Dissident... Apostate!.. TRAITOR!!!

Something interesting happened this past month at the Supreme Court. Whereas Courts are often conjoined with their Chief Justice's surname (the Roberts Court, the Rehnquist Court, and the Burger Court being the most recent three), it became clear, after three rulings of major import (NYSRPA v Bruen, Dobbs v Jackson, West Virginia v EPA), that this Court may be John Roberts' in name, but it is Clarence Thomas's in influence.

This emergence, forecast by, among others, William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal, was bound to elicit even greater vitriol for Thomas than that which he has endured across his thirty-one years on the Court.

Sure enough, the Left delivered. Even though he only authored one of the three landmark cases (and not Dobbs, which overturned Roe v Wade - that was Justice Alito, as we've expected ever since a draft opinion was leaked a couple months ago). Bruen, the gun rights case, was briefly all the rage, pun intended. Dobbs eclipsed it, in sky-screams, in hyperbole, in theater, in outright lies, and in targeted vitriol. Of all the hatred piled on the rest of the concurring justices, that directed at Clarence Thomas is by far the most malignant.

Why?

The answer is as simple as it is disappointing.

Because he's black.

That reason is a telltale that provides us with a roadmap into leftist thinking, one that leads to the conclusion that the Left is divorced from the nation's fundamental values of liberty and individual rights. Thus, it's no surprise they just spent Independence Day denouncing the nation itself.

Since Thomas is black, he is expected to have a particular world view - one that is written by the Left's Best-and-Brightest (most of whom are, ironically, not black). The Left presumes ownership (irony alert, again!) of the minds and mindsets of blacks, of other minorities, of women, of gays, lesbians, and others who've been agglomerated under the LGBTQIA2S+ banner, and of a list of other "oppressed" identity groups.

With an emphasis on "groups." There is no room for individualism of thought therein. If you are black, you are expected to think as, and advocate as, a black person should. This means, practically speaking, a blind allegiance to the Democratic Party that decided, back in the 1960s, that blacks were to be Democrats forever-after.

Thus, "black issues" are akin to one-party rule, and any black that doesn't align with the "black" position on an issue is therefore a dissident. That many positions advocated by that party are dogmatic in nature, defying rational and fact-based rebuttals, elevates that dissidence to heresy, aka the rejection of a belief set, or apostasy, aka its renunciation. Given that Thomas was a radical lefty in his youth, he gets the "apostate" label.

Religious comparisons make the Left uncomfortable, since rejection of religious liberty is among their fundamentals (the fact that many blacks are deeply religious is an inconvenience to be ignored), so they move on to the truest denunciation of all: treason.

Thus, Thomas and all other black conservatives, (and libertarians) are race-traitors. All women who oppose abortion are gender-traitors. Gays that reject the erasure of gender that's at the heart of the trans-activist movement are (label pending)-traitors. And so on.

Again, no room for individuality. No tolerance for diversity of viewpoint or opinion, even in disagreement. Dissent must be quashed, apostasy must be punished, and treason must be denounced with every fiber of their being. We witness a monolithic mass of Ahabs, spirits full of rage and hate, exhibiting their modernized form of racism.

From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

I'm not MAGA. I'm not jingoistic, I'm not tribal, and I'm not nationalistic. But, I am a true believer in the core values upon which the nation was founded - those of the Enlightenment, the premise of individual sovereignty, the concept of limited government focused on protecting and advancing our individual (and property) rights, and otherwise leaving us alone. A mindset that is collectivistic in nature, that subordinates an individual to the preordained views and politics of his skin color, repulses me. I will defend the rights of those who embrace this mindset all day long, a defense they will not offer me in return, but I don’t find common cause with them. They are, as I just mentioned, modern racists, deeming those they champion as their political chattel, and treating all who seek to escape the ideological plantation the way antebellum slave-owners did their escapees.

Thomas's great sin is not his originalist interpretation of the Constitution, it's that he has this interpretation despite his skin color (it's worth noting that Amy Coney Barrett was mocked and derided in similar fashion by the likes of Keith Olbermann, who denigrated her as a "paralegal" in an expletive-riddled tweet. For added irony, ponder David Hogg's reply that "hate is not a mental illness"). Or, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who offered up a disingenuous platitude only days after bellowing an expletive-enhanced denunciation of the Justice.

Today's Left has no room for contrary ideas, for a nation with a diversity of opinions, or for a party that draws and supports people who don't embrace leftism. This is not liberalism, of either the classic or more modern sort, it's the natural evolution of progressivist arrogance to an apparently inevitable demand for conformity, and a dehumanization and collectivization of individuals not in the curated echelons of the Best-and-Brightest. For how such a mindset turns out, we have plenty of examples: USSR, Khmer Rouge, Red China, DPRK, GDR, the various Islamic Republics, and many more.

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Peter.