Adam Liptak of the New York Times is confidently confused in the approved manner:
Is it really that hard to grasp that in this context, terms like "Catholic," "Jew," and "Protestant" are primarily ethnic terms, not religious ones?
Does Justice Ginsburg, for example, keep kosher? Is that what it takes to be religiously Jewish? Who knows?
What everybody does know is that she is ethnically Jewish.
Henry Ford and General Patton believed that they were reincarnated, but that didn't make them ethnically Hindu (at least not in this lifetime). Everybody considers them ethnically Protestant, and rightfully so.
That's not a difficult distinction to comprehend. Obviously, there can be a gray area between ethnicity and religion (they're fuzzy sets), but to ignore the very existence of the concept of ethnicity is to act in a fundamentally obtuse manner.
Once you recognize that "Protestant" is an ethnic category as well as a religious one, however, then a potential lack of Protestant representation on the Supreme Court could be recognized as a question of the Supreme Court's ethnic diversity and ethnic representativeness, issues that are highly fashionable these days.
Sonia Sotomayor, for example, was repeatedly lauded for adding ethnic diversity.
So, why shouldn't a potential lack of Protestant ethnics on the Court be considered a question of ethnic diversity?
Of course, when people use the word "diverse" they actually mean, as Orwell might say: But some nominees are more diverse than others. Ethnic diversity for me but not for thee. But, when talking about the Supreme Court, it's hard to come up with a validation for this bias that sounds just.
So, we see a lot of Liptak's type of strategic muddleheadedness to confuse onlookers. It's another version of the old "Einstein was Jewish / Trotsky wasn't Jewish" muddle in which Einstein, a good guy, is Jewish because he was ethnically Jewish, but Trotsky, a bad guy, wasn't Jewish because he wasn't religiously Jewish. It's logically okay to make either argument (although not both), but, obviously, you need to note the distinction between ethnicity and religion and grasp that others might have logical reasons for not agreeing with your categorizations.
Is this really that hard?
But Justice Stevens cuts a lone figure on the current court in one demographic category: He is the only Protestant.
His retirement, which was announced on Friday, makes possible something that would have been unimaginable a generation or two ago — a court without a single member of the nation’s majority religion.
“The practical reality of life in America is that religion plays much less of a role in everyday life than it did 50 or 100 years ago,” said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Adding a Protestant to the court, he said, would not bring an important element to its discussions.
“These days,” said Lee Epstein, a law professor at Northwestern and an authority on the court, “we’ve moved to other sources of diversity,” including race, gender and ethnicity. ...
It is hard to imagine the court without a black justice, for instance, and it may well turn out that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is sitting in a new “Hispanic seat.” It would surprise no one if President Obama tried to increase the number of women on the court to three. Not so long ago, there was similar casual talk, but of a “Catholic seat” or a “Jewish seat” on the Supreme Court. Today, the court is made up of six Roman Catholics, two Jews and Justice Stevens.
It was not ever thus. Presidents once looked at two main factors in picking justices.
“Historically, religion was huge,” said Professor Epstein of Northwestern. “It was up there with geography as the key factor.”...
The short list of candidates to succeed Justice Stevens includes two Jews, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Judge Merrick B. Garland of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and one Protestant, Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago.
But it is unlikely that religious affiliation will play a meaningful role in the decision making. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said that society is past worrying about a nominee’s religious affiliations.
Is it really that hard to grasp that in this context, terms like "Catholic," "Jew," and "Protestant" are primarily ethnic terms, not religious ones?
Does Justice Ginsburg, for example, keep kosher? Is that what it takes to be religiously Jewish? Who knows?
What everybody does know is that she is ethnically Jewish.
Henry Ford and General Patton believed that they were reincarnated, but that didn't make them ethnically Hindu (at least not in this lifetime). Everybody considers them ethnically Protestant, and rightfully so.
That's not a difficult distinction to comprehend. Obviously, there can be a gray area between ethnicity and religion (they're fuzzy sets), but to ignore the very existence of the concept of ethnicity is to act in a fundamentally obtuse manner.
Once you recognize that "Protestant" is an ethnic category as well as a religious one, however, then a potential lack of Protestant representation on the Supreme Court could be recognized as a question of the Supreme Court's ethnic diversity and ethnic representativeness, issues that are highly fashionable these days.
Sonia Sotomayor, for example, was repeatedly lauded for adding ethnic diversity.
So, why shouldn't a potential lack of Protestant ethnics on the Court be considered a question of ethnic diversity?
Of course, when people use the word "diverse" they actually mean, as Orwell might say: But some nominees are more diverse than others. Ethnic diversity for me but not for thee. But, when talking about the Supreme Court, it's hard to come up with a validation for this bias that sounds just.
So, we see a lot of Liptak's type of strategic muddleheadedness to confuse onlookers. It's another version of the old "Einstein was Jewish / Trotsky wasn't Jewish" muddle in which Einstein, a good guy, is Jewish because he was ethnically Jewish, but Trotsky, a bad guy, wasn't Jewish because he wasn't religiously Jewish. It's logically okay to make either argument (although not both), but, obviously, you need to note the distinction between ethnicity and religion and grasp that others might have logical reasons for not agreeing with your categorizations.
Is this really that hard?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
75 comments:
Liptak also walks right up to but willfully ignores the obvious point that a 9-person supreme court is eventually not going to have enough room for all the approved diversity, even if non-approved diversity like Wasps are left out. one black, one Jew, one east Asian, one hispanic, one south Asian, one Muslim...the court is never really going to represent America, there isnt enough space.
