Friday, November 21, 2003

Not Allowed the Dignity of Independent Thought

Not Allowed the Dignity of Independent Thought

You have to be the right kind of Democrat before you are issued a license to use Democrat endorsed slurs, just as you must be the right kind of minority before Democrats will permit you a place on the court. Georgia’s senior Democratic US Senator Zell Miller finds himself under attack for comparing his party’s treatment of judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown to a lynching. President Bush nominated Brown to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Along with certain other nominees, Democrats have used the filibuster to prevent her nomination from coming to a vote.
"The Democrats in this chamber refuse to stand and let her do it,” Miller thundered, “They're standing in the doorway, and they've got a sign: Conservative African-American women need not apply. And if you have the temerity to do so your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched."
"Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the South," complained Wade Henderson, the director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Certainly such criticism can be justified. It was demeaning to Jews when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals compared the chicken industry to the Nazi holocaust. But California Senator Barbara Boxer suffered no criticism for using the same metaphor. In 2001, she explained why she intended to vote against John Ashcroft’s nomination for Attorney General: "I hate to use a charged term, but it's my heart talking here. I really think it was a political lynching that happened in the United States Senate." Did Boxer demean “all those African-Americans hung from trees.” No, Barbara Boxer is the right kind of Democrat.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who jumps through whatever hoops liberal pressure groups hold up for him, dutifully squeaked, "I was offended. I think it was unfortunate. I think those within the civil rights leadership who have commented and have asked for an apology are right."
Miller also recalled his party’s racist past by comparing the minority party’s obstruction to former Alabama governor George Wallace’s attempts to prevent integration of the University of Alabama.
I can and soon will recall a few similar slurs directed at Republicans by Democrats that no Democrat complained about.
Even though Bill Clinton’s nominee for the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declared that he would not honor Supreme Court decisions that obstructed his agenda, Jesse Jackson declared that opposition to his nomination was “a hate crime.” Was this disrespectful of hate crime victims?
Typical Democrat slurs include:
Rep. John Lewis of Georgia evoking Nazis when he declared that Republicans were, “coming for our children. They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled."
Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP accused that "[the Republican Party's] idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."
Since Democrats boast that they have graciously permitted 168 judicial nominees through the gates it is worth taking note of whose nominations they have obstructed. Three are women of which one is also African-American. Another is Hispanic. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, specified Miguel Estrada’s ethnicity (“He is Latino”) as a reason to oppose him. I doubt that their judicial temperament or ideology departs radically from white male nominees who have been permitted through the door. The difference is that views tolerable in white males are intolerable among traditional victim groups that serve as incubators for indignant leftwing agitators.
And I’m still waiting for the first liberal to criticize Ted Kennedy for calling Janice Brown a “Neanderthal.”
Even America’s preeminent racial demagogue is uncomfortable with the Democrats’ treatment of Judge Brown. "I don't agree with her politics. I don't agree with some of her background. But she should get an up-or-down vote" opined the oh-so-reverend Al Sharpton. He equated the filibusters with the "pocket vetoes" used for so long against blacks.
Wade Henderson was more subdued in his reaction to Sharpton than Zell Miller’s: "I don't believe it. That can't be true. It would be shockingly surprising."
The reverend Al had better be careful, or he might discover that he is the wrong kind of black.

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