{"id":98109,"date":"2016-06-05T15:26:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T23:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=98109"},"modified":"2016-06-05T15:26:27","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T23:26:27","slug":"trump-the-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=98109","title":{"rendered":"Trump & The Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESSAY<\/a>: Something that we think still confuses a lot of conservatives is their presumption that leftwing arguments are supposed to be applied evenhandedly. Thus their befuddlement over Trump\u2019s comment about the judge.<\/p>\n

When Sonia Sotomayor said that being a \u201cwise Latina\u201d influences her decisions for the better, that\u2014we were told\u2014was not merely nothing to worry about but a sign of her judicial temperament and fitness for the High Court. When Trump says being a Latino will influence this judge\u2019s hearing of his case, he\u2019s Hitler.<\/p>\n

There may seem at first glance to be an inconsistency here. But there is a common thread. The left mostly takes for granted, first, that people from certain ethnicities in positions of power will be liberal Democrats and, second, that they will use that power in the interests of their party and co-ethnics. This is a core reason for shouts of \u201ctreason!\u201d \u201cUncle Tom\u201d (or Tomas) and the like. People like Clarence Thomas are offending the left\u2019s whole conception of the moral order. How dare he!<\/p>\n

The implicit assumption underlying Sotomayor\u2019s comment and Thomas\u2019 refusal to play to type is that there is a type\u2014an expectation. By virtue of her being a liberal, a Democrat, a woman, and a Latina (wise or otherwise), Sotomayor\u2019s voting pattern on the Court ought to be predictable. As, indeed, it is. So should Thomas\u2019, but he declines to play his assigned role. <\/p>\n

The slightly deeper assumption is that this identity-based predictability is necessary, because the institutions and laws as designed will not reliably produce the \u201ccorrect\u201d outcome. That\u2019s the logic of diversity in a nutshell. If everybody in power strictly followed law and procedure, the good guys\u2014the poor, minorities, women, etc.\u2014would lose a great deal of the time and that would be bad. We need people who will look past the niceties of the rule of law and toward the outcome\u2014the end. The best way to ensure that is \u201cdiversity,\u201d i.e., people more loyal to their own party and tribe than to abstractions like the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Trump simply took this very same logic and restated it from his own point-of-view\u2014that is, from the point-of-view of a rich, Republican, ostentatiously hyper-American defendant in a lawsuit being litigated in a highly-charged political environment. He knows full well that at least 50% of the country will howl like crazy if he wins this suit. He knows that the judge knows that, too. He further knows that judge knows what his own \u201cside\u201d expects him to do. It would take an act of extraordinary courage to act against interest and expectation in this instance. And our present system is not calibrated to produce such acts of courage but rather to produce the expected outcome.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what diversity is for. That is, beyond the fairness issue, viz., that in a multiethnic country, it\u2019s unwise and arguably unjust for high offices to be monopolized by one group. But that\u2019s an argument for something like quotas\u2014or, if you want to be high-minded about it, \u201cdistributive justice\u201d\u2014and the quota rationale for diversity is pass\u00e9. The current rationale is that diversity provides \u201cperspectives.\u201d Perspectives to aid in getting around the law and procedure. Otherwise, who cares about diversity? Just apply the law. Simple.<\/p>\n

Trump is taking for granted\u2014because he is not blind\u2014that ethnic Democratic judges will rule in the interests of their party and of their ethnic bloc. That’s what they\u2019re supposed to do. The MSM and the overall narrative say this is just fine. It\u2019s only bad when someone like Trump points it out in a negative way. If a properly sanctified liberal had said \u201cThis man is a good judge because his background gives him the perspective to see past narrow, technical legalities and grasp the larger justice,\u201d not only would no one have complained, that comment would have been widely praised. In fact, comments just like it are celebrated all the time. That is precisely what Justice Sotomayor\u2019s \u201cwise Latina\u201d phrase was meant to convey.<\/p>\n

Plus, Trump has whacked the hornets\u2019 nest by his criticism of Mexican immigration, which he feels this judge is bound to take personally. And why shouldn\u2019t he conclude that? The left (and the domesticated right) tell us incessantly that any criticism\u2014however fair or factual\u2014that touches on a specific group will inevitably arouse the ire of that group. Don\u2019t say anything negative about immigration or the Hispanics will never vote for you! Don\u2019t say anything critical of Islamic terror or more Muslims will hate us! But when Trump uses that same logic\u2014I\u2019ve criticized Mexican immigration so it\u2019s likely this judge won\u2019t like me\u2014he\u2019s a villain.<\/p>\n

To look for logical consistency in any of this is to miss the point. Trump is bad, and he is using these leftist arguments for bad (that is, not their intended) ends. Therefore he is both bad and wrong, even though others who say logically identical things are good and right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESSAY: Something that we think still confuses a lot of conservatives is their presumption that leftwing arguments are supposed to be applied evenhandedly. Thus their befuddlement over Trump\u2019s comment about the judge. When Sonia Sotomayor said that being a \u201cwise … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98110,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98109\/revisions\/98110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}