Diversity, multi-culturalism, affirmative action and the like start & stop based on double-standards.
This means a floor, or minimum % near overall population %, for more preferred groups like blacks & Jews, a token representation for less preferred groups like women & Hispanics, a who cares attitude toward successful others like Asians, and active discrimination against white, male Christians, especially protestants.
A ceiling is in place against white men, especially N Euro Protestants, saying their #'s should not rise above population %. Of course this ceiling is absent for all other groups.
Hey, its not a double-standard if the New York Times won't discuss it, right? ;-)
OT
http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
Nearly had a heart attack.
Great post.
This is exactly what you see at elite universities like those in the Ivy League.
The "white" student population is largely Jewish. White gentiles are greatly underrepresented. But you're not supposed to notice this or say anything about it. Doing so would, of course, mean that you're an anti-Semite. You're just not supposed to differentiate between Jews and whites, at least not in this instance anyway.
So you have a situation where the majority population of the country is greatly underrepresented, but technically not "officially" underrepresented, because, you know, you're just not supposed to differentiate and distinguish between Jews and whites. Only Nazis would do something like that. If you point it out or complain about it, the response will be that the "white" representation is adequate and high enough and that other demographics (black, Latino, Muslim, gay & lesbian, handicapped, deaf, mute, etc.) are underrepresented and that whites are privileged etc. Then if you reply by breaking down the "white" representation into its proper constituent parts, then you'll be immediately slimed as an anti-Semitic Nazi who doesn't deserve to have any say. There's really just no exit whatsoever. It's like a trap.
SCOTUS: Position available--- applicant must be vibrant, empathetic...melanin rich or suitably ashamed...Harvard or Yale diploma...knowledge of constitutional law not essential...preferably the child or grandchild of immigrants...No (White) Protestants need apply.
If there was the prospect of there being no Jews on the Supreme Court I wonder if we would be reading in the New York Times that we're "past worrying about a nominee’s religious affiliations."
the court is never really going to represent America, there isnt enough space.
The Constitution does not specify the number of SC justices. I could see the Democrats trying seats to adds diversities. Could also see a Republican adding seats so one or fetuses can stay on the Court for 80 or so years.
Liptak, Stone and Epstein all concur, we don't need any of those pitchfork-wielding Protestants on our court.
Sorry, I was bordering on pattern recognition there. I'll turn myself in.
I await the next instance when Justice Breyer or Ginsburg (or Kagan?) can make arguments for disparate impact as a prima facie case for racism. Will someone point out to them that a 2-3% segment of the population constitutes 22% (33%) of supreme court justices? What form of racism was responsible for that?
Don't expect to actally see that happen, however.
What is a Protestant "ethnicity"?
If you define, say, German as a Protestant ethnicity, does it matter if Mr. Schneider is a practicing Catholic?
Would you accept, for example, a member of a majority-black Baptist congregation as representative of a "Protestant ethnicity"?
Mr. E was raised Lutheran. His wife, Mrs. E, was raised Catholic. Are their sons (all sons, thus far) to be considered "Protestant" or "Catholic" ethnicity? (This one is a real example - I'm referring to relatives of mine.)
You might find this post on my blog to be of interest.
http://gerald-belton.blogspot.com/2010/04/diversity-and-supreme-court.html
Stevens wasn't just a Protestant, he was a dyed in the wool member of the Establishment.
By the way, Justice Stevens grew up in Hyde Park (same neighborhood as Obama, Bill Ayers, Farrakhan) and went to the same school Obama sent his daughters (Univ of Chicago Lab Schools).
Back around 1974, when the Jews, blacks, and women really started to take over, I predicted that the nation would be bankrupted, that the Constitution would be trashed, that corruption would be rampant, and that, with those people running the show, we would soon become easy prey for our enemies.
It turns out that I was over-optimistic.
It's sick but funny to think of all of the Jews (esp. Jewish senators) who would have a huge problem with a Court with no blacks, Hispanics or women but who see no problem at all with a Court with no Protestants but with three Jews.
I'm still half hoping we'll get another Jewish nominee just so that everytime the issue of diversity comes up, or the gripes of "anti-semitism," we can point to the Court, which is unassailably the most powerful body in the land. These people face no elections, serve for life, and can overturn any law in the land. And one-third of its members will be Jewish.
Liptak also walks right up to but willfully ignores the obvious point that a 9-person supreme court is eventually not going to have enough room for all the approved diversity
Try telling that to an opinionated Asian. I seem to know quite a few who seem to think that Asians deserve a slot, even though the Court's not a representative body and even though Asians are barely 5% of the population and even though Asians have only been around in significant numbers since the 1980s.
Speaking of which it's funny that none of the short lists I've seen includes an Asian. I wouldn't leave them out, as I'm sure Obama would love to solidify the Third Minority in time for the coming elections. He's already got blacks and Hispanics in his corner.
More and more I see that your blogging is really an exercise to work out your Jewish obsession, Steve.
What if Obama nominated a hardcore white liberal Protestant man?
Would that satisfy you?
With two out of nine being Jews this is about 22%. Or about eleven times the actual number of Jews in America.
Is there really a clear ethnic diversity between Catholic and Protestant anymore?
Steve, the country has moved beyond religious distinctions. That's why we now are unquestioning of a Federal Reserve where the chairmen for the last 23 years and a majority of the board are of a particular ethnicity. We've moved beyond it, ok?
