Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim or [sic] government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
As I've previouslyhere, this was as scurrilous a libel as they come.
If you follow the link back, hoping for proof that the above is "scurrilous libel," I think you'll be grossly disappointed.
You'll find a link to Andy himself saying "not a word of what Kennedy said is true." Proof? Well, err, none.
For example the truth about Roe v. Wade is that Bork believes (and he makes no secret of this),Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Now, does that mean that absent Roe v. Wade, women might eventually go back to the days of back-alley abortions? It's certainly possible, at least in some states. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in New York, California, and Hawaii, and if memory serves me, illegal everywhere else. But of course, women don't need to have back alley abortions if abortion is illegal, they could just have the child, so maybe it's libel to say that if Bork was on the bench, etc.
Segregated lunch counters? Well, Bork doesn't believe that the 14th Amendment outlawed segregation "in every walk of life," whatever that means.
Just because the Left attacked Bork doesn't mean that Bork wasn't a weird guy. Sneering at "penumbras" and "emanations" is one thing, but totally rejecting any Constitutional right that wasn't specificially enumerated is a distortion of the express language of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Bork screwed himself when he fired Archibald Cox during the Saturday Night Massacre. But he really is a weird and unpleasant person. He wouldn't get the time of day if he wasn't an outspoken critic of Roe v. Wade.
It is so typical of conservatives that they adulate Bork and dismiss Gonzalez, a far superior choice. But that's abortion politics for you. The litmus test that destroys the careers of decent men and women and leaves us with charlatans, creeps and weirdos.
Heaven forbid that creationism vs. evolution be elevated to the status of another litmus test, at least among the mainstream. I'd be forced to vote Democrat, and so would Lindy. ;^) |
