Sotomayer and the Tyranny of Race

In every important respect Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election was a victory for racism. First there was the racist claim that his skin color made his election somehow significant for black Americans with whom he otherwise shares no common moral or historical heritage. Second, his stubborn advocacy of the parent's right to murder her child made it a victory in principle for the racist notion that "inferior" physical development leaves people with no rights that must be respected by their supposed betters. Third, the US Constitution has been openly set aside on account of fears that racist violence would result from investigating the facts regarding his citizenship at birth (lest they support the conclusion that he is constitutionally ineligible to serve as President of the United States.) Truth, right and the Constitution all sacrificed for the sake of racist fears and premises.

The reaction in some quarters to the Sotomayer selection smacks of the same racist mentality. "Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, called Sotomayor's nomination 'a monumental day for Latinos. Finally we see ourselves represented on the highest court in the land.'" There was a time when we understood that those who served on the Supreme Court had first and foremost to prove that they represented the whole people of the United States, whose sovereign will constitutes the legitimacy of the Constitution it is their duty to uphold. The notion that someone would serve as the representative of this or that race or special interest tended to disqualify them from service.

Of course, a person proposed for a seat on the bench can't be held responsible for how others see her. But in a speech she reportedly gave in 2001 "Sotomayor has said that personal experiences "affect the facts that judges choose to see….I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging…but I accept that there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

If her assessment of herself was correct, her own words disqualify her from serving on the Supreme Court. Unless we mean to overturn the whole idea of Constitutional government, the decisions of the justices of the Supreme Court should be based on the Constitution and the laws. No justices can be allowed to "accept" judgments based on gender or ethnicity. If they do, what becomes of the promise of liberty and justice for all, of equal rights and the equal protection of the law?

Does the notion that it's somehow acceptable to disregard the Constitution on account of race in Obama's case now make it acceptable to confirm as a Supreme Court Justice someone willing to allow their ethnic identity to distort their judgment of facts, and the basis for their decisions? Tragically, this is exactly the racist legal culture we would expect to result from the racist political mentality the Obama faction exploited to achieve his electoral victory.

Unity is always on their lips, but their hearts are far from it. Instead of a national government that represents our common heart for justice and liberty, the Obama faction means to create a fractured reflection of all our differences, until we forget how to see, think and act as Americans, regardless of those differences. With this dissolution of the American identity they prepare the way for the dissolution of the United States itself, so that a strong sense of our national identity no longer poses an obstacle to their plans for a new, global regime that sets aside our "provincial" concerns with right and ordered liberty.

Of course, those concerns are precisely what raise our national consciousness above the level of mere group selfishness, so that our concern for the good of our nation becomes a concern for the rights and decent freedom of all humanity. The sacrifices we commemorate every Memorial Day are marked by headstones and memorials in far flung corners of the globe where Americans gave ultimate proof that this concern is no pious abstraction. But it seems that what they died to preserve for others, we are now quietly surrendering ourselves under the mesmerizing influence of racist fears and lies.

Such is the change Obama represents. But where is the hope in it, except for those who succeed, as he did, by invoking the power of the very evil their success has supposedly overcome? "Racism is dead," they seem to say, "Long live the tyranny of race."

An Open Letter to Father Jenkins

An Open Letter to Father Jenkins

President of the University of Notre Dame

I pray God that you, and the Trustees and Faculty of the University of Notre Dame will reconsider your decision to extend an Honorary Degree to Barack Obama, and that you will withdraw your invitation to him to speak at the University's Commencement exercises in May. As leaders in the American Catholic community do you not hold to the Church's teaching with regard to the inviolable sanctity of human life, and against the heinous practice of abortion?

The issue at stake in the fight against abortion is starkly simple: Are all human beings created equal, or not? It is the same issue that was at stake in the fight against slavery and racial discrimination.

As an American who subscribes to the self-evident truths our country was founded upon, I answer the question in favor of equality. As a descendant of enslaved Black Americans, I believe that any other answer would invalidate the struggle for justice to which so many Americans of all races gave their lives.

Given that the principle at stake is the same as that which demanded opposition to slavery, I have always had a simple test when dealing with any question involving abortion. I ask myself what I would do or say if slavery was the issue in question. I recommend this test for your consideration. Ask yourself whether you would invite as a Commencement speaker an individual who abused the authority of office to provide Federal funding for the purchase of slaves. Would you consider it honorable for the University to confer an honorary degree on an individual who issued executive orders allowing US funds to be used to support slave markets? Would you let the University be used to give stature to a politician who supported the position that ownership of slaves is a matter of individual choice?

