The demotic Supreme
Jeffrey Toobin wonders why Clarence Thomas is so pissed-off. (Why indeed. He is a Supreme Court justice after all – what more does he want? Universal adulation? Well – sorry, but that’s not owed to anyone.)
A touchstone of Clarence Thomas’s career on the Supreme Court has been his hostility to what he calls élites…“All the Law School cares about is its own image among know-it-all elites.”…“Nothing but an interest in classroom aesthetics and a hypersensitivity to elite sensibilities justifies the school districts’ racial balancing programs,” he said. “If our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.”
One wonders what he thinks he is, if not a member of a pretty conspicuous (and tiny, and powerful) elite. Does he think he’s not really part of an elite – especially not a know-it-all elite – because he didn’t get where he is because of his accomplishments or publications or achievements or experience but rather because of his particular combination of race and politics? If he does think that for that reason, one wonders how he manages not to consider the implications – one wonders how he manages to be so self-righteous about his hatred of elites. Who, exactly, does he think put him where he is if not a paradigmatic member of the elite? Who, exactly, does he think George Herbert Walker Bush is? Willy Loman?
Triumph over the élites, Thomas writes, took faith in God and, especially, courage. This, too, has been a longtime theme for him, and he elaborated upon it in the annual Francis Boyer lecture of the American Enterprise Institute on February 13, 2001.
Ah yes – the American Enterprise Institute – that bastion of anti-elitism.
On this night, in other words, Thomas, while celebrating the courage to speak unpopular truths, was telling some of the most powerful people in the worlds of government, business, and finance precisely what they wanted to hear—that affirmative action was bad, that black people didn’t want or need their help, that government did more harm than good. Be not afraid. Indeed, throughout his judicial career Thomas has, in the name of anti-élitism, shown a distinct solicitude for certain kinds of élites—say, for employers over employees, for government over individuals, for corporations over regulators, and for executioners over the condemned. Thomas’s tender concern for the problems of the powerful reveals itself, in the end, as a form of self-pity.
Read the rest.
Come on , Tingey, I was raised RC, ( didn’t follow through with it) but one thing stuck, the acceptance of everyone as a “child of God’ or whatever term you want to use. So Clarry might have problems with relating to others, but I guess that more to do with his ‘elite’ education and mixing with ‘elite’ people than any religious affiliation he may or may not hold. It’s not all about your particular view.
IMHO, Clarence Thomas is a deeply twisted individual, mostly because he’s guilt-ridden. He knows he’s underqualified for his lofty position, that he lied about Anita Hill, that god knows he’s a sinner because of his addiction to porn, and worst of all, that he’s guilty of being darkly pigmented. He seems to be completely devoid of solidarity with his fellow African descendants (which includes all of us, to some extent).
He certainly can’t claim ‘I got here by hard work’ – because he may have worked hard but that’s absolutely not how he got where he is; he got there by way of a cheap, contemptuous, cynical ploy on the part of George Herbert Walker Bush. Hard work had nothing to do with it.
OT: Sorry
TV alert for those in the States: PBS’s _Nova_ has a program about the Dover trial on tonight (right now, for those of you in the east): “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial”
Tue, Nov 13, 8:00 PM | Run Time: 120 min.
Genre: Science
“Conflict among the school board, parents and teachers evolves when the board orders teachers to read to students a statement suggesting an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
Yup. There’s a press release by Barbara Forrest about the Nove program in ‘Articles’ – I hoped that would be enough notification.
‘Devoid of solidarity…’
Racism in action.
Doug I think you are right about C.T. being guilt ridden, in many way he typifies what is wrong with afirmative action,however high the person climbs in life they always have the stigma of having got there by afirmative action not by their talent or hard work. It also cant be easy being a black conservative because liberal blacks seem to think it o.k to use terms like race traitor or house negro to describe you,this is probably why he dosnt have much solidarity with other people of African descent, although is that necesary must every black person feel solidarity with their fellow blacks? He also probably feels a bit inadequate because people will always compare him to Thurgood Marshall(usualy unfavorably)
Re: RC Children of God.
“The primal concept of sanctifying grace is a new God-given and Godlike life superadded to our natural life. By that very life we are born to God even as the child to its parent, and thus we acquire a new filiation. This filiation is called adoption for two reasons: first, to distinguish it from the one natural filiation which belongs to Jesus; second, to emphasize the fact that we have it only through the free choice and merciful condescension of God. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Supernatural Adoption – Wikisourced
Ioannes Paulus PP. II Dominum et vivificantem.
“The Word became flesh, (that Word in whom) was life and the life was the light of men…to all who received him he gave the power to become the children of God.”211 But all this was accomplished and is unceasingly accomplished “by the power of the Holy Spirit.” For as St. Paul teaches, “all who are led by the Spirit of God” are “children of God.”212 The filiation of divine adoption is born in man on the basis of the mystery of the Incarnation, therefore through Christ the eternal Son. But the birth, or rebirth. happens when God the Father “sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.”213 Then “we receive a spirit of adopted sons by which we cry ‘Abba, Father!'”214 Hence the divine filiation planted in the human soul through sanctifying grace is the work of the Holy Spirit. “It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”215 Sanctifying grace is the principle and source of man’s new life: divine, supernatural life”
Also, the same thing on a lighter level.
“Divine filiation Christians are said to be children of God because they have the same nature … Thus, John Paul II said that divine filiation is “the culminating point of ratzingerthewise.blogspot.com/2007/09/divine-filiation.html
Other Christian Faiths also refer to “children of God”
The following is taken from their versions of the bible.
