By CHRISTOPHER MANION
“McCarthyism: a campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations” — Typical Internet Definition.
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Since the mid-1950s, millions of Americans have been trained to shrink in horror when they hear the name of “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy. Why, he “looked for Communists under every bed,” we were told. “If your mommie is a commie then you’ve gotta turn’er in,” as one “folk song” put it. McCarthyism was bad, bad, bad — but please do not look further.
Well, some ten years back, Stan Evans decided that looking further was a good idea. In Blacklisted By History (New York: Crown Forum, 2007), Evans dug through countless FBI and State Department files that were untouched by the hands of the hack historians who had perpetuated the “McCarthyite” myth.
Accumulating mountains of evidence, Evans found that, as the bumper sticker on Vanna White (my old white van) puts it, “McCarthy Was Right.” The ideological manufacturers of “McCarthyism” used it as a bludgeon, threatening all to agree that Communism posed no threat to the West. Evans proved conclusively that the contrary was true. In fact the U.S. government was riddled with agents dedicated to the West’s decline and destruction.
While Evans proved that McCarthy was right, there has been many a “campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations” since his day.
The most lethal in our time is currently being conducted by the ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.). As the Internet’s Jewish Women’s Archive explains, the young Feinstein graduated from San Francisco’s Convent of the Sacred Heart, “a prestigious private Catholic high school . . . (the first Jew to do so).” She learned about the Catholic faith firsthand, and presumably learned it well, since she was smart enough to be accepted at Stanford University upon graduation.
So it was not through mere ignorance that Sen. Feinstein confronted Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings earlier this year. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein told Barrett. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.” (Mrs. Barrett’s nomination was later confirmed by the Senate, and she now serves as a judge on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.)
Sen. Feinstein’s observation was crude, but correct. She knew that “dogma” was inseparable from the natural law. The natural law teaches us to “do good and avoid evil.” You don’t have to be Catholic to know that abortion is evil — and Feinstein is Exhibit A in that regard. In stage-managing the destruction of Judge Kavanaugh, she dare not even mention the subject. The figure of the unfettered, ubiquitous abortionist is the invisible elephant in the room.
In addressing Mrs. Barrett, Feinstein knew that the “concern” she alluded to is shared indeed by “large numbers of people in this country” — and those are the very people that today are bent on destroying Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh As Everyman
The fate of the Kavanaugh nomination remains uncertain at this writing. Clearly Feinstein wants to defeat it. But we cannot ignore the fact that she is in it for the long haul. She aims not only to defeat his nomination, but to destroy him — for the good of the country and the court, of course.
Feinstein’s dogma lives loudly within her: For a generation to come, “Feinsteinites” will do everything they can to defeat and to destroy any and all erosion of their sacramental totem: abortion, unfettered, universal, and free — and if you don’t celebrate it we will destroy you.
This writer has staffed hundreds of Senate nomination hearings. In virtually every case, the nominee brings to the committee a résumé replete with first-class credentials, as well as a record of accomplishment and merit.
Those who are nominated for high office, in government or the courts, are not there by accident. They have been preparing for this responsibility for years. Many have been aiming at such responsibility all of their adult lives.
Feinsteinism teaches: If you’re a conservative, forget it. If you aspire to any position of responsibility that can even remotely impede our desire for unimpeded sex free of consequences, we will ruin you.
We want our sex, and we want it now.
Judge Kavanaugh was nominated to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, but there are 142 vacancies on other federal courts waiting to be filled, and 72 nominees for those positions are in various stages of confirmation by the Senate.
What message do the Feinsteinites send to those nominees, and those who aspire to follow them?
“If the dogma lives loudly within you, watch out.”
Translated, that means, “If you are pro-life, you’re toast.”
The Swinging
Door Gets Stuck
Desperation comes in many forms, and the left is desperate indeed. They insist that, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, he’ll have to recuse himself whenever anyone who opposed him came before the court. Which means that, because they are biased, Kavanaugh must be biased too. In case that doesn’t work, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who’d very much like be a justice himself, insists that, “Given his blatant partisanship and personal animosity toward liberals, how could [Kavanaugh] be an effective member of the Supreme Court?”
Of course, that doesn’t apply to Harvard Law grad and now Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who got his first federal court appointment because he served as Ted Kennedy’s very political staff director on the Judiciary Committee.
“That door swings both ways,” observed Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker in the early 1980s. He was speaking of applying certain standards, as I recall. The same standards should apply to everyone, equally.
Well, not today. Pro-abortion justices can be as biased as they please. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the “ACLU Women’s Rights Project” in 1972, served as the project’s director, and was also the ACLU’s general counsel. She has been pro-abortion all her professional life. She never recuses in cases involving her former employer. She has been candid in expressing her low opinion of President Trump, but Tribe’s “personal animosity” standard doesn’t swing both ways.
The elephant in the room roars. It’s all about sex.
Harvard Makes It Unanimous
Even if Kavanaugh is confirmed, the left’s echo chamber has something to brag about. A group of female students of Harvard Law insist that Kavanaugh’s mere presence on campus would constitute sexual harassment. While there might be no connection, the Harvard student paper, The Crimson, reports that Kavanaugh will not be returning to campus next semester to teach the course that he has taught there for years; the original invitation came from Law School Dean Elena Kagan before she became an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
Those disappointed by this news can find a modicum of consolation in The Crimson’s banner headline: “Facing Penalties, 100 Percent of College Students Completed Sexual Harassment Training.” Those who regarded the “training” as hogwash, propaganda, or a waste of time were warned by college administrators that they would be “barred from enrolling in classes” if they did not submit.
Academic freedom lives.
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