The Party of Bork

(Justice)Rosenberg equals the government over business, the individual over government, the environment over everything. And the Indians? Oh, give 'em whatever they want. -- Pelican Brief, 1993

That description of a fictional Supreme Court Justice's judicial philosophy condenses as well as anything I've ever read the core of liberalism.

Government over business, the individual over government, the environment over everything, and give the Indians whatever they want.

In other words: regulate business to protect society; regulate government to protect individuals; regulate business, government and individuals to protect the environment on which they all depend; and do everything to make up for America's genocide.

Liberalism prizes the individual above business and government in every case, except where trumped by protecting the natural world and paying for genocide.

No surprise that conservatism values precisely the opposite: government over individuals who challenge business, and business over government, individuals, the environment, Indians, science, religion and common sense.

It's easy to figure the conservative position on virtually anything: whatever is in the best short-term interest of huge, rapacious corporations is what conservatives are for. No matter who or what gets trampled in the process.

There is one guaranteed way to turn every repug in the nation into a pro-abortion fanatic overnight: find a way for the Koch Brothers to profit from it.

Repugs are anti-women - or rather anti- sentient, independent women - because sentient, independent women are not profitable.

Think I'm exaggerating? It's all there, plain as day, in the judicial decisions of the man Mitt Romney has hired to advise him on judicial appointments - whom a President Romney would appoint to the Supreme Court: Robert Bork.

Down with Tyranny:

In August 1987, during his Supreme Court confirmation fight, the Public Citizen Litigation Group published an exhaustive and devastating report on Judge Bork’s judicial record. The authors could find no “consistent application of judicial restraint or any other judicial philosophy” in Bork’s work on the Court. Rather, by focusing on split decisions, where judicial ideology is made most plain, Public Citizen found that “one can predict [Bork’s] vote with almost complete accuracy simply by identifying the parties in the case.” When the government litigated against a business corporation, Judge Bork voted for the business interest 100% of the time. But when government was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers, Bork voted nearly 100% of the time for the government.

In the crucial field of administrative law, for example, “Judge Bork adhered to an extreme form of judicial restraint if the case was brought by public interest organizations. His vote favored the executive in every one of the seven split decisions in which public interest organizations challenged regulations issued by federal agencies.” In these cases, Judge Bork defended, for example, Reagan administration rules relating to the environment, the regulation of carcinogenic colors in food, drugs and cosmetics, the regulation of companies with television and radio licenses, and privacy rules in family planning clinics. Similarly, in the six split decisions relating to civil rights and civil liberties where the government was a party, Judge Bork “voted against the individual every time.” In one of these cases, Dronenburg v. Zech, Judge Bork wrote a 1984 opinion upholding the Navy’s discharge of a sailor for being gay and used the opportunity to attack the Supreme Court’s entire line of authority, beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut, which articulated a constitutional right to privacy in matters relating to sex and procreation.

Yet, in the eight split decisions where a business interest challenged the government, Judge Bork voted straight down the line for business every time.

He's not alone; just the most blatant example. Bork might as well be on the Supreme Court already, because every decision of the Fanatic Five falls right in line on the conservative business uber alles imperative. Bush v. Gore, Carhart, Citizens United, Florence: every single one elevated business and authoritarian government over the individual regardless of Constitutional letter, spirit or precedent.

No lie repugs tell is as despicably mendacious as the claim that conservatism honors and protects individuals.

Read the whole thing.