Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks on a peculiar aspect of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, giving us a glimpse into the hidden world of the high court, but also into the characters of Thomas and Sotomayor.
Here’s the Sotomayor quote mentioned in this episode, from The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2022, print edition ‘Notable & Quotable section:
I suspect I have probably disagreed with him more than with any other justice, that we have not joined each other’s opinions more than anybody else. And yet Justice [Clarence] Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name. Every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their families’ names and histories. He’s the first one who will go up to someone, when you’re walking with him, and say, “Is your son OK? How’s your daughter doing in college?” He’s the first one that when my stepfather died sent me flowers in Florida. He is a man who keeps cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work there, but about people. . . . You really can’t begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith, but until you can look at their views and think about what the human reaction is that’s motivating those views.
— Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
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24 replies on “Grace Notes: Supreme Court’s Sotomayor Publicly Reveals Shocking Facts about Clarence Thomas”
We need to stop acting like abused spouses and running back into the arms of these radicals every time we receive the faintest of praise. Enough is enough.
I don’t know if I am among the “we” referred to in that statement, but for the sake of clarity, I’d like to include this:
I said, “For the first time ever since I first heard her name, I respect Sonia Sotomayor.” I stand by that.
What I neglected to mention is that it could easily be the last time I will ever respect Sonia Sotomayor as well. I am pleased and surprised that she has seen that in Thomas… but she quite obviously did not connect it to any other facets of the man’s personality, nor did it cause her to rethink any of her own views. She is still exactly the same person, with exactly the same vision of herself, and exactly the same contempt for legal process if it doesn’t get the results she wants.
As always, scratch a leftist, find a totalitarian who imagines themselves as one of the Elect, better than us poor peasants, different not only in degree but in kind.
It’s nice to know there is a human under there after all… but not only do I not believe that human can ever dig out from under the crap she’s buried under, I don’t believe she has any desire to do so.
OK. Understood. Thank you for clarifying. Did not intend any offense. I personally viewed her statement as empty, convenient and identical to the phony cries from Biden for unity upon his inauguration after the radical Democrats did (and continue to do) everything they can to divide and conquer.
Once upon a time Sotomayor would have received respect from me for making that statement. Not any more, and I’m not sure she would have deserved it them. The Democrats and RINO’s have taken advantage of our trust for a long time while lining their pockets and populating the Swamp with fellow ugly creatures of betrayal.
These snakes are in it for themselves…always, and they proved it again with 3 votes against overturning a clear mistake by the Court. Party over country and the law every time.
God bless you and yours. Enjoy your weekend!
I suggest you read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict Of Visions. It will help you to understand how someone like her can actually be completely sincere in what you and I think of as two utterly incompatible views. She begins from a different set of assumptions about what the world is and how it works.
An example of this is the view of the law. People like you and me concern ourselves with process. When we speak of “equality under the law,” we think of people going through the same process, subject to the same rules. Sure, sometimes you don’t get the results you hoped for, but that equality of process is the best you can hope for.
Someone with the vision of the world common to people like Sotomayor, when they speak of “equality under the law,” they think in terms of equality of result. That’s why they think the mere fact that more blacks get convicted of crimes than whites in this country is, by itself, absolute proof of systemic racism. “Equality under the law” is either meaningless, or a deliberate lie, if it generates unequal results, according to the set of assumptions they have about how the world works.
Oh and I wasn’t offended. And for the record, I agree with your statement that we need to stop treating them as people we can negotiate with in good faith. We can’t. That’s inherent in the incompatibility of the two visions. We use the same words, but mean vastly different, sometimes opposite, things by them.
Given that, “acting in good faith” is as or more likely to result in problems as intentional sabotage. So whether we or they “act in good faith” is completely beside the point.
Hi Sam. Thank you for your understanding and your detailed response and the Sowell recommendation. He’s a national treasure. I’ll add it to my list.
.
Having said that, only a complete and utter freaking moron defines the fairness inherent in equality as equality of outcome without regard to the effort put forth by each individual.
But of course, communists love to hide behind incompetent puppets.
Only communists and their useful idiots define equality as equal outcome. The former sell it as a lie to the useful idiots while they grab power by demonizing another group. The useful idiots absorb the lie to feed their ego and record fake achievement while avoiding personal responsibility and the actual achievement that results.
So Sotomayor is either an incredibly dense ego-freak with a weapons-grade, delusional sense of innate ability in complete contradiction to her epic stupidity or a lying communist. Either one, she should be impeached and her law license revoked.
