[BRIGADE] PJB: A Quota Queen for the Court
Published: Tue, 06/02/09
By Patrick J. Buchanan
June 2, 2009
If the U.S. Senate rejects race-based justice, Sonia Sotomayor will
never sit on the Supreme Court.
Because that is what Sonia is all about. As The New York Times
reported Saturday, the salient cause of her career has been
advancing persons of color, over whites, based on race and national
origin.
"Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto
Rico," writes reporter David Kirkpatrick, "has championed the
importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring
and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career."
At Princeton, she headed up Accion Puertorriquena, which filed a
complaint with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
demanding that her school hire Hispanic teachers. At Yale, she
co-chaired a coalition of non-black minorities of color that
demanded more Latino professors and administrators.
At Yale, she "shared the alarm of others in the group when the
Supreme Court prohibited the use of quotas in university admissions
in the 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke."
Alan Bakke was an applicant to the UC medical school at Davis who
was rejected, though his test scores were higher than almost all of
the minority students who were admitted. Bakke was white.
After Yale, Sotomayor joined the National Council of La Raza and
the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. Both promote race
and ethnic preferences, affirmative action and quotas for Hispanics.
But why should Puerto Ricans like Sotomayor, who were never
subjected to slavery or Jim Crow -- their island was liberated from
Spain in 1898 by the United States -- get racial or ethnic
preferences over Polish- or Portuguese-Americans?
What is the justification for this kind of discrimination?
Like Lani Guinier, the Clinton appointee rejected for reverse
racism, Sonia Sotomayor is a quota queen. She believes in, preaches
and practices race-based justice. Her burying the appeal of the
white New Haven firefighters, who were denied promotions they had
won in competitive exams, was a no-brainer for her.
In her world, equal justice takes a back seat to tribal justice.
Now, people often come out to vote for one of their own. Catholics
for JFK, evangelicals for Mike Huckabee, women for Hillary Clinton,
Mormons for Mitt Romney, Jews for Joe Lieberman and
African-Americans for Barack Obama. That is political reality and
an exercise of political freedom.
But tribal justice is un-American.
In the 1950s and 1960s, this country reached consensus that denying
black men and women the equal opportunity to advance and succeed
must come to an end. Discrimination based on race, color or
ethnicity, we agreed, was wrong.
Sotomayor, however, has an exception to the no-discrimination rule.
She believes in no discrimination, unless done to white males and
to benefit people like her.
How can any Republican senator vote to elevate to the Supreme Court
a judge who, all her life, has believed in, preached and practiced
race discrimination against white males, without endorsing the
Obama-Sotomayor view that diversity trumps equal justice, and
race-based justice should have its own seat on the high court?
Down the path Sotomayor would take us lies an America where
Hispanic justices rule for Hispanics, black judges rule for blacks
and white judges rule for white folks.
It is an America where who gets admitted to the best colleges and
universities is not decided on grades and academic excellence, but
on race and ethnicity, where advancement in jobs and careers
depends not on aptitude and ability, but on where your grandparents
came from.
On principle, Republicans cannot support Sonia Sotomayor.
And politically, if they do, why should the white working man and
woman ever vote Republican again, as it is they who are the
designated victims of the race-based justice of Sonia Sotomayor?
It was Richard Nixon who brought the white working class, North and
South, into his New Majority, when he increased the Republican
presidential vote from 43 percent in 1968 to 61 percent in 1972.
Ronald Reagan solidified this base.
But why should the white working and middle class stay with the
GOP? Its presidents exported their jobs to Mexico, China and Asia,
and threw open America's doors to tens of millions, legal and
illegal, from the Third World, who have swamped their cities and
towns. If the GOP will not end race-based affirmative action, which
threatens the futures of their children, why vote for the GOP?
Why should white folks vote for anyone who says, "We are against
race discrimination, unless it is discrimination against you"?
Obama would not have selected Sotomayor if he did not share her
convictions. And there is nothing in his writings or career to hint
at disagreement. Thus it comes down to the senators, especially the
Republicans. A vote for Sonia Sotomayor is a vote to affirm that
race-based justice deserves its own seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But if that happens, it will not only be the race consciousness of
Hispanics that will be on the rise in the good old U.S.A.
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/