But you never mentioned the motivations of those who appointed them nor any other circumstance. If you do not want to know what I would infer from such facts, how about you argue what I ought to infer.

I could infer nothing from such facts. What would you infer?

The arguments as to why this is a good thing are still lost on me. Far from being any concrete progression towards a better state of affairs for anyone besides Joe Biden's political career, every argument in favor of a race-based nomination to the supreme court seeks to satisfy problems that are purely symbolic in nature. Therefor, in utilitarian terms, every good thing that may come of it is unable to manifest beyond anyone's brain matter. In ethical terms, it is morally bankrupt.

“Representation”—a single judge, by virtue of her skin-color alone, will represent all who happen to fall within these racialist distinctions—fits perfectly well in the Western tradition of superficiality versus depth, but serves as little more than a fig leaf in practice. To put to the side for now the argument that these distinctions were created and enforced by the enemy in the first place, to further enforce them on the implication that someone can only represent another so long as her pigment is similar (and as a corollary, that one is unable to represent another if her pigment is different) is as sinister as it is false. It is not true, in any case, but is also bound to set up everyone who believes in it for failure and disappointment.

The notion that race-based nominations can be used to "redress past wrongs" is of the same symbolic character. It redresses nothing. It neither brings to justice those who perpetrate such wrongs or seeks retribution for those who were wronged by them. And because it utilizes exactly what was wrong about these past wrongs—the prohibition of other races in favor of one—it is itself a wrong.

The irony of entrenching vast swaths of individuals under the false taxonomies and superstitions of white supremacy shouldn't be lost on us, but this is where collectivism allied with racism necessarily leads, as it always has. For my own tastes, wherever it is unethical to lobby against someone on the grounds of race, it is unethical to lobby in favor of someone on the grounds of race, and for the same reason. It seems to me that violating this principle is the problem to begin with.

You look at the disproportionate representation of certain skin colors in prison, and then someone comes along and shows the same disproportionate representation in violent criminal activity such as murder. Any implications derived from these proportions are sinister, but false, because both use the specious race variable in order to make predictions about individuals. The fact remains that not all people you call Black or White have the same experiences as everyone else who occupies their position in the color spectrum. The fact remains that individuals, not races, are found in prison, commit crimes, are victims of crime, etcetera.

One of the potential nominees has a father who was cop, which falls outside your assumptions that, by virtue of her skin color alone, her experience is somehow “closer to those who have been incarcerated”. Not only is the assumption wrong, it’s odious; it assumes that her, her family, or her friends have been on the wrong side of the justice system by virtue of her skin color, when exactly the opposite is the case. False assumptions such as these are the direct result of methodological racism, just like every racist act, policy, or system throughout history.

No, it is not obvious to me that someone who has been convicted and sentenced to prison, or who is similar in skin-tone to others who may have had such experiences (which is everyone), are better suited to the highest court in the land—nor is it obvious that someone’s epidermis can afford him some ability, or otherwise prohibit him, from taking such experiences into consideration.

Instead, it’s obvious to me that these insidious generalizations are born of race-thinking and other assumptions, all of it premised on bogus taxonomies. You want her skin color to matter, is the problem, like everyone else who tries to divide the species into such tenuous and superficial categories. There is some symbolic self-interest in it for you, perhaps even in most of us. But at the same time this grandstanding can only serve to maintain a division where there isn’t one. This division, at every step, is born of pseudoscience and hatred, and reified by activities such as this.

You are unable to explain why the racial makeup of the court is relevant to law or the court’s function.

It was certainly relevant wherever the law was unjust and the court racist, sure. But that’s no argument that it is now or ought to be.

Right, being black is irrelevant to qualifications. But not irrelevant to the makeup of the court.The woman he nominates will be black and qualified and will have a judicial philosophy that is not at odds with his own.

The racial makeup of a court is irrelevant to law and the function of a court. Not to mention, historically speaking, the only ones concerned with the racial makeup of the court were of the racist variety. This is reason enough to avoid race-based hiring or nominations, to say nothing of the ethics.

But now we have this quandary of “representation”, as if justice will be accessible so long as millions of people can point to a similar pigment in the epidermis of nine judges. Racism has enough narcissism built into it, why add more?

