The Lady Is A Lightweight!

...Pat Buchanan

What angers me most about Sotomayor's remark comparing the judgement of a Latina woman with that of a white man is not just that it is racial bigotry, but that it reveals a colossal ignorance and naivete.

I believe in my heart of hearts that, out of the womb, the only difference between a white baby, a brown baby or a black baby is skin pigment. That there is any difference in inherent brain power is just foolish. In fact, I believe the smartest intellects among us have not used all the inherent brain power with which they were born. Every child has brains to spare. It is what you do with them that counts.

I know that people are afforded different opportunities in life. Things go easy for some folk... hard as hell for others. But, on the whole success comes from hard work, discipline and good life choices. The idea that all wealthy white men were born with a silver spoon betrays an ignorance that, in itself, disqualifies anyone for a seat on the Supreme Court.

My very white father had only a 4th grade education. At the outset of the depression, he and mom found themselves with four small children, no job and homeless. He found a job driving a truck for a flat $25 a week. Hours? Whatever it took to get the work done. He wisely rented a farm (owned by an elderly widow who had moved to town) with 68 acres and an old shell of a house. The house had no inside plumbing or wiring, and no means of heating or cooling. He picked up an old wood-burning heating stove and a wood-burning kitchen stove. It should be apparent, but don't lose sight of the fact that operating these devises required lots of chopping and sawing of firewood.

Planting a garden and field crops each year, and gradually acquiring livestock one head at a time, he kept his family healthily well-fed throughout the depression. Few people today can even imagine the amount of work that required.

Jump ahead two generations to my five children. All successful and prosperous. Each with a college education acquired through hard work and personal sacrifice. Yes, there were some scholarships, a few small grants and some massive student loans, but no affirmative action or other outside help. They each did it on their own. My eldest, twin girls, worked in their college cafeteria to pay tuition and living expenses. My oldest boy (who has two Masters' Degrees) must have flipped about half the millions of burgers McDonald's claims to have served. My youngest daughter raised two children as a single mom before returning to college and is now a highly successful woman engineer.

My youngest is a college professor with a PhD. Law is not his field, but judging from the number of his papers published in prestigious scientific journals, I will stack his intellect up against Sotomayor's any day. And she has the audacity to proclaim that because of skin pigment, Spanish surname and her blessing of a hard-working parent and a giving society, she would make a better judgement than he? This ignorant woman is going to sit on our nation's highest court?

Finally, there is one more source of my anger. The partisan warnings from Democrat politicians, such as NY Senator Charles Schumer, against Republicans who may oppose this woman's confirmation. I pray that Republican and like-minded Democrats oppose this woman with all the energy they can muster, and base that opposition solely on the fact that Sonia Sotomayor is, as Pat Buchanan said today, too lightweight to be a Supreme Court Justice.