Republicans, in an effort to attack U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, are declaring open season on anyone in their path: including the late, great Thurgood Marshall, the first black man to serve on the Court.
I had a chance to
check out Media Matters for America to take in its research on an attack that conservatives are now engaging in as they attack Justice Marshall.
First, the background. Kagan, who clerked for Marshall, cited a statement by the former justice, who stated that the Constitution, as it was originally composed, was "defective." Right wingers have now begun to attack Marshall to try and suggest that he was some kind of an anti-American radical (a familiar tactic for conservatives who attack minorities). And, as is usually the case, Republicans are completely misguided about Marshall and have taken his comments out of context in a deliberate effort to portray him in the most negative light possible.
When Marshall talked about the Constitution as "defective" he did so because it permitted slavery and denied women the rights that they deserved. But, why would conservatives let the facts get in the way of a good smear.
Below is what
Media Matters for America wrote as it documented the full context of what Marshall had to say.
Marshall: Original Constitution was "defective," required amendments to end slavery, guarantee women's suffrage. In his May 6, 1987 speech to the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association, Marshall -- the first African-American Supreme Court justice -- stated:
I cannot accept this invitation, for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.
For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: 'We the People." When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America's citizens. "We the People" included, in the words of the Framers, "the whole Number of free Persons." On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, although they were counted for representational purposes at threefifths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over a hundred and thirty years.
These omissions were intentional. The record of the Framers' debates on the slave question is especially clear: The Southern States acceded to the demands of the New England States for giving Congress broad power to regulate commerce, in exchange for the right to continue the slave trade. The economic interests of the regions coalesced: New Englanders engaged in the "carrying trade" would profit from transporting slaves from Africa as well as goods produced in America by slave labor. The perpetuation of slavery ensured the primary source of wealth in the Southern States.
Despite this clear understanding of the role slavery would play in the new republic, use of the words "slaves" and "slavery" was carefully avoided in the original document. Political representation in the lower House of Congress was to be based on the population of "free Persons" in each State, plus threefifths of all "other Persons." Moral principles against slavery, for those who had them, were compromised, with no explanation of the conflicting principles for which the American Revolutionary War had ostensibly been fought: the selfevident truths "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Marshall was not randomly attacking the Constitution as some black radical, who hated America. To the contrary, Marshall believed in the greatness of America to right wrongs over the course of time.
Historically, righting the wrongs has helped make the Constitution stronger today than it was when blacks were held as slaves and women were treated unfairly.
But, the fact that the Constitution allowed slavery and women to be treated as less than equal was lost on the mind of far-right talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who rarely wastes an opportunity to attack black people.
LIMBAUGH: I wanted to go even further, so here the last paragraph, we find out even more about Thurgood Marshall, who Elena Kagan idolized:
"During the year that marked the bicentennial of the Constitution, Justice Marshall gave a characteristically candid speech. He declared" -- this is a law review article that she wrote -- "he declared that the Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was 'defective'; only over the course of 200 years had the nation 'attain[ed] the system of constitutional government, and its respect for . . . individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental today.' The Constitution today, the Justice continued, contains a great deal to be proud of. '[B]ut the credit does not belong to the Framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of "liberty," "justice," and "equality,'" and who strived to better them.' The credit, in other words, belongs to people like Justice Marshall. As the many thousands who waited on the Supreme Court steps will know, our modem Constitution is his."
So, this is who Elena Kagan idolizes, Justice Marshall, who said the Constitution as originally drafted and conceived was 'defective,' and only over the course of 200 years with people like him on the Supreme Court had it become worth anything.
Notice the attempt to demonize Marshall and Kagan through Marshall?
Limbaugh seems to leave out the parts about slavery and women's rights.
Was this an oversight on his part?
Limbaugh is an individual conservatives love, who relishes taking a shot at a great man like Justice Thurgood Marshall who did so much for so many people.
I am no law scholar, but what Marshall said about the original Constitution being "defective" was right on the money, and is obvious.
