The New York Times takes a look at recently-confirmed Appelate Court Justice Justice Janice Rogers-Brown that gives some insight into her judicial philosophy:
“In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery,” she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders’ emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms.
“We no longer find slavery abhorrent,” she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. “We embrace it.” She explained in another speech, “If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy – a license to steal, a warrant for oppression.”
While such statements would be shocking to the typical audience of The New York Times, Justice Brown is right. The values that create a strong and healthy society are not created via the means of government largesse. No spending program can come even close to matching a culture that fosters personal responsibility and a strong work ethic. The culture of victimhood that has risen in the United States does more to oppress black Americans than anything the Klu Klux Klan could ever hope to do. Justice Brown, a sharecropper’s daughter who grew up in the grip of extreme poverty, knows quite well about the skills necessary to rise from poverty to power.
What this nation needs more than anyone else is a judiciary that understand that government is not a panacea for everything. Justice Brown is an accomplished and intellectual student of political philosophy and jurisprudence who fundamentally understands the tradoff between democracy and the welfare state. The road to serfdom is always a tempting one, and having a Justice in the DC Circuit who is at least somewhat reticent to take yet another step down that road is a valuable addition to the federal judiciary.
We’re all supposed to mortified and disgusted when Howard Dean calls the Republican Party a monolithic party of mostly white Christians, but then burst in applause at the histrionics of Brown equating government workers who distribute food stamps with slavemasters.
Bush would probably be wise to marginalize, rather than promote, the kinds of Republicans who actually read the party platform aloud and tell the poor exactly what they think of them. Keep in mind there are plenty of red-state “values voters” waiting by their mailbox for their government checks to arrive. If at some point in the near future, they decide they love the ability to feed their kids more than they hate gays, inflammatory rhetoric by the real class warfare instigators like Janice Rogers-Brown could end up being a huge liability.