I hope and assume that the answer to all of these questions is no. Since you have chosen to answer otherwise where abortion rather than slavery is at issue, you must see a moral difference between enslaving grown people and killing nascent ones. Or else you see a moral difference between the nascent child in the abortuary and the slave on the auction block. As a Black, Catholic, prolife American, I challenge you to explain the difference to me and to everyone like me. Perhaps you make a distinction because the child is more helpless, more imperatively incapable of voluntary wrongdoing, more explicitly acknowledged by Christ to be the subject of His special regard? (Matthew 18:6, Luke 17:2) Or perhaps it's because some refuse to recognize the nascent child's humanity?

Whenever someone raises the latter objection I remember a speech Frederick Douglass made in which he felt compelled to make arguments for the humanity of black Americans because, he said, "A respectable public journal, published in Richmond Virginia., bases its whole defence [sic] of the slave system upon a denial of the Negro's manhood." You see, people once raised a question about that, which supposedly Catholic Christians (including some no doubt from my home state of Maryland) probably used at that time to justify their commerce with slaveholders; their willingness to hold in honor those who practiced or defended slavery; or even their own willingness to hold slaves themselves.

When I read of slavery in my youth I could not understand why so many tolerated such evil for so long. I asked God to help me never in my life to be such as they were. Once I fully understood the nature of the abortion issue, I was moved to stand against abortion and the slaughter of innocent life as I would have wanted all people of conscience and goodwill to stand against slavery and the rape of my forbears' liberty. When people suggest that Barack Obama shares some heritage with me, I know better. For the truest test of that heritage is not the color of someone's skin, but the determination of their heart, never to stand silently by while God's fundamental law of justice is denied to persons whose only crime is the unjustly despised appearance of their humanity.

I know that the Catholic Church today is guilty of no such dereliction. The Holy Father, the clergy, and millions of the laity have joined together in prayer, and work and sacrifice to bear witness against the wrong of abortion, to bear witness against a false idea of choice that betrays God-given liberty. Your University bears the name of the Blessed Mother of Christ, who honored God's will for human life though it could have meant her own dishonor in the minds of her contemporaries. Even if, as you say, Obama's visit does worldly honor to you and your colleagues, what is more consistent with her example: to seek honor at the expense of God's truth, or to forego it if need be, in obedience to His loving will.

I realize that such a decision is not so much for thought as for prayer. So I ask that you give prayerful consideration to the plea that is on my heart, and on the hearts of millions like me. This may well be a teaching moment for Obama and other politicians like him. But sometimes one deed speaks more certainly of truth than many words could do. Thus spoke the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Are we not called to act as He did? Perhaps the best Commencement speech of all would be the testimony of silence, in which, perhaps for the first time, someone who needs to hear it will hear the voice of Rachel, weeping. (Matthew 2:18)

With Pleasing Hope for Life,

Alan Keyes

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Keyes: Obama owes success to cowardice Holder decries

According to Eric Holder (Holder: US is nation of cowards on racial matters) "in things racial we [Americans] have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." I find myself quite unexpectedly agreeing with him, but I couldn't help but see the profound irony of that remark, especially coming from someone in his position. He claims the title of Attorney General of the United States by appointment from a man whose victory in the last election was mainly due to that kind of cowardice; a man whose constitutional eligibility for the office of President remains under a debilitating cloud of suspicion, because of that kind of cowardice; a man whose whole career as a left-wing activist and politician has exploited that kind of cowardice. Though Holder purports to see this cowardice in other Americans, I wonder whether he sees, or would honestly admit, how much it has influenced and determined the outlook and activities of left-wing and liberal blacks like himself and his new boss.

Because it so well served their purposes of self-advancement, the liberal black elite became adept at exploiting the fear of perceived racism so prevalent since the Civil Rights movement's conquest of America's conscience in the 1960s. In the process they actually strengthened and perpetuated negative stereotypes, to such a degree that black Americans fell into the trap of seeing their ethnic identity in almost entirely negative terms. Years ago, in my essay Masters of the Dream, I described the tragically self-defeating nature of the liberal black establishment's negative pre-occupation with racism.

