“You know this is a Protestant country,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt reminded two non-Protestant members of his administration, “and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance.”Funny thing happened after a few decades - I guess;
All eight justices left on the bench once Stevens steps down ... (are) all Ivy League graduates – predominantly white and male – and none of them are Protestant.I thought this was a good addition for DivThu.
We used to be a nation that defined diversity as diversity of thought and different religious backgrounds tend to give one different educational backgrounds and views of things - now notsomuch.
I don't think that the President will be looking at religion at all in replacing Stevens - that is the wrong kind of Diversity.
With Justice John Paul Steven just months away from retirement, the White House says President Obama is considering a more diverse pool of candidates, including whites, blacks and Hispanics -- men and women -- to tap for his replacement.Do you need a translator? Didn't think so.
"I think he will have a broad group of people that represent many – that represent America as a way of looking at the nominee," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.
Whodathunk such enlightened thought would come from the post-racial America Obama was to bring us. Kind of sad when the Supreme Court is getting as bad a the NFL.
15 comments:
Yes, but can Justice Thomas or Stevens run a 4.5 40? I bet Justice Sotomayor can run through some tackles though. Check out the thighs! :)
Geez, thanks for *that* visual, right when I was thinking about breakfast. Pass the brain bleach, please...
When FDR made that statement, the country was dominated by mainline Protestants. Evangelical Protestants don't value education as much as the Mainline Protestants. They have more of a watered down spirituality.
"<span>Evangelical Protestants don't value education as much as the Mainline Protestants.<span>"</span></span>
What an ignorant statement that is.
You obviously have never been around schools like Norfolk Christian and like schools - and have not spent much time around the Salamander family.
No coincidence the number of Catholics on the court.
I'll just say that if you count backwards about 50 years you see that the preponderance of eminently qualified candidates on the court now were products of the country's excellent Catholic School system or benefitted from a system of thought and logic still taught and promoted in authentic Catholic universities. Such stuff is also the foundation of Western Jurisprudence. A whole crop of legal scholars who were educated and trained in that environment are reaching the pinnacles of their careers. (Though I don't think Sotomayor is a particularly GOOD Catholic.)
Note to future generations of "minorities": Catholics in America once were viewed with a jaundiced eye. If you want your children and grandchildren to overcome discrimination and be successful, a solid education is the way to go for them to achieve authentic progress and ultimate success. Not quotas.
The Salamander family is clearly an exception, not the rule. There is a large group of home-schooling evangelicals whose math and science education is abysmal. You can’t teach science when you don’t believe in it.
Delta Bravo hit the nail on the head when he expressed the superiority of the educational system. Roman Catholic philosophy starts with the premise that one of the key gifts of God to man was the gift of reason. The great lawyer, Aquinas, taught that the Common Law was an effort to reach God. By applying reason to a problem, one is doing God’s work. The monk, Mendel, began the field of genetics by applying the gift of reason to the observations he made of the peas growing in his monastery garden. Catholics are comfortable with evolution and other scientific truths, because their do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible. The Bible is divinely inspired, but the work of man. We did not get it entirely correct; what with being human and all.
The Society of Jesus is an example of how Catholics think education leads to Christ. If we teach you to read, write and use the gift of reason, it is much more likely that through the application of your mind you will come to know the Lord than it would be if you did not have an education.
Spoken like a bigoted jackass. My grandson spent three years in an evangilical school, three days at school, two at home. The past year and a half, completely home schooled. He took the SAT just before he turned fourteen and scored in the top 5% in both math and verbal. The key is family values and an emphasis on a strong education, not what damn religion you are or how you practice it. And here's your big FYI: DeltaBravo is a Sea Going Sailor Lady, and if you tick her off, she will kick your butt.
Oh, BTW...I'm Catholic. And yes, I've been taught by Jesuits. If the one that taught me humanities and critical thinking had read this drivel you'd have done three rounds in the ring with him to clear your mind.
If you are going to throw stones at the Evangelicals for alleged failures in math and science, I suggest you brush up on your history. If by Aquinas you mean Saint Thomas Aquinas, he was not a lawyer, he was a philosopher and theologian. His philosophical doctrines included theories of eternal, natural, human and divine law, but in that sense "law" refers more to the scientific sense of the term (e.g. the laws of gravity). "Common law" is the term for the Anglo legal tradition. It would be very hard for Aquinas, an Italian, to be teaching Anglo Common law, seeing as Italy was very much following the civil/Roman Code law tradition during his lifetime.
Just saying...
You may have been thinking Thomas Moore?
But then, you'd still be wrong on a lot of your points.
And just to really clarify...I say Anglo, as the "common law" is practiced today by nations with Anglo-Saxon heritage such as the UK, US, Australia etc. If we want to get REALLY technical, it didn't actually get adopted as a legal doctrine until after the Norman conquest.
Byron, now that's my kind of Jesuit!
As AR points out, Thomas Aquinas (b1225-d1274) and the other Scholastics have a definate Natural Law approach to a lot of things, and I beleive that is widely taught and followed in RC education. Having the (vast?) majority of the USSC follow that tradition is hardly diverse. If one wanted a group that "reflected America" a Baptist or Methodist would be nice.
Byron also points out that family support is key to success in school. My sister, the High School math teacher, says she can usually tell by the second week who will do well - it is ALL about the family support (and not religion or ethnicity - she has a great story about the black wannabe gang-banger whose mother, the ER physician, showed up unexpected one day to visit the school and found him in his droopy pants with color coordinated and matching underwear, dew-rag and socks - none of which he had been wearing when he left the house that morning - Dr. Mama was NOT amused).
She also points out that home schooling (she teaches in a public school) is hard in the higher grades - it is very difficult to be able to teach AP English, and Math, and Chem, and Biology, and, well you get the idea. Not impossible, but difficult.
As a card carrying Mainline Protestant, I am gobsmacked by the "watered down spirituality" part!
Mine were the Jesuits of over 40 years ago, both in New Orleans and here in Jax (my humanities teacher in senior year of HS was a Georgetown grad). Back in NOLA, in high school, you messed up in class you did three rounds with one of the brothers. You WOULD get your butt kicked. My uncle who at 16 was 6'4" and a freakin monster went out of his way to meet up with this one brother who was nearly a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter. Three rounds later, Uncle Richard was drug bleeding from the ring...the brother fought Golden Gloves :)
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