This pick is a major slap in the mouth to Conservative Southern Protestants, period.
Alito will totally be confirmed. He will not be filibustered, and he will say all the right things about 'precedent'.
There has been only one Catholic president (ouf of 43). Is that "a major slap in the mouth to American Catholics", hmmm?
Southern (from Alabama) and Protestant (Baptist), and "conservative" at least in the sense of "strict constructionist/textualist," whether or not you agree with his own specific Constitutional interpretations.
Because if you don't go to Yale or Harvard you are not qualified to be on the SC. Just ask those print "conservatives" - they are just as elitist as their fellow liberals.
As a Catholic, I'd much rather have an evangelical constructionist on the court than a waffling Catholic like justice Kennedy.
There is no bias against 'Conservative Southern Protestants,' at least no more than there exists against Catholics or any other conservative religious. I see you posting this same complaint on thread after thread, give it a rest.
Well, I think your point is the same point women's groups make about needing another woman. While I would have loved to see an evangelical get the nod (a qualified, tested evangelical), it is not essential. I would be thrilled with nine Catholic Scalia's.
It will be over their parents' dead bodies that my grandchildren will attend those same institutions. No, my grandchildren will be going to colleges with names like Ave Maria, Christendom, Thomas Aquinas and Franciscan. Their Catholic parents (my children) know that mainstream colleges and mainstream America are no place for Catholics. By the time my grandchildren are middle aged, they will have lived a life on the fringe of American society. Much the way the adult Evangelicals have been living in our country since the 70's.
In twenty or thirty years, our country will have turned the corner one way or the other. People who previously would have been considered living on the fringe will either we welcomed into mainstream society or we - Evangelicals and Catholics alike - will be marginalized together.
I'd rather have a Roman Catholic justice who reads the Constitution as a Christian reads the Bible, than a Christian justice who reads it as an RC reads the Bible.
Dan
I am Catholic, and I am offended that Kennedy and Kerry consider themselves Catholic.
Geez, let us have some heroes in power to offset the stain from the northeastern liberal CINOs.
You have conservative southern protestants in the White House and Senate. You have a conservative Northern Protestant as speaker of the house. Do you really feel as though you are unrepresented?
And what would you rather have, a coreligionist on the Supreme Court, or someone who will overturn Roe?
BTW, the reason diversity doesn't matter on the court is that judges simply apply the law. You do not need diverse representation because they are not representatives of anyone. They represent the law. That's it.
I wanted a Southerner but I am 100% in support of this fine man, Samuel Alito.
This isn't a slap at anybody, it's a good solid pick. I strongly predict there will be one more slot to fill before the end of Dubya's term.
I'm a 'Conservative Southern Evangelical Protestant', and I think your statement is both ludicrous and childish. How incredibly myopic to think that the conservative or southern or Protestant interest in issues can only be advanced by a conservative southern Protestant.
Three Cheers for President Bush and Alito!
Evangelicals, Southern or not, are not less intelligent than other Americans. What differentiates them from other Americans, apart from but stemming from their theological views, is their view of the future and family legacy. Starting in the mid 1800s but coming to prominence in the 20th Century, the eschatological view known as dispensationalism became dominant among evangelicals. Dispensationalism, which relates to the role of the Church and of national Israel in the current age and the one to come, is based on Biblical interpretation that sees the only hope for mankind's future in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, Who will establish a literal 1000 year kingdom on earth. This kingdom would be established seven years after Christians were raptured from the earth, prior to a time of tribulation in which most of the remaining human race would be killed, according to the majority opinion in the dispensationalist camp. Human efforts to reform society either through governmental or private means are regarded as ultimately futile. The Christian's primary duty is therefore to preach the Gospel and wait for the blessed hope.
Another element in evangelical theology that must be considered is the effect of the concepts of secondary separation and sinless perfection. Neither concept is as widespread among evangelicals as is dispensationalism. Secondary separation, characteristic of many fundamentalist Baptists, is the belief that saved people should not associate with nonbelievers or participate in their amusements. Thus, many fundamentalists boycotted the movies even in the era when Frank Capra and John Ford were directing movies whose lead actors were Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and John Wayne. Sinless perfection, characteristic of many Holiness believers and other Wesleyans, is the doctrine that any sin committed by a Christian will cause him to lose his salvation. As a result, the Christian had to avoid worldly temptations at all costs. Both secondary separation and sinless perfection are aberrant doctrines that resemble the ancient heresy of Manicheanism, which held that matter was evil and that sin was prevalent everywhere.
With a majority opinion in the evangelical community that the Lord was returning soon and a significant minority of evangelicals engaged in self-segregation from the mainstream, education in matters outside Scripture was not emphasized and discouraged by many as being as futile as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Bible colleges and seminaries turned out large numbers of preachers, church staff, and missionaries, along with some theologians and Biblical scholars, but little else. Those not so inclined were mostly educated in public schools and state colleges. If they retained their Christian faith after secular humanist indoctrination, they lived with the concept that things sacred were divorced from those that are of this world. Many rural white Southerners who migrated to the cities after the world wars pulled themselves out of the blue collar workforce much as the children and grandchildren of European immigrants did in Northern cities. Unlike the largely Catholic Northerners, who developed an elaborate university system from Boston College in Massachusetts to Benedictine College near Kansas City, there was little expenditure and effort made in the area of higher education with a Christian worldview. The more prestigious private colleges in the South, such as Baylor and Duke, were far from evangelical strongholds.
While the English Puritans, the Scottish Presbyterians, and their immediate descendants in America were strongly focused upon education of their young people, the rise of liberalism in the mainline denominations redirected the old zeal in a secularist direction. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, only non-Christian groups were as emphatic upon education as were the old Presbyterians and Puritans: Jewish immigrants from central and eastern Europe and East Asian immigrants, most of whom were not Christians (Koreans excepted). The academic achievements of Jews and Asian-Americans witness their commitment to education of young people.
As long as evangelicals place insufficient emphasis on education and the inculcation of the Christian worldview among the young, they will not take a leadership role in American society. When they take seriously God's command to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis 3 and 9, this situation will change, but no sooner.
This is an utterly stupid complaint, as was your recent post about trinitarianism. I mean, really, really stupid. I'm not trying to be mean.
This is a dumb thread. Are we the party of quotas now?
This southerner is not all that concerned about where Alito comes from. All that matters to me is that he'll be faithful to the Constitution.