Every ethnic group except for White Protestants is apparently supposed, in our multiculti world, to have group consciousness and solidarity.
These same White Protestants, in several varieties, founded this country and shaped its culture.
I'd prefer a less hyphenated society, but if we're going for diversity, the founding ethnos ought to be first among equals, no?
I suppose for Catholic and Protestant, one could use the "ethnic" term in the sense of, "if this person's ancestors had all kept the same religion since the Reformation".
For example, I'm Catholic, but ethnically I'm half Protestant -- my maternal grandmother was a member of the Putnam family, and I also have a WASP Freemason and some German ancestors who had converted to Catholicism on my father's side.
LOL. religion does not matter until you start talking about all the detrimental things that a segment of the jewish population is doing, then a nuclear war of words starts all over again.
how about, somebody suggests we have a supreme court with zero jews. how quickly would religion become important again? in about 0.2 seconds.
there's gonna be more muslims that jews in america soon, anybody expect a widespread, persistent call for islam to be represented on the supreme court? like in baseball: not enough blacks, not enough blacks, not enough blacks!
The Libs have done it: Scotch-Irish Protestants, the very marrow that made America, have been disappeared.
Only thing that matters if constitutional or anti-constitutional. Thomas is black but votes for the constitution.
Who/whom part 938478273401979821347.
one of the early candidates for replacing stevens actually was an east asian, a korean liberal activist judge from california.
More and more I see that your blogging is really an exercise to work out your Jewish obsession, Steve.
What if Obama nominated a hardcore white liberal Protestant man?
Would that satisfy you?
Saying something about Ashkenazis that Ashkenazi-uber-alles don't like is "Jewish obsession." Ashkenazi-uber-alles policing everything we say about Ashkenazis is not "Jewish obsession."
More and more I see that your blogging is really an exercise to work out your Jewish obsession, Steve.
What if Obama nominated a hardcore white liberal Protestant man?
Would that satisfy you?
Yes, exactly "J" aka "Israeli water engineer." You're absolutely right. Steve clearly has some sort of "unhealthy" "obsession." He must be suffering from a "neurosis." Or have an "authoritarian personality." Whatever it is, he obviously is not right in the head for simply, um, noticing patterns and stuff in the real world.
Lucille,
Good question about Protestant vs. Catholic "ethnicities".
European ethnicities don't cleanly fall along religious lines, but here's just one way of describing it:
Catholics are mostly from the peoples who were ruled under the Holy Roman Empire along with the Spain, the rest of Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and Lithuania. Protestants are roughly everyone to the north of Germany along with much of that country: (the UK, Nordic and Baltic countries). The rest, like the Greeks, are more Eastern and are Orthodox.
The European Catholics on the Supreme Court:
John Roberts: Czechoslovakia
Antonin Scalia: Italy (Sicilain father, unknown mother, but probably northern Italy as maiden name is Panaro)
Anthony Kennedy: Ireland
Samuel Alito: Italy (family name was changed from Alati to Alito and is probably northern European as that is where Alatis are concentrated.)
It's so old-fashioned, really. The conservative vs. liberal split on the U.S. Supreme Court is mostly reflecting the very old and deadly Jewish-HRE Europeans fued.
I wonder if the *symbolism* of this court make-up will cause some soul-searching amongst secular, anti-Christian Jews for their condescension and treatment of Protestants? Especially the Celtic Scots-Irish who have loved them so much?
I would guess that most liberals would be very uncomfortable with the monolithic make-up of the liberal wing, especially with the Jewish over-representation. I read the MSM editorials as trying to persuade Obama against a Jewish pick and less about concern for Protestants.
There is no bias against Protestants, excluding evangelicals. Most modern-day Protestants barely practice their religion anyways. Plus the ethnic lines between Protestant whites and Catholic whites have blurred quite a bit in the past 50 years.
This seems a good post to send a compliment to Steve. I have just read a discussion of a subtle point of quantum mechanics in "Physics Today" and C. Alden Mead remarks about the physicist David Bohm:
"I particularly recall a plenary talk given by Bohm. In it, he expressed astonishment that certain physicists refused to accept the AB effect and even went to great lengths to try to disprove it. As he said, “It would be much more revolutionary for this effect to be wrong than for it to be right,” since it was a clear consequence of fundamental quantum mechanics.
I considered his remark very Bohmian, in that (a) no one else would have said it that way, and (b) once uttered, it was obviously true. Bohm’s habit, in his soft‑spoken way, of making such blindingly original statements is one of the things I most remember about this unorthodox and profound thinker."
This is how I think of Steve.
Robert Hume,
The person who most reminds me of Steve is Julian Simon which is ironic as Steve tends to be more of a Malthusian:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
"Of course, since people don't particularly like to have their cherished beliefs contradicted by heaps of facts served up on a platter, Simon has never been Mr. Popularity."
"He always found it somewhat peculiar that neither the Science piece nor his public wager with Ehrlich nor anything else that he did, said, or wrote seemed to make much of a dent on the world at large...***Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker.***" (emphasis added)
"The book [The Population Bomb] sold 3 million copies, became the best-selling environmental tract of all time, and got the author on The Tonight Show.
At home in Illinois, Simon watched Ehrlich on the Johnny Carson show, and he went bananas. In fact, more bananas than he'd ever before gone in his life."
and finally, but best of all,
"Julian Simon never received a MacArthur award.
