Alito, FDR, and Me.

Alito will probably be confirmed. Supreme Court appointees may be the most lasting legacy a President can leave, although they aren't always what the nominating President might hope for. Rehnquist, for instance, influenced this country's direction for 30 years. Presidents at best get 8. Bush has managed one knock-out so far: Roberts as Chief Justice. Roberts could very well serve for 30+ years. Many Presidents have understood the power of the Supreme Court: FDR tried to pack the Court to ensure his New Deal legislation would be ruled constitutional (he was certainly inventive: the plan was to expand the Court from nine to potentially 13 members). That plan didn't work, but FDR eventually managed 8 court appointments due to death or retirement.

Again, proving that some legacies are best left unclaimed, it was FDR's reconstituted Court that ruled FDR's Executive Order 9066, calling for the internment of Japanese-Americans, constitutional.

Now we have Alito, the man who belonged to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group established in 1972 to fight against Princeton's then-recent policy of admitting women and minorities (when anyone talks about these eastern "liberal" schools, one might want to dig deeper and ask why it is that so many of them held retrograde admissions and social policies for so long). Not only did Alito belong to this conservative group, but also he listed it as a feature on his job application in 1985 for the Reagan administration.

1985, people.

As The Nation points out, in 1983 the organization's organ Prospect had published an article lamenting the inroads women and minorities had made:

"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place," fretted a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism." "Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children."

Wow. And Alito is listing this organization as a feather in his CAP, so to speak?

Alito of course claims he had no idea. Really, he is "shocked, shocked" that this conservative organization would be misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Let's take his word on that and then ask what sort of judgement a man must have to list something on his resume about which he knows absolutely nothing.

Certainly, these are dark days, but I step back and allow myself at least a small amount of faith in a progress narrative: conservatives have always lost in the end. It may take fifty years, it may take 100 years, but in the end the conservative bloc -- that group that defends upperclass white heterosexual male privilege -- loses (and by the way, underneath those signifiers lurks the end aim of conservatism: service to Capital).