I don’t think humanity has developed the medical instruments or the psychological analysis required to measure the level of abject vacancy of intellect it takes to sit as a justice on the SCOTUS in the capital city of the nation the Preamble of whose Declaration of Independence begins with:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration
.. in a building a mere 2.6 miles from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial whose primary civil rights figure fighting for equality said this on August 28, 1963:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
https://www.ihaveadreamspeech.us/
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lincoln+Memorial,+Lincoln+Memorial,+Lincoln+Memorial+Circle+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/Supreme+Court+of+the+United+States,+1+First+St+NE,+Washington,+DC+20543/@38.8900143,-77.0360627,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7b771e0906287:0x1049d1c9c95c2eb6!2m2!1d-77.050176!2d38.8892686!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7b828d32c69bb:0xffb704728ee19592!2m2!1d-77.0050676!2d38.8906396!3e2
If Sotomayor is truly this functionally retarded, she should be captured and studied by the world’s leading primatologists, anthropologists, zoologists and evolutionary biologists with a dash of philosophers and divinity experts to handle the wonder and awe of God’s creation angle.
I was a young squire at the time, but I still remember the main argument against affirmative action…”Well, as long as it doesn’t turn into equal outcome.” The concern then was giving people who hadn’t earned something the same rewards by lowering the standards of achievement as we have with school admissions test scores and dropping the physical fitness standards for fire, police, military, etc.
The reason I remember this is that my parents worked hard as a team to put food on the table and provide a home for us while my brother and I delivered papers among other things while working hard to obtain a great education. We treasured the opportunity and demanded the best from ourselves to achieve an outcome. No way did we want to just hand the success we earned to a lazy, undeserving, spoiled, entitled slug.
My guess is these communists knew then that equal outcome was their final goal, at least the ones directing the agenda they’ve been pushing all this time.
Based on my background, you can imagine how Obama’s “white privilege” went over with me…like a fart in church. It was one of the driving forces which propelled me to figure out what the hell they were scheming behind the scenes.
Along these lines, what really grates me is when some complete freaking moron says, :”Well isn’t about time we had a [insert victim group here] [POTUS / SCOTUS justice / police chief / college president / district attorney].”
I don’t give a rip if we have 1,000 white male presidents or whatever in a row going forward as long as we’re getting the best person for the job, and I’m fed up with these communists pretending otherwise and their useful idiots like Sotomayor being given the time of day while they insult and condemn the rest of us “deplorables” with the insinuations they make by titling themselves as “progressives” while impede the actual progress we all want and deserve as we maintain the equality of opportunity this great nation already offers and has for a long time.
Get them all out of office. Every last one. Drain the Swamp.
God bless and thanks again!
“Having said that, only a complete and utter freaking moron defines the fairness inherent in equality as equality of outcome without regard to the effort put forth by each individual.”
And they think our reasoning makes as little sense, and cannot possibly be honest, every bit as much as we think of them.
And believe it or not, it logically follows for both of us. It’s because we begin with different postulates.
I don’t claim to understand it, but having read the explanation of it, I believe that it’s true.
Well the truth is the truth, and I will not cede it to morons like Sotomayor. In no way shape or form is stealing from one person what they’ve earned and giving it to another fair. It’s only fair to them as they want to pit the haves versus the have nots against each other while they grab power. They are communists.
I’ll bet their followers won’t feel like they’ve been treated fairly when they’re in the bread lines or in prison for daring to buck the regime.
At a certain point, we as actual good, decent people need to stop compromising and appeasing by giving them the benefit of the doubt or the time of day. We’ve done this for years in an effort not to “offend’ them and be politically correct as defined by them. It was the genesis of cancel culture and Twitter mobs though seemed innocent enough at the time to the rest of us who wanted to go along to get along.
If we don’t stand up to the bullies now, we will fall to their hidden agenda of tyranny.
Sotomayor can kiss it.
Very much appreciate your thoughts and perspective. Thank you. God bless. Enjoy your day.
What clarified my understanding was the realization that they have no interest in truth or logic and will engage—or have their useful idiots engage—in whatever lies and hypocrisy they deem necessary to divide and distract as they centralize power and control. Once they believe they have installed themselves securely in power, they will unmask and reveal their tyranny.