'MacArthur!' he says. 'I can't even get a McDonald's!'" (Erlich and Lester Brown, another Malthusian both won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award.
Caucasian Deputies Association
Harris County Sheriff's Dept. (includes Houston, TX)
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7384209
How about an evangelical Christian (Baptist or Church of Christ) fundie white male from the South educated at a southern university and law school? There are millions of these folks out there, and I would say they are underrepresented on the court. Proportionally they are should have at least one SCOTUS seat, if not two.
"Is this really that hard?"
This is culture war.
"What if Obama nominated a hardcore white liberal Protestant man?"
To replace the liberal Protestant white man who's retiring? That's part of the problem with Steve's logic here -- conservatives would almost certainly be better served by a white Catholic Justice, who would be much more likely to be a conservative. You're better off with a John Roberts, even if he is Catholic and has some Czech genes mixed in with his Anglo Saxon genes.
WASPs blazed the trail for anti-racism well before American Jews did.
"The Libs have done it: Scotch-Irish Protestants, the very marrow that made America, have been disappeared."
That's really a different sort of white Protestant than Stevens is.
Hey, how about a scientologist?
How about one of the TV judges?
Texas Justice!!
The WASPs created American in their ideological image. They did such a good job of it, they no longer feel the need to run its institutions themselves (perhaps with the exception of the State Department and the CIA, where WASPs have stuck around mostly). If they ran the Supreme Court it would be further to the left than it is today.
Ethno composition of the Supreme Court means a whole heckuva lot. There are obvious ethnic prisms through which the United States Constitution is interpreted, and more importantly, will be interpreted. The Wise Latina herself made this point very clear in her confirmation hearings!
If Barry Soetoro gets two terms and is able to get a 5-4 or 6-3 vote leftist majority (sorry, they are leftists, not liberals) then he can usher in the age of a hardcore post-Constitution USA based on a new legal framework, which is in turn based on a new ethnic prism.
The Warren Court made radical reforms - forty years ago - but those old liberals were pikers compared to the modern left wing revolutionaries of 2010. These people openly praise Saul Alinsky. These people are Trotskyites (neocons) and, uh - judging from quotes in the media by administration officials - crypto-Maoists (neoliberals).
The future legal transformation will be fueled by a deep ethnic animosity toward the WASP Constitution. The game is now the same game it always was: which ethnic mafia will control this country. WASPs have been knocked out of Harvard and a lot of the other tip top levels of power in the USA. They do not control the supreme court, media, finance or elite higher education. And, very simply, they don't control the borders i.e. the future composition of the country.
WASPs no longer control this nation and their still large demographic slice of the pie is apparently meaningless as a path to power and irrelevant as a hold on whatever power they have left. The inescapable conclusion is that the WASPs will be utterly marginalized politically and economically in the near future (next thirty years). The recent Harvard grads coming up through the elite power structures are going to be the final consummation of the Great Purge.
What surprises me is any belief that the purging process will be stopped or reversed. It is a progression. It is gaining speed and not slowing down. These people mean business (the revolutionaries, that is).
I would say that Kulak-ization is on the agenda - and if you haven't figured out who the new Kulaks are, you haven't been paying attention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
"Kulaks (Russian: кула́к, kulak, "fist", by extension "tight-fisted") were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged as a result of the Stolypin reform which began in 1906. The Stolypin reform created a new class of landowners who were allowed to acquire for credit a plot of land from the large estate owners, and the credit (a kind of mortgage loan) was to be repaid from farm work. In 1912, 16% of peasants (up from 11% in 1903) had relatively large endowments of over 8 acres (3.2 hectares) per male family member (a threshold used in statistics to distinguish between middle-class and prosperous farmers, i.e., kulaks). At that time an average farmer's family had 6 to 10 children."
"According to Marxism-Leninism, the kulaks were a class enemy of the poorer peasants."
Which Jews and What Jews?
Hardcore Hasidim? Joe Lieberman? Screenwriter Robert Avrech? Rahm Emmanuel?
Most American Jews are so acculturated that their primary identity is SWPL liberalism, see say Justice Stevens or the various anti-Racists. They'd probably turn themselves inside out to justify "Queers for Palestine" the way the blogger Zombie has documented.
A few minor groups, like the Hasidic or Orthodox, or very culturally conservative guys like Avrech, have vastly different views. The Orthodox and Hasidic withdraw like the Amish from society. Guys like Avrech or Evan Sayet are probably to the right of Steve Sailer, including identity politics.
Meanwhile, Justice Thomas is a reliable conservative vote.
What the Supreme Court picks and policies are all about is who screws whom. The fairly hereditary Hollywood-Academic-Business-Political elite, allied with non-Whites, or the Majority White population, which is a mixture of working/middle Class Evangelical and Catholic. The latter "cafeteria Catholics" who go to Mass on Easter and Christmas.
The overrepresentation of Jews on the Democratic side of the court is their business. What I would like explained is why the Republican side of the court is completely Catholic when the base of the GOP is composed of Evangelical Protestantsm especially considering that White Catholics are constantly wavering between the GOP and the Dems.
Whiskey shooting off diversion flares again.
This discussion reminds me of the consciously MSM-overlooked fact that the executive committee of the South African Communist Party during the anti-Apartheid struggle was composed of 6 Indians and 6 Jews (I don't have an update on the current mix). Apparently Jews considered blacks unfit to run their own communist party. That sort of says everything to me.