…the belief that the black identity has no positive content means that, in dealing with the problems of the black community, one neglects to think about policies based on the community's internal values, institutions and resources. Instead, one assumes that the solutions must come from without. The passive victims of history become the passive beneficiaries of philanthropy, the passive clients of bureaucracy, the passive subjects of the domineering welfare state. Despite all good intentions to the contrary, this type of liberalism pushes black Americans back toward a condition of endless childhood, servitude and subjection. Liberal hope becomes liberal slavery.

In reaction against racial prejudice the black elite unwittingly embraced race and racism as the defining preoccupation of the black American identity. This leads them to be blind to the development of a distinctly positive black American identity, rooted in the assumption that personal moral and spiritual worth persist despite all the demeaning assaults predicated on racial inferiority. The history of that moral identity reveals an incessant spiritual guerrilla war against the devaluation of their humanity that centered ultimately around a simple and unyielding faith in God as the true standard of human worth, and Christ as the one whose suffering, sacrifice and resurrection validated the Godly dignity of every human being willing to put their faith in Him.

Instead of embracing this moral identity the liberal black elite aped the snobby (and often atheistic) scientific materialism that became increasingly characteristic of the American liberal establishment in the course of the twentieth century. They jumped on the bandwagon of leftist social analyses that defined groups in terms of quantifiable characteristics. Apparently they do not realize how much this implicitly validates the dehumanizing practice of classifying beings by physical characteristics, to which practice all truly racist ideologies owe their repugnant pedigree.

In the introduction to the essay quoted above I allude to the deadly effects of this surrender of moral identity.

Already, generations of black children have grown up without any sense of their true heritage. Consciously or unconsciously, their minds are influenced by those who, for whatever reason, spread the doctrine that racists ripped black Americans from our African roots, stripped us of our values and institutions, and left us with no shred of our own culture or humanity. Leaders like Louis Farrakhan, who claim to be strong enemies of racism, have taken this demeaning doctrine as a major premise of their creed. Ironically, in order to prove the worst in others, it requires that we deny the best in ourselves.

The black American liberal elites celebrate the election of Barak Obama as some kind of breakthrough for black Americans. This is the ultimate and deeply self-abasing fruit of their moral surrender. Except for the physical characteristics derived from his biological heritage, I cannot see what connection Obama has with the positive, moral identity of Black Americans. Black Americans are in fact a physically motley ethnic group. But despite physical differences, a common spirit and heart were refined, forged and tempered in the historic experiences of slavery, "Jim Crow" segregation and the stifling environment of pervasive racial prejudice. Many of the deepest emotional struggles, and the strong spiritual resources arising from the reality of that heritage take root during childhood and adolescence, formative years during which Obama was being raised in contexts devoid of the need to confront and deal with it. Though Holder laments American cowardice with respect to racial matters, Obama is the ultimate concession to that cowardice. Defined in racial terms he is a man whites need not fear- with dark skin but devoid of the spiritual tension characteristic of black Americans- W.E.B. Dubois' "two souls in one body" that pull between resentment and affiliation: the smoldering despair that true justice will ever really be served battling with the undying faith that God's love will ultimately and truly transform the American heart, the human heart, to be open to the race we all have in common.

I agree with Holder that we need to get beyond this cowardice. It will require that we get beyond the idea that Obama's election is the historic breakthrough that carries America out of the shadow of racism. Maybe that's the larger meaning of the doubt as to his identity that hangs over his claim to the Presidency. Even if he ultimately shows proof that he is a natural born citizen, as the Constitution requires, that will still not be enough to prove that he is what he and so many others falsely proclaim him to be. For in the end the burden from racism in America isn't about physical appearances- it's about moral and spiritual realities. It's about trying to do what's right regardless of racial feelings and perceptions. From this perspective, Obama's rejection of the simple premise that all human beings are created equal (including our nascent offspring) means that his election rather reasserts than transcends the ruthless disregard for humanity that made race and racism such potent instruments of evil.

Proud of Obama?

