Think about it...

President Thomas, Justice Obama

September 4, 2011 by Don Surber

What if Barack Obama served on the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas were president? What if some miracle — some “Freaky Friday” Disney moment — on January 20, 2009, the two most politically powerful black men in Washington switched jobs. What then? We know what Justice Obama would have become: Another mediocre liberal drone spitting out the predictably contradictory and vapid decisions that slowly corrode our rights and undermine our nation and our society. Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer and Obama are an interchangeable lot. They want to hollow out our Constitution.

But what kind of president would Clarence Thomas, a truly independent thinker, make? An examination of his history would show an angry young black man who matured into an elder whose hide is thicker than a rhinoceros and whose determination to thrive despite all the slings and arrows thrown at him by the barbaric bigots on the left. Andre Carson can go hang himself. John Lewis can pound salt. And Maxine Waters can go straight to hell. None of them stood beside Clarence Thomas during that electronic lynching by those racist liberals in his confirmation circus 20 years ago.

I remember people calling him a hypocritical ingrate for not appreciating the affirmative action that got him into Yale. They were calling him Boy. He knew it and he would have none of it. Clarence Thomas has proved George H.W. Bush correct when he said Clarence Thomas was the best man for the job, because he could take all that vile vitriol from the left and become the most outstanding member of this court.

Clarence Thomas has an intellectual curiosity that is sadly missing elsewhere on the bench. His approach to the Constitution does James Madison proud. Last summer, the court voted 8-1 to strike down a Virginia law that bans the burning of crosses. The one who stood up for that law was Justice Thomas and he was right. He wrote: “This statute prohibits only conduct, not expression. Just as one cannot burn down someone’s house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point.”

This was not a First Amendment case. This was a terrorist threat against an inter-racial couple — like Clarence and Virginia Thomas. It takes an extraordinary individual to remain civil and not take personal the legal claptrap written by his 8 colleagues — all of them white and none of them smart enough to see that such intimidation is a crime.

In Kelo vs. the city of New London, in which the court stripped away private property rights in favor of the public good, Justice Thomas wrote in dissent:

Still worse, it is backwards to adopt a searching standard of constitutional review for nontraditional property interests, such as welfare benefits, see, e.g., Goldberg, supra, while deferring to the legislature’s determination as to what constitutes a public use when it exercises the power of eminent domain, and thereby invades individuals’ traditional rights in real property. The Court has elsewhere recognized ‘the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic,’ Payton, supra, at 601, when the issue is only whether the government may search a home. Yet today the Court tells us that we are not to second-guess the City’s considered judgments, ante, at 18, when the issue is, instead, whether the government may take the infinitely more intrusive step of tearing down petitioners’ homes. Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not. Once one accepts, as the Court at least nominally does, ante, at 6, that the Public Use Clause is a limit on the eminent domain power of the Federal Government and the States, there is no justification for the almost complete deference it grants to legislatures as to what satisfies it.

That line rings so true: “Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not.” A man’s home is his castle? Well, the state will just confiscate that castle and then where are you? In some government-run shelter and if you complain you are a hypocritical ingrate.

By the way, the Kelo property is now an urban wasteland as the project bellied up. Had New London, Connecticut, protected the rights of individuals, the Kelos would still be paying the town property taxes on their beloved home. This is what happens when Supreme Court justices fail to do their job and protect the rights of men.

No longer am I alone in appreciating Justice Thomas. From Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker — whose purpose is to see that Justice Thomas is disqualified from hearing the Obamacare case because his wife is politically active:

The conventional view of Thomas takes his lack of participation at oral argument as a kind of metaphor. The silent Justice is said to be an intellectual nonentity, a cipher for his similarly conservative colleague, Antonin Scalia. But those who follow the Court closely find this stereotype wrong in every particular. Thomas has long been a favorite of conservatives, but they admire the Justice for how he gives voice to their cause, not just because he votes their way. “Of the nine Justices presently on the Court, he is the one whose opinions I enjoy reading the most,” Steve Calabresi, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a co-founder of the Federalist Society, said. “They are very scholarly, with lots of historical sources, and his views are the most principled, even among the conservatives. He has staked out some bold positions, and then the Court has set out and moved in his direction.”

Thomas’s intellect and his influence have also been recognized by those who generally disagree with his views. According to Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, Thomas’s career resembles that of Hugo Black, the former Alabama senator who served from 1937 to 1971 and is today universally regarded as a major figure in the Court’s history. “Both were Southerners who came to the Court young and with very little judicial experience,” Amar said. (Thomas is from Georgia.) “Early in their careers, they were often in dissent, sometimes by themselves, but they were content to go their own way. But once Earl Warren became Chief Justice the Court started to come to Black. It’s the same with Thomas and the Roberts Court. Thomas’s views are now being followed by a majority of the Court in case after case.”

So we have this fiercely independent straight-thinker on the bench. What could we expect from a Thomas presidency?

1. A pack of jackals press that would tear into him at every opportunity imaginable. Former girlfriends and any hint of scandal would be examined fully and in public. His birth certificate would be displayed on Page One of the New York Times. The barrage of constant carping on minor points of petty disputes would cause ears to ring from Maine to California. Perhaps, as Hank Johnson might say, Hawaii would tip over from all the people moving there to avoid That Damnable Ringing.

2. President Thomas would show no sign of complaint and would continue to be a gracious and humble public servant, secure in the knowledge that the Truth outlasts the fool.

3. There would be no Thomascare as the president would see the interstate commerce clause as limiting federal powers to arbitrating interstate disputes rather than a license to run roughshod over the states.

4. There would be no stimulus and no trillion-dollar spending sprees. President Thomas would have the nation live within its means. Unemployment would be 5% — the same as it was the last two times the budget was balance in the early 1970s and late 1990s.

5. Moammar Gadhafi would have celebrated his 42nd year in power — unless President Thomas had the permission of Congress first to lob Cruise missiles around Tripoli. Frankly, I think Clarence Thomas is sick of such adventures in kinetic military activity.

6. No one would appreciate what a fine and wonderful president we would have. Perhaps it is better that each generation has a Carter or an Obama to remind us of the cost of socialism.

In short, we’d wind up with a Reagan-worthy president.