Dirty Harriet (remastered)

The Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court by President Bush has led to a fascinating flurry of arguments and analysis from within the conservative camp. Hugh Hewitt is one the biggest voices in favor of her confirmation, while some writers at the National Review Online and the Weekly Standard led the outrage that followed news of Bush's choice.

The whole situation so far has served well in reminding me that everyone has an agenda. It is far too easy to nod off into a simple stupor of agreement with the moonshine offered by pundits, instead of diligently distilling what's heard by the wisdom of the Spirit.

My agenda is Jesus' glory. Most people do not share in this agenda. Conservative goals overlap with mine much more often than do liberal ones; however, the disease of deception, principally pride, is rampant within the conservative corpus and I must do well to resist its infection, by the purity of Christ.

This being said, it seems the fall out among some conservative voices over the Miers nomination is based on pride. Many of the dissenting views come from lawyers or legal scholars. For the most part, most of these experts are principled conservatives, so we agree on many public policy issues. But, based on the arguments in full display on the web, they seem suffer from the same sickness that most academics are stricken with: elitism.

The bottom line is that interpreting the greatest governing document ever written, the Constitution of the United States, is not that difficult. Many well-meaning lawyers and law professors, out of fear of the "evolving Constitition" proponents that have led to the horrible rulings by the Supreme Court in the past fifty years, have imprudently adopted a myopic standard towards potential Justices. They want a large body of constructionist scholarship, membership in the Federalist Society, Ivy-league letters, etc. These indicators can be telling. But they are not necessary.

I embrace holding the Supreme Court Justices to a lofty standard, but it seems some of the clamor over this nomination can be chalked up to academic elitism.

My main man, Thomas Sowell.

Hugh Hewitt's pundit scorecard:

"On Miers' side to date: Ken Starr, Lino Gralia, Thomas Sowell, James Dobson, Jay Sekulow, Marvin Olasky, Chuck Colson, Michael Medved, William Rusher, R. Emmett Tyrrell and of course Fred Barnes. Against her: The Corner, Tucker Carlson, Bill Kristol, Robert Bork, Mark Levin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and Charles Krauthhammer."