“On His Extremist Island”: Clarence Thomas Would Turn Back The Clock
In yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on official government prayers at town-council meetings, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the 5-4 decision arguing that such practices are permissible under the First Amendment. There was a separate concurring opinion from Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia, but then Justice Clarence Thomas decided to go further than any of his colleagues.
As Dahlia Lithwick noted, Thomas made the case “that in his view the First Amendment religion clauses don’t apply to the states in the first place.”
Wait, really? Yep, that’s what Thomas actually believes.
…Thomas couldn’t get Scalia’s signature for another part of his dissenting opinion, in which Thomas – not for the first time – disputes the notion that the 1st Amendment’s ban on the “establishment” of religion even applies to state and local governments.
Here’s the deal: the first 16 words of the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Nearly a century ago, under something called the incorporation doctrine, courts ruled that most of the Bill of Rights applies to state and local government, too.
In other words, under the literal text of the Constitution, Congress can’t pass laws interfering in religion, abridging the freedom of speech, or undermining a free press, but once the Bill of Rights was applied more broadly, neither can states or municipalities.
Thomas, however, wants to turn back the clock. If policymakers in your state chose today to establish Christianity as the official state religion, Clarence Thomas believes that would be entirely permissible under the First Amendment. So long as Congress didn’t pass the law, he says, it’s kosher.
Even Scalia, hardly a moderate, seems to think that’s nutty, but Thomas just doesn’t care.
As Michael McGough’s report added, “Thomas has argued, the Establishment Clause ‘is best understood as a federalism provision – it protects state establishments from federal interference but does not protect any individual right.’”
This is clearly quite radical, even by contemporary standards, though Thomas isn’t entirely alone on his extremist island – it was just last year when North Carolina Republicans considered legislation that read, “The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
That bill ultimately failed, as did Thomas’ effort to find justices who would endorse his perspective, but as conservative politics moves sharply to the right, it’ll be worth watching to see just how many Republican officials end up embracing this argument.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 6, 2014
“Neutral, Generic Blessings?”: Get Prayer Out Of The Churches And Back In The Public Square Where It Belongs!
Maybe it’s something I retained from my early training as a Southern Baptist, way back when members of that denomination, believe it or not, hewed closely to Roger Williams’ doctrine of strict separation of church and state. But every time increasingly conservative courts make fresh accommodations for state-sanctioned religious expressions, as SCOTUS did yesterday in Town of Greece v. Galloway, I have an adverse reaction from a religious point of view.
As Dahlia Lithwick points out at Slate, the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision goes well out of its way to emphasize the banality of prayers at town meetings and other public events:
There will be a good deal of bitterness in the coming days among members of religious minorities and majorities who believe that the Town of Greece decision is just or unjust depending largely on how they feel about sectarian Christian prayers. But stepping back from the specific arguments of the plurality and dissent, it’s fascinating to see how Kennedy and Justice Samuel Alito relentlessly characterize religion as an essentially peaceful, civilizing, lofty influence that seems to have more to do with social politeness than religious zeal. Kennedy’s majority opinion contains the complete text of four prayers, presumably to calm and unify his stressed-out reader, and he writes lovingly of prayer that is “solemn and respectful in tone, that invites lawmakers to reflect upon shared ideals and common ends before they embark on the fractious business of governing.” He seems unaware that for every solemn and respectful prayer, America offers up dozens of fiery, judgmental, even violent ones.
And yes, Americans also offer up soul-wrenching, spiritually deep, and challenging prayers, too. Cheapening prayer into a “neutral,” generic blessing of secular proceedings offends me as much as sanctioning sectarian expressions because most people in a given community more or less belong to a particular faith, which appears to have been the case in Greece, New York.
Had I been on the Court, I would have probably filed a dissenting opinion urging the reversal of Marsh v. Chambers, the 1983 precedent which basically authorized generic public prayers to a generic God, instead of expanding Marsh to include “non-coercive” sectarian prayers, as the majority did, or drawing the line at prayers so empty as to be deemed non-sectarian, as the dissenters did.
Corporate prayer is meaningless if it does not invoke the beliefs of the community for which it is offered. That is why it belongs in gatherings of believers (and those who for whatever reason–say attendance at a wedding or funeral–are voluntarily participating in a religious event). Yes, throughout the centuries there have been many religious believers who reject the very idea of a “secular” realm, but that is unmistakably alien to American traditions, much as latter-day “constitutional conservatives” try to demonstrate otherwise in their audacious efforts to turn Jefferson into a theocrat.
