Slavery in Liberalism

... is what Janice Rogers Brown, one of the two most extreme judges that Democrats were attempting to block before the Group of 14 convened to break the filibuster deadlock and end the "nuclear option."

"In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms.

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it." She explained in another speech, "If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

To her critics, such remarks are evidence of extremism. This week, some Senate Democrats have even singled her out as the most objectionable of President Bush's more than 200 judicial nominees, citing her criticism of affirmative action and abortion rights but most of all her sweeping denunciations of New Deal legal precedents that enabled many federal regulations and social programs - developments she has called "the triumph of our socialist revolution."

Her friends and supporters say her views of slavery underpin her judicial philosophy. It was her study of that history, they say, combined with her evangelical Christian faith and her self-propelled rise from poverty that led her to abandon the liberal views she learned from her family.

"We discuss things like, 'How did slavery happen?' " said her friend and mentor Steve Merksamer, a lawyer in Sacramento, Calif. "It comes down to the fact that she believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation - even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years - was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land," he said. "She brings that philosophy to her legal work."

On the California Supreme Court, her opinions have reflected the philosophy and language of her speeches. In an opinion involving fees charged to San Francisco hotel owners, for example, she proclaimed that "private property, already an endangered species in California, is now entirely extinct in San Francisco." In an affirmative action case, she criticized "entitlement programs based on group representation." And in dissenting in a case involving Nike's labor practices, she compared the United States Supreme Court to "a wizard trained at Hogwarts" conjuring up distinctions about commercial speech that she said restricted businesses' freedoms.

But "Activist Judges" are ideological judges who impinge upon their legal rulings their own personal ideologies, only when they are "liberal." This kind of ideology, which apparently is on the record as a method in Brown's personal process of judicial review, is acceptable and lauded. The Democrats were right to push against Brown's nomination because they were pushing against her objectivity in law and her methods of justification of her legal opinions. She is, as much as any liberal judge, attempting to shape the legal code with her own concepts of what it should be.

And, just for the record: If we track Liberalism as far as oppression and slavery, we must also consider that tracking Conservativism far enough leads to nihilism and anarchy, which, when human nature is re-placed in the equation, allows for tribal factions, which raises regional and racial conflict. If Liberalism breeds Slavery, then Conservatism breeds Racism and Anarchy. But, by definition, this is extremist thought, and not reality.

We at the AntiCentenarian are willing to accept, and work within, the realm of reality. Are you, Judge Brown?