The Volokh Conspiracy

Just because Dujack is a crank doesn't excuse Alito from joining the bigots of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Just to put things in perspective, CAP was a great believer in quotas (gasp!). As long as they were floors for alumni children and white males.

CAP pushed for quotas to increase the numbers of legacy admissions.

It is not a highly defensible bunch, but I hardly think that membership in the organization is a big negative.

Democratic McCarthyism at it's best!!!!!!!HAHA. So what if that person was a card carrying memeber of the Communist party??????? Do they not have any shame. Apparently not.

Since some posters have chosen to mock him, I answer them that Steven Dujack is neither a crank nor a wingnut. He is a hero to those who are familiar with the work that he does. He is the grandson of Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Noble Laureate and widely admired writer whose family was killed in the Holocaust. Here is a quote from Mr. Dujack:

"The Holocaust happened because ordinary people chose to ignore the extraordinary oppression and abuse being inflicted on innocents. My grandfather often said that this mindset, whether it manifested itself as the oppression of animals or of people, exemplifies the most hideous and dangerous of all racist principles. The Jewish philosopher and Holocaust survivor Theodor Adorno said, “The Holocaust begins wherever one looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks, ‘They’re only animals.’”

The fact that an intelligent, dedicated person with a heightened compassion for animals is dismissed so readily as a "wingnut" by callous people on the Right and the Left is nothing short of tragic. I guess those same people think Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, who had those same views, were also wingnuts.

Here's a quote from Albert Schweitzer:

"Out of such heart-breaking experiences that often shamed me there slowly arose in me the unshakeable conviction that we had the right to bring pain and death to another being only in case of inescapable necessity, and that all of us must feel the horror that lies in thoughtless torturing and killing. This conviction has become increasingly dominant within me. I have become more and more certain that at the bottom of our hearts we all think so, and simply do not dare to admit it and practice it, because we are afraid that others will laugh at us for being sentimental, and because we have allowed our better feelings to be blunted. But I vowed that I would never let my feelings get blunted, and I would never again fear the reproach of sentimentalism."

Out of curiosity, does dropping Dujack from the witness list change anything? Instead of Dujack testifying about CAP, Senator Schumer or Kennedy or whoever can read one of the articles from their newsletter into the record and ask Judge Alito if he agrees with it. Judge Alito will, of course, say no, and that he's never had anything but the deepest respect for people of other races and women. Senator Schumer can then ask why he joined CAP, and Judge Alito can do a tap dance about his deep respect for tradition (but not, of course, at the expense of privileging white males above all others). Republicans can be self-satisfied, Democrats can be smuggly disgusted, and everyone can vote exactly as they would have had CAP never existed.

for the record, when I read Dujack's comparison, I *am* offended. I have a general aversion to comparisons between the Holocaust and other events, and it is heightened when Jews are compared to animals as the Nazis did.

The Democrats are not playing for the nomination here (that's settled), they are playing for political points leading into the next election. Establishing a tighter connection between the Republicans and indulgence for elitism in our institutions is an enormously potent political message.