There is a yawning gap in your understanding. Biden opposed Brown's nomination because of her human rights record as detailed above. Being a black woman is not sufficient grounds for supporting a judicial nominee. To think otherwise is tokenism. To nominate a candidate who is a qualified black woman whose judicial philosophy and record he approves of is not.

I completely agree. Biden explicitly stated his nominee will be a black woman, all of which is irrelevant to qualifications.

Well, you have grouped people and have made assumptions about them according to their racial characteristics. But all I’m trying to say is these assumptions are the prerequisite to any social practice that groups them any further, to any racism, to any racial discrimination.

I’m not sure how one can redress past wrongs and make starting points equal through racial discrimination. This is because one is neither victim or perpetrator by the fact of her complexion or any other phenotype alone. In fact, assigning guilt and victimhood to people according to their racial features is a past wrong, also a present and future wrong, as is racial discrimination in hiring. It seems silly to me redress these past wrongs by applying them in practice.

Again, I bow before your expertise in law, and if I’m ever in the market for Dutch legal advice I’ll be sure to let you know.

No I fully agree. That’s why I said Biden, nor anyone, cannot claim he is excluding other races for matters of racial justice. His past actions falsify this theory.

I still do not understand why you are accusing me of tokenism out of one side of the mouth, and then defending Biden’s tokenism outside of the other.

Why is that? Because I think people with a white skin get hired easier, are less often deemed suspects in criminal cases, get shot by police less often, I somehow place people with a darker complexion on a lower rung? No I simply think there is a lot of prejudice against people with a darker skin and that that means they have fewer chances in life and are required to prove themselves more than people with a light complexion. Those are cultural traits.

I see it like this: you've grouped people under superficial racial categories of which there is no scientific basis, look for the disparities between them, and use the results to position them, one on top of the other, in a hierarchy of superficial racial categories of which there is no scientific basis. That right there is the methodology that has unleashed racism upon the world. It results in assumptions about people on the basis of their complexion, in injustice, and finally, in racial supremacy and inferiority.

Assuming prejudice, both against and for, is the result of this methodology, I oppose it on the same grounds. We cannot in fact infer how much prejudice, discrimination, hostility, someone has faced by the mere fact of their complexion alone, for the same reason we cannot know what position they occupy in the economy, in ability, in intelligence, and so on. The assumptions we make about someone’s status based on which racial categories they happen to occupy are neither right or wrong, they’re “not even wrong”, to use the phrase. The fact of someone’s status becomes apparent only in other forms of inquiry, such as conversation, cooperation, mutual enterprise, etc.

You are not a lawyer eh? Best leave it at that. I am not going into that because I am used to being paid to give legal education. What you can do is read a few pages back in the thread, read the article Atheist provided and my comments and you may have an inkling what lawyers can and cannot do. This remark is just intellectual laziness.

While your ability to train students to give legal advice and draft documents are far superior to mine, I see no reason to abide by your authority in other aspects of law and Justice.

I could care less what a judge looks like, what feigned group they “represent”. It is Biden, not me, who is making the symbolic effort of choosing a black woman for the court. Of course, you wouldn’t dare make such an accusation against Biden, would you?

Very true. It probably is about tokenism for Biden in particular, and the democrats in general.

No I only need to assume that there is a privilege to being white. All in research I know of confirms that privilege.

Just another racial hierarchy upon which you place people with darker complexions on a lower rung.

Of course not, they are based on cultural hierarchies reiterated in discourse and practice.

What does the spectrum of complexion have to do with culture?

And you are again wrong. Read my discussion with mr Atheist. The law does not speak. Judges do, they interpret the law.

The law does not speak, sure, but it is spoken. A judge cannot interpret her way out of it.

Positive iscrimination is a way to redress past wrongs and an attempt at creating equal starting positions. It has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority.

You’d have to assume she’s been wronged, and base it on nothing other than the color of her skin. So already you place her on a lower rung in a racial hierarchy.

Not different ways of thinking but different perspectives. Having different perspectives represented might lead to better in the sense of better informed legal judgments. In the US there is also the matter of judgment before ones peers to be kept in mind. That does deal with equal representation. Considered in the long term would it not also be representationally fair if a woman of color gets a chance to shape the law of the land? Law is, as I have tried to show a hermeneutic enterprise in which the presence of a plethora of background assumptions is beneficial. Now it is not by necessity that a woman or a or a black person brings a different perspective to the table, but it is more likely than that a white man does.

