One of the more interesting elements of the Alito is what it says about the changing face of conservatism in the United States and the general drift of ethnic Catholics (some might say "urban Catholics") toward the Republican Party. Alito, along with Scalia, now makes the second ethnic Catholic to be appointed to the Court (no Poles yet, of course). I have yet to see an in-depth profile of his personal life, but one profile I read this morning indicated that he is the son of an Italian immigrant who worked in the New Jersey State Government, presumably from a relatively modest background (I'm just speculating on that point for now). Thus, three of the most conservative Justices (probably the three most conservative) on the Supreme Court would be a black man raised in Georgia poverty and two Italian-Americans, all Catholic as well. This group traditionally has been Democratic and liberal in orientation, which adds to the puzzle. Perhaps this is simply an isolated coincidence, but I wonder whether this demographic fact says something deeper about the nature of modern conservatism and political alignments in the country. In the possibility that there is something larger at work here, I'll take a stab at trying to offer an explanation.
In true old-world style, his mother is even named Rose (yes, her name is actually "Rose Alito" from New Jersey--no word from Bruce Springsteen on the nomination). The New York Times has some great quotes from her in its profile of him:
Alito's mother, Rose, who will turn 91 in December, spent Monday fielding congratulatory telephone calls from her home in Hamilton, N.J., a Trenton suburb. ''I'm so excited I can't even express myself,'' she said.
More candid that her son might wish, she said, ''I think he was upset that he didn't get there in the first shot, that Miers got it.'' That was a reference to Bush's choice of Harriet Miers, since withdrawn.
If confirmed, Alito would be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court. ''Of course he's against abortion,'' his mother said, another comment supporters in Washington might wish she'd held back.
I suspect that there were plenty of us who grew up in Italian, Polish, or similar households who feel like we know Rose Alito.
I think that the demographic fact of the make-up of the conservative Justices (Thomas, Scalia, and Alito) is a remarkable statement on the nature of modern conservatism (I'm frankly not sure where Roberts fits in this). I don't know Alito, but I feel like my background growing up is similar enough to his that I will hazard a few speculations on what this says about the nature of modern conservativism. For those like myself (and I hazard to guess Scalia, Alito, and Thomas) conservatism is attractive because it now seems to be the party of meritocracy where one is judged on your character and ability, and not on your connections or demographics. As the doors of schools such as Princeton and Yale Law School (in Alito's case), and the professions themselves have been thrown open to Italians, Poles, Irish, etc., individuals such as Scalia and Alito have had the opportunity to prove themselves. All that is asked is for the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of a free country and to compete on equal terms.
Among other things, I think this cultural upbringing reflects itself in a skepticism about racial preferences in college admissions and hiring. It is difficult to say, from what I can tell, that Sam Alito's ascent to the Supreme Court came about through some sort of unfair advantage, money, or family connections. In the legal arena, I think this cultural temperament may reflect itself in a anti-elitist streak rebelling against the arrogance of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary and a humility in the face of the common-sense of citizens as reflected through democratically-elected legislatures. These old rules and elitism historically were used by the WASPs to discriminate and exclude ethnic Catholics. From all reports I hear about Alito, he also is a genuinely human, nice, and down-to-Earth guy, or, in other words "a regular guy."
In general then, I think this is more of a populist conservatism with a strong anti-elitist strain to it. Scalia articulates this anti-elitist populism forcefully in many of his opinions, and I suspect that to the extent that Alito is fruit from a similar tree, a similar populism is present in his thought. This is Reagan-style conservatism (perhaps with a bit of Nixonian populism) rather than Bush conservatism.
(Historical footnote: Nixon actually toyed with the idea of appointing an ethnic Catholic to the Court, but in the end chose not to do so. There are some great soundbites in John Dean's book The Rehnquist Choice where you can hear Nixon speculating on whether there are any good "Poles or Italians" out there that he can put on the Court.) Strangely enough, the five most conservative members of the Court are now all Catholic.
Update:
Reading the Comments, apparently "ethnic Catholic" is more of a term of art than I was aware. I simply have in mind the more traditionally working-class Catholic cultures of Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Poland, plus the Irish), versus the "high Catholicism" of Western Europe (as found in England, France, Austria, etc.). As my relatives would put it, it is the difference between those "whose names end with vowels" and those who do not. I thought this was a fairly conventionally-understood distinction. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to simply illustrate it--Scalia and Alito are "ethnic Catholics" and Roberts and Kennedy are not. Judging from some of the Comments, it may only be ethnic Catholics that draw this distinction.
