Category: Culture

It has become apparent, with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, that empathy has become the virtue dujour in order to be seriously considered for a job as a Supreme court justice. Apparently a judge having empathy gives them the ability to be sensitive to those who appear before them and perhaps even vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of the plaintiffs in their courtroom.

And yet one wonders, given Sotomayor’s treatment of white Fireman Ricci in the Ricci vs. DeStefano case, whether or not Ms. Sotomayor’s empathy is racially and ideologically conditioned. In that case Sotomayor had no empathy for Ricci who had been denied a promotion at his job due to New Haven’s desire to have a rainbow fire department. In other words, what we have here is what might be called selective empathy. All the empathy of Jesus for the cultural Marxist proletariat but only the empathy of Scrooge for those who are not part of the cultural Marxist rank and file.

I have no doubt that empathy is a great individual virtue to have but it is a positive albatross around the neck for someone who is a sitting judge. There is a reason that lady justice is blind and part of that reason is so that she won’t suffer the pains of empathy. Adjudicating and interpreting the law is supposed to be, by definition, non-prejudicial and non empathetic. When empathy is allowed sway in our Judges what happens is that law is used to discriminate in favor of whoever can come up with the best sob story. Justice then becomes not about applying the objective constitutional and case law to petitioners who come before the court but rather justice becomes about the vagaries and instability of emotions. Give me the coldness of Judge Solomon ordering a baby split in half over the empathy that gave us Roe vs. Wade.

But this desire to appoint someone with empathy to the High court on the part of Obama confirms something I’ve said for some time now and that is that with the election of Obama racial tensions in this country are only going to increase. Due to the vetting process that happens before these kinds of appointments we can be sure that the President made this appointment with full knowledge both of Sotomayor’s membership in a racist organizations like La Raza and of Sotomayor’s controversial comments on race. The problem that Sotomayor is suddenly having with her racist comments are serving to open a window on the soul of Barack Hussein Obama. Obama is a man who is committed to continuing the cultural Marxist long march through the institutions of this country with the intent of remaking the character of this country. For Obama America is too white, too Christian, and too privileged and Obama will use people like Sotomayor, who share his worldview, to overthrow that America. We really should not be surprised that a man who sat under the “ministry” of white hating Jeremiah Wright would appoint a woman who has said derogatory things about white men in comparison to Latina women. With Sotomayor the cultural Marxist unholy trinity of Wright, Obama, and Sotomayor is complete and with the appeal to empathy we have the sentimental means by which justice will be corrupted.

There are many people who are uncomfortable with the whole racial aspect of this discussion. These people need to remember that it is the cultural Marxist who are the ones who are playing the “race card.” Now, we can either respond to that or we can just ignore the glaring contradictions of a people who at one time chide white America for being to racist while at the another time pursue an agenda that is laden with racial assumptions. It must be kept in mind not to fault the people who are merely responding to the hypocrisy of the cultural Marxists.

Yesterday I went shopping with my wife and we visited the Gift & Bible store to pick up some Bibles for the graduates who attend our church.

While in this Christian bookstore there was a huge book display pushing a book written by Jon & Kate Gosselin. Now, I know little about this couple except that they have a bunch of kids and a reality TV show (which I’ve never watched) and that recently Jon had adultery rumors floating around. I didn’t even know, until I was in the store, that they were “Christian.”

So, here again, as in the Carrie Prejean beauty case, we have Christians making heroes out of morally suspicious people. Don’t get me wrong … I’m all for heroes. I don’t even mind if my heroes have warts. I’m not against esteeming people. What I am against is how the Christian world keeps coughing up the wrong people to be heroes. Indeed, its almost as if they are finding anti-heroes to be heroes. What we are constantly getting are heroes that are celebrities but who have little or no character.

“In an age of diminishing expectations, the Protestant virtues no longer excite enthusiasm. Inflation erodes investments and savings. Advertising undermines the horror of indebtedness, exhorting the consumer to buy now and pay later. As the future becomes menacing and uncertain, only fools put off until tomorrow the fun they can have today….In earlier times, the self-made man took pride in his judgment of character and probity; today he anxiously scans the faces of his fellows not so as to evaluate their credit but in order to gauge their susceptibility to his own blandishments. He practices the classic arts of seduction, and with the same indifference to moral niceties, hoping to win your heart while picking your pocket. The happy hooker stands in place of Horatio Alger as the prototype of personal success. If Robinson Crusoe embodied the ideal type of economic man, the hero of bourgeois society in its ascendancy, the spirit of Molly Flanders presides over its dotage.”

Christopher Lasch
The Culture Of Narcissism — pg. 52

Lasch insists that American character has shifted so as to be something that earlier Americans would have found detestable.

