NPR : Judges Tyranny of Tolerance Book Spurs Complaints
A veteran St. Louis judge is causing a political stir by publishing a liberal-bashing book. The first chapter of Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker, Jr.s book, The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault, has been widely read in legal circles, after being distributed by email.
When a judge reads a selection from his own book on the air and rants about "the liberal agenda" and throws around words like "femi-fascist," you know it's half-past beer o'clock.
Judge Dierker complains that "the liberal agenda" is screwing up this country's court system, and the entire legal system as well. But I consider that "the conservative agenda" is nigh to destroying democracy by ensuring that wherever possible, conservative judges who toe the "agenda" line have been appointed by the Bush administration. The Dems have managed to hold up some appointments in Congress, fortunately for little concepts we have here called civil liberties, civil rights, and reproductive rights. This holding action is decried by the anti-rights Right as all part of "the liberal agenda."
News flash: there is no liberal agenda. TINLA.
The Left is a loose coalition of interest groups, who all want their narrow niche issues protected and promoted. A large, friendly chocolate Lab herding cats would have more success than most Dem "leaders" at keeping everybody moving more or less in the same direction. About the only evil, bad thing we have on the Left are "machine" style politics (as in Chicago and the Cook County Board) and political consultants. You know, the guys that advise their candidates to show up at blue-collar photo ops with their sleeves rolled up. This was so their candidates would resemble the idealized archetype of the no-nonsense, committed, "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" kind of politician. Of either party. Nobody is like that anymore, unfortunately.
There is no cabal, no secret society that meets by the light of the silvery moon to discuss ways to screw the conservatives over. There doesn't have to be.
The conservatives screw themselves (and us) over quite spectaclarly well without any input from the rest of the nation. Viz., Iraq. Billions of dollars and more than 3000 US military lives wasted, and no questions asked or answered.
Until now. There's your liberal agenda for you; getting some actual work done and oversight performed in Congress.
This judge (who by all accounts is a worthy and respected justice) complains that "the liberal agenda" is responsible for all kinds of sins and evils. You know, bad things like affirmative action, abortion, gay marriage and liberty and justice for all. Because the people who would benefit from these things being legal are also bad, sinful, and evil. And liberals. Of course, feminists and other evil things are liberals, too.
What put the bee in Judge Dierker's judicial bonnet, I wonder? Bad divorce? Religious mania? Lesbian neighbors who trimmed back his apple tree without permission?
Maybe he just listens to Limbaugh and O'Reilly too much. He should stick to the law; it's much better suited to a man of his abilities.
I tend to consider the whole TINC meme to be applicable to the Left, Right and any other axial extreme one might consider. While it is true that most Left groups have a narrow interest that make their cooperation beyond “Anyone But Bush” unlikely, most Right gropus have their own backstabbing twist on things that makes their cooperation lilely to last only until We Can Do Them In. That’s true on the business front, the social conservative front, and the political front.
I mean, think of it — for all that the Bushies are supposed to epitomize the triumph of the Neo-con Big Business Big Oil Skull-and-Crossbones Handmaiden Conservative Conspiracy, they can’t even do something as simple as (if the theories are correct) take over Iraq, or Afghanistan, or outlaw abortion / homosexuality / Wicca. They’re the gang that can’t shoot straight. And these are the unnamed masters of the world? Feh.
That said, vote the bums out of the White House in ’08 and prove I’m right. 🙂