Upon what assumption do you assume she has a different perspective? I figure these assumptions are based on nothing other than pseudoscientific racial distinctions and nothing besides, but perhaps I’m wrong. I’m not lawyer, but I assume that the only perspective that matters in a court is the word of the law.

Based on the definitions I related, I don't think the nomination is racist. To be racist, it seems you must contend that a particular race is superior than another; that must be the basis of the distinction made. If the nomination isn't based on a belief in the superiority of a black woman over others because she's black or a woman, it doesn't appear to come within the definitions. I think you have an uncommon definition of racism.

So-called “positive” race discrimination suggests a belief in the inferiority of the races they are designed to help. But this nomination isn’t a form of affirmative action, and it isn’t clear that Biden thinks women with darker complexions are inferior.

Neither is it about racial justice. Biden worked really hard to filibuster Judge Janice Brown back in the Bush days, and threatened to do the same if she was ever nominated for Supreme Court. He actively and explicitly opposed the nomination of a black woman, so if it was about racial justice let’s just say he missed that opportunity 20 years ago.

Rather, it is about identity politics, in this case using race and gender to score political points in the hopes of retaining political power now and in the future, the ethics of racial discrimination be damned. You can see the justification of this form of discrimination in this very thread, complete with essentialist notions about her experience, different knowledge, and different ways of thinking, which are racist assumptions if I’ve ever seen them. So if it isn’t racist according to your definition, it soon will be.

There is an ethical problem with freedom as construed in liberal thought. If freedom is founded on sovereignty, then my freedom can only be won at the cost of your sovereignty. This is an approach that sets each individual against all the others. We see the result in the dissolution of the common wealth in those nations that claim a liberal heritage.

Better, then to see freedom as a building of the capacity to achieve, to become more than one already is, both individually and as part of that common wealth. We achieve freedom so considered by building the capacity of those around us to be free.

I’m not sure how a freedom founded on sovereignty can only be won at a cost to another’s sovereignty. If each of us are (or ought to be) sovereign over our own actions, and therefor is (or ought to be) free, it seems to me the ethical act would be to give sovereignty instead of purchase it.

Arendt doesn’t describe freedom as a building of the capacity to achieve, but as a capacity to begin. Beginning does not necessitate achieving anymore than it necessitates failing. So I would say your “building of the capacity to achieve” falls more under her Christian conception of “freedom for the sake of salvation” as it appears in her genealogy.

No, she should not have been censored. Censorship is cruel and leaves us ignorant. Better to let truth and falsity battle it out in the open field.

The idea that objects are merely collections or aggregates arranged from other objects (particles, atoms, etc) hasn't born itself out, in my opinion. Arrangement assumes a creative force that at sometime or somewhere formed an object from other disparate and unconnected objects (like particles). But tables are built from pieces of other objects (trees, for example), and do not form, particle-by-particle, like Voltron.

We need to know what this creative force is in order to know that a table was arranged in such a manner.

Actually, the justice system is already perverse. It does not serve justice, and you can ask any lawyer and they will say the same thing.

The justice system is about finding "a" guilty person, regardless of his or her being truly guilty or not. If the court is satisfied that the person is guilty, they condemn him or her. What they find actually is unrelated to reality.

I wouldn't say the system is just—it clearly isn't—but that it ought to be. But it's true: the law serves only to protect the state's interest.

Selecting a judge on the basis race, gender, and “diversity” has nothing to do with justice, I’m afraid, and everything to do with the perversion of justice. When you scan candidates for their skin color and genitalia you’ve tossed justice to the wind in favor of race and sex-based discrimination, adopting the same habits and superstitions which have prohibited diversity in the first place. All of it serves to degrade the candidates and their work. Now, when asked why she was chosen for the Supreme court, the answer is embarrassingly clear.

I like her idea that evoking “freedom of consciousness”, or applying freedom to other metaphysical spaces, is irrelevant. Freedom is the prime concern of politics, of the polis, of political action, and not of inward universes. “The raison d'etre of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action”.

