Being Judicial, Not Ideological

FOR MY MONEY, the new Supreme Court justice is good enough. He seems fine. Intelligent, nice, qualified. He should do well. Still and all, we still have a problem. We must, we simply must get past this diseased attitude that being an ideological conservative constitutes a qualification for service in the high judiciary. It does not. Right wing politics is not the same thing as justice, not the same thing as judicial quality and wise decision making. Conservatives, traditionalists, are truly amazing in how they brand conservatism as justice, as constitutional faithfulness, how they equate capitalism with freedom, religion with virtue, and so forth. Its a long list of propaganda. Justice is perception, open mindedness, fairness, and reason, but it is not conservatism. The reason why a conservative supreme court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare, and the reason why a conservative court legalized gay marriage is that, in both instances, doing what they did was the right thing to do. In each case the court transcended its inherent and general conservative ideology, and made decision which by their nature were favorable to progressivism. time and again people have been appointed to the high court who were presumed to be rack solid conservatives, only to later, in their renderings, to reveal themselves to be more flexible than that. Liberals need not despair. The United Supreme Court, when push comes to shove, is not at all unwilling to depart from a conservative path, and their is not indication that this is going to change.