Posted on 10/29/2003 3:57:30 PM PST by goldstategop
The newspaper that almost missed the war in Iraq because its reporters were in Georgia covering the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club has declared another one of President George Bush's judicial nominees as "out of the mainstream." The New York Times has proclaimed so many Bush nominees "out of the mainstream" that the editorial calling California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown "out of the mainstream" was literally titled: "Out of the Mainstream, Again."
Among Bush's "many unworthy judicial nominees," the Times said, Brown is "among the very worst" – more "out of the mainstream" than all the rest! Even Teddy Kennedy, who might be well advised to withhold comment on a woman's position relative to a moving body of water, has described Brown as "out of the mainstream," adding, "Let's just hope this one can swim."
Liberals are hysterical about Justice Brown principally because she is black. Nothing enrages them so much as a minority who does not spend her days saying hosannas to liberals.
On the basis of its editorial positions, the Times seems to have called a bunch of racist Southern election supervisors out of retirement to cover judicial nominations for the paper. The only difference is, instead of phony "literacy" tests, now we have phony "mainstream" tests. Amazingly, no matter how many conservative minorities Bush sends up, the Times has not been able to find a single one who is "qualified." The Times thinks Justice Brown should be the maid and Miguel Estrada the pool boy.
According to the Times, Brown has "declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear." What the Times means by "mainstream legal values" is: off-the-charts unpopular positions favored by NAMBLA, the ACLU and The New York Times editorial page.
Thus, for example, opposition to partial-birth abortion – opposed by 70 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream."
Support for the death penalty – supported by 70 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream."
Opposition to government-sanctioned race discrimination – which voters in the largest state in the nation put on an initiative titled Proposition 209 and enacted into law – is "out of the mainstream."
Opposition to gay marriage – opposed by 60 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream."
Failing to recognize that totally nude dancing is "speech" is "out of the mainstream."
Questioning whether gay Scoutmasters should be taking 14-year-old boys on overnight sleepovers in the woods is "out of the mainstream."
I guess if your "mainstream" includes Roman Polanski, Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Jacques Chirac, then Brown really is "out of the mainstream." This proverbial "stream" they're constantly referring to is evidently located somewhere in France.
Liberals are always complaining that they haven't figured out how to distill their message to slogans and bumper stickers – as they allege Republicans have. Though it can't be easy to fit the entire Communist Manifesto on a bumper sticker, I beg to differ. (Bumper sticker version of the current Democratic platform: "Ask me about how I'm going to raise your taxes.")
The problem is, if Democrats ever dared speak coherently, the American people would lynch them. Fortunately for liberals, soccer moms hear that a nominee is "extreme" and "out the mainstream" and are too frightened to ask for details. (Ironically, based on ticket sales and TV ratings, soccer is also out of the mainstream.)
In addition to the fact that she is black and "out of the mainstream," the first item in the Times' bill of particulars against Brown was this:
"She regularly stakes out extreme positions, often dissenting alone. In one case, her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company's free-speech rights."
Despite the Times' implication that Brown was "dissenting alone" in this case, she was not. The opinion of the California Supreme Court in the case, Aguilar v. Avis, was as closely divided as it gets: 4-3. Among the dissenters was Stanley Mosk, who was once described by the Los Angeles Times as "the court's most liberal member." When Mosk died in 2001, his obituary in The New York Times described him as "the only liberal on the seven-member court." I suppose if the Times had mentioned that a prominent liberal jurist had agreed with Brown in Aguilar, it would be harder to frighten silly women with that "out of the mainstream" babble.
But the real beauty part of Brown's dissent in Aguilar is that she was vindicating a constitutional principle that is second in importance only to abortion for liberals: no prior restraints on speech.
In a major victory for Avis, the jury rejected almost all of the claims against Avis by Hispanic employees, but did find that two managers – only one of whom still worked at Avis – had called Hispanics names. So the lower-court judge got the idea to issue an injunction prohibiting one single Avis manager from ever using derogatory language about Avis' Hispanic employees.
The injunction was broad enough to prevent the manager from using such language in his home, out of earshot of his employees, in a joking or friendly manner, as part of a hypothetical example, or even if his speech were incapable of creating a "hostile environment" under the law. Questions were also raised about whether he was even allowed to chuckle at the little dog in those "Yo quiero Taco Bell" TV commercials. It was basically a bill of attainder against this one manager (who was himself married to a Hispanic).
