By Marta Mossburg
|
23 July 2010
First Published in
The Wall Street Journal
For members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is not just a matter of law or politics. It is a spiritual imperative for the disillusioned Obama acolytes suffering from post-election politician syndrome.
They need a replacement for the "deep cynicism" decimating the hope Barack Obama generated in supporters prior to the 2008 presidential election, according to one of Berkeley-based NSP's three leaders, Rabbi Michael Lerner.
The pacifists for open borders, with a penchant for emitting 'sacred hollers' in a group setting, are culled mainly from liberal Protestant and Jewish congregations. Members are not required to have any particular religious beliefs. What adherents are asked to do is "to take time out each day to look at this incredible universe, say: Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!"—and chart their path to heaven through politics.
One of NSP's most sacred causes is the Global Marshall Plan. Introduced in Congress this year, the resolution is styled as "a commitment to peace, social justice and the ecological sanity of our planet."
Spiritual Progressives could be dismissed as yet another consortium of disgruntled ex-hippies, if it weren't for the fact that their leaders do not inhabit the current fringe. Mr. Lerner was a former health-care adviser to Hillary Clinton and edits a magazine, Tikkun, which President Barack Obama used to read in his community-organizing days.
Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat representing Minnesota's 5th district, and Heather Booth, a community organizer and force behind ACORN, are prominent members. Ms. Booth led the AFL-CIO's health-care campaign in 2008 and was training director of the Democratic National Committee.
They and the 400 or so attendees at a June NSP Washington Strategy Development Conference for Liberals and Progressives (many wearing Birkenstocks with socks, elastic-waist pants and No-Nuke T-shirts) rallied to the refrain that they were done waiting for politicians to save them and would work to transform the law instead. Their goal: Convert the U.S. legal system to one based on empathy—for each person, depending on their circumstances—from one based on a rule of law that values equal protection for all. In this brave new world, Judge Kagan is to be their Beatrice.
Gary Peller, a Constitutional law professor at Georgetown University who spoke at the conference, set a tone with his denunciation of neutrality before the law as a "sham ideology." To prove his point, Mr. Peller cited a 1977 Supreme Court case that ultimately allowed Nazis the right to march in Skokie, Ill., home to many Jews.
"There can't be free speech for everyone if you have taken away the right of Holocaust survivors to come out that day…unless you think it must come at the cost of severe emotional distress." For that reason, he said, any just legal system must look at the effect of law on people.
Also at the conference was Peter Gabel, a long-time law professor at the now-defunct New College of California School of Law. He decried what he described as a legal system where a good friend could be dissuaded from applying to law school because she could not master the logic questions on the LSAT. Our legal system, he said, should "emphasize not merely winning and losing," but a "moral resolution of a conflict, that produces recognition and connection."
Such are the reasons why Spiritual Progressives support Ms. Kagan as a Supreme Court Justice. Along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, Mr. Gabel told conference-goers, she "will stand up for the human concern." It's all about, "Putting your heart into it—that's the way to exert pressure on the court," he added. The reason: "You will never out-argue [Justice Antonin] Scalia."
Mr. Gabel's matter-of-fact-delivery gave no hint that he saw the irony in promoting a Supreme Court justice because she will use her heart rather than her head—using the same reason men argued that women should not be able to vote at the turn of the last century.
Whether their hope in Ms. Kagan is justified has yet to be proven. The former Harvard Law dean gave vague answers to questions in her Senate confirmation hearings and has virtually no record of jurisprudence to analyze. If anything, her silence about her political views, about previous Supreme Court decisions and about the culture of the current court, with a vagueness of the sort she argued against in a law-review article, reveals the capability for situational ethics so hated in Mr. Obama by progressives.
Yet there is a long list of justices leaving a trail of disappointing decisions to onetime backers, including the man Ms. Kagan would replace, Justice John Paul Stevens. The Gerald Ford-appointee supported affirmative action, abortion rights and a strong federal government at the expense of states' rights.
That means that NSP supporters may have to look elsewhere for inspiration in a year or two if Ms. Kagan is confirmed as expected.
As the Rev. Raymond Bell, senior pastor of First Rising Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, and one of the few African Americans who attended the conference, said, "We've always hoped that the government would do something. … We're used to our hopes not being fulfilled. We're not new in this game. Maybe it's new to white people."
For members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is not just a matter of law or politics. It is a spiritual imperative for the disillusioned Obama acolytes suffering from post-election politician syndrome.
They need a replacement for the "deep cynicism" decimating the hope Barack Obama generated in supporters prior to the 2008 presidential election, according to one of Berkeley-based NSP's three leaders, Rabbi Michael Lerner.