What I would like explained is why the Republican side of the court is completely Catholic when the base of the GOP is composed of Evangelical Protestantsm especially considering that White Catholics are constantly wavering between the GOP and the Dems.
The "Catholics" who vote Dem (or who *are* Dems) are obviously non-practicing. (And keep in mind that the Catholic Church itself has been severely remiss about keeping closet left-wing radicals out of its power structure -- a prime example of O'Sullivan's First Law in action.) Practicing Catholics are just as hard-right GOP (or Ron Paul Tea Party types, especially in the case of traditionalists) as evangelicals.
The whole thing is rather appalling. I see a lot of Jew-baiting on the posts. To be expected, I suppose, and perhaps even deserved, given the generally bad political behaviour of Jews. But I am still mystified by the whole collapse of WASPdom, at least in the public arena. Surely this is the crux. Why and how did it happen? I know Kevin MacDonald's view of the whole thing, which some on this board seem to share, but it just doesn't add up.
My city, Toronto, went from being a hub of the Orange Order in the 1930s to a multicultural junkyard by the 1990s. It's hardly possible to invoke Jews in the Canadian case--they're neither as obnoxiously left-wing as their America confreres nor as influential or numerous. Further, few Jews were needed to impose multiculturalism on Canada. That was accomplished by vindictive French Catholics like Trudeau and masochistic WASPs like Pearson. You can note similarly of Britain.
There certainly do seem to be dynamics intrinsic to Protestantism that have abetted its own undoing--including its individualism, but also its politer-than-prissiness. (From personal experience, I can attest that the foreign, usually female, WASPs at Oxbridge are always the absolute worst and most vindictive PC enforcers. Has WASP civility simply gone haywire? Someone needs to contact John Murray Cuddihy; he may need to revise his thesis.)
It occurred to me on a recent trip through New England that maybe the WASPs and fellow-minded whites have their own wonderful little Whitopias (like Burlington, Vermont) such that they have little need to venture forth into the corrupted Ivy League or other realms of overwrought multiculti neurosis. Why go to the PC snakepit of Harvard to do a bullshit arts degree when you can perfectly well enjoy life at the wonderful, easy-going, relaxed, almost all-white University of Vermont, jumping in the lake in the summer and skiing in the winter? Maybe the WASPs are happy that everyone's focused on the multiculturalization of their erstwhile playgrounds, as they've moved and found better ones.
The comments by Fred also seem to be apt in that WASPs seem to concentrate in areas of real hard power, like State, CIA, military, etc. So maybe they are still around, but just less conspicuously.
In any event, wherefore the collapse of WASPdom? I'd say Tom Wolfe got it right in Bonfire: decadence.
"Whiskey said...
Which Jews and What Jews?
Hardcore Hasidim? Joe Lieberman? Screenwriter Robert Avrech? Rahm Emmanuel?"
Who the hell is Robert Avrech, and why would you pick him over Akiva Goldsman or Tony Kushner, or say Harvey and Bob Weinstein.
As to the other three you mention, some unnamed Hasidim, Lieberman, and Emmanuel - what do they have in common. Nothing I suppose. Your Hasidim is just a construct (although real ones engage in some fairly sharp business practices), and Lieberman and Emmanuel seek to undermine and destroy the very concept of my country. And Akiva Goldsman aside, the Hollywood guys I mentioned cast people like me in the perpetual villain role in their movies, and are peddlers of decadent cultural swill.
So no, I don't notice any pattern there. None at all.
What I would like explained is why the Republican side of the court is completely Catholic when the base of the GOP is composed of Evangelical Protestantsm especially considering that White Catholics are constantly wavering between the GOP and the Dems.
White Catholics and White Southerners have voted for the same candidates since the Democratic party was the party of "Rome, Rum and Rebellion" after the Civil War. Northeastern WASPs and White Southerners have been divided ever since the days of Adams and Jefferson (really much longer than that if you trace their history back to Britain).
"What is a Protestant "ethnicity"?"
Northwestern European people, especially people from England. The people who founded America. Don't pretend you don't know what we're talking about.
Personally I'd be fine with 9 Jewish justices, so long as at least 5 of them were conservatives (genuine conservatives).
"With two out of nine being Jews this is about 22%. Or about eleven times the actual number of Jews in America."
It's actually worse than that, when you consider that you have to deduct those 2 seats to figure out what the average non-Jewish American's share of the Court is. Assuming 315 million Americans, 6 million of whom are Jews, that's about 1 seat per 44 million non-Jewish Americans, versus 1 seat for 3 million Jews - or 14.67x their "share." But let us be generous and say they're only overrepresented fourteen-fold.
A third Jewish justice and it will be a 25-fold disparity. More and more I don't think the nominee will be Jewish, however, but either black, Asian, female, or some combination thereof. Black would really, really be a good choice for Republicans - it would solidify the growing feeling that Obama really is a race-obsessed bigot. The worst electorally for Republicans would be an Asian.
Anthony Kennedy: Ireland
Kennedy's middle name is McLeod, which is a Scottish name, and which sounds like a family name, to boot, so it's likely that he is part British. Between Kennedy and Roberts we may have one whole Brit on the Court.
Contrast that with the presidency where we seldom elect a person without significant British ancestry even when he's a black guy.
