Posted on 11/04/2007 12:46:19 PM PST by K-oneTexas
October 2007
Clarence Thomas Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court Clarence Thomas
Download PDF A Conversation with Justice Clarence Thomas
The following is excerpted and edited from an interview with Justice Thomas conducted in his chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on September 19, 2007. Conducting the interview were Kaitlyn Buss, Daniel Burfiend, and Jillian Melchior, Hillsdale College seniors from the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism and the History and Political Science Department. Also present were Hillsdale president Larry Arnn and Hillsdale vice president and Imprimis editor Douglas Jeffrey.
The Honorable Clarence Thomas has been an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court since 1991. Prior to that he served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and as assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education. Justice Thomas graduated cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School before entering legal practice as assistant attorney general of Missouri and, later, as an attorney with the Monsanto Company. His new book is entitled My Grandfathers Son: A Memoir. Q: Why did you decide to write My Grandfathers Son?
CT: Ive met with young people from all over the country, from different backgroundssome with privileged backgrounds and some with less privileged backgroundsand they all have tough problems, challenges and uncertainties in their lives. And often they think that I grew up wise and had a plan in life to get where I have gottenthat I had no doubts and uncertainties myself. Well, the truth is that I had plenty of uncertainties and doubts, and this book is my story. I was proud when my editor called me as the book was being finalized and said: The great thing about this book is that its not the usual Washington book. Its yours; you wrote it. In fact, I did write it. And my hope is that young people who read it will find something in it they can identify with and learn from. Q: Ive noticed that you have a theme in your speeches about people who have influenced you, and now youre trying to influence others in a similar way. Can you talk a little about who influenced you?
CT: The first line in the book is, I was nine years old when I met my father. That refers to my biological father. But my grandfather was my real father. I named the book My Grandfathers Son because thats who I am. My grandfather and my grandmother influenced me and made me what I am today. Thats why I always take offense when I hear it said that Yale or some other institution is responsible. I was already fully formed by my grandparents. Whatever was poured into this vessel came from their way of life, and from my grandfathers independence, his insistence on self-sufficiency, his desire to think for himself even in the segregated South.
My father left when I was two, and up there on the wall you can see a photograph by Walker Evans of the Savannah neighborhood where my mother, my brother and I lived in one room. It doesnt look like much of a neighborhood, does it? And when I went to live with my grandfather, I was seven. His name was Myers Anderson. And it was a different way of life that he had worked hard to make possible. He built his house, a cinderblock house. He made the cinderblocks. And he was proud of that. It had a refrigerator, a deep freezer, a hot water heaterI had never seen any of these things in my life. It was wonderful. And then he taught me the connection between having these things and work. Everything he had, he showed me how to get it the honest way.
One of my grandfathers favorite sayings was, Old Man Cant is dead, I helped bury him. I must have heard that a hundred times. Today weve grown comfortable with programs and theories, whether its affirmative action or something else. Centralized governments always love grand theories and five-year-plans. But no government program could have done what my grandfather did for me and for others who needed help. Its the golden ruledo unto others as you would have them do unto you. The golden rule cant operate through a government program, it can only work between people.
I was talking to my brother oncemy brother died eight years ago very suddenly, which was really devastatingbut we were talking and we agreed that my grandfather was the greatest person we had ever known. And mind you, as young people there came a time that we rejected him. But he told us the truth about life. He taught us everything we needed to know to live in this world. And it remained with us. Even when people ask about my judicial philosophy, I can honestly say, to the extent I have one, it comes from my grandfather. Q: In the photo of your grandfather, he looks like a very serious man. What was he like personally?
CT: Yes, he was serious, and he was tough. He wasnt a mean man, but he was a hard man. He lived a hard life, and he was hardened by it. His life was marked by segregation, by no education, by having no father, by having his mother die when he was nine and going to live with his grandmother who was a freed slave. In a recent book, the authors said my grandfather was a wealthy man. And one of my cousins said when he heard this, Has anybody found the money? My grandfather owned two trucks and delivered fuel oil with one and ice with the other. His only employees were my brother and me, and we were little kids. Anything that he could do to make a living he did. And when the ice business was displaced by the refrigerator, we