George Takei’s racist attack on Justice Thomas today is impossible to take out of context. The phrase “clown in blackface” can have only racist connotations. For quite awhile now I have regularly enjoyed reading Takei’s commentary on various issues, his jokes and bad puns on his Facebook page, and many other things he has done over the years. I disliked the few times he would call for socialist centralization and awful new laws, but I thought that he was a wonderful guy with a great message and a fantastic disposition, and a great heart; until today. Today he looked like a hate filled, ugly, bigoted racist with nothing intelligent to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWwHqvTEFaM
If a Republican had made such a remark about a black Democrat, the universe would have exploded in attacks, threats, calls for apology, and general condemnation. I hope over the coming days, people will treat Takei similarly; because, you know, equality.
I believe Takei should apologize; but let me make that clearer: I am not a white guy asking a Japanese guy to apologize to a black guy. I am an American asking an American to apologize for his ignorant attack on the character of an American. I’m sick of tribalism, I’m sick of Democrat led segregation, and I’m sick of divisive nonsense driving a wedge between us. But such tribalism keeps getting worse and worse…
The last few weeks in the US have been wildly divisive and Takei jumped on that hate-filled bandwagon. While the majority of us were joined in a celebration of love as gay rights activists achieved a fantastic victory in Obergefell v. Hodges, some have been incredibly violent, hostile, and outright threatening.
Such divisiveness has no place in rational conversation among adults. Takei invokes his victim-cred by talking about how his family was savagely injured by Franklin Roosevelt’s tyrannical incarceration of Japanese Americans – from the timing of his invocation, it seems that he understood that he made an incredibly hate filled racist remark and wanted to justify it; it can’t be justified or excused. I think it goes without saying, however, that Takei’s remarks about his family bear zero relevance to Justice Thomas’ dissent in Obergefell. His dissent very clearly takes a legal position, which is actually quite accurate and thoughtful, and concludes that the majority opinion gets the Constitution wrong.
No invective, no activism, nothing that would disqualify him from holding the position of Supreme Court Associate Justice.
Takei, then, merely lashed out like a 2-year-old because of his self-righteous indignation and polemical nonsense spewed forth (after such ignorant and childish outrage, let’s keep Takei away from Justice Thomas’ citations to Korematsu). Loudly beating his victim drum, he seems to think it is permissible for him to make racist remarks. Pure applesauce.
If Takei seriously believes Justice Thomas is unfit because he believes the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to gay marriage, then I think Takei should direct his attention to Justice Thomas’ dissenting opinion in Lawrence:
I join Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion. I write separately to note that the law before the Court today “is . . . uncommonly silly.” If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.
Notwithstanding this, I recognize that as a member of this Court I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to “decide cases ‘agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.'” And, just like Justice Stewart, I “can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,” or as the Court terms it today, the “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions,”
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (citations omitted).
In Lawrence, the Court was determining whether state laws that banned the act of sodomy were constitutional; those laws were very obviously directed and enforced to harm gay men. Justice Thomas directly states that he would vote to repeal such laws if he were in a position to do so. He then correctly states that it is not his place to do so and it is not the province of the Court to create new provisions in the Constitution. Justice Thomas’ dissenting opinions are well-crafted, well-reasoned, articulate, thoughtful, and appropriate for a Justice of the Supreme Court.
I think it is important to point out that I completely disagree with Justice Thomas’ legal conclusions in both Lawrence and Obergefell (also relevant, I disagree with the majority opinion in Lawrence – but that gets too legally technical and complicated for this article). Despite that disagreement, I will not make angry, racist, and divisive remarks to degrade anyone’s character.
It is also important to note that Takei is not, as is obvious, a jurist. These legal issues raised by Justice Thomas are incredibly technical and require a long grasp on history. So Takei is lashing out in mere ignorance.
And the layperson in Takei latches onto Justice Thomas’ reference to dignity… The majority opined that the dignity of gay persons somehow creates a new right in the Constitution; as Justice Thomas correctly points out, “[T]he Constitution contains no ‘dignity’ Clause.” Obergefell v. Hodges. If you disagree with Justice Thomas, formulate a reasoned, legal position that is contrary to his, cite historical and legal texts, and be a rational adult. Do anything… ANYTHING other than resorting to racist jiggery-pokery.
Rising above Takei’s racism, I think all of this debate and divisiveness would be completely remedied by the general acceptance of the libertarian position that has been around for decades. That is, individual rights fully vindicate the right of gay persons to marry and the coordinate position that it is not the province of a government to interfere with such individual and private action. We are each of us autonomous persons free to rightfully act as he or she desires.
There are no powers in any legitimate government to interfere with such rights; it is only the province of a government to prevent or remedy the private interference with the rights of others. Instead, we live in the Socialist Republic of the United States and when socialists empower a government to interfere with the rights of others in a way they agree with, it is only a matter of time for the government to interfere with the rights they believe are sacrosanct.
That is, if you don’t hate your government yet, keep using it to abuse the rights of others to your benefit and soon you will.
Such socialist belief in the nonsense of a “living law” and a “social contract” is what empowered governments to ban gay sex and marriage in the first place. Why don’t we try something radical… why don’t we see what it would be like if governments didn’t have such unconstitutional, immoral, and illegal powers?
In any event, George, let’s hear it. Let’s see you be the loving, caring, and unifying person that you have been for so long. Call your comments what they were, racist, own them, apologize, and move on. For so long you have been against hate and against bullying – but your comments today were clearly hate filled and degrading. Be the change you want to see in the world. I know for a fact that you don’t want the world to be racist and hate filled – so be the change, George.
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