and, yes, there are a mounting
number of violent and widespread Leftist attacks (around 700, just the reported
ones) on Trump supporters and “deplorables” all across the nation, mostly not
restrained by law enforcement at all—and, yes, the Democratic Party and its
current crop of candidates are sounding even more radical and revolutionary
than any run-of-the-mill old fashioned Communist in the 1950s did—and, yes, the
Mainstream Media has become, if possible, even more frenzied and unhinged in its
attacks on anything that smacks of “normal” or “conservative”….
Yes, all
these things, all these observations are verifiably true, and each deserve
extensive reflection and comment.
And I’ve
not even mentioned the bald-faced and utterly despicable, if poorly executed
attempt by Massachusetts Marxist Senator Elizabeth Warren—who desperately wants
to be president and put the rest of us in nasty prison Gulags—to reach back to
the Stone Age to find some 1,000th percentage trace of “Indian
ancestry,” to fend off the attacks on her lies (made when she applied for a
teaching position at Harvard) that she was part Cherokee/part Delaware Indian.
Even the Cherokee Nation, based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, has blisteringly
criticized her false manipulation of DNA testing and her clumsy use of those
purported results to “prove” her supposed ancestry. As their statement reads,
her claim,
“…makes a mockery out
of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal
governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose
heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her
continued claims of tribal heritage." [
http://www.cherokee.org/News/Stories/20181015_Cherokee-Nation-responds-to-Senator-Warrens-DNA-test
]
Welcome to the United States in Fall 2018 in which the longtime mask
has dropped from the lurid face of the Left, from the establishment Deep State.
And what we behold are the fevered convictions and manic desires for the total
transformation of the country into something that would be completely
unrecognizable to the Founders of 240 years ago, indeed, to our grandparents of
only 50 years ago.
And, yes, I did say “Gulags” earlier, because that is exactly
where all this is headed—unless we do something about it. That is where we
shall end up if this fanatical lunacy is not met forcefully and defeated. That
is exactly what the new face of the Democratic Party, spearheaded and now
almost totally dominated by demonic feminism and racialism is all about: it is
an unleashed and angry, merciless form of totalitarianism, actually unlike
anything humanity has experienced previously. And its unparalleled dogmatism and
unswerving, power-hungry desire—once somewhat concealed—is now increasingly
visible for all to see.
I have used this following evocative quote from the great
English writer, Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), previously, but it fits now more
than ever:
“[T]he Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in
this that he cannot make;
that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every
Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been
true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the
long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his
irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds
refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and
awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.” [Hilaire Belloc. This and That and the Other (1912), p. 282]
Race and gender are the twin Hydra-headed, stony-faced monster of
this madness and frenzied barbarism. The examples of this infectious psychosis are
widespread: just turn on your television set.
Tuesday evening, October 16, coming home from my Sons of
Confederate Veterans meeting, I happened to catch a bit of the Tucker Carlson
Tonight program on Fox (the only consistently watchable program now on that
network). And Tucker was interviewing a “Democratic political strategist”
(important characterization!), by the name of Monica Klein. Rather than beat
around the bush or use leftist code words, Klein enunciated clearly and
forcefully both the goals of increasingly dominant feminism and the eventual
goals of the radicalized Democratic Party. Her words and “groupthink”
ideological linguistic usages are, in themselves, chilling—far more scary than
anything an old fogey Communist might have said sixty years ago—because she is
deadly serious about her extreme goals.
For what she spouted has, here and now, become the standard
talking points, the formalized platform of one of two major political parties
in the USA. And it almost totally dominates our educational system—from primary
grades to grad school; it pervades Hollywood that then drenches us in its tendentious
and poisonous slime; and it is spit out every hour of every day by our media
and our polluted culture.
Here is a YouTube video of the exchange (about seven minutes) between
Carlson and Klein; I find this frightening, as, I believe, should you:
This virulent feminism, were it to triumph, would destroy what
is left of the American republic…and, yes, the Gulag for us would not be far
behind.
I pass on one additional essay today, another superb commentary
by my friend Christopher DeGroot. And this one returns to the Kavanaugh
confirmation process for observations that dovetail with some of my comments,
and for more significant ramifications of what that process means and
illustrates.
Moral Smugness Towards Brett Kavanaugh
By CHRISTOPHER
DEGROOT October 12,
2018, 12:05 am
Finding fault with his character and temperament, but never their own.
Finding fault with his character and temperament, but never their own.
To the political witch hunt
that seemed as though it might ruin his and his family’s lives, and which
certainly caused the Kavanaugh family to experience profound suffering, Brett
Kavanaugh reacted as anyone would: with natural and justified anger. Of course,
at first Kavanaugh was rather cool-headed, but by the September 27 Supreme
Court confirmation hearing, the cheap character assassination had become a lot
worse, and a fiery Kavanaugh reflected the difference.
On Twitter, Senator Dianne Feinstein
utilized Kavanaugh’s anger to effect her characteristic pseudo-moral
manipulation:
The Republican
strategy is no longer attack the victim, it is ignore the victim. The entire
country is watching how we handle these serious allegations. The Senate has
failed a test on how we treat women, especially for women who are survivors of
sexual assault. Judge Kavanaugh did not reflect an impartial temperament or the
fairness and even-handedness one would see in a judge. He was aggressive and
belligerent. He should not be rewarded with a lifetime Supreme Court seat. I’ve
never seen someone who wants to be elevated to the highest court in our country
behave in the manner that Judge Kavanaugh did yesterday. The person who
testified yesterday and demonstrated a balanced temperament was Dr. Ford.
Feinstein also invited leading #MeToo activist
Alyssa Milano to be her guest at the hearing. With a front row seat, Milano
would be sure to get the Twitter mob and “the resistance” worked up into a
frenzy. Milano was seated just behind Kavanaugh during his testimony, so
America saw an angry-looking Milano throughout it. Such optics are no accident.
As if on cue, mindless journalists and others,
in their moral smugness, have been waxing indignant about “Kavanaugh’s
temperament,” as if it made him “unfit to be a Supreme Court justice.” As with
the allegation that he once threw ice at someone in a bar, Kavanaugh’s
temperament is being used as evidence that he would be as out of control on the
bench as he was during the hearing.
Amid the furor, Senator Ben Sasse announced
that, in light of the edifying #MeToo movement, he had actually opposed
Kavanaugh’s nomination all along. A woman justice would have been better for
gender equality’s sake, and certainly better for appearances. Alas, women’s hysteria is contagious. Many feminized
men suffer from it, quite unknowingly. So deep is their delusion that they take
submission for virtue.
In her article “Kavanaugh is the Face of
American Male Rage,” feminist Jessica Valenti lamented: “Even as women calmly and expertly explain the
ways in which men have hurt us, our pain is immediately drowned out and glossed
over by men’s belief that they should not have to answer to us, of all people.”
Calmly and expertly! Yes, they were a couple of
calm experts, the feminist women who harassed Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator
during the hearing’s intermission, prompting that weak and impressionable man
to have second thoughts about Kavanaugh. Calm experts, too, the screaming
“pro-choice” protesters who had to be carried out during the previous
confirmation hearings.
But for all her oblivious conceit, Valenti’s
language reveals that, for her as for other feminists, this issue is not about justice in regard to
Kavanaugh and Ford: it is about women’s
grievances towards men in general. For that this controversy is but an
occasion, and to that due process must yield.
The apex of the moral smugness towards Brett
Kavanaugh is — where else? — in academia. Here the examples are many, so I
shall focus only on the worst: namely, the letter signed by over 2,400 law
professors opposing Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh,
the professors believe, “displayed a lack of judicial temperament” at the
September 27 hearing. The letter was emailed to the offices of Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on October 4.
A testament to liberal partisanship and dubious
assumptions, the letter claims that:
Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment
to judicious inquiry. Instead of being open to the necessary search for
accuracy, Judge Kavanaugh was repeatedly aggressive with questioners. Even in
his prepared remarks, Judge Kavanaugh located the hearing as a partisan
question, referring to it as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit,”
rather than acknowledging the need for the Senate, faced with new information,
to try to understand what had transpired. Instead of trying to sort out with reason
and care the allegations that were raised, Judge Kavanaugh responded in an
intemperate, inflammatory, and partial manner, as he interrupted and, at times,
was discourteous to questioners.
Citing the bureaucrats at the Congressional
Research Service, the letter states that a judge must have “a personality that
is evenhanded, unbiased, impartial, courteous yet firm, and dedicated to a
process, not a result.”
The letter reminds us, moreover, that:
…under two statutes governing bias and recusal,
judges must step aside if they are at risk of being perceived as or of being
unfair. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 144, 455. As this Congress has put it, a judge or
justice “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality
might reasonably be questioned.” 28 USC § 455.
Like the reactions to last year’s Amy Wax controversy, this letter does not
reflect well on the state of legal academe. The moralism would be all well and
good if these professors had bothered to make a substantive case. But they did
not. Certainly “Judge Kavanaugh located the hearing as a partisan question,
referring to it as ‘a calculated and orchestrated political hit.’” The
professors need not agree, but they have to do much more than assert “the need
for the Senate, faced with new information, to try to understand what had
transpired.” For in context, Kavanaugh’s conception of the hearing is eminently
reasonable.
To begin with, Senator Chuck Grassley offered to
send investigators to California to speak with Christine Ford. Although this
offer was national news, as it were, Ford claimed she was unaware of it. If she
did not lie about that, as she did about her fear of flying, and probably much
else, then her attorneys — in violation of legal ethics — withheld information from
her. Either way, it is highly probable that the purpose of the D.C. location
was to realize the political interests which, arguably, were behind this
controversy from the beginning. After all, Ford’s ever-changing story is
riddled with holes and inconsistencies, and as prosecutor Rachel Mitchell wrote
in her devastating report, “the activities of
congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford’s attorneys likely affected Dr. Ford’s
account.”
Nor is it true that Kavanaugh wasn’t “open to
the necessary search for accuracy.” On the contrary, he repeatedly stated that
he’d accept a seventh FBI background investigation, if that’s what the Senate
Judiciary committee wanted; but believing himself to be innocent, and the
hearing “a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” he objected to the
seventh FBI background investigation on principle. Again, the law professors
need not agree, but they have done absolutely nothing to show that Kavanaugh is
wrong here, even as the facts are very much in his favor.
As for the criticism that Kavanaugh was
“repeatedly aggressive with questioners,” “intemperate,” “discourteous,” and so
on, let us assume for argument’s sake that this is accurate. Now, given the
overwhelmingly liberal character of legal academe, it is worth asking whether
the law professors would have perceived a liberal judge in the same manner, and
whether they would have been so vexed by such behavior by him or her. In any
event, one might have fairly expected some allowance for natural and rightful
anger in a man who believes he is innocent and that people are trying to ruin
his and his family’s lives. Consider that Kavanaugh was faced with vague,
varying allegations of a vile crime from nearly forty years ago, while
thousands of people echoed the charges with “I believe Dr. Ford.” In such
circumstances does not good character call
for fierce indignation? Anyway, the closest the professors
come to showing empathy for Kavanaugh’s condition is this single, rather
half-hearted sentence: “The question at issue was of course painful for
anyone.” Which is abruptly followed by: “But Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack
of commitment to judicious inquiry.”
There is a touch of unintended grim humor in
that breathless transition. It is much as though someone were to ask how your
day went, but by the time you get three words out, he has already launched into
impassioned talk about himself. It seems plain that for the law professors, as
for the Democrats, anything besides abject, emotionless submission to the
manipulations of Ford, her attorneys, and the Democrats is evidence of a bad
character. Such a perspective, I submit, is itself testimony to the grossest
bias, and perverse and contrary to human nature besides.
Said Mark Lemley, a professor at
Stanford Law School: “As someone who knew and liked Brett Kavanaugh when we
clerked together, I have tried very hard to stay out of this process and to
give him the benefit of the doubt.” But alas, at the September 27 hearing
Kavanaugh “was not what we should expect of a Supreme Court Justice. Telling
obvious lies about his background, yelling at senators, refusing to answer
questions, and blaming his troubles on others is not appropriate behavior.”
What “obvious lies”? Why was “yelling at Senators” not “appropriate behavior”?
“Refusing to answer [which] questions”? What “troubles” did Kavanaugh blame “on
others,” and why was he wrong to do so? Lemley doesn’t say, for his purpose is
superficial: showing everybody what a good person he is.
Meanwhile, it is quite foolish to imply, as the
law professors do, that temperament is some sort of clear judiciary criterion.
With their vague language and confused thought, the professors betray that
their minds are bundles of smug prejudice: hardly the sort of people who should
be training future lawyers. They don’t even know what they mean by the idea of
temperament in this context: precisely what it entails in regard to both
reasoning and morality.
The assumption that temperament tells us so
much about a person’s reasoning ability
or other intellectual
competence is a delusion; in this case, motivated by
resentment and a will to punish. For temperament and reasoning, though related
in many instances, are quite different things. Although we have the rightful
intuition that a moral monster should not occupy any position of importance,
temperament does not explain reasoning, nor does the latter reduce to it.
It is the same with character. Your neurosurgeon
may be a jerk, but that in itself entails nothing about his ability qua neurosurgeon. Likewise
with Brett Kavanaugh and his jurisprudence.
This is not to say that temperament and character
don’t matter. They do. Just not in this facile moralistic sense. The general,
unspoken premise of Kavanaugh’s self-righteous critics is that judiciary
reasoning is determined by
temperament in some precise, straightforward sense that everybody understands.
This is sheer nonsense. People are simply assuming a certain relationship
because doing so allows them to assert their prejudices and interests.
Kavanaugh’s critics, in legal academe and
elsewhere, are an appalling spectacle. Many are people who cannot read or think
beyond a high school level — and that’s putting it generously. They could never
get to where Kavanaugh has in life. Still, in their dull hysteria they fancy
themselves superior to the man.
Happily for him, Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed
to the Supreme Court. It is said that Dianne Feinstein’s pal Alyssa Milano will
soon lead a celebrity resistance protest. Whether Milano will get naked, as she
has in several bad movies, is not known.
Christopher DeGroot is a columnist at Taki’s Magazine and senior
contributing editor of New English Review. His writing
has appeared in The
American Spectator, The Imaginative Conservative, Frontpage Magazine, The Daily Caller, American Thinker, Jacobite Magazine, The Unz Review, Ygdrasil,
A Journal of the Poetic Arts, and
elsewhere. Follow him at @CEGrotius.
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