VFR on Roberts in 2005—Part I

In 2005, when the entire conservative movement was supporting the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, I wrote many entries arguing that Roberts was an unprincipled legal technician who would serve the interests of liberalism.

Here is one of those entries, from September 5, 2005:

Bush and his hollowed-out conservative supporters

Given my previous comparisons of John Roberts to the Mother of All Stealth Nominees, David Souter, and my critical discussions of Roberts’s legal work for homosexual rights and other left-liberal causes, it can be imagined how I feel about President Bush’s nomination of Roberts to fill the vacancy left on the Supreme Court by the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

The reversal of conservative hopes under George W. Bush just doesn’t stop, does it? Bush the elder picked Souter to be an Associate Justice, which was bad enough. But Bush the younger, who is supposedly more conservative than dear old dad, and who repeatedly promised to nominate judges whose judicial philosophy matched that of Thomas or Scalia, has picked a Souter type to be Chief Justice. So come on, all you conservative-movement honchos! As Bush keeps piling betrayal upon betrayal, keep telling us how much you love and support him! Consummate your transformation into what you’ve already become:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 28, 2012 05:43 PM | Send