Shorter Clarence Thomas: Progressives are traitors, and my wife’s seditious attempt to overthrow the government was therefore a good thing

When I posted earlier this morning about Sonia Sotomayor apologizing to Brett Kavanaugb for hurting his feelings by telling the truth, I wasn’t aware that just a few hours earlier Clarence Thomas had declared that the approximately 55% of the population that doesn’t worship Confederate Jesus aren’t really Americans at all, and should be extirpated as an alien presence in the body politic.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Wednesday delivered a televised broadside against progressivism, a political philosophy he described as an existential threat to America and the principles that founded it 250 years ago. 

“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas said in a speech at the University of Texas Austin Law School pegged to the nation’s upcoming milestone birthday. 

A spirit of “cynicism, rejection, hostility and animus” toward America — by Americans — has taken hold, Thomas said in remarks carried live on CSPAN.

I do agree wholeheartedly with that latter observation.

He said that the values enshrined in the 1776 Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor” among Americans — a trend perpetrated, he argued, by “intellectuals” and the nation’s colleges and universities. 

Once more with feeling:

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”

 “[Progressivism] holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government,” he said. “It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”

This is ultimately an argument for a literal theocracy, and you don’t have to stay on that train for many subway stops to get there, as we’re seeing at this precise historical moment.

Thomas said Washington has been overrun by elected and appointed officials who lack commitment to “righteous cause, to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety or to the original meaning of the Constitution.”

I missed the Free Enterprise, Religious Piety, Traditional Morality, and Original Meaning clauses of the Constitution, but maybe that’s because my law school was a nest of reds.

“They recast themselves as Institutionalists, pragmatists or thoughtful moderates, all as a way of justifying their failures to themselves, their consciences, and their country,” he said. 

Thomas called on Americans to stand up for their principles and endure personal “sacrifices,” if necessary, to preserve the nation’s democracy.  

“In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration have so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs,” he said. 

In other words, sedition in the defense of liberty is no vice. Just ask my wife!

Also too, shame on the University Texas’s law school for platforming this disgrace to the judiciary, although I’m fully aware that not giving Thomas another half million dollar RV is probably a violation of the Federalist Society Secret Constitution’s emoluments clause.