Eugenics in the USA: Black Life, White Justice

Although some liberals are bent on denying the existence of a cultural battle they appear to be losing (the “war on Christmas” — see the preceding New Oxford Note), their smug self-assurance when discussing cultural battles they’ve been winning for decades (e.g., the “war on the unborn”) occasionally causes them to reveal more than they intended.

The most recent example comes courtesy of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a noted liberal. How liberal is she? In the 1970s Ginsburg served as general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union; that same decade she cofounded the ACLU’s “Women’s Rights Project.” She also cofounded the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first journal of its kind to focus exclusively on women’s legal matters. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and in 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court, where she has been a consistent advocate for abortion. So intent is she on making life itself difficult for the unborn that she twice voted against outlawing partial-birth abortion (in 2000 and 2007).

To top it off, Ginsburg became the first Supreme Court justice to preside over a same-sex wedding when she officiated at the August 2013 “nuptials” of 59-year-old Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and 32-year-old John Roberts, a commodities regulator. She later remarked that same-sex marriage represents the “genius” of the U.S. Constitution.

Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg a liberal? Yes, a card-carrying one, if there were such a thing.