I should also make clear that I certainly am not implying that the world or conservatism is truly meritocratic--President Bush quite plainly illustrates the continued role of pull and family connections. Class undoubtedly still matters. I'm simply saying that for those like myself (and perhaps Alito) conservatism at least since Reagan (and perhaps even Nixon) appears relatively more meritocratic in principle than liberalism. Perhaps this perception is incorrect, but that doesn't mean it is absent. As an example, consider the changing perception of labor unions in the minds of the ethnic Americans I am describing--do they help out the "little guy" or are they an apparatus for protecting seniority and connections? You will get a strong disagreement of opinion on this issue. More relevantly, one's opinion on this is neither "correct" or "incorrect" but is rather subjective.
I deleted a paragraph from an earlier version.
How to you explain the (admittedly subjective) observation that the majority of the Italians, Poles, Irish, Jews, etc. who took advantage of the new meritocratic admission standards at the Harvards and Princetons of this country to gain an elite education did not end up members of the "concervative party of meritocracy" you so nicely envision, and instead became members of the probably even more meritocratic liberal elite?
Said differently, it's nice and heart-warming story you are telling in your post above, but shouldn't you also acknowledge that most hard-working immigrant children reaching the top level of academic achievment (just like you and Alito did) do not actually agree with your and his world view?
Something tells me that each individual you mentioned had something 99.9999% of all people don't have: an amazing intellect that they were blessed with at birth. It's easy to argue for competition on the "merits" when the deck is stacked in your favor from the begining. How is it that Alito (or yourself) earned your intellect? How did that come about by hard work? Could it be that if Alito weren't nearly as bright, he might feel diffrently about government assistance?
ROTFLMAO. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the other hand, as a Jewish woman going to law school in the '50's never had to fight to have the doors opened for her. Conservatives and meritocracy???? You have to be kidding me. Does the name George W. Bush mean anything to you? How 'bout Michael Brown (heckuva job there Brownie)? Harriet Miers?
And you use Clarence Thomas as an example --- regardless of how you feel Justice Thomas has developed, he was hardly (not even f-cking close) to the most "meritorious" conservative pick Poppy Bush could have made at the time. Keep living in fantasy land there Todd.
Wait, sorry, what does humility mean again?
Great point -- the last poll on the subject had W with an approval rating amongst African-Americans at a whopping 2 percent. Apparently the lowest ever seen by a longshot. As Kanye West said: "George Bush doesn't care about black people." True or not, the statement clearly resonated even amongst those African-Americans who vote GOP.
VB: I'm not an expert by any means, but IIRC, Judaiasm DID originally arise (and dominate) a specific ethnic group, did it not, as opposed to the latter religions of the Book, which have historically-documented origins and which spread across ethnic and racial lines to a egree Judaism did not? It's why people call themselves 'half-Jewish' and suchly; they're referring to the Jewish ethnicity (the 'sons of Issac' biblically) which may not be the same as being a practicing Jew. But I'm not sure about this.
The majority of Catholics are ethnic Catholics; a few aren't.
My grandfather Foote was a non-ethnic Catholic. My grandfather Tiernan and grandmother Flynn were ethnic Catholics. My grandmother Harding had an ethnic Catholic parent and a non-ethnic Catholic parent.
Based on my mother-in-laws experience, and that of some others, I can also vouch for the fact that some Catholic parishes in the Chicago area kicked out the ethnic Poles in favor of non-ethnic and earlier arriving Irish Catholics.
I'm agnostic, but I completely understand what Todd is saying.
So when is the telephone hotline to the Vatican being installed?
But before we jump on Todd too much, I can attest that among at least some Catholic Irish, Italians, and Poles, there was a feeling that we were considered ethnic in a way that Anglo-Americans were not. I'm sure that's all Todd meant, right?
What they fail to understand is that had you tried to find a home in the liberal party you would have been rejected for your Polish/Catholic background. The same is no doubt true for Alito. It is remarkable that conservatives have moved past anti-catholic bigotry. If only the left could act in kind.
As you humbly remind them, yours is the party of meritocracy. And no one exemplifies the true spirit of your party more than Clarence Thomas -- a man raised in poverty who later proved a useful affirmative action hire for the right.
Bless you, Todd. May you never forget your humble beginnings.
Trying ... not ... to ... puke. ...
How sappy ...
From the posting guidelines:
Here's a tip: Reread your post, and think of what people would think if you said this over dinner. If you think people would view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who vastly overdoes it on the hyperbole, rewrite your post before hitting enter.
It's a big Internet, people. Generally, the folks who hang out here do so because the tone is a little different than you find at the Democratic Underground. I would like to see it stay that way, and I suspect most of the other visitors here would as well.
- AJ
Please turn off comments for those without the right to post. The commenters here are hysterical and rude. (Present company and a small minority of previous posters in this thread excluded, of course). You have a large enough group of bloggers that commenting among yourselves would be far more enlightning.
Actually, I doubt this would have affected significantly Todd, who is younger than Alito. Many of the ethnic divisions inside the Catholic church have melted, and the anti-catholic bias outside the catholic church has diminished. I know many liberal Polish Catholics.
