Our fellow Tennessean, David French, points out at National Review that progressives and far left Democrats are deploying “Religious Ignorance and Bigotry” to attack potential Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, a graduate of Tennessee’s Rhodes College, for her Catholic faith.
“If you ever need much evidence that the growing “God gap” in American politics fosters an immense amount of ignorance and occasionally outright bigotry, look no farther than the concern — the alarm, even — that Amy Coney Barrett is on President Trump’s short list to replace Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court,” French wrote on Monday:
The alarm isn’t about her credentials. She’s checked every box of excellence — law review, appellate-court clerkship, Supreme Court clerkship (with Justice Scalia), elite law-firm experience, law professor at an elite law school, and now experience as a federal judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s a young, brilliant woman at the apex of her profession.
So, beyond her obvious originalist judicial philosophy (shared to varying degrees by every person on Trump’s list of potential nominees), what’s the problem with Judge Barrett. Why do some progressives single her out for particular scorn?
It turns out that she’s a faithful Christian who lives a Christian life very similar to the lives of millions upon millions of her fellow American believers.
No, really, that’s the objection.
Of course there was the infamous moment during Judge Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals when Senator Dianne Feinstein imposed an obvious religious test on her nomination. “When you read your speeches,” Feinstein said, “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the man who persuaded former Gov. Phil Bredesen to run as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)–the same man who is holding fundraisers in the wealthy liberal enclaves of New York City to fund Bredesen’s campaign, has been the lead voice in the ugly and bigoted attacks on Barrett over her Christian faith in the days since she has emerged as a front runner to succeed recently retired Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y, on Monday slammed federal judge Amy Coney Barrett, one of the front-runners to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, by calling her an “activist judge” who could put abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act at risk,” the Washington Examiner reported on Monday:
“Amy Coney Barrett is a judge on the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit & on @realDonaldTrump’s pre-approved list for SCOTUS. She passed his ‘litmus test’ on overturning Roe v. Wade & striking down the ACA. Here’s where she stands on Americans’ big issues,” Schumer said in a series of tweets Monday.
Schumer’s claim that Barrett has “passed [President Trump’s] ‘litmus test’ on overturning Roe v. Wade” is a flat-out lie, and he knows it to be a flat-out lie.
His protege Phil Bredesen knows it to be a flat-out lie as well, but the former governor, who claims he will approach President Trump’s agenda in a fair minded way is exhibiting anything but fair mindedness by tolerating his benefactor’s public deceptions about Judge Barret.
Bredesen’s silence on this outrage speaks volumes about what he really stands for: the far left agenda of the current Democratic Party.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
— Article Six of the United States Constitution