Opinion

OPINION: Cory Booker’s Stalinesque Kavanaugh Comments: ‘Not A Trial’

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Alan Keyes Former Assistant Secretary of State
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New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker recently stated:

So, my hope is that beyond the vicious partisan rancor that is going on, beyond the accusation, we don’t lose sight of what this moral moment is about in this country, and ultimately ask ourselves the question – Is this the right person to sit on the highest court in the land for a lifetime appointment … And then ultimately not whether he is ‘innocent or guilty’ — this is not a trial — but ultimately, have enough questions been raised that we should not move on to another candidate … but ultimately, have enough questions been raised that we should not move on to another candidate.

The definition of “trial” reads:

A formal examination of evidence by a judge, typically before a jury, in order to decide guilt in a case of criminal or civil proceedings.

A test of performance, qualities, or suitability of someone or something.

A person, experience, or situation that tests a person’s endurance or forbearance.

Today, another word about the U.S. Senate’s obscene test case the Democrat totalitarians (and their media mind-benders) have made of the confirmation process for Judge Kavanaugh: Now that Booker and his Stalinesque fellow travelers have failed it, he wants us to believe it was never a test.

Whatever their political persuasion, Americans who still uphold the Constitution need to ponder Mr. Booker’s brief but thoroughly informative admission of that failure.

Booker’s words indicate that he accepts the fact that Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser has utterly failed to produce a shred of tangible evidence to support the charge she brings against him. So, now, he says evidence doesn’t matter.

Since the judge reacted wrathfully against the vile blows aimed at his reputation, his public service and his family’s life, Booker purports to be shocked and dismayed over the prospect of a judge who sincerely despises malicious injustice. And, finally, he speaks to the general public as if its politically safe to assume that everyone is a co-conspirator in the now glaringly obvious Democrat scheme to deploy scurrilous charges to mock the confirmation process.

This, despite the fact that it is one of the most important pillars upholding the sovereign power of the people of the States, respectively.

It’s not just that the Democrat totalitarians wanted to delay the confirmation process. They have turned it into a staged show, contrived to produce results using propaganda and factional mobilization with no regard for rational deliberation, moral or otherwise.

It seems insane for Booker to suggest that they consider this a “moral moment.” Morality has nothing to do with the totalitarian ideology they espouse. That ideology despises the very idea of ceding power to reasoning when it is based on principles self-evidently true and takes careful account of observable facts. But when they turn against that idea, they wholly discard the thoughtful foundation of our self-government as a people.

The tragedy presently unfolding for the United States owes much to the fact that the totalitarian ideology assumes that there is no power but in the force or forces that determine material outcomes at any given point in time. So, the totalitarian elitists’ perspective on history belies the very idea of “a moral moment” except in the absurd sense of Alexander Pope’s assertion, (slandering God and all decent humanity) that “Whatever is, is right.”

This perspective gives rise to the assertion that “what happens” is the only rule for judgment so that all that matters is the outcome (of an election, a battle, or of “History) Anything is “moral” that contributes to a favorable outcome.

Of course, this raises the question: Favorable to whom?

When the outcome of history leads to the mass murder of millions of kulaks, Chinese anti-Communists, or Nazi hated Jews in Europe, is that outcome — favorable to the Soviets, the Maoists or Hitler’s Nazi mesmerized Germans — a “moral moment” or a morally detestable, timelessly damnable crime against God and all Creation? Though few openly say yes, the totalitarians’ ideology forces the answer.

They may say pretend it has something to do with stern service to a good cause, but the service rendered before the outcome has been resolved (as the trials at Nuremberg attest) operates in the absence of any standard, not on account of it.

This paradox has always belied the heartily self-righteous tone of totalitarian analytical tomes. Marx drones heavily about the oppressive plight of the proletariat. Imperialists and ruthless capitalists, and the “race” of despicable financiers, also come in for heavy doses of totalitarian ire.

But if the emotion that results proves insufficient to “make history,” its verdict follows the winners, awarding then the rulers’ scepter, until the next go-round. By the standard of history that makes they have the only warrant of right that matters.

Of course, the scribblers of totalitarian tracts presume upon the fact that some moral code already informs their readers. Since it developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, the ideologues of totalitarianism heavily relied on the Christian ethos, which was emerging victorious against other more ancient forms of moral habituation.

