May 29, 2009

(Educators)Barack Obama's legacy is coming sharply into focus, four years early. He's out to transform a nation of laws, once the pride of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and exemplar to the world, into a nation of feelings. We won't need judges, just social workers damp with empathy.

This is in line with the president's larger vision, to cut America down to a size a community organizer could manage, making it merely one of the nice nations of the world, like Belgium or Brazil. The home of the brave and the land of the free would become what our English cousins call wet, weak, ineffectual, fragile, fearful, and inconsequential.

Sonia Sotomayor is one of the building blocks of the president's envisioned Mediocre Society. She's a perfect first nominee to the Supreme Court, untouchable for anyone tempted to look at who she really is, a lawyer of good grades - she graduated summa cum laude from her university and even won the class spelling bee in elementary school - but a judge with a modest record, confident of entitlement, and determined to help the president render America harmless, armed with good intentions but at the mercy of ravenous rivals. We may one day look back at her as the best of the worst.

The president is the master of demographic politics, playing the race card in a way that no one else could. Miss Sotomayor was presented not first as a jurist distinguished by learning and accomplishment, but as a Latina, a woman of empathy and delicate sensibility. He's counting on male gallantry, if not male timidity, to carry the day. Robert Gibbs, the president's press agent, was an unapologetic intimidator, warning everyone to be exceedingly careful in talking about her. Criticism of Miss Sotomayor is to be regarded as proof of racism, sexism and maybe even fascism. Criticize the little lady at your own risk.

Miss Sotomayor herself has played the game skillfully. When, interviewing for a job during her final year at law school, she was asked whether she thought she would have been admitted to the prestigious school had she not been of Puerto Rican extraction. It was a recruiter's legitimately provocative question, but she cried racism! and demanded an apology. Her credentials were impressive enough to suggest that she could stand up to tough and even impertinent questions