Cirque du Kagan

That Kagan was repeatedly pressed by Senate Republicans to comment on her hard-Left political inclinations that riddle her tenuous legal career was expected. But the most profound scene in this confirmation drama was evidenced by the automatonic affirmation by Kagan’s supporters. Effused Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) at the close of the session, “You demonstrated an impressive, an encyclopedic knowledge of the law.”

The dubiousness of this whole spectacle was palpable. Kagan repeatedly rebuffed the idea that she might be a “results-oriented” justice. She rejoined, “It suggests that a judge is kind of picking sides irrespective of what the law requires. . . . The judge should be trying to figure out as best she can what the law does require, and not going in and saying, ‘You know, I don’t really care about the law, you know, this side should win.'”

But this is precisely the sort of justice leftists at the helm of the Democrat Party in Washington expect. Indeed the contradiction can be found in Kagan’s own words. Despite that she denies the sort of judicial activism that conservatives have long derided, Kagan’s tribute to her admitted mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall, declared that “the Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was ‘defective.’ . . . The Constitution today . . . 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 It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of ‘liberty,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘equality.'”

Here’s the rub. If by acquiescence to ‘outdated notions’ we mean stare decisis, or more specifically the law, then to what–pray tell–could Kagan have been referring in her admonition against results-orientation?

Further, reason should remind us all that, in the end, each of the justices of the Supreme Court are first human beings. And these human beings are governed by human nature. That is, they cannot be unbiased (a different thing entirely from objectivity). And as such, each of them will not escape the bias that results from his or her particular worldview with respect to that very human nature. Are humans perfectible or irreversibly prone to vice?

No matter the puffery Kagan or any other nominee may offer to judicial impartiality, one cannot escape the inclination to a fundamental answer on this question. And therein lies the great paradox. The Progressive Left invests its entire existence into the grand prospect of perfecting the lives of every human being through the strategic coordination of social engineering. This coordination requires, as it must, swift actions from the ever-powerful state. History has shown quite clearly that judicial decree can often be the swiftest action of them all.

This is the Progressive endgame. Feign respect for judicial impartiality all the while resigning one’s votes to the dictates of social engineering from on high. Sen. Leahy and his Progressive colleagues play the game well. With an overwhelming Democrat majority in the Senate, Kagan’s confirmation was already certain before this circus began.

This week’s committee session was little more than a Progressive wink-and-nod. And when conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) queried Kagan on whether she considered herself a ‘liberal Progressive’, he aimed at the heart of the matter. To which she replied, “Huh?” Exactly.