Supposedly empirical social science and psychology worked to shoulder it aside as an analytical framework. But both suffered from the defect of reasoning, after the fact, that made “history” useless as the basis for moral judgment.

So, in practice, the totalitarian ideologues perforce had to play upon the heartstrings of consciences directly or indirectly informed by the Christian understanding. This is one reason the totalitarian ideologues always have to perfume their forceful imposition of control and regimentation with rhetorical tropes that purport to advance democracy. It’s why they cast their goals in terms that pretend to edify the people; the downtrodden masses; the common spirit of “volk.”

In every case, however, the resulting edifice of government relies on the oppressive stratification of society, characteristic of oligarchic dictatorship in every epoch of human experience. The classless utopia that purports to be the goal of totalitarian communist and socialist reveries is literally “nowhere” to be found.

So, Booker and his ilk pluck saturate their rhetoric with irate concerns for the exploited, the victimized — the dejected, rejected, spiritually and emotionally homeless people plagued with the sense that there is nowhere is the place where they belong.

Impelled by this sense, they are easily taken up by emotional currents that promise to remove all the identifying boundaries, norms, limits and habitations whose every existence reproaches the unhomelike consciousness that discourages their every attempt to heal the wound of being alone, undistinguished, and unremarkable for anything but their prideful humiliation.

Such were the sort of people to whom the promise of God’s kingdom, revealed in Jesus Christ, offered abiding hope as Christianity spread throughout the earth. Unlike the distant prospect of some totalitarian utopia, Christ did not invite people to accept present bondage for the sake of future domination.

He counseled instead that each should “cast down your bucket where you are,” laying aside the pointless longing for future power in order to rule themselves, upon the throne of power God has set up in every heart, from which all who identify with Christ may rule the universe within themselves as God-in Christ rules all things else by His goodwill.

This exchange if homelessness for home-rule, as it were, – within the precincts of every human body that accepts to have the seed of Christ implanted — becomes the tree of individual liberty. It begins with the struggle to conquer one’s own soul, for the sake of God-in-Christ. It ends by becoming a community of unselfish conquerors, capable of serving the happiness and peace of others, as Christ served all the world. This is, or ought to be, the goal of human power, for every human government worthy of the task.

The commitment to self-government, inextricably bound to God’s rules for human nature (what the American Declaration of Independence calls “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”) is the standard of right from which all other rights derive.

Because our self-government assumes that this commitment exists in every citizen, our law presumes that they are innocent of violating it. This presumption stands unless the evidence of their own acts proves the contrary. This presumption is the emblem of self-rule, an ensign of sovereign rank that cannot be removed but by a fair trial of the evidence that justifies removing it.

Thanks to its root in the way, truth and life of Christ, this sovereign insignia is like a birthmark, born with and by every natural and naturalized American. No test of battle is required for them to claim it.

To the contrary, a test or trial governed by rational principle, with strict regard for the premises of right endowed by God, must be applied to all who wish to strip it away. The burden of proof is on the accuser. No matter if one or a hundred thousand accusers level charges that question it. Without evidence, the lineage of sovereignty stands, with God as the witness who attests to its truth, for all who bear the title of humanity.

Booker and his cohorts now want us to accept the assertion that accusation without trial is proof enough to bar Judge Kavanaugh from service to our country. Are we so foolish as to forget that such accusations were the stuff Stalin’s ‘show trials’ were made on; the stuff that Mao used so that roaming gangs could murderously enforce his “Perpetual Revolution?” When these totalitarians have turned every election, every hearing, every disputed issue into a proofless execution, decided by the heaviest barrage of unproven, and therefore irresistible charges, what must become of liberty?

Judge Kavanaugh is just the ultimate test subject. The aim is to launch a campaign of totalitarian oppression throughout our society.

If the suspending the presumption of innocence works, despite the public exposure and prestige of a Constitutionally mandated confirmation hearing of the highest order, what fools they are who think that it will not become the norm against citizens like themselves. They have much less warrant — not to mention means of money and influence — to defend themselves against it.

We must not forget the evidence of history: Once totalitarians can presume the guilt of some, they have always ended up oppressing or snuffing out the lives of millions. America’s turn is coming once we fail to defeat this onslaught. That means defeating the betrayers of our sovereignty as a people, as individuals, and as a Party.

Dr. Alan Keyes is a political activist, prolific writer, former diplomat, and the founder of LoyaltoLiberty.com


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.