Unless they accept the degrading premise of racism (that physical traits alone are a valid basis for identifying human communities), I cannot understand why people would assume that I should take pride in the election of Barak Obama simply because we both have dark skin. Because he takes the position that it's right to slaughter innocent human beings by abortion, I believe he represents the antithesis of decent conscience. Like the southern slaveholders in the nineteenth century, he accepts the view that a human being's most basic rights may be disregarded simply because another human being considers his physical characteristics or stage of human development inferior. Of course people like Obama aim at a more violently immoral result than the southern slaveholders. Whether from moral sentiment or selfish interest, the advocates of slavery supported a system that at the very least regarded the death of a slave as a regrettable, though sometimes necessary, waste of capital Those who support the abortion industry work to perpetuate a system that builds capital by wasting the lives of innocent human beings in the uttermost condition of helplessness.

People who wrote handbooks on slave husbandry actually gave advice to slaveholders about keeping the slaves healthy and strong for work. The abortion industry thrives on the development of more convenient and reliable methods of extermination. Its advocates fight hard to make sure potential clients are not exposed to any information that might interfere with the decision to devote new victims to the slaughter.

Slaveholders had to develop all manner of human relationships with their slaves, some of which involved genuine emotional attachment on both sides. The abortion industry depends on the denial of the emotional bond that is the paradigm of loving human relations, that between a mother and her child; and it implies the denial and irrelevance of the scarcely less fundamental tie that ought to bind a father to his offspring.

People pretend to scoff and take umbrage at anyone who dares to mention Obama and Hitler in the same breath. Yet the "good liberals" who staff the surgical killing fields that masquerade as medical facilities suppress the personhood of innocents in the womb with the same officious ruthlessness that characterized the "good Germans" who suppressed the humanity of the Jews, gypsies and other groups they regarded as inferior and consigned to the death camps. And the "choice" honored by pro-abortion slogans has about as much to do with freedom as the "work" honored by the slogan that reigned over Auschwitz and Buchenwald, "Arbeit Macht Frei."

Far from any feeling of pride, I can feel only shame at the thought that someone now occupies the White House who in his rise to power consolidated the dedication of his most hard core devotees by boldly defending the murder of newborn children who survive intended slaughter, on the grounds that respecting their indisputable right to life would somehow interfere with their mothers' "right" to the dead, dismembered little carcass they pay the abortionist to deliver.

Far from any feeling of pride, I feel only revulsion, and I cringe at the thought that anyone would identify me with a man who promotes evil more hard hearted and spiritually corrupting than that which claimed the liberty and blighted the lives of my forbears. I know that God forgives those who repent of the sin of abortion, even as he takes to his bosom the intended victims of their mistake. But as for those who defend the sin; who lure others into believing it has the sanction of right; who make the piled remains of tiny human beings the landfill on which to construct their edifice of profit and political power; as for these workers of iniquity I know that Christ rejects them ("...depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity." Luke 13:37) and for them our father God reserves only annihilation, ("…destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity." Proverbs 21:15)

Yet I also feel terrible grief at the sight of so many who rejoice in the triumph of evil that Obama represents because they have been deceived and manipulated into believing that he somehow represents a vindication of all the years of suffering, sorrow and outcast oppression experienced by Americans whose heritage includes the bitter reality of slavery, abuse and unjust discrimination. How can the generations beaten, hounded and murdered on account of the rejection of God ordained human equality be vindicated by the elevation to power of a man who champions that rejection, not just for one group or another, but for all human beings too young and inarticulate to defend themselves? How can the generations denied opportunity and a just recompense for their talent and labor be vindicated by the adulation given to a man who promotes as lawful, and would impose by law, the ultimate denial of opportunity and all justice to the posterity which represents the renewal of mankind's hope in this and every generation?

As the children of those generations of bondage and tears lift up this golden calf of pride for the world's applause they reject, like the children of Israel, the will and heart of the very God of Justice who made provision for their deliverance from floggings and unrequited toil, from contumely and searing humiliation. I grieve because I fear that like the Israelites of old, this generation prepares for itself a trial of renewed oppression, a place by the rivers of Babylon where they will learn again from hardship to seek the mercy of God by the only path that finds him- the path marked out by the true Messiah who best exemplified respect for his righteousness and obedience to his will. His is the heart from which we know the truth their new, false prophet of unity and hope cast down by the wayside in his rise to notoriety: real love and hope would rather lose all to preserve respect for God's true gift of life than preside, by its destruction, over a nation departed from his knowledge and headed for calamity.

"For the LORD knows the way of the just: but the way of the unjust shall perish." (Psalms 1:6)