Lemmings of a Feather Flock Together

“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the time they are a-changin’.”

- Bob Dylan – “The Times They Are a Changin’” (1964)

Two days ago I commented on the Harriet Miers nomination, noting that:

“I suspect that in the current political environment that Harriet Miers is going to need a lot of grace and a little bit of moxie too. She’ll be excoriated not only for her lack of experience, but also for her loyalty to George Bush or her temperament. Every closet in her life will opened in a search for political or judicial skeletons. The boys and girls on Capital Hill are soon going to pull the swords out of their scabbards to see how much political flaying they can do. Unlike John Roberts, Ms. Miers will have to fend off the blows and slashing from the far right and the far left. I hope and pray that she’ll hold her ground, centered on her faith and integrity. If she maintains her hold on those pillars of her life she’ll fare well. I wish her the best.”

Having now read some of the commentary since then, I hope that she has leather skin and a bullet proof heart.

What’s really been disappointing (although not surprising) is the viciousness of the attacks from the right. Here, for example, is what Pat Buchanan had to say about the nomination:

“Bush capitulated to the diversity-mongers, used a critical Supreme Court seat to reward a crony and revealed that he lacks the desire to engage the Senate in fierce combat to carry out his now-suspect commitment to remake the court in the image of Scalia and Thomas.”

George Will, who is normally quite temperate, weighed in with these carefully chosen words:

“Under the rubric of “diversity” -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can be understood, empathized with and represented only by a member of that group.”

So, Harriet Miers, if you believe the press, is either George Bush’s crony or a “tawdry corollary” to the “idea of categorical representation.”

But wait. There’s even more invective coming from the right. Earlier today John Podhortez asked whether the President had chosen her “because she is an evangelical Christian:”

“Is this the real meaning of the “trust me” message -- and are her religious beliefs the reason that James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Marvin Olasky and others have given her the big thumbs-up? They were clearly given an early preview of the Miers nomination and were told things about her or told things by her that made her right with them. Has the president decided, in effect, that just as there has been a Jewish seat and an African-American seat and a female seat on the court, there will now be a born-again seat?”

Adding insult to injury, Molly Ivins has taken up her sword to discredit Ms.Miers. Some samples of her latest follow:

“Miers, like Bush himself, is classic Texas conservative Establishment, with the addition of Christian fundamentalism. What I mean by fundamentalist is one who believes in both biblical inerrancy and salvation by faith alone.”

“She is enrolled in the Valley View Christian Church of Dallas, which she attended for at least 20 years before moving to Washington five years ago. Among that church's other members is Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court, considered second only to Priscilla Owen as that court's most adamant anti-abortion judge.”

“Miers’ church states on its Web site that it believes in biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.”

“I have said for years about people in public life, ‘I don't write about sex, drugs or rock ‘n' roll.’ If I had my druthers, I wouldn't write about the religion of those in public life, either, as I consider it a most private matter. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution because this country was founded by people who had experienced both religious persecution and state-supported religions. I think John F. Kennedy's 1960 statement to the Baptist ministers should stand as a model of how public servants should handle the relation between religious belief and public service.”

It seems to me that the old adage is true – politics makes strange bedfellows. Rock-ribbed conservatives and die-hard liberals have joined hands across the political divide to discredit Harriet Miers even before the confirmation process begins.

If I read the pundits correctly Harriet Miers has three strikes against her. She’s a crony, a token woman, and an evangelical Christian to boot.

Her detractors claim to be conscientiously objecting to at least three principles the President has violated in nominating her to the Supreme Court. First, while they can’t say for sure, they don’t believe she has the pedigree of a Supreme Court justice. Then, if only being a lawyer and a woman isn’t enough to disqualify her, being an evangelical Christian is, in their minds, more than enough to throw her to the wolves.

What could I possibly say to such noble principles?

Responding to Harriet Miers’ detractors could be dangerous. It could be a bit like standing down wind of them while they’re coughing up ammunition to aim at her and those who might seem to be her supporters. But I’m going to go ahead anyway. I’ve had the phlegm of my enemies deposited on me. I’ve been spit on before and I’m sure I’ll be spit on again before I return to the dust.

While I don’t consider myself an anti-intellectual contrarian, I must admit that the hue and cry about this woman’s lack of pedigree amuses me. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with a “real intellectual” when I was doing my graduate work in Kansas City. One acquaintance, a brilliant mind, used to dominate our between class conversations with his expert language and thought. One phrase, in particular, became his mantra – “considered consequent eschatology.” He used it liberally, and often found creative ways to inject it, or its derivatives (“considered consequent eschatological developments”) into our daily dialogues. One day, out of curiosity, I asked him a question. “How would you explain that clever little catch phrase of yours to a cab driver?” Nonplussed, he responded, “This isn’t for cab drivers or the rank and file for that matter. It’s for minds suitably intelligent to grasp.”

Well, I suspect we may have one, two, or more of this genius’s relatives sitting on the highest court in the land right now. Perhaps someone like Harriet Miers would be like a breath of fresh air in Washington. Perhaps it would be refreshing to have someone on the High Court who would ask questions like, “How would you explain this clever little decision of yours to a cab driver?”

A while ago I read this from Marvin Olasky:

“But perhaps that makes Miers the perfect candidate. Perhaps it takes someone who did not go to Harvard or Yale and has never seemed to care. Miers went to law school at Southern Methodist University, which, although a well-respected institution, was unlikely to have been a bastion of progressive thought when she entered it in 1970.”

Like Olasky, I’m not impressed with the high sounding credentials. I once delivered newspapers around the campus of Harvard and I learned something. While the elite may think so, a Harvard or Yale degree doesn’t mean that its holder craps ice cream.

There’s little that can be said about the “token woman” argument that’s being raised. She is what she is. She’s a woman. I suspect that she’s probably more a woman than many of her detractors are men. I’ll leave it at that.

I think that when it comes right down to it her religion scares the hell out of both the left and right. Molly Ivins cited John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Southern Baptists in 1960 as her principle. What principle, I wonder, was she adhering to? Was it this one?:

“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end -- where all men and all churches are treated as equal -- where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice -- where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind -- and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, both the lay and the pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”

Or was it this one?:

“That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe -- a great office that must be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it, its occupancy from the members of any religious group. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

I find the rhetoric coming from the seats of power both fascinating and frightening. This one nomination, this “religious” woman, has caused shock waves. The president who nominated her is being pilloried from the left and the right. While I don’t think that George Bush harbors any Messianic designs, I suspect that his detractors, like the Pharisees and Sadducees of old are worried enough to stir up the masses. In His day, the religious right and left dealt with Jesus harshly. There were clever catch phrases back then, as there are today. “We have no king but Caesar!” “If you’re the son of God, come down from there!”

Well, I can smell a new millennium crucifixion brewing in the editorial board rooms right now. I read all the commentary and wonder, “Who am I to be thinking in such a contrary manner when the experts seem to have spoken?” I guess when it comes right down to it I don’t want to be just another lemming jumping off the cliff into the philosophical darkness.

Yes, there’s a crucifixion brewing and I think I’ll stay home with the cab drivers, the rank and file, and those who aren’t “suitably intelligent.”