A New Extreme of Partisanship?

While the news headlines this week have focused primarily on the health care debate, something that should have been a monumental moment occurred Tuesday when Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the first Latino Associate Justice of the United States. While most would acknowledge that her views fall left-of-center, Conservative lobbyists spent the past two and a half or so months berating Sotomayor...trying to convince the general public that she is an ultra-activist jurist attempting to destroy the American way of life. What end did this achieve? It didn't.

Sotomayor replaced David Souter, a jurist whose stances had tended to be more liberal than Sotomayors. In reality, this is probably the best thing that Conservatives could have hoped for under a Democratic president. In addition, the senate held a (basically) full-proof majority, so dissenting Republicans had no hope of effecting her approval.

Nonetheless, Republicans managed to show how separatist and racist the party has become. No, I don't think the Democrats are anywhere near "fair" either, but by deriding this woman because of her ethnicity, Republicans lost the potential for thousands, if not millions, of future Latino votes.

Now, if you're thinking, "are you suggesting they vote for her because she is Latino, in order to strengthen a voting block?", I'm not at all. Historically, justices have been approved by the senate with unanimous or nearly unanimous votes. Despite my principle disagreements with Justice Sotomayor, I cannot feasibly argue, by any stretch of the imagination, that she was unqualified for her new position. Obviously 30-odd senators have forgotten that their vote is supposed to be based on whether or not the candidate is qualified, not whether they will always see eye-to-eye.

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So, why did this happen? Simple. This is the result of a hyper-moralized social dynamic, in which some Americans are acting like grabby children and others simply do not want to share. The first group, which has a tendency to be Democrats, see any situation in which they are not provided with all services they require, as a failure of their government. These are the people who, in the 1960s wanted to affect change, and now are older, needier, and feel they are entitled enough to force it instead. These were the people that wanted the government out of their lives back then, and now are trying to coerce it to force people on their bandwagon. I.e., heath care, environmental policy, business policy, stem cell policy, etc.

The amazing effect has been the adamant protesting of neo-conservatives, who are also gaining the "high-and-mighty" persona, and also refuse to compromise. They are people who do not want to provide or help provide health care (but are likely privileged enough to have it or never get sick), refuse to listen when people tell them that recycling, alternative fuels, etc. will save them money and make the air more breathable (and who out there loves the air in LA?), claim to be a friend of small business, but only help Wal-Mart and Oil companies, and who often don't understand medical and social policy, but would rather shout from the rooftops than come down and see the other side.

Theoretically, we could work out a lot of these issues. We could offer a government health plan side-by-side with private ones, or require all drug companies to be non-for-profit. We could work with business and tax pollution to give breaks to environmental alternatives, rather than hating business. We could worry more about the tax that Wal-Mart is literally adding to our budget, and less about keeping dying businesses afloat, and we could allow non-embryonic stem-cell research, explain the positive effects of contraceptives, and encourage good Christians to read their bible, and find where it says that if someone is not doing something they should be, they will, according to the Bible, have to pay for whatever sins later, and that forcing religion on people now only causes division and hate and anger and unnecessary violence.

Will this happen? Probably not, but if American's don't learn to loosen their belts and talk things out, checks and balences will become meaningless, and our Republic will eventually shatter.