During President Obama’s campaign for the presidency, he said that he wanted his Supreme Court nominees to have empathy. We need more empathy in our courts because with empathy comes thinking. Gee what a novel idea.
President Obama
After President Obama kept his campaign promise and announced Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for the US Supreme Court, former US Representative Tom Tancredo attacked The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States describing them as “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the noose.” Tommy boy is once again projecting his self hatred, fear mongering to the base of the Republican Party and wrapping himself in the Confederate flag.
After the President’s announcement of his Supreme Court pick, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said: “Crazy nonsense empathic. I’ll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind. Craziness.” Steele makes it clear that the Republican Party’s new code word du jour is “empathy.” Evidently, according to Steele, anyone showing an ounce of compassion isn’t qualified to sit on the high court. Progressive liberals need to tell the Republicans to shut up and sit in the corner because the adults are now in charge. We have a lot of work to do putting this country back together after the Republicans destroyed it over the last 8 years.
In the past, Republicans attempted to make “liberal” a dirty word. Today, “empathy” is not only a Republican code word for “judicial activism;” it is also code for anything progressive liberal. I think we already know they will fail at branding empathy as a bad thing. No one takes the Republican Party seriously anymore. Conservatives refuse to walk in another person’s shoes. The Republican Party has lost the capacity to show compassion for their fellow human beings. Of course, this presumes that they possessed this capability to begin with.
Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor
While we continue to hear the slobbering Republican Party attack those who are empathic, let us not forget what having empathy really means. It’s no surprise that the Republican Party opposes “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…”
The base of the Republican Party, the so-called Christian conservatives, conveniently forget that Jesus was empathetic. Any Republican Bible thumper should know that. This demonstrates how demented and twisted the Republicans truly are. They viciously attack progressive liberals when we dare to show our humanity through empathy. The actions of Tancredo and Steele are nothing more than Republicans projecting their own short falls.
Posted by: Joe Allen, May 31, 2009
ProudProgressiveLiberal at gmail.com