So let’s don’t assume the only Americans who object to the kind of public prayers sanctioned by Town of Greece–or for that matter, Marsh–are members of religious minorities or unbelievers, justified as they are in the exclusion they feel in public events blessed according to rites they do not accept. Some wag years ago mock-thundered that it was “time to get prayer out of the churches and back in the schools where they belong.” That’s exactly how I react to the the whole “religious expression in the public square” movement. It’s offensive to those who pray as much as to those who don’t.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 6, 2014
“An Election-Year ‘Hustle The-Base’ Strategy”: Democrats Should Boycott Latest Benghazi Charade
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is trying to make the GOP’s latest Benghazi theater more than partisan drama by asking Speaker John Boehner to appoint an equal number of Democrats and Republicans to the new “investigative” panel he’s convening. The speaker is unlikely to do that, so Democrats should boycott this latest GOP fundraising stunt.
Five House committees have already investigated the Benghazi tragedy and issued biased reports; there have been two Senate committee reports plus the Accountability Review Board’s findings. The bipartisan reports found errors on the part of State Department personnel and recommended staffing and other changes. But because none of the investigations were able to charge then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with incompetence, or prove that President Obama tried to cover up the truth to get re-elected, Republicans won’t believe them, and insist there’s more to “investigate.”
Thus we have the latest House Benghazi stunt – and Democrats should stay away from it. There’s precedent for boycotting such a panel: Dems did so in 2005, when Republicans organized a sham “investigation” into how President Bush handled the Katrina catastrophe, when it became clear the effort was meant to be a whitewash, not a thorough probe.
I admit, Benghazi is to progressives what climate change is to conservatives: No matter how much the right wing shrieks about it, and purports to have new evidence of wrongdoing, we don’t believe it. The difference is, progressives are right. The notion that a newly uncovered email from national security communications staffer Ben Rhodes “necessitated” this latest investigation is another partisan cover story.
On one level, the new committee is actually a rebuke to histrionic House Oversight Committee chair Darrell Issa, whose many forays into the swamp of Benghazi conspiracy theories uncovered nothing to hurt Democrats, not even the Rhodes email. As ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings has pointed out, Issa denied Democratic members the most basic tools with which to participate in his committee’s sham investigation:
Over the past year, House Republicans have conducted their Benghazi investigation in a completely partisan manner by denying access to hearing witnesses, leaking cherry-picked excerpts to create a false narrative, issuing unilateral subpoenas without Committee votes, releasing multiple partisan staff reports, excluding Democratic Members from fact-finding delegations to Libya in violation of the Speaker’s own rules, and launching unsubstantiated accusations that turn out to be completely false. So I do not have much faith that a new select committee will be any different.
The new committee won’t have any more power than Issa’s did. And there’s no reason to believe chairman Trey Gowdy will be smarter or fairer than Issa (check out Simon Moloy’s profile here.) Gowdy is the Oversight Committee member who has set his hectoring of witnesses to action-movie music and posted it to You Tube. He is likely to out-Issa Darrell Issa.
There’s possible political risk in boycotting the Gowdy charade. “Some of these hearings are going to be televised,” political scientist Norman Ornstein told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. “The question is, does it make more sense to be in there, participating in the process and pointing out Republican overkill again and again, or does it make more sense to further destroy the image of the committee by staying out of it?”
It’s true that as the Oversight Committee’s leading Democrat, Cummings has been able to regularly thwart Issa and counter the chair’s allegations in the media. But he did so at a constant disadvantage, since he was shut out of the investigative process by Issa. There’s no reason to expect Gowdy to treat Democrats any differently. (Cummings’ office says he has not yet taken a position on the boycott idea.)
Gowdy’s committee is best understood as as a base-energizing fundraising tool for the GOP, part of what Politico’s Michael Hirsch calls “the Benghazi industrial complex,” engineered to damage Clinton so much she either can’t run for president or decides it’s not worth the pain. Of course, Benghazi fever hasn’t spread beyond the fever swamps of Obama hatred that afflict the GOP’s far-right base. But that’s enough to keep it alive, and potentially make it a potent midterm-election organizing tool. House Democrats should make that role clear by boycotting it.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, May 6, 2014
“Dear Privileged-At-Princeton”: You. Are. Privileged. And Meritocracy Is A Myth.
When I read The Princeton Tory cover story “Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege,” written by my classmate Tal Fortgang, I realized that I had just witnessed an attempt at checking privilege that was so unsuccessful it was borderline satirical. Fortgang, a fellow Princeton freshman, complained about the overuse and misuse of the phrase “check your privilege,” and asserted that the phrase was “toeing the line” of reverse racism. To prove this, he detailed his family’s history of persecution under the Holocaust, their journey to America and their ultimate rise to entrepreneurial success. He claims that the only privilege he has is that his ancestors made it to America, were hard-working and passed down wonderful values such as faith and education.
