David Brooks had an interesting column a couple of weeks ago in which he raised a really good point: The left and right in America not only have different opinions about policy, but they literally perceive objective facts differently.
Party affiliation even shapes people’s perceptions of reality. In 1960, Angus Campbell and others published a classic text, “The American Voter,” in which they argued that partisanship serves as a filter. A partisan filters out facts that are inconsistent with the party’s approved worldview and exaggerates facts that confirm it.
I think this is absolutely true. I can remember dealing with ideological rivals in my last job and marveling at the conflict over basic, impartial truths. I was always stunned to hear, for example, a conservative try to convince me that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to the states. If we can’t agree on fundamental facts, how could we engage in a debate over more complex nuances? The truth is, we couldn’t.
What’s truly disturbing, however, is when rigid ideologues, who reject reality, take their place as lifetime members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Exhibit A: Clarence Thomas.
[Clarence Thomas’] latest challenge to conventional wisdom came this week in the Pledge of Allegiance case, when he opined that the Constitution protected a state’s right to recognize an official church.
Almost everyone has assumed that the opposite is true.
That’s because the opposite is true.
This LA Times article explains the consequences of Thomas’ radical ideology. Laws protecting minimum wages would be struck down as unconstitutional, as would laws that prohibit discrimination, protect the environment and church-state separation, and regulate the safety of consumer products. In a 1991 case dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment,” Harry Blackmun noted that Thomas’ position would allow the torture of inmates by prison guards.
Thomas’ approach was made even clearer in this week’s Pledge of Allegiance ruling.
In his separate opinion, Thomas said he would go much further and sweep aside 60 years of law by ruling that the 1st Amendment did not limit a state’s power to “establish” an official religion.
“Quite simply, the Establishment Clause … protects state establishments from federal interference. [It] does not protect an individual right,” he wrote.
It’s hard to understate the consequences of Thomas’ vision of the law, should it ever be implemented.
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Thomas’ view “breathtakingly radical.”
“Mississippi could be officially Baptist, and Utah could be officially Mormon. If his viewpoint ever became the majority on the high court, it would tear our country apart along religious lines,” he said.
[…]
“This is a pretty astonishing view. No one [among past justices] has gone remotely this far, and I don’t think he’ll get a second vote for it,” said University of Texas law professor Douglas Laycock.
“He is a hard-nosed originalist who looks back to 1791,” when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Laycock said. “He acts as though the Civil War didn’t happen, or it didn’t matter.”
I remember a joke from a few years back in which a conservative tells a liberal, “You know why conservatives don’t care about the Y2K bug? Because everyone will think its 1900 — and we like it better that way.”
Thomas is essentially saying that turning the clock back to 1900 isn’t nearly good enough. He’s aiming for 1787 and not a year later.
The Times’ David Savage noted that Thomas doesn’t have many ideological cohorts on the high court right now, but he’s young and that may change.
None of the other justices have adopted Thomas’ 18th century view of “commerce” or “punishment.” But Thomas’ distinctive views are likely to figure in a pending struggle over police interrogations and the Miranda warnings.
Under the famous 1966 Miranda vs. Arizona ruling, the court said the Constitution’s protection against self-incrimination required officers to warn suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer.
Last year, however, Thomas set out a much narrower view of the 5th Amendment, which says a person shall not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The word “witness” refers to a court trial, not a police station, Thomas said.
At the time, three others agreed with him: Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia. With only one more, the court could undercut the basis for the Miranda warnings, which restrict police questioning.
Remind me, who did Bush say was one of his favorite Supreme Court justices?