I couldn't tell if this poster was critiquing those who responded to the blog entry, or to the blog entry itself!
Everyone is here to read intelligent discussion, and as a new reader who has been really impressed by the discussion on this site, I think that is pretty clear to us all. But this blog entry...maybe that's why you're seeing some more knee jerk responses.
The word "connections" really doesn't belong there. Conservatism is extremely attractive to ultra-rich and easily bribed voters (that is, voters who only vote republican because they want to keep more money and pay less in taxes, and not because they adhere to any real libertarian political theory, but only because they're greedy), who are overwhelmingly the group with all the fancy connections. The conservative party is the place to be for that crowd. I suspect you felt obligated to put the word "connections" in there to distance the sentence from a straightforward attack on affirmative action, and to make it at least sound like an homage to merit more generally.
And come to think of it, why wouldn't a libertarian free-marketeer think that admissions favors for the ultra-rich is a perfectly acceptable quid pro quo for Universities that are constantly begging everyone in sight for contributions? Hey, it's your money, if you want to spend on large donations to get your kid in to Harvard, what harm is there in that? One kid in god knows how many, but the entire university benefits from the donation, and the better our universities are, the better our society is, right? What is the conservative/libertarian response to that?
Nor am I saying that it is necessarily the case that groups that have been discriminated against or excluded necessarily become more conservative (blacks in general and Jews as some Commenters have noted). Indeed, that doesn't answer the question it simply deepens the puzzle, namely, why have the members of this particular group drifted toward conservatism when the other groups have not.
The question I was hoping to put on the table was what, if anything, does it say about American society if we appoint the second-ever ethnic Catholic who also turns out to be quite conservative. The question is intended as an intellectual, not partisan question.
And yes, as someone mentioned before, the notion that the same conservative movement that elected George W. Bush somehow embodies a "meritocracy" is laughable.
Please consider that people of remarkably similar temperament/values are routinely considered "conservatives" in some times/places and "liberals" in others. Consider this snippet from the above post:
"Alito was a member of Stevenson Hall, a University-sponsored alternative to the eating clubs which Grais described as 'the main alternative to the private clubs for those of us who wanted a more egalitarian atmosphere.'"
I'd imagine that nearly all liberals, then and now, would consider this a very liberal thing to do, and would think of the eating clubs as the worst sort of conservative bastion. The change is that most intellectual conservatives, like Todd and Alito, now consider it a very conservative things to do, as the eating clubs of today have been taken over by the liberal elite that now runs the universities.
I do not by any means intend this as an attack or criticism; my observation is simply that only Scalia and Thomas ever refer to God, based on what I have seen, in quotes or speeches, at least in a way that makes it sound like they believe in God. See for example oral arguments in Newdow. Certainly it's possible that someone who never refers to God might believe in God, but among brainy academics and high-ranking judges, I think we would agree that the religious are quite rare, and that there's significant political pressure to appear religious.
Their religion is perhaps interesting as a demographic fact, and that is indeed how it seems to be discussed in the posts here. I do believe it is important, however, to make the distinction between ethnic/ancestral Catholicism and practicing Catholicism (or other religions for that matter), because many (mostly those who practice their religion) are likely to be confused by a statement like "5/9 of the Supreme Court will be Catholic."
The libertarian attitude towards affirmative action: That government should not mandate affirmative action, and that private institutions and employers may enact those programs at their own expense. Moreover, applying this principle in full means eliminating all government subsidies to universities. Universities seem to lack the proper incentives/motivations. Perhaps the best way of insuring such incentives is by being a for-profit institution, so that they are forced to meet the demands of their consumers. I concede that it is a bit paradoxical to have a for-profit company reject 90% of its customers. But consider the vast bureaucracy of colleges, rising tuition, superflous offices like all those inclusion organizations etc.
In general, the libertarian attitude (not the reasoning) towards such regulation is, if YOU want to do that, fine, but don't try to force other people to comply with your whims.
Politics is hardly meritocratic, so don't expect any politician, no matter his banter, to consistently reward merit.
Are you serious? John Kerry isn't Catholic? John Kennedy? Or is he somehow not Catholic enough for you? And if that is the case, I wonder what Mr. Alito's views on the death penalty are?
As to Professor Zywicki's point in his response, above, about what it says about America as a whole that two "ethnic Catholics" can be on the court at the same time and both be conservative, I would agree that this is good for the country to have members of all religions involved in any party they choose. In the last national election, I remember reading a lot about how more traditional members of religions (by that I mean, for example, the distinction between an Orthodox or Reform Jew), Jews and Catholics in particular, were beginning to move towards voting Republican even though historically they had voted for Democrats and that this shift was based on social rather than fiscal rationales. It is perhaps unsurprising that two members who seem to embody this shift in their written views on societal issues would be conservative. Maybe the only surprise is that they would be ahead of the general trend, as their views have been established for many years.