Thomas was Protestant when he was nominated, and later became a Catholic. Roberts may be religiously Catholic, but come on, the guy just screams "ethnically Protestant white dude". Razib explains why the conservatives are all Catholic here. Like Steve, I wonder when the right will pick a Mormon (the Yankees of red-state America). I also think we should focus more on the diversity of occupational background. Do any have much experience in business law (or business generally)? Were any defense lawyers?
The whole thing is rather appalling. I see a lot of WASP-baiting on the posts. To be expected, I suppose, and perhaps even deserved, given the generally bad political behaviour of WASPs. I am not at all mystified by "the whole collapse of WASPdom" meme. Such dissembling is an attempt to obscure the crux. I know Kevin MacDonald's view of the whole thing, which some on this board seem to share, and it makes more sense than blaming WASPs for "suiciding" themselves.
It's hardly possible to invoke Jews in the Canadian case--they're neither as obnoxiously left-wing as their America confreres nor as influential or numerous. Further, few Jews were needed to impose multiculturalism on Canada.
The Zeitgeist-along with the psychological effects of economic, military and cultural hegemony-travels easily across borders-especially an undefended one like Canada's. The Iron Curtain's powerful insulating effect can still be sen in former Soviet Bloc countries. See, for example, the strong showing of the uniformed neo-fascists of Jobbik in last Sunday's Hungarian election and the annual state-protected march of Latvian Waffen-SS veterans.
A lot of the Protestant-Catholic confusion is due to the fact that Euro-American/White American is the USA's only taboo ethnicity. The vast majority of white Americans are of of mixed European ancestry and have little or no remaining cultural connection to the "Old Country." But it is forbidden to call them what they really are so we have to construct the largely false divisions of "Protestant" and "Catholic".
Evangelicals, like Mormons, are real but they get the dismissal and derision thrown in their direction because ( in the popular mind and, more importantly. the Jewish mind) they are conflated with snake-handling Fundamentalists/ Christian Zionists.
And there's nothing a Jew despises more than some bumpkin who loves him.
Paul Gottfried's latest:
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-myth-of-judeo-christian-values/
(...)
Prominent Jewish groups, such as the World Jewish Congress, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League, show nothing but indifference or hostility to the continued existence of Christian institutions in what used to be Christian countries.
Such behavior is not restricted to countries in which established Christian churches once persecuted Jews. It is equally present in predominantly Protestant countries, which have no significant histories of anti-Semitism. Why do most American Jews loathe the Philo-Semitic Christian Right, a religious force that only a lunatic would mistake for the anti-Jewish Russian Orthodox Church of the 19th century? In surveys about religious intolerance in America, as Norman Podhoretz rightly notes, Jews seem inordinately upset about Evangelical Christians, a group whose ethical positions are the same as those taught by Hebrew Scripture and who adore Israel almost as much as Larry.
My explanation, which Larry may not want to hear, is that Jewish distaste for Christianity is so deep-seated that it can not be written off as a legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. This unfortunate hostility actually seems to grow in intensity or expressiveness as Christians try to reach out to Jews.
(...)
Svigor,
I think that someone who runs Majority Rights should by rights recuse himself from the Jewish obsession discussion.
Whoever,
"Yes, exactly "J" aka "Israeli water engineer."
Ha ha. Wrong "J" - I'm a low-grade self-employed graphic artist in suburban northeast who reads blogs when the work flow is slow.
Some oblique replies to my post suggest that I'm WASP-baiting and ignoring cross-border influence in Canada so as to downplay the Jewish factor in Canada's multiculturalization.
(1). The idea that WASPs are decadent seems pretty straightforward and is not baiting in the slightest. If they were not decadent, we'd not have to watch them get off so often on their own guilt. Frankly, I wish the WASPs would start being a bit more assertive. I admire WASP culture and achievement and calling them decadent is one way of saying: 'Get a grip!'.
(2). American ignorance about Canada is legendary (at least up north). Canada is in fact quite a different place from the US, and those who entrenched multiculturalism there were not acting under Jewish American influence but actually perceived themselves as anti-American and promoted anti-Americanism as intrinsic to Canadian national identity. The idea of blaming Jews for Canada's multiculturalism is absurd, however much local Jewish communities in Montreal and Toronto may have approved of it. French Canada, which was notoriously antisemitic during the interwar period, is clearly the large demographic constituency that supported these measures and provided the electoral hegemony to the Liberal Party for 100 years to impose them.
I suppose pointing these things out is irrelevant. It's easier to find a scapegoat. But in the end it will not improve the situation.
icr quoted Gottfried:My explanation, which Larry may not want to hear, is that Jewish distaste for Christianity is so deep-seated that it can not be written off as a legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. This unfortunate hostility actually seems to grow in intensity or expressiveness as Christians try to reach out to Jews.
As a former "Christian Zionist" I could not have put it better. After 4 visits to that artificial piece of desert called Israel, I began to realize just how much Jews despise Christians. That put a lot of European history in perspective and also solved the ever-present riddle of why Jews are forever trying to destroy the western countries which they like to live in so much.
re: collapse of WASPdom:
"Even the “Baby Boom” of the 1950s was predominantly a phenomenon of urban Catholics and rural Protestants. In 1957, the U.S. total fertility rate peaked at 3.7 (average lifetime births per woman, based on annual birth rates) which meant that the average U.S. woman was more likely to have 4 children than to have 3. Yet if you scratch below the surface on that number, you’ll see that the WASP elite of the Northeast were reproducing at a rate far below the national average." -R.S. McCain
Mainline WASPs preached Birth Control in hopes of paring down Catholic numbers, and spent lots of $ co-opting Catholic leaders and spreading Catholic dissent. But they were most effective among their own kind.
