Seems that for Senator Dianne Feinstein, being a believing Catholic is enough to disqualify a candidate for a federal judgeship.
Feinstein stated as such at confirmation hearings for Notre Dame law professor Amy Barrett, nominated by President Trump to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma," explained the Senator. "And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern when you come to the big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country."
In follow-up clarification from Feinstein's office, we learn that what's foremost on the Senator's mind is abortion.
"Professor Barrett has argued that a judge's faith should affect how they approach certain cases. Based on this Senator Feinstein questioned her if she could separate her views from the law, particularly regarding women's reproductive rights."
But Professor Barrett is already on record, and widely quoted, that a judge should recuse himself or herself when deliberating a case that conflicts with his or her religious convictions.
Most fundamental, however, is a judge's willingness and ability to think clearly, rigorously and honestly. It is on this test -- clear, rigorous and honest thought -- we find the failure on the side of Senator Feinstein.
How is it that religious principle is "dogma," but left-wing doctrine, spontaneously emerging from the minds of men and women with certain political predispositions, is not?
"Women's reproductive rights"? Where does this come from? What exactly is the authority according to which we arrive to the conclusion, and codify into law, that a woman has a "right" to destroy her innocent unborn child? From what incontrovertible eternal truth does this absurdity emerge?
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I would put it, and Feinstein's inquisition, more in the category of the famous quote of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can only be maintained for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
We have arrived to a sad state of affairs where many falsehoods have been widely peddled in society at large and ultimately accepted as truths. And the process whereby this has occurred is frighteningly like the process described by Goebbels. Alleged "facts," emerging from politically interested parties, are repeated over and over in the media, until these "facts" are widely accepted as truth and then preserved by suppressing dissent.
After many years, many of these distortions have found their way into courtrooms and into law.
Now liberals like Feinstein, after having succeeded in rewriting much of our social script, and purging the biblically rooted truths that informed our law and replacing them with the premises of the secular humanism promoted on our college campuses, want to move forward with the rest of Goebbels' program.
They want to use the State to repress dialogue and dissent.
In their view, a legal scholar who happens to believe that life is sacred, that to destroy life in the womb is murder, should be disqualified to be a federal judge.
Is their opinion the same regarding a legal scholar who happens to believe that marriage is a holy sacrament between a man and a woman?
Senator Feinstein and company should be on notice that, despite their inclinations, America remains a free nation and still, in the eyes of many, a free nation under God.
Far from being over, the cultural war is still going strong.
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