This so-called “privilege check” would have had a much better start had the author first Googled the meaning of privilege, because he holds a fundamental misconception about what it actually is. Privilege is not an idea aimed at muting opinion or understating the worth of accomplishments. It is not a stab at personal character, nor is it something for which one needs to apologize. But it is also not a myth. Privilege refers to the very real benefits that society affords certain groups over others, and it is manifested in many ways. This country has a history of overall preference for white males, and Fortgang even complains that people prompt him to feel “personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.”
While Fortgang is not responsible for white male dominance in society, he should at least recognize that this social hierarchy is not a mere coincidence, nor is it a testament to the power of hard work. Such a micro-level explanation, when applied to our country’s current state, would imply that white males have by and large outworked most women and minorities in the many fields in which they dominate.
The reality is as follows: White men are the only ones who have been afforded political and social rights since the founding of this country. In a sense, this constitutes a head start, or a privilege. Women and minorities, on the other hand, have had to fight for equal status. Moreover, that fight still rages today. Women earn only 77% of what men are paid, and it’s worse for women of color. There’s also unconscious bias, which undoubtedly affects behavior, but is more difficult to address due to its subtlety. For instance, a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school found that white males are more likely to receive a response from professors than minorities and women report. If Fortgang can’t accept that his gender and race are beneficial to him, then he should at least concede that they are not a hindrance, which is more than can be said for women and minorities.
Fortgang’s privilege is evident in his erroneous assertion that America is “a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.” Such a statement fails to acknowledge that an equal protection clause in the law is not enough to effect equal treatment, nor does the law even promise that every violation will be properly handled. People of color know all too well what it means to be neglected and abused by the justice system, rather than protected by it. With racism becoming more covert, there is declining protection against it. The I, Too, Am Princeton Tumblr is a response by Fortgang’s own classmates who feel they are victims of mistreatment and micro-aggressions because of their race. Fortgang’s privilege is, in essence, the inability to not see these things as problematic because it doesn’t affect him.
The real myth here is meritocracy. Fortgang’s major issue with being told to check his privilege is that it “diminish[es] everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.” How about this: No one is saying Fortgang did not sow seeds, but checking his privilege is just acknowledging that the ground he tilled was more fertile than the ground others tilled. They could have spent the same amount of time in the hot sun, watering these seeds, but Fortgang might still reap better results because of certain advantages. For example, he says his value of education is a privilege, and it might be. However, his African American counterpart in an underfunded, under-sourced school with the same value of education and work ethic may not be afforded the same opportunities at the end of his high school career. Ultimately, success is when hard work meets opportunity.
Speaking of hard work, let me now address this touching story Fortgang presented about the hard work of his ancestors. For one, white privilege contributed to their ability to build a legacy for him. Standards for citizenship have been historically discriminatory, with U.S. naturalization originally limited to “free white persons.” Just because the “American Dream is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant” doesn’t mean it’s equally attainable for all other groups in America. Additionally, Fortgang’s ancestors’ past struggle in no way negates the existence of his societal privilege today. He doesn’t have to fear racial profiling or employment discrimination. The closest thing to racism that he cites is someone calling him privileged.
Calling a white male “privileged” in a country with such a clear history and continuing pattern of preference for white males is about as wrong as calling a rich person “advantaged” in a capitalist society. The word privilege isn’t a negative judgment about Fortgang or his character, but simply a recognition that our society’s institutionalized racism and sexism isn’t aimed at white males. And for that Fortgang is privileged.
Is that clear? You. Are. Privileged. It is OK to admit that. You will not be struck down by lightning, I promise. You will not be forced to repent for your “patron saint of white maleness” or for accepting your state of whiteness and maleness.
Common sentiment on campus is a sincere desire that Fortgang open his eyes to reality, not only his own but that of the people around him. This lack of touch with reality was probably evident in the comments he made about welfare that prompted one of our classmates to suggest that he check his privilege in the first place. If he did, maybe then would he understand that there are people on welfare who work just as hard as he does but don’t have the same opportunities. Maybe if he were keen to the realities of racial profiling and discrepancies in convictions of homicides that shift depending on the race of the victims and defendants, he wouldn’t want to punch people angry over the Zimmerman verdict in their “idiot faces.” Fortgang’s understanding of so many issues and people would increase if he took the first step towards recognizing his own privilege. Even as a black woman, whose race and sex has posed unique and difficult challenges, I have done a privilege check. I am privileged to come from an upper middle class family, to belong to the religious majority and to have both my parents in the home. I acknowledge this because it allows me to empathize more with others and remain humble and grateful. Fortgang can do the same, and I highly recommend that he does. If he takes the time to really check his privilege, people will be able to tell, and maybe he won’t be instructed to do so again.
By: Briana Payton, a Princeton freshman studying sociology and pursuing certificates in African American Studies and American Studies; Published, Time, May 6, 2014
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