Also critical to my understanding was realizing that evil people who disregard life, don’t believe they will ever be judged by God and will commit horrible atrocities—killing 17 children and 2 teaches in Uvalde to justify a gun grab, for example—still exist.
Not saying that’s what happened in Uvalde, but look at how they stirred up Ukraine. You think they care about dead Ukrainian children?
When you think like a prideful, arrogant, condescending globalist with a might equals right, I define what’s moral and not, collateral damage is necessary for the good of the world as I’m the smart one mentality seeking control and following Agenda 2030, everything they are doing from open borders to lying to us about the vaccines makes perfect sense.
They’re not all evil like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Just the ones at the top with Satan being the ultimate director through temptation. But those at the top are using the rest to their own ends, probably by appealing to their arrogance and egos.
“When you think like a prideful, arrogant, condescending globalist with a might equals right, I define what’s moral and not, collateral damage is necessary for the good of the world as I’m the smart one mentality seeking control and following Agenda 2030, everything they are doing from open borders to lying to us about the vaccines makes perfect sense.”
Which is exactly the point I was making. They aren’t con artists playing us. It’s far, far worse than that. They sincerely believe the manure they’re peddling.
“Well the truth is the truth, and I will not cede it to morons like Sotomayor.”
Me neither.
OK. Sounds like we’re on the same page. They can wish in one hand that the truth is on their side and crap in the other and see which one fills up first. Understood that they truly believe it. As one of my favorite math teachers used to say, “Right is right even if no one is right, and wrong is wrong even if everyone is wrong.” That’s pretty much where they are.
The inmates took over the asylum while no one was looking. Time to restore order.
,MAGA and lead the world forward.
Around minute 7 or 8 Bill mentions law vs. morality. I hope he/they have a segment sometime exploring that more deeply. We have a government and a society based on the rule of law; viz., “a government of laws, not of men”. But men are the final arbiters of their moral outlook, while “law” can be correctly or unwisely worded, or change meaning or circumstance over time. So wherever we have bad law not in sync with the reasonable moral assessment, we need to have ways of changing the laws quickly and correctly; or come up with new rationales for changing our moral views.
Some both in the video and here in the comments say this has raised their opinion of Sonia Sotomayor to some degree. For me the opposite is true.
It’s one thing to be unaware of the right path and blindly stumbling down the wrong one because you don’t know any better and your view is clouded by tunnel vision. It’s a completely different thing to see, know, admire and laud the right path and still insist on stumbling down the wrong one.
It’s also a matter of perception, or perhaps I mean perceptiveness. Sotomayor can perceive the good in Clarence Thomas and as far as that goes she can admire it but she does not perceive the connection between that foundational good and the rest of his actions on the bench. If the way Thomas faces humanity is commendable and laudable then that is not something Thomas likely reserves solely for employees and acquaintances. If Thomas acts in the way she describes it’s not some kind of parlour trick or quirk of mnemonic retention, it’s who the man actually is.
Sotomayor can see The Light, it’s standing right in front of her in the person of Clarence Thomas. She looks at the light, admires it, writes about it then turns away from it to favor her chosen darkness.
She literally demonstrates Lucifer’s Choice from Paradise Lost by Milton — Preferring to rule in Hell over serving in Heaven. To corrupt the Constitution by inserting an agenda rather than serve it by a stalwart interpretation — That is exactly what she’s doing. She is exerting her will not the will of the Founders and contrary to the laws we all agree to live under. She binds the Right to those laws while allowing the Left to ignore or corrupt them. The dichotomy between Sotomayor and Thomas could not be more sharply defined nor focused any clearer.
I don’t find anything in that to increase my respect for Sonia Sotomayor. All she really did with this was invalidate any excuses she might have for being who and what she is.
My regard for her thereby is adversely affected while knowing this tidbit about Clarence Thomas raises my opinion of that man all the more.
I’ll give her the very words she spoke, returned to her on a silver platter:
“You really can’t begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith …”
Yet when I step back and look at her views I see someone who ought to know better, has a shining example in front of her and has no excuse not to know better; yet chooses to ignore what she ought rightfully know to be best.
Even the fact that she salts her comment with the expression “bad faith” is telling to me. Why? Here’s a definition of bad faith …
Bad Faith (noun)
I don’t think Sotomayor or any other Justice on the Supreme Court fits that definition. She introduces it to imply it then show everyone how gracious and open minded she is to disavow it. That’s a very cleverly crafted Straw Man Fallacy. Do you think a Supreme Court Justice doesn’t know how to carefully choose her words? I’m not going to buy that one.
