Posted on 08/08/2005 7:00:50 AM PDT by Graybeard58
For the uninitiated, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is an organization of conservatives and libertarians who believe the separation of powers is paramount to ensuring Americans' liberties. Members believe it "the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be." They advocate public policies that place "a premium on individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law."
But to the angry left, no organization is more profane or dangerous to their dream of a socialist world. In a syndicated column last month, knee-jerk progressive Molly Ivins made John Roberts, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, out to be the devil incarnate for once belonging to the society. "The reason that matters is that the Federalist Society is the primo ultraconservative legal group in the whole country." She even got a former president of the American Bar Association to say society members are "slouching toward extremism."
These statements say more about the speakers than their subject. The Federalist Society's 35,000 members are hardly subversives. They believe, as the founders did, in limited government, personal responsibility and the notion that people make the best choices for themselves and society.
If that means they are "slouching toward extremism," then by all means they should slouch away.
But we raise Ms. Ivins' objections to shed light on the left's perceptions of right and wrong. In her April 26 column about Republicans threatening to change Senate Rule 22, involving votes on judicial nominations, she wrote, "Sen. Robert Byrd, the resident scholar of all things senatorial, notes that while Rule 22 is only 86 years old, the tactic itself has been used since the first Congress. (Hearing Byrd hold forth on such matters is pure pleasure -- whether you agree with him or not, he is a magnificent speaker of the old school and a sad reminder how debased most political speech is today.)"
This is the same Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who recruited for the Ku Klux Klan. Back when he was founding his KKK chapter, Klansmen for fun and intimidation would drag black people from their homes; burn crosses on their lawns and burn down their houses; and then whip and sometimes lynch them to try to suppress black voting and black participation in white society. Old school, indeed.
In a 1945 letter to one of the most notorious segregationists in Senate history, Theodore Bilbo, D-Miss., the future "resident scholar of everything senatorial" wrote that he would never fight in the armed forces "with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels." Alas, political speech ain't what it used to be.
A year later, he would write to the KKK's imperial wizard: "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Ah, yes, hearing "Byrd hold forth on such matters is pure pleasure."
From this racist, terrorist past, he fashioned what became a virtual lifetime appointment to the U.S. Senate. But Ms. Ivins is quick to forgive Sen. Byrd for his association with a violent white supremacist organization that is virulently anti-black, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. Yet Mr. Roberts is an extremist because he once belonged to a group that believes in republican government and American principles.
This is the shrill, scaremongering, two-faced American political left, at its most shameless.
A surprisingly excellent editorial!
read later
Yes, excellent but not surprising to me. I post editorials from this paper a lot. They are one of the most consistently conservative newspapers in the country.
I think that a fair reading of the mission statements and policies of both the ABA and the Federalist Society would lead to the conclusion that the ABA is much closer to leftist extremism than the Federalist Society is to right wing extremism.
Keep up the good work!
;^)
LOL
It is so great to read an editorial like this one, pointing out just absurd she is. Thanks for posting it.
Ping
Check this out.
Wonderfully written! Thanks for posting this.
Well .. it's about darn time some of these idiots are called into question for their distorted views.
"slouching toward extreemism" fits in right nicely with all the other lables like "war-monger", "religious right", "chicken-hawk", "jingoistic", "anti-women's rights", "pawn in Bush's war",......
Yet another veiled threat to conservatives to stop thinking and stop believing your own eyes and ears or we'll call you a really bad name.
Let's see now, Molly Ivins, Helen Thomas,Babs Streisand, Hitlery, Janet Reno, etc., etc., etc.!! Isn't it a shame there are no good looking women in the publics' eye who are liberals? Jane Fonda used to be, but she looks like she was rode hard and put up wet more than once!
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