I mentioned in a post yesterday that I’m currently reading Jill Lepore’s These Truths, a history of the US. Today I began the last section of the book, covering the period from the end of World War II to our own bleak times. Early in that period the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. Lepore discussed each justice in turn, many of whom were initially inclined to rule against the plaintiffs. It was only the timely and fortunate death of Chief Justice Vinson, which brought Earl Warren to the court, that saved us from continued court sanctioned segregation. This sentence sort of jumped out at me:
Hugo Black, from Alabama, was one of the strongest voices in opposition to segregation, even though he himself had been a member of the Klan in the 1920s – a blot that he strained to scrub clean.
Hugo Black was a great justice. Hugo Black could never get on the Supreme Court today if he were nominated by a Democrat, but unreconstructed racists (William Rehnquist was a Supreme Court clerk at the time Brownwas decided, and he urged Justice Jackson to vote to preserve Plessy v Ferguson) nominated by Republicans breeze right through. So do sexual abusers, but we’ll get to one of them later.
The quote about Black brought to mind the situation in Virginia and like situations, and the question of whether an individual should be permanently barred from public office due to something he or she may have done in the past. I’m not expressing any particular view on Northam, though this articlein today’s Times certainly indicates that the issue there is more complicated than it might seem to some. But, of course, there’s the “indentured servant” thing, and that’s pretty weird. Anyway, I’m talking about the fact that when a Democrat has sinned, he or she is automatically consigned to political hell, by everyone (Democrats, Republicans and the press) while Republicans skate free to sin again.
There are very few people in this world who have done nothing shameful in the past. We Catholics were taught about confession and penance; confess your sins and a sincere act of contrition and sinning no more gets you right with the Lord and on track to go to heaven, until you sin again. Even a mortal sin can be forgiven, provided you are properly contrite, etc. I’ve got no brief for Catholicism anymore, but there’s something to that formulation (except the heaven part). It seems to me that we’ve seen a number of instances in which people of the Democratic persuasion have been subjected to a take no prisoners sort of “justice”, which essentially mandates that a past sin, be it venial or mortal, cannot be forgiven, and requires that the sinner be banished forever, despite what he or she may have done since committing his or her particular sin. They are not allowed, like Black, to strain to scrub the blot clean. “There is”, to quote Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius, “not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow”.
Now I can hear my Republican friends (actually, I have no Republican friends) saying that I didn’t make the same argument about Kavanaugh. But in that case, the circumstances didn’t warrant it, because while Kavanaugh (a “devout” Catholic no less) had obviously committed the sin in question, he neither admitted to the sin nor expressed any contrition. In fact, he broke the eighth commandment repeatedly during his testimony, except while professing his fondness for beer. Had he admitted his error and expressed contrition, the situation might have been different. Instead, he committed what was, under the circumstances, yet another mortal sin, for which he cannot be forgiven so long as, like the aforementioned Claudius, he is “still possessed of those effects for which” he bore false witness.
Part of the dynamics in these incidents has to do with the press wanting to bring someone down. It only works on Democrats because IOKYAR. Not only does the press not let up on Democrats (consider the fact that they are amplifying the stupid Indian meme about Elizabeth Warren) but it rapidly consigns Republican sins to the memory hole.
Some examples from the recent past: Some Republicans voiced some pallid objections to Roy Moore, but only the voters actually rejected him, and had his sin been merely racism (he is a racist after all) rather than molesting young white girls, he’d be a senator right now and no one would be talking about him. In fact his racism was hardly mentioned during the campaign. It was a given. Consider Cindy Hyde-Smith, the newly elected Republican from Mississippi, who is, like Moore, currently and without question a racist. I mean, I don’t know how you rank these things, but I think dressing up in black face 30 years ago, but being a relatively decent person since then, is not quite as bad as wanting to go to a lynching in the here and now. Or consider the irony that the guy who would become governor if the beleaguered Democrats in Virginia all resign edited a yearbook full of racist stuff and currently teaches classes at William & Mary in which he both acts in a racist fashion and promotes racism. He hasn’t changed, but we all know he’ll skate free, even if Northam and the other Democrats all resign. In truth and in fact (as we lawyers like to say) the Republican Party is now the home base for racists, and that fact goes unacknowledged by some of the same forces that go after folks like Northam. The only rule, so far as Republicans are concerned, is that you can’t publicly, proudly, and explicitly admit to being a racist (see, e.g., Steven King, who forgot to talk in code) and even if you do, you’re not pressured to resign, you just lose your committee assignments.
Again, I’m not excusing what Northam did. What I’m saying is that the fact that someone (always a Democrat) did something wrong years ago should not automatically and unquestionably disqualify them from holding public office forever. We have already lost some good people (e.g., Al Franken) and will undoubtedly lose more in the future if this kind of thing isn’t tempered by some sort of due process and sound judgment, while the real bad guys on the right will just keep on keeping on.
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