I don’t think anyone on the Supreme Court is acting in bad faith. Good being true to Good is Good Faith. Evil being true to Evil is also Good Faith, in that it’s genuine and not intended to deceive or mislead. Rather that is Evil showing itself and spreading its cards on the table for everyone to see. It’s honest, it’s not in bad faith but it sure as hell isn’t good or something to be lauded either.
I’m not even saying Sotomayor is evil, I’m saying she’s being influenced by Evil and she refuses to move into the Light.
Again using her own words —
“… look at their views and think about what the human reaction is that’s motivating those views.”
What I see when I look at her views and the motivation for them is the profound influence of humanistic evil. Her intention may not be to deceive while her actions demonstrate she herself is the deceived. That is always the most efficient, influential course for Evil to chart, True Believers are nearly impossible to sway with reason.
There just is no other way to explain how someone that intelligent and that educated can swear an oath before Heaven and Earth to uphold the Constitution then betray that oath consistently without so much as a pang of conscience. All the while excusing her perfidy with sophistry.
I find very little commendable about that woman. May God have Mercy on her soul.
That is an interesting perspective of which I had not considered. Thank you for, as usual, giving a different slant on things. If Justice Sotamayor knows what good looks like and acts like, then to not try to emulate it does speak volumes. As always, thanks for taking the time to write it all out.
Thanks, that’s complementary by my lights. I appreciate very much that you took the time to say that.
When it comes to the U.S. Constitution there are only two types of Government personalities. There is the type like Clarence Thomas who strives mightily to understand and apply the ideals of our Founding Fathers when they codified those mores into our Constitution. Such people thereby are servants of the the Constitution, the Rule of Law and of The People.
Then you have the Sotomayor, Obama etc. types who study the U.S. Constitution seeking ways to thwart the ideals contained therein and insert their own agenda. This is a highly skilled endeavor because the Founding Fathers, and subsequent Amendments, do not leave a lot of wiggle room. This kind is seeking mastery of the Constitution, defeat of the Rule of Law and whether they admit it or not or even know it or not, tyranny over The People.
There are only the two types, everyone in power in the U.S. whether elected or appointed falls somewhere between the two ends of that spectrum.
Just because I know you will appreciate the quote.
“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
While I appreciate and share Scott’s sentiment, the problem remains of finding a single Democrat today acting in good faith. They don’t. Not even a close call. They are lying, communist, globalist tyrants seeking total control or useful idiots putting their own ego and self-interest above that of the country.
Now that President Trump is gone, everyone in the Republican machine wants to jump in front of the parade after the hard work and sacrifice he, me and millions of Americans including the Whittleverse and our dear leaders here have performed to take this country back. We are on the verge of thagt, which is why they cry for “normal” and “civil dialogue” and fawn over DeSantis as a “uniter.”
Make no mistake. They will try to destroy DeSantis just as they tried to destroy President Trump. It’s Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football all over again with the fascist Swamp as the controlled opposition RINO’s wants to get back to a united, normal country after the Democrats try to wreck and divide. The Republican voters fall for it every single time. WE CANNOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN OR ELSE WE WON’T HAVE A COUNTRY.
And to augment your comment, I perceive the best leverage point for every Republican office holder or candidate going forward is to take a class in how to denigrate the media at every turn for the biased and lying scum they have become, as they are failing to provide part of the checks and balances the founders perceived would be available to an alert and literate public. Then go after the state universities and the state/local boards of education via treats of funding cutoffs, etc., to get them realigned with stable republican and Republican values. Finally, theR’s need to reject any PAC or related campaign or lobbying money from those corporations with woke CEO’s and overly aggressive HR/DEI departments.
DeSantis is not always favored, even by some of my fellow Floridians, as he sometimes comes across as “too aggressive” against the media, or “making waves to polish his national exposure”. But he does know his stuff and has admonished his fellow R’s at some other state Republican meeting(s) to take the attack to the media, not be wall flowers, and emphasizing that the media (as presently behaving and constituted) are (mostly) not our friends.
Well said!
Show me one communist Democrat not acting in bad faith while trying to destroy this country as they deceive and lie through their teeth. Tulsi Gabbard comes to mind, but she and others like her are reviled by their own party.
These are power-hungry globalist tyrants. Glad Sotomayor recognizes the value of being a conservative and that we actually care about people, but her talk is cheap.