I am a semi non-ethnic white male Catholic lawyer (Irish catholic on my mother's side). I attached no particular meaning to the term; the fact that so many others did strikes me as remarkable.
I enjoyed the post and found myself to be largely in agreement. I noted especially the references to Reagan and his appeal. The phrase, "all that is asked is for the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of a free country and to compete on equal terms" is classic Reagan, and the extent to which rhetoric like this resonates with the reader probably explains the divergent views expressed in response to the post. To my mind, this phrase reflects a core value (arguably the core value) of Goldwater-Reagan conservatism. This is different in kind from Bush conservatism.
Accordingly, could care less that Alito - or any member of the Court - is a Catholic. Or Jewish, Protestant, male, female, black, white, hispanic or asian. What I do care about is his (or her) intelligence, and even more importantly, his (or her) intellectual integrity.
I think that the last four nominees to the Court (excluding Miers, about whom I hold no strong opinion), meet this test.
Their supposed ideologies really don't matter to me if they have intellectual integrity.
I would like to echo the conservatism/populist v. liberal/elite thinking. I grew up in the third wealthiest town in Massachusetts. It was very Republican (it voted for Nixon over McGovern, Bush over Dukakis, and of course Dole over Clinton), but it is very socially liberal These are old-time liberal WASP Republicans, hardly conservatives. For instance, Sen. Saltonstall used to live there. They ran their world — their companies, their schools - including colleges, and their town. These were people used to making the big decisions. No one was going to tell them what to do because they were the top. The buck stopped with them. They had no superiors.
Why shouldn't they — who run companies that employ thousands, who make life-and-death decisions — make their own decisions on moral and ethical matters? They weren't going to listen to any Pope or any tradition. They are so used to deciding for themselves, running their own lives, that they became used to making their own moral decisions. And they were right, damn it! Since most were very successful and self-made men, they kept to their own consel.
They are not humble.
(And in many ways have a right not to be. How humble should Bill Gates be?)
But it takes humility to submit. To submit to authority. To submit to tradition. To submit to the Consitution.
Successful, self-made entreprenaurs are not humble, and neither are their kids or grand-kids (see the Kennedys). For judicial restraint, you need humility.
One core of Catholicism is that it demands humility - it demands submission to Tradition and the Church. One core of ethnic Catholicism is that it demands submission to — to the family and to the ethnic traditions be they Italian or Irish.
Does this make sense?
There are many people who will recognize the truth in the professor's observations. Also, he will learn Justice Roberts is an ethnic Catholic. And, in addition, Bruce's comments are also accurate.
Would a survey of exit polling or some such shed any light here on the general hypothesis? Or narrowing that hypothesis to federal judges, a check into the ethnic, religious, and ideological backgrounds of the same?
Sorry, but that is just nonsense on stilts. Completely made up, pulled directly from the posterior. Upon what do you base this perfectly ridiculous assertion?
(1) The status of Italians as "ethnic Catholics" seems to be a selective East Coast (New England?) phenomenon, and to this observer does not seem to obtain in New York and New Jersey. In San Francisco and the Bay Area, Italians are very much the old establishment in politics, commerce, the judiciary, and - significantly - ownership of prime real estate.
The California Supreme Court traditionally had an informal slot for one Italian, as well as other slots for significant old-immigrant constituencies (e.g. Chinese). By contrast, the first clearly Hispanic justice (Moreno) was only appointed recently.
(2) In Britain and European countries (as until recently in the U.S.), there has always been an informal understanding that appellate court justices should reflect a rough balance of religious and regional backgrounds as well as (more recently) maintaining some gender balance.
Here in the U.S., Justice Ginsburg has repeatedly spoken of the importance of her Jewish background to her legal thinking. Viewed in this light, concerted (and apparently well-meaning) attempts to avoid open discussion of religious background of Alito fly in the face of common sense.
To the majority of Americans who are not Catholic and view the worldwide Catholic Church with some skepticism, a Supreme Court that is five-ninth Catholic is frankly of concern, notwithstanding the fact that these justices represent a wide ideological spectrum.
Surely, President Bush could have identify a genuinely conservative non-Catholic other than Harriet Myers. Janice Rogers Brown is a hi-voltage judge who has repeatedly shown her conservative mettle. (This is perhaps why her appointment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had less than overwhelming Republican support).
(3) One further thought - a 5:4 Catholic/non-Catholic constellation on the Supreme Court may work against "Catholic" viewpoints (whatever and however dissonant they may be in a given case). For reasons of bureaucratic self-preservation, the Supreme Court will try hard to avoid 5:4 decisions pitting the Catholic contingent against the various Protestants and Jews.
N.B.: The fact that some justices are clearly secularists and perhaps atheists does not negate the impact of their religious/social upbringing.