The inconsistencies and ideological flip-flops of left-wingers in politics, the media and academy continue to perplex me. I can’t get a handle on how they can reverse themselves on the major issues of our time without seeming to notice what they have done—unless they are outright hypocrites.
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I hesitate to make that charge without some evidence. Really, I am not posturing to make a point. I have known too many good and sincere Catholics who subscribe to what might be called a “Catholic Worker outlook” on life to allege deliberate hypocrisy on their part. Still, the ideological inconsistency can be astounding.
You know the syndrome I have in mind. For example, the folks who proudly defended the right of protestors to march to end segregation and march against U.S. military policy, but now think it appropriate to pass laws to stop protests outside abortion clinics. The same individuals who condemned the “immorality” of our military involvement in Vietnam, Grenada, and Nicaragua, and who warned of the dangers of the United States becoming a “policeman to the world,” saw nothing wrong with President Clinton sending troops to Haiti and Bosnia.
The Democrats who mocked conservatives who worried about balanced budgets and deficit spending, and who championed the notion that a Keynesian manipulation of the national debt was a wise and just approach to managing the economy, now scold the Bush administration for “squandering” the budget surplus achieved by the Clinton administration. (To be fair, it has to be said that some conservatives have flipped on this question too. Many, who once fretted over the idea of the federal government not balancing its books each year, find nothing wrong with deficit spending when it is done by a Republican administration.) We have the phenomenon of academic liberals, who once held a near-religious devotion to the notion of academic freedom, enforcing codes of political correctness on college campuses in defense of feminist and homosexual causes.
Another example of this flip-flopping recently came to my attention. It is a doozy. Remember when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were warned not to use abortion as a “litmus test” when appointing federal judges? The admonition was that it was wrong for a president to look for judges who would be likely to reverse Roe v. Wade; that “judicial competence” should be the sole criterion when considering an individual for the bench; that a “pro-choice” individual should not be denied a judgeship simply because of “single issue” politics. I can remember as clear as day when this view was propounded by Democratic politicians and the cast of reporters who make the rounds of the nightly talk shows, as if it were the essence of reason and fairness. “Be impartial.” “Look for the best man or woman for the job.” “No litmus tests for judicial appointments.”
Right. You guessed it. The tables have turned. I don’t know when or how the new thinking became established in pro-abortion circles, but it is in place. The people who are determined to keep abortion legal and readily available now favor “litmus tests,” as long as they are applied to root out judges with pro-life views. In a column in The Wall Street Journal, Douglas W. Kmiec, dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at Catholic University of American School of Law, reported on how it is done. He writes of how “activists with fax machines in Washington” went to work when The New York Times reported that the Bush administration was considering nominating him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
He writes that an “organization that styles itself the Alliance for Justice” went after him with great determination. Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, commented: “Kmiec’s record reflects a . . . philosophy opposing a woman’s right to choose,” emphasizing that Kmiec once testified before Congress that “abortion is more than the killing, it is also the coarsening of the American heart. . . .Abortion undermines all life.” These “unreasonable” views were enough to make him unacceptable for Aron’s group. Moreover, it is not just the Alliance for Justice that is using this litmus test. I have heard more than a few congressional Democrats on the talk shows in recent weeks, warning that they will do everything in their power to deny any Bush appointees to the Supreme Court who are pro-life.
Does Kmiec deny that he is pro-life? Not at all. He states, “These are my writings. Put in their full context, I stand by them.” The question is why he should have to defend himself on this ground, if there are to be no “litmus tests” on abortion for appointees for federal judgeships. Oh, I forgot. That was the liberals’ old position.
But I should not be flippant here, or even appear to be. Kmiec knows what is as stake, understands that “disqualifying a person from a federal post on the basis of his religious or moral beliefs cuts deeply against the guarantee of religious freedom secured in the First Amendment; it might even contravene the Article VI admonition that ‘no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.’” Then he focuses on the central question. “‘So then, can a pro-life Catholic serve as an appellate judge? As much as someone without those beliefs could, if both accepted the constitutional structure, possessed sufficient legal study, and demonstrated personal traits that ensure evenhanded application of the law.’”
The fact that Kmiec has to defend himself on this ground makes it clear: There are now liberal activists who do not think pro-life Catholics fit candidates for federal judgeships. It has come to that. And watch: There will be a significant number of Catholic politicians — I would put my money on Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and Mario Cuomo — who will take this position too when the question of Bush appointments for the Supreme Court come to center stage.
