Townhall columnist Mike Adams tells us about a former student of his who used the opportunity to ask Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a question which all lawyers and judges should ask themselves before they even start their career:
“What should American culture and society look to as the source for just laws?”
Sotomayor paused for a long time, looked at him, and slowly said,
“What a very interesting question.”
Then she made an even longer pause, and then said even more slowly:
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought of that question in that form before.”
Really.
Makes one wonder, if she thought of “that question,” what is the form it took in her mind then? A judge who thinks about the laws, should first think what laws are just and what aren’t; and how we know if they are. If laws are not based on a standard of justice then what are they based on? And if a judge is not interested in justice, then what?
Mike Adams then recalls some of her earlier remarks about how she judges. Her remarks make it clear that she bases her judgment on her own experience, on her being a woman, a Latino, on her subjective assessment of the situation, on her “heritage” (whatever that might mean), and on her “experiences.” Which means, of course, that any question of objective morality and objective justice is completely excluded.
Which means that Judge Sotomayor judges as she sees fit, based on her own prejudices and passions. Arbitrary judgments based on prejudice not on an objective understanding of what is good and what is bad.
That a hard-core liberal like Sotomayor cares nil for questions of justice and morality is not a surprise. Moral relativism is the central doctrine of all socialism and liberalism. After all, it was Frederick Engels who called for the abolition of all absolute morality. A self-conscious student of the founders of Marxism like Sotomayor wouldn’t miss that important tenet of Marxism.
What is less explicable is why Republican politicians would never ask Sotomayor the question about objective justice and the source of it when she was screened for a Federal judge, and then for the Supreme Court. If she never thought about the question, then she was never asked the question, until Mike Adams’ student did. If she was never asked that question, the Republican legislators didn’t really care about the issue of objective justice. And given the fact that some of them even voted for her nomination, that means that Republican politicians actively supported a hard-core liberal activist who openly proclaims that she judges on the basis of her personal bias and ideology.
Of course, the most inexplicable of all is Rick Santorum’s vote for Sotomayor’s nomination in 1998. A politician who profusely uses quasi-religious language and gives political homilies, who bemoans the “moral decline” of America and vows to use the Presidency to restore morality should be quite selective as to who gets his support. That Santorum voted for Sotomayor without even asking the first question a Christian should ask, “What is your source for just laws?,” only shows that Santorum either doesn’t believe his own moralistic rhetoric, or he doesn’t know what it means in practice. Either way, we know that thanks to his failure, and to the failure of many Republicans to understand the meaning of conservatism, we now have another liberal activist in the Supreme Court who cares nil for justice, and only cares for her own subjective “experiences.”
Or may be Santorum’s vote for Sotomayor is not that surprising, after all. Both Santorum and Sotomayor share one conviction: That more Federal government is better. Both are statist and power-mongers, and both believe that the average man on the street can not and should not be let alone to pursue his happiness in any moral and legitimate way he wants. Both Santorum and Sotomayor want the government to control our lives, liberties, and economic decisions. The rhetoric may be different but the essence of their philosophy of government remains the same.
And that statist philosophy of government has one enemy: Objective justice that comes from a transcendent source. Statists dislike that. It means that the government is not the source of our rights. That’s why they never ask the question about objective justice.