It occurs to me that all you need to do to predict Obama's Supreme Court nominee is apply the simple laws of identity politics, so...
An HBD Original Presentation: Your Handy Barack Hussein Obama Identity-Politics Guide to Selecting the Supreme Court Nominee
A) White Man or Woman: No. Six is already too many (see possible exception at (E) below).
B) Hispanic: No. Already got a Proud Latina(TM). They value the growing Latina/o/Chicano/a vote, but they don't want them to get uppity or anythin.
C) Black Man or Woman: Most likely (70%+). At core Obama is a black bigot. He wants to nominate an Afro-American. He thinks there should be a "real" black justice on the Court, and this might very well be his last chance to put one there. In addition, two black justices on the Court would mean that, for the first time in history, blacks would be overrepresented in one branch of government. Another bonus: any black nominee would likely be Protestant, solving that little problem.
D) Asian: Next most likely (20%+). Never been an Asian on the Court, and Obama & Co. would like to secure this demo for the Dems, especially considering the frailty of their popular support in the coming elections. Asians are also an untapped gold mine of political contributions. Downside: probably not a Protestant. Upside: first Buddhist/Hindu/Muslim/Shintoist/Sikh/Jain/Parsee/Whatever. And who cares about the Proddies anyway? Not Obama!
E) Jew: Least likely, but still possible (5-10%). All those 5-4 rulings allowing the continuation of quotas/affirmative action/set-asides for "underrepresented minorities" would sure look funny were they signed by three Jews. Leftists might not catch the irony, but blue collar whites sure as hell would. HOWEVER...the Jewish lobby (and its money) is still an extremely powerful force, Obama is surrounded by Jews (Emanuel, Axelrod, ad infinitum) and, no doubt, he is already getting loads of emails and calls from Jewish contributors (and 13.5 Jewish senators) asking him to nominate Kagan or Garland or Sunstein or whoever. Moreover, while the Jewish lobby is willing to tolerate a goy Treasury secretary or Attorney General, they know the Supreme Court is for keeps. They will play rough, if they must.
"Confidently confused in the approved manner" is a great way of putting it.
And if you challenge them, they become "aggressively confused," "militantly confused," "indignantly confused," "righteously confused," etc. LOL.
BTW: “The practical reality of life in America is that religion plays much less of a role in everyday life than it did 50 or 100 years ago,” said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Adding a Protestant to the court, he said, would not bring an important element to its discussions.
From Wiki: "Stone has written about the religion of Supreme Court Judges, notably as to how they relate to judicial decisions about abortion. He has argued that five sitting Catholic judges effectively prevented the legalization of partial-birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart."
From his University of Chicago bio: "Mr. Stone is a member of the national Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society, a member of the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union...a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the Straight for Equality Project of PFLAG..."
But like a good liberal, Stone's perfectly happy worrying about some people's underrepresentation. He writes at Huggington Post: "Since the founding, there have been 112 justices of the Supreme Court. Of these, 94% have been Christian, 83% have been Protestant, 11% have been Catholic, and 6% have been Jewish...This means that, relative to the current population, Christians, Protestants and Jews have been substantially overrepresented on the Court historically, whereas Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus, and especially non-religious people have been substantially underrepresented on the Court...To bring total Christian representation on the Supreme Court down to the percentage of Christians in the current population, none of the next 22 justices should be Christian."
Got that? There have been 112 Supreme Court justices in our entire history, but Stone retroactively applies current demographics to what past representation on the Court should have been. This is like someone whining how unfair it is that none of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Hindu - or Jewish.
Stone doesn't bother to point out that all of the Jewish justices have been among the last 50 or so nominees, meaning their real "share" is 12%, not 6%.
And I won't even get into his assumption that the supposed 94% of justices who were Christian were actually believers in any real sense. It seems to me that people in the political spotlight claim religious identification far more often than those who aren't, though only for respectibility's sake.
Canada actually has at least three Jewish justices on its nine member Supreme Court - Marshall Rothstein, Rosalie Silberman Abella and Morris Fish.
I found this description of one pretty laughable: "Abella was the sole commissioner of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, in which she coined the term employment equity, a strategy for reducing barriers in employment faced by women, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and Aboriginal peoples in Canada."
No. Sense. Of. Irony. Whatsoever.
This one was also pretty interesting: "[Marshall Rothstein] and Dorfman, a Montreal native and family doctor, have four children, Ronald Rothstein an attorney in Chicago, Douglas Rothstein a business executive in Cambridge, MA, Tracey Rosenberg, a dentist in New York City and (Bo) Rothstein, an attorney in Vancouver."
Staunchly loyal, patriotic Canadians - three of whose four children absconded to the United States. Well if there's a better deal out there...
Kijkfaas McGee, you don't understand MacDonald's thesis if you think the low number or influence of Jews in Canada can invalidate it. MacDonald argues that the most powerful modern force of Jewish influence in white societies has been through transnational intellectual movements like Marxism, Freudianism, race denial in anthropology etc. These movements have been strongly influential in all white countries, regardless of where the originators operated. Canada got the same dose of the "culture of critique" that every other Western country did.
I've heard enough of the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish talk to last a life time.
We should have an Eastern Orthodox Christian on the court.