For Arendt, politics and freedom are intimately linked. She gives a better account of freedom in her The Promise of Politics:

"Politics", in the Greek sense of the word, is therefore centered around freedom, whereby freedom is understood negatively as not being ruled or ruling, and positively as a space which can be created only by men and in which each man moves among his peers. Without those who are my equals, there is no freedom, which is why the man who rules over others—and for that very reason is different from them on principle—is indeed a happier and more enviable man than those over whom he rules, but he is not one whit freer. He too moves in a sphere in which there is no freedom whatever.

At the very least her essay is a good reminder that until everyone is free to participate in the polis, there is no freedom. Given Arendt's criteria, we can look at places with rigid lockdowns and confirm that we are not free, that there is no freedom.

Hiring someone based on her race is the exact opposite of justice, is racist, is stupid, but works perfectly well for politics in the current age.

The author of the article might had fared better with Isaiah Berlin's distinction, which seems to me less muddled. Berlin's versions of liberty, positive and negative, are similar to Arendt's, but a little easier to grasp.

Negative liberty is the kind of freedom found in the phrase “freedom convoy”, as evidenced by their opposition to certain mandates.

Go back to sleep NOS. Or go read more Ayn Rand.

Take some drugs and think about it, Mike.

I don't think I understand you. Are you saying I don't have the right to speak freely unless you give it to me?

That’s right. If no people give and recognize your right to speak, then you have no right to speak freely. It sounds easy to understand to me.

Right, only man in his government form can flatten ground and lay asphalt.

Sure, set a bunch of bureaucrats to do the jobs you refuse to. That’ll work.

It surely is a right. My behavior is such that I allow you to use it, yes, just as my behavior is to allow you to speak when I give you the right to speak freely.

Sweet Jesus, wanting to tax people to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves is sociopathy?

Nah, it was just a joke. But it is immoral and unjust.

Yes, but we need an arrangement that will guarantee that the rights bestowed by citizens to other citizens and the private arrangements that they make are protected and honored, do we not? Don't we need some sort of basic legislation to do this?

In my opinion yes. The so-called Night-Watchmen state suits me just fine. Beyond that it should not go.

I can give you the right to borrow my lawnmower whenever you require it. Rights are bestowed by men, and not all men are legislators.

That’s very admirable. Now you just need to organize with others who do the same and on a grander scale. Do the work instead of demanding it if others. Lead by example instead of force and coercion. Lead by reason instead of sociopathy.

We were talking about the poor, just to be sure. But it appears you’re talking someone broken down on the side of the road. Would you extend the same kindness to the homeless in your community, as you would someone who cannot fix their car?

I don't look at someone on broken down on the road and say "Eh, I pay taxes -- let the government help."

Then what do you do?

Fair enough; my apologies. I’ll just say the American left used to uphold freedom as a guiding principle, and the void has been filled with statism, collectivism, and authoritarianism.

I completely agree that we should care for those who cannot take care of themselves, so long as they want our help. But I believe stealing people’s money or demanding others care for those who cannot care for themselves does not amount to any kind of care I that I can believe in. In fact I believe that is the opposite of care.

The worry for me is, if you limit caring to paying taxes, why should anyone care for those who cannot take care of themselves if they’ve already done it? Why should I give a man a quarter if I’ve already given that quarter to the institutions I’ve delegated to care for others?

Perhaps that’s where we differ. I don’t see how being payed a wage for one’s voluntary labor constitutes slavery while having a monopoly on violence appropriating one’s payments for labor constitutes a sacrifice for the greater good. Taxes are forced labor and slavery. To feel the force of this, try evade taxes on the one hand, and not showing up to work on the other. Only one may land you in prison, where slavery is still constitutionally protected.

Everyone does have the right to a decent standard of living, should they attain it. But if you believe everyone has a right to be provided with a minimum standard of living, why won’t you provide it to them?

Ready-made identities suit us perfectly. We don’t need to consider a person on his own when we need only apply an identity and be done with it. Of course, this is to misidentify rather than identify, but who cares at this point?

I thought it was obvious I wasn’t speaking of some “general individual happiness”, which sounds to me incoherent. Sorry, I should have been more clear. By “individual happiness”, I mean the happiness as determined by each individual. A collective, to me, is simply the sum total of individuals.

So yes, the arrangement, if one is required, should allow individuals to pursuit their own happiness instead of providing happiness to whichever group of individuals hold a majority. But this is an individualist, laissez faire system, such as the one theorized by the founders, but betrayed by everyone henceforth. Could such a system find a home in the left-wing, as it had once done?