We are all Manchurian candidates for the right wing

If you want evidence of how effectively the right-wing has controlled the discourse in America, consider the following. In an otherwise useful review of how we deal with judicial misconduct, Thomas D. Williams, in “Who Is Judging the Judge?” (a t r u t h o u t | Report, Monday 16 October 2006) reports the following in the conclusion:

"More than half of Americans are angry and disappointed with the nation's judiciary," a September 2005 survey for the American Bar Association Journal Report shows. "A majority of the survey respondents agreed with statements that 'judicial activism' has reached the crisis stage, and that judges who ignore voters' values should be impeached," says the survey. "Nearly half agreed with a congressman who said judges are 'arrogant, out-of-control and unaccountable.'"

The right wing’s crusade against so-called “activist judges” is another piece of absurdity that has polluted public opinion. What it means is judges who do not rule the way I want them to rule, but dressed up as a principled position, which it is not. What the proponents of the criticism ignore is the fact that judges do not bring cases. They aren't ambulance chasing judges showing up wherever they can find a dispute that will allow them to twist the meaning of the Constitution. All they do is rule on cases brought by people who seek out correction of a perceived injustice, including criminal law prosecutors, based on arguments presented by lawyers as to what the law is. What they really mean is that they wish judges did not listen to certain kinds of arguments – like arguments accepted for over 100 years by the Supreme Court that a right of privacy is implicit in the Constitution, a concept of the purest conservative lineage that suddenly prompted opposition from people who call themselves "conservatives" once it threatened their ability to impose their religious beliefs on everyone.

The right wing is able to put untold millions of dollars behind distilling and then repeating these simplistic slogans that will function as mnemonic devices for Republican positions. What we see here is that regardless of how absurd it is, a majority of Americans have accepted the "activist judges" mantra as true. Think of others: Social Security “won’t be there for me” (false), “medical malpractice crisis” (there is none), ”excessive labor costs” as the automatic diagnosis for companies in trouble. These guys are so good, with relentless repetition everywhere readily funded, that even progressives and liberals tend to accept many of them without question. The left is improving, but it has a long way to go. The first step is for us to recognize when it is happening.