Sotomayor has to walk the walk if she’s going to talk the talk. I absolutely detest when hypocrites try to steal valor from those who espouse the values the hypocrites themselves ignore. Failing to arm herself with the TRUTH before VOTING FOR BIDEN’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL VACCINE MANDATE does not make her a good faith actor interested in the welfare of the American people or our protection from tyranny by the Constitution. These are basic facts which anyone but especially a SCOTUS justice should have spent the time to gather before rendering such an important decision.
Can you imagine a country where the Biden regime would have been able to weaponize any federal agency, not just OSHA, to enforce vaccine mandates?
https://www.citizensjournal.us/sotomayor-repeats-lies-as-supreme-court-argues-over-bidens-covid-shot-mandate/
For the first time ever since I first heard her name, I respect Sonia Sotomayor.
Forgive what sounds like a complete departure from subject, but it isn’t, I promise.
My sister, while I love her, is the one of my siblings I personally like least. She and I were members of a medieval reenactment group (Society for Creative Anachronism) for decades. And at one point she and her husband were “Baron and Baroness” of the local group. There was trouble during their time as the landed nobles. To hear her tell it, it was motivated by jealousy and envy. I don’t know, I was abroad at the time. But the end result was that she and her husband stepped down, just to keep peace in the Barony.
Many years later, the landed nobles at the time announced that they were stepping down (the job is surprisingly stressful and wearing), and names were being taken for who might succeed them. Her husband asked her if they should consider putting their names in again, as the people who were available for the job were mostly short on experience in the Barony. She absolutely refused, which surprised her husband.
But it was her reason for refusing which causes me to bring this up now. When he asked her why, she said the Baron and Baroness represent the populace of the Barony. They don’t have to like every member of that populace, but they do have to represent them, to the region, to the Kingdom, and to the SCA as a whole. If someone in that group has an idea for something they think should be done, or changed, or whatever, the landed nobles have to be able to give that idea fair consideration.
She told her husband that as long as there are people in the Barony that she had no desire to hear anything they have to say, solely because it’s them who are saying it, she cannot do justice to the job of Baroness. As I said at the beginning of all this, I often don’t like my sister much, but I couldn’t help admiring her reasoning in that, and admire the decision that she made as a result.
That’s not an easy standard to meet. Even having had that example set by one of my own family members over a decade ago, I often fail to meet it myself, especially when it comes to politics.
But even if you know in advance that you won’t succeed, that’s no excuse not to try.
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence… but don’t rule out malice.” – Robert A. Heinlein
This was a great episode. Yes, we have differences of opinion on how things should work; but we should be able to discuss them and at the end depart without animosity. It is very hard sometimes, but it should be the goal.
Clarence Thomas is what my grandfather would have called a true gentleman.
I’m afraid that’s an idealistic pipe dream with these radical Democrats who want their way or the highway and have been tearing us down from the inside out for decades. They’re globalists along with the RINO’s and care nothing about anything else but power and world government. They will say and do anything to get it.
Sotomayor’s lame attempt at unity right before they, in retrospect, released the Roe v. Wade decision is hollow. She voted for Biden’s vaccine mandate and refuses to say blip about the stolen election, both in direct opposition to American interests. More fakery from the left.
The Republican establishment desperately wants to work with the Democrats to pretend that we shouldn’t put “divisive” President Trump right back in there to finished what he started. He earned that right. In fact, he should be there right now finishing them off.
So they can nix their pathetic attempt to jump in front of the parade We the People started with Trump’s leadership. Their dream of a Republican Party supporting spineless candidates like Dr. Oz for Senate from PA, who turned his back on Trump the second he won the Republican nomination, is not going to happen.
Everyone knows this except these cementheads including but not limited to the 15 Republicans who voted to move their phony gun control legislation forward using Uvalde as an excuse. These people are evil. There were officers in that school within 3 minutes, and they’re desperate to pass this legilslation and disarm Americans while they still can. Just like they were desperate to certify and put 2020 in the can hoping to shove us aside.
The truth is continuing to come out on their attempted coup in 2020, the manmade shamdemic and their climate con. This is their last hurrah, and the traitorous Swamp can go pound sand.
Having gotten all that off my chest, have a fantastic weekend Ron. Thanks for letting me rant. LOL. God bless you and yours!
Fight like hell.
“Clarence Thomas created equal” is a really good documentary. Anybody who watches that film and is anti-Clarence is a dunce.