No tolerance for intolerance

I disagree with Andrew Sullivan:

The critique of her seeming preoccupation with her heritage nonetheless seems valid to me, but it's also a little - how does one say this? - 1995. The underlying arguments about affirmative action are still relevant, of course, but their salience seems less potent now. I'm not sure why - perhaps the war and the recession and the debt make the intensity of those fights seem like a luxury of a time of peace and prosperity and fiscal sanity. Perhaps Obama has made racial diversity less threatening to some.

I think the racist views that Sotomayor appears to hold could be very damaging for her. There seems to be something about my generation, especially those of us who have invested a lot of time and energy into our education, that drives us to have a deep dislike of racist views, regardless of the race of the person holding them.

I certainly have zero tolerance for racism and, off the top of my head, I can think of many friends of mine, of a wide spectrum of political views, who share my lack of tolerance.

I'm very interested in hearing what other people have to say about this. Does Sotomayor potentially holding racist views and allowing those to influence her judicial decisions bother you? Do you think there is something unique about our generation (the edge of Gen X and Gen Y) that causes us to feel especially disdainful towards public figures holding racist views?

Not Impressed but Not Surprised

As most must know by now, President Obama has announced he will be nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the supreme court.  At this point I find myself agreeing with the assessment of this nomination over at The Volokh Conspiracy 

My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part based on their ethnic or racial origins.

The more I think about it, the more this nomination bothers me. In particular, I'm having trouble getting past Judge Sotomayor's statement that, " ...I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

That statement strikes me as rather racist on her part and, had a white male judge said something equivalent, I have to believe the left would be throwing a fit about it this morning.

It also brings up the issue that my ideal justice would work to suppress their personal experiences when ruling on the constitutionality of a law. Justices are meant to decide cases based on the text of the law and the way in which it was meant to be applied, not in the way in which they personally think it should be applied.

Time will tell but I believe that this is going to end up being just one more thing on the growing list of moves by President Obama which disappoint me but don't surprise me.