What Lasch saw in the culture is present in spades in the Church. The Church growth model suggests to me that Pastors are more inclined to look at people not in order to assess their character but rather to see how susceptible people are to having their pockets picked by their willingness to financially support the church.

Lasch later picks up the implication of this phenomenon,

“The latest success manuals differ from earlier ones — even surpassing the cynicism of Dale Carnegie and Peale — in their frank acceptance of the need to exploit and intimidate others, in their lack of interest in the substance of success, and in the candor with which they insist that appearances — ‘winning images’ — count for more than performance, ascription for more than achievement….Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.”

Part of the lack of American character is found in the seemingly universal pursuit of style over substance and appearance over accomplishment. Part of the problem here, as this reality has gained steam, is that people no longer have the ability to press past style and appearance in order ascertain if there exists any genuine substance and accomplishment. My experience suggests that the majority of the time there is no there “there” when one encounters those who excel at style and appearance.

Part of the evidence of all of this is found in how little Americans read. Part of the evidence of all of this is found in how easily Americans can be manipulated by both the Major Media and by Talk Radio. A people who had substance couldn’t be fooled by the ridiculous things that are said in both these formats. (Though it does remind one of the descriptions of the Gladiators in the Roman Coliseums fighting one another to the death.)

All of this, of course, is a harbinger of approaching cultural doom. There is no way that a culture can survive long when its character is all wind, and threatening clouds but no rain. Unreality can not survive long as reality.

In conclusion, I have found the result of what Lasch describes is a population that has no soul. It is as if people don’t even realize that they are alive but instead are just going through the stylistic motions of life.

“First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise.”

Sonia Sotomayor

This is classic postmodern decontstructionist tripe. If there can never be a universal definition of “wise” then we are making it up as we go.

1.) Sonia Sotomayor was a politically correct pick and Political correctness is just a shorthand way of describing cultural Marxist guidelines for speech and cultural action. That Sotomayor is part of the flotsam and jetsam of cultural Marxism and political correctness can be seen by the fact that her nomination is being floated on the back of her victim status as a Hispanic and a Woman. This victim status, which becomes the bulwark of the totalitarian system that is political correctness, is accentuated by Sotomayer’s membership of La Raza. La Raza is the Hispanic version of the Klu Klux Klan.

Quotes from Sotomayor reveal that Political Correctness (PC) is the basis of this nomination. PC teaches that all of history can be understood as one group having power over other groups. Listen to Sotomayor,

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion as a judge than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sotomayor thinks in terms of groups and see’s herself as part of a group, the membership of which, makes her automatically superior to those in other groups. This is classical cultural Marxism. Victims like Female Hispanics are superior. Oppressors like White males are inferior. Sotomayor is only qualified for a Supreme Court position because she is a poster child for political correctness and cultural Marxism.

2.) This nomination by Obama proves something that I’ve contended all along and that is that Obama is an anti-white racist. With this nomination Obama reveals his continued pursuit of anti-white identity politics. If Obama gets another Supreme Court nominee I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that the seat will go to a Black “jurist.” Obama is a black liberation theology socialist. His whole administration is dedicated to making people of color the head while white people are the tail. This nomination by Obama proves that Obama, when he speaks at places like Notre Dame, must be completely ignored since his speeches are intended to defuse the cultural tensions that his policies and nominations create.

3.) Cultural Marxist identity politics only works when it is employed by those who are Cultural Marxists. For example, Clarence Thomas’ blackness made no difference to Cultural Marxist Democrats. Similarly, Alberto Gonzales’ “Latino” identity didn’t cut any slack with the Cultural Marxists Democrats.

4.) Sotomayor believes that legislative action should be made from the Judicial bench. This revels her utter disregard for Constitutional law. Sotomayor, as was seen by her New Haven Ct. reasoning, once on the bench will adjudicate cases based on group identity and not on what the law says. In classical cultural Marxist jurisprudence Sotomayor deconstructs the constitutional text thus removing all meaning from the text and re-inserts any meaning she desires.

5.) Conventional wisdom insists that Sotomayor should not be resisted since her nomination is inevitable. This is classic Stockholm syndrome thinking. Those with Stockholm syndrome begin to identify with their kidnappers to the point that they act the way their kidnappers desire. The Christian West has been kidnapped by Cultural Marxism and there is very little will left to resist the conventional wisdom that is spat out by the organs of cultural Marxism.

Sonia Sotomayor is a lightweight justice who only got as far as she has because of the cultural Marxism that has been prevalent for the last 25 years. She is the judicial equivalent of putting a 85 pound woman in a elite military special ops unit simply because she is a woman. She doesn’t know Constitutional Law. All reports suggest that she is a intellectual dwarf. She is anti-second amendment. She is pro Cultural Marxism.