I note that liberals laughed at the idea that a "hostile environment" could be created by a single incident of a governor dropping his pants and asking a subordinate to "kiss it." But the mere speculative threat of a manager saying "wetback" – one time – was such a threat to the stability of the nation that the Times backed a prior restraint on the manager's speech.
Usually The New York Times is citing the law's antagonism to prior restraints on speech in order to wax eloquent about the Supreme Court's "landmark decision in the Pentagon Papers case." In a ruling that celebrated the very essence of the First Amendment, the court ruled that the government couldn't stop the Treason Times from publishing classified national-security documents. As the Times put it, that case had "made it clear that only a showing of concrete, immediate risk to the nation could justify a judicial order imposing a prior restraint on any kind of publication."
But apparently, there is one interest even more vital than preventing an immediate risk to the nation: stopping a supervisor someplace in America from ever using the word "spic." Anyone who disagrees is "out of the mainstream." And any minority who is not duly grateful to liberals for supporting prior restraints against certain words is only qualified to be the maid
You nailed it, best response. Nothing more can be said. Well done.
Liberals are hysterical about Justice Brown principally because she is black. Nothing enrages them so much as a minority who does not spend her days saying hosannas to liberals."
The biggest reason they hate her is because she is a strict consitutionalist who refuses to make up it's meaning to suit her private agendas. In fact Constitutionalism is her agenda. She prescribes to the strictest interpretation of the Constitution.
If we ever do anything as an activist web site, it should be to go to D.C. if neccessary and shout the walls of the Capitol down to get her on the bench. It is of major importance.
Soccer . . . . ugh!
But oh-so-European and therefore loved by the left. Give me Americano football any day. As our 14-year old daughter said the other day as we sat in Kinnick stadium watching our beloved Hawkeyes pummel Penn State, "Whoever invented football must have been a genius!"
Liberalism is a mental disorder. As such, it makes "sense" to liberals that a Utopian society is a real possibility, if only the "great unwashed" would listen to their brilliant words. The great hope of liberals is that a society of truly equal people can be established if enough people would be willing to give up part of their living standard.
Thus, the putrid bumper sticker "Live simply so that others can simply Live". The morons really do want to establish a nation based on the French model of egalitarianism, or "equality of outcome". In order to do that, they must have a strong centralized government with no bounds to its authority to redistribute the wealth of the nation, i.e., steal it from those who make it and give it to those parasites that don't. In order to do that, they must destroy the Republic and the Constitution. That's their effing "end game". Little do they understand from history that those who have tried this before have literally destroyed their societies in spasms of civil violence.
I think that it is somewhat more complicated. They believe that with their stranglehold over the media and education, they can eventually bring about such a change in the ethos of the average American that their ideology will indeed be "mainstream".. Indeed, part of their program is to constantly repeat that their values are the mainstream values and that real American values are "out of the mainstream". This is precisely the topic Ann's article was about.
In the 70's the liberals were frightened by what they were seeing as a reemergence of traditional American values after the 60's. It was emerging all over the popular culture in a way that unmistakenly was a kind of hard hat response to the hippie leftist culture. This was a clear popular cultural movement. It really did scare the lefties. What happened? Well, leftist think tankers had a lot of meetings frantically trying to figure out how to respond. Their answer was to try to co-opt rather than to oppose what was traditional Americana. The Carter candidacy was a part of this effort. It was stealth. Appear red white and blue on the one hand; on the other, find ways to sell leftist initiatives as really what America was all about anyway. This is when they started talking about "our traditional values" and "mainstream values". Prior to this the left took a more confrontational stance against traditional American culture, thinking and claiming that it was just passe' and so over.
When this was adjusted in the 70's, the left began the long slow effort. They were thrown into panic during the Reagan-zeit, because he trumped them with authentic American values and that was what they really could not stand about him. They smoldered throughout his administrations, but they reemerged with the Bork and Clarance Thomas nomination-fights. The essential claim was that Bork was out of the mainstream. He had been direct in his published work and the lefties did monumental research intrying to distort whatever he said into an offense against this or that political faction. Republican weak sisters lost both fights in the media, but Clarence Thomas was able to squeak through, in the end, because of his race. {The Anita Hill claim, I am sure, was complete bs; Nina Todtenburg of NPR was a principal bad actor.)
All the while however, inthe public schools, PC marxist-feminism was being indoctrinated at an ever bolder pace. The left hopes that they can slowly change what is perceived as normal or "mainstream" so it is ripe for their plucking and then lights out on America. Gays and the continuing dimunition of men in the media is part of this. Look at the ads. Is there anything noble or admirable in America that is ever presented? The answer is obvious I believe.
This is closer to what they really think, I believe.
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