Galatians 3:26-27 (KJV) says, “For you are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus
To be a child of God and part of His family, we must be born into His family. Our Lord said in John 3:3, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven.” Then He tells us how being born again takes place in John 3:5, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” When one is born again by being baptized into Christ he becomes a child of God.
In 1 Peter 1:4 we read “To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.” Are you eligible for that inheritance? Have you become a child of God by being baptized into Christ?
Has your faith led you to be baptized, so that you can become a child of God? If not then you are not a child of God. To be a child of God, our faith must be a faith that will accept and do all that the Lord tells us to do. It must be an obedient faith, because God says in James 2:17,20 & 24, “Thus also faith, by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Erm, Tingey, something tells me I am not supposed to be going this far.
“Has your faith led you to be baptized, so that you can become a child of God?”
Well, I just read in B&W news an article about a woman who was drowned whilst in the process of being baptised and becoming a “child of God.”
I think I will go and join the Family of Love. Does anyone else care to join?
“Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.”
She was being exorcised, not baptised.
Oh dear, let’s all jump to conclusions. Tingey please re-read what I wrote ‘acceptance of everyone as a “child of God’ or whatever term you want to use’. To put it in very simple terms, each human being is deserving of respect. What is so difficult about this? Because some individuals of a particular group believe or act in unsavoury ways, and thus may loose the right to respect, it does not follow that other members of the group should be rebuked or repudiated. To do so is no more that prejudice.
Apparently right on topic:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010861
“Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.”
Why is that right on topic?
Your Thomas article seems to be mainly a fun way for the morally superior people to enjoy despising political enemies. Big of him not to call Thomas the N-word, btw.
Berkowitz explains how he was more reasonable than elitist Princeton Liberals in a self-serving and unreliable annecdote. ChrisPer, that was a rubbish article.
‘Big of him not to call Thomas the N-word, btw.’
Meaning that Toobin secretly sees Thomas as a nigger? Or was there some other meaning I didn’t see in that comment?
If you are goung to make that charge, at least spare us the ‘N-word’ weaseling. Back it up.
There’s a lot to despise about Clarence Thomas, ChrisPer, and the travesty of his appointment was about way more than ‘political enemies’ – I for one would have screamed like a fire alarm if any Democrat had put an obviously unqualified candidate like Thomas on the bench for such obviously political reasons.
And what, indeed, does that ridiculous N-word comment mean?
So ‘morally superior’ yourself. Nyah.
Well OB, I will defer to your knowledge; out here in the boonies his appointment hearings looked very ordinary but some of his opponents seem worse.
The n-word thing refers to the anti-Bush crowd finding it acceptable to call Condi Rice a ‘house nigger’. I find her the more likable for thinking she is her own woman, but apparently racial solidarity is more important than freedom of thought in America.
What anti-Bush crowd’? Why are you pinning that on Jeffrey Toobin? Have you read him much?
And why are you always lecturing me about US political figures and then backing down when I ask how much you know about them? Why don’t you just hang onto the thought that you don’t know much about them? Save yourself the trouble?
Touche.
Don I dont think refraining from using the word n***er is weaseling we all kmow what the word is,it just seems a bit unnecesary to use it in a post just for effect? there is also the posibility that a black person might be reading it as well so it just seems like good manners to refrain from its use.
“Thomas began to notice that the Catholic Church had said little about persistent racism in America. That silence gnawed at him. On the day that Martin Luther King was shot, he heard a classmate say, “That’s good. I hope the son of a bitch dies.” “His brutal words finished off my vocation—and my youthful innocence about race,” Thomas writes. He soon resolved to leave the seminary.”
When a person joins the Roman Catholic priesthood or becomes a religious nun/sister it is customarily not for racial, political or worldly wise reasons. It is exclusively because they have ‘extraordinary’ callings by God – to give to him their entire lives. No human peoples’ affecting ill words no matter how emotionally confounded it might appear on one special day could justify ones wanting to leave the priesthood. Nonetheless, it might act as a catalyst. Nevertheless, when all is said and done at the end of the day – there must be much deeper -seated reasons than the ones Thomas has stated, which led him to leave the seminary. It strikes me that Thomas may have hidden behind the above-mentioned reasons to comfort himself. He is constantly flagellating himself with the big black stick. He, all his life, ostensibly tortured himself with it in order to feel comfortable in his elite surroundings. The Catholic Church in the past kept its mouth shut on very serious issues such as the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Child Sexual Abuse, the list goes on and on and on. Besides, from reading the article I believe Thomas did not either raise his voice too much at the derisory amount of Black people who were employed BY HIM- in his work of place. Thomas is patently grief-stricken and angst -ridden but the ‘race card’ is being flaunted as a cover-up. Christine Buckley who grew up in Goldenbridge, and whose father was Nigerian, also had grave difficulties of a similar nature to Thomas (growing up in a white man’s world of which, I may add -she has openly talked about) and like him in spite of it, she too became successful. The propensity to become introspective about ones racial background is all too easy in a ‘white’ environment. Black and coloured children in the past in Ireland were abominably treated and sent to industrial schools in the west of Ireland. Out of sight out of mind! Thomas was one hell of a lucky man to have been by the very same religious people, educated (as those who were infamously noted for ignoring others whose antecedents were of the same religion and race for thousands of years). Children of converts were always (it seems) better treated. Many of them as well became saints. So to Thomas I say do not look a gift-horse in the mouth. He has a lot to be cheerful – to have reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession. Law. Conversion by his relative to Catholicism did him well if not anything else. By his standards Therefore, the glass should be seen by him to be half-full as opposed to being half-empty. How more philosophical can one get at this American Thanksgiving time of year!
Thomas should not be such a doubting Thomas.