I suppose pointing these things out is irrelevant. It's easier to find a scapegoat. But in the end it will not improve the situation.
Hey, at least that's falsifiable. Let Euros escape Ashkenazis (right now, they're not allowed to escape Ashkenazis the way Ashkenazis are allowed to escape Euros) and we'll find out what the benefits are, if any.
Can't go 'round saying a plan won't help if you won't let anyone test it.
Another obtuse liberal mantra is:
Islam is a religion, not a race
When discussing crime & immigration some goodthinker is virtually guaranteed to quote this. Of course it is true in a purely technical sense but its deployed to strip any value from discussion.
In Britain there are a lot of Muslims, when it comes to crime and Islamic fundamental connections the Asian (Pakistan) Muslims are mostly at the forefront.
In Germany Muslim is generally going to mean Turkish.
And so on...
But the mantra is intended to make us believe that adherents of Islam an ad hoc collection of individuals with no ethnic identity at all.
SCOTUS: Position available--- applicant must be vibrant, empathetic...melanin rich or suitably ashamed...Harvard or Yale diploma...knowledge of constitutional law not essential...preferably the child or grandchild of immigrants...No (White) Protestants need apply.
You forgot "wise"!
annual state-protected march of Latvian Waffen-SS veterans.
I was in Estonia a few weeks ago and saw several market stalls selling nazi memorabilia, T shirts etc. A lot of this was commemorating the SS Wiking division (the Scandanavian SS division), apparently lots of Estonians joined this (and the Finnish army) to fight the soviets. Little sign of anyone celebrating those Estonians who fought for the soviets. In one museum this was addressed with a standard 'plague-on-both-your-houses' bit of history. But I rather suspect that Estonian atttudes are not as even handed as modern orthodoxy demands.
The irony was these particular stalls all seemed to run by ethnic Russians (though I could be wrong on this). I got a few pictures but was told sternly "No photos!". I meekly put away the camera
I don't know if this has come up around here, but Elena Kagan is a closeted lesbian that lives with a partner.
source
ATBOTL, you do not understand tautology. MacDonald's thesis cannot be falsified by any evidence. According to your fantasy, if there are ten Jews in Canada and one is a left-wing jackass, then the fact that the Liberal Party is electorally maintained by millions of French Catholics and that the leaders of the Liberal Party and its bureaucracy have been very disproportionately French is all just a front for the one said Jewish jackass's campaign of subversion. This is what some regard as paranoia. It occurs to me that you are simply a fool. In any event, what French Canada indicates is that many minorities, to varying degree, engage in the same practice as diasporic Jews--promoting particular interests through a false universalism. This includes Protestants in France, Catholics and all other non-WASP ethnic groups in Canada, non-whites in the US, Arabs in Israel, etc. But I am wasting my time.
I don't know if this has come up around here, but Elena Kagan is a closeted lesbian that lives with a partner.
I don't much care that she's a lesbian - a Jewish lesbian, even (and doesn't this picture just have "Jewish lesbian" written all over it?) - except to the extent that it makes her more likely to be a radical anti-white male socialist, but this is sure to irk a few folks: "When a federal appeals court ruled the Pentagon could not withhold funds, [Kagan] banned the military from Harvard’s campus once again."
Kagan, banning the military from recruiting at Harvard, at a time of war.
Not "no," but "Hell no."
"CaptainBueno said...
I don't know if this has come up around here, but Elena Kagan is a closeted lesbian........"
Anyone who's seen her picture would have figured that out.
"Even the “Baby Boom” of the 1950s was predominantly a phenomenon of urban Catholics and rural Protestants."
It must have had an effect on other segments. The only four children+ Jewish families I've known of had the kids during the 50s and early 60s. And some super large Protestant families who were not rural.
Kijkfaas McGee, you did not in any way address the point of my post. Subversive, anti-Western Jewish intellectual movements like Marxism, Freudianism, Boasian anthropology, Levi-Strauss's cultural relativism, the School of Social Research, etc. all had a profound influence on Canada and every other Western Country. Marxism did not orginate in Russia but that doesn't mean that the Communist revolution of 1917 could not have been caused by Marxism.
Yes, you are wasting your time dissimulating.
The organized Jewish community in Canada is responsible for Canada's speech-crime laws, as this Jewish writer admits:
"On this point, I agree with Mr. Soharwardy and Mr. Elmasry: I blame the Jews.
A generation ago, illiberal elements in the "official" Jewish community pressed Canadian governments to introduce laws limiting free speech. The targets of those laws were invariably poor, unorganized, harmless neo-Nazi cranks and conspiracy theorists such as Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra — nobodies who were turned into international celebrities when they were prosecuted for their thought crimes.
But now come Mr. Elmasry and Mr. Soharwardy and their ilk, using the very precedents set by the Canadian Jewish Congress."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article661959.ece
Your link didn't take me to Judge Kagan, Mark, but what was cool is that I recognized the guy on there as a dude I armwrestled during Mardi Gras back in the 90s.
Yes, fluoride-containing toothpaste, something I have been sticking in my mouth, and then down the drain and out into the world, at least a couple of times a day my entire life is toxic in surprisingly small doses. (At least I was surprised.) There is a lot of evidence on both sides of the question as to whether fluoride is harmful to the environment. I am not addressing that question. I have simply decided that if something I stick in my mouth says on its face that I should contact a Poison Control Center immediately if I swallow more than a toothbrush-full, I don't want to stick it in my mouth, or anywhere else, anymore.
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