Echoes in Eternity

This is good news! Huge, in fact, as it has much broader implications than just gutting ObamaCare. The Supreme Court will ultimately decide this though.

This is GREAT news for those in this country who still appreciate free speech.

Charles Krauthammer wrote a fantastic column this week regarding the SCOTUS nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. He says that conservative Republicans should ask deep and penetrating questions into substantive issues, then vote to confirm (assuming nothing really awful comes to light).

Sonia Sotomayor has a classic American story. So does Frank Ricci.

Ricci is a New Haven firefighter stationed seven blocks from where Sotomayor went to law school (Yale). Raised in blue-collar Wallingford, Conn., Ricci struggled as a C and D student in public schools ill-prepared to address his serious learning disabilities. Nonetheless he persevered, becoming a junior firefighter and Connecticut's youngest certified EMT.

After studying fire science at a community college, he became a New Haven "truckie," the guy who puts up ladders and breaks holes in burning buildings. When his department announced exams for promotions, he spent $1,000 on books, quit his second job so he could study eight to 13 hours a day, and, because of his dyslexia, hired someone to read him the material.

He placed sixth on the lieutenant's exam, which qualified him for promotion. Except that the exams were thrown out by the city, and all promotions denied, because no blacks had scored high enough to be promoted.

Ricci (with 19 others) sued.

That's where these two American stories intersect. Sotomayor was a member of the three-member circuit court panel that upheld the dismissal of his case, thus denying Ricci his promotion.
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Two things are sure to happen this summer: The Supreme Court will overturn Sotomayor's panel's ruling. And, barring some huge hidden scandal, Sotomayor will be elevated to that same Supreme Court.

What should a principled conservative do? Use the upcoming hearings not to deny her the seat, but to illuminate her views. No magazine gossip from anonymous court clerks. No "temperament" insinuations. Nothing ad hominem. The argument should be elevated, respectful and entirely about judicial philosophy.

On the Ricci case. And on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats' enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.

Sotomayor shares President Obama's vision of empathy as lying at the heart of judicial decision-making -- sympathetic concern for litigants' background and current circumstances, and for how any judicial decision would affect their lives.

Since the 2008 election, people have been asking what conservatism stands for. Well, if nothing else, it stands unequivocally against justice as empathy -- and unequivocally for the principle of blind justice.

Empathy is a vital virtue to be exercised in private life -- through charity, respect and lovingkindness -- and in the legislative life of a society where the consequences of any law matter greatly, which is why income taxes are progressive and safety nets built for the poor and disadvantaged.

But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not.
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When the hearings begin, Republicans should call Frank Ricci as their first witness. Democrats want justice rooted in empathy? Let Ricci tell his story and let the American people judge whether his promotion should have been denied because of his skin color in a procedure Sotomayor joined in calling "facially race-neutral."

Make the case for individual vs. group rights, for justice vs. empathy. Then vote to confirm Sotomayor solely on the grounds -- consistently violated by the Democrats, including Sen. Obama -- that a president is entitled to deference on his Supreme Court nominees, particularly one who so thoroughly reflects the mainstream views of the winning party. Elections have consequences.

Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: A judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less "advantaged."

A teaching moment, as liberals like to say. Clarifying and politically potent. Seize it.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life" - Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court candidate

It's informative that Obama didn't even interview a man, showing that in his view, qualifications begin with gender and ethinicity and not with competency.

For an initial case against Sotomayor, read this.

Regarding the recent SCOTUS decision... I came across a blog in which the writer wrote the following:

The purpose of Orwellian language is so people can pretend there is a slight possibility the words are an accurate description.
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Some people, who have not actually read the decision, think the Supremes recently limited the ability of women to have late term abortions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In these situations women can still become un-pregnant. They can “disarticulate the fetus” and even “reduce” or “separate the fetal calvarium.".

"Disarticulate" actually means to dismember it.

"Reducing the calvarium" means to suck out the baby's brains. Sorry--I mean "fetus."

When a doctor separates the calvarium she is removing the head with scissors.

These procedures can all still be used in late term pregnancies. Although, it requires a little more finesse, the court said it is ok to require that it all be done without inducing delivery.

Does anyone else think there is something wrong when civilized people can sit around and actually discuss whether it is better to sever a baby’s head or just suck out it's brain, and then conclude it all depends on the precise physical location of the body at the time?

This is all Orwellian obfuscation of the truth. There is a slight possibility that the location of the body at the time the brains are sucked out has some profound moral bearing, but it is unlikely.

None of us are as precise with language as we should be, but Orwellian doublespeak is something altogether different.

There is always a reason for it.

After having read that post, with which I agree completely, one would tend to assume that the writer must be socially conservative in his or her beliefs (since the liberal agenda is so anti-life). So it would come as quite a surprise to the reader that the writer actually describes herself as a bisexual post-modern neo-feminist with unique interests including nudism. So if she can "get it" on abortion, why can't her fellow feminists? The concept of every human being's right to life shouldn't be so hard to grasp, right? But, as we read in Keystone last night,

they are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. (Eph. 4:18-19)

Only through the saving power of Christ can we see the "light" and become sensitive again to God's law.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the partial-birth abortion ban that President Bush had signed into federal law in 2003. Basically, it bans the abortion procedure that involved delivering a late-term baby from the womb until only the head remained in utero, at which time (pardon the expression) the doctor inserted surgical scissors into the baby's skull and removed the brain. In a word, infanticide. So on the face, it would appear that this decision is a huge triumph for the pro-life movement. However, not to be pessimistic, but in reality this is a very small step. This ban does NOT eliminate in utero late-term abortions, just a method of carrying them out. So, while it is fantastic that finally SCOTUS stood up to the pro-abortion lobby, we have a very long way to go. So along those lines, here is an article by Dinesh D'Souza proposing how pro-lifers continue that fight in the mode of Abraham Lincoln and his fight against slavery.

I am not an expert on the abortion issue, but I have learned a great deal about it, strangely enough, by studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates. These debates were about slavery. But look at how closely the arguments parallel the abortion debate.

Douglas, the Democrat, took the pro-choice position. He said that each state should decide for itself whether or not it wanted slavery. Douglas denied that he was pro-slavery. In fact, at one time he professed to be "personally opposed" to it. At the same time, Douglas was reluctant to impose his moral views on the new territories. Douglas affirmed the right of each state to choose. He invoked the great principle of freedom of choice.

Lincoln, the Republican, disagreed. Lincoln argued that choice cannot be exercised without reference to the content of the choice. How can it make sense to permit a person to choose to enslave another human being? How can self-determination be invoked to deny others self-determination? How can choice be used to negate choice?
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The argument between Douglas and Lincoln is very similar in content, and very nearly in form, to the argument between the pro-choice and the pro-life movements. Pro-choice advocates don't like to be considered pro-abortion. Many of them say they are "personally opposed." One question to put to them is, "Why are you personally opposed?" The only reason for one to be personally opposed to abortion is that one is deeply convinced that the fetus is more than a mere collection of cells, that it is a developing human being.
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What, then, is the challenge facing the pro-life movement? It is the same challenge that Lincoln faced: to build popular consent for the restriction and ultimately the ending of abortions. Right now the pro-life movement does not enjoy the support of the American people to do this. Neither, by the way, did Lincoln have a national mandate to end slavery. It is highly significant that Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He was resolutely anti-slavery in principle, but his political campaign focused on the issue of curtailing the spread of slavery to the territories.

In my view the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times this will require political and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hardliners in the pro-life movement. These hardliners are fools. They want to outlaw all abortions, and so they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions, with the consequence that they end up preventing no abortions. These folks should learn some lessons from Abraham Lincoln.

Where I think D'Souza slips a bit in his conclusion is where he mentions pro-life "hardliners." While I am sure there are some people who can't see the forest for the trees in the pro-life movement, almost everyone I have met understand that you must be able to chew gum while walking, so to speak. If we are ever going to see abortion eliminated in this country, we will have to do all the small things along with the big ones. We aren't likely to wake up one morning and find that abortion was completely banned; rather, slowly, conservatives will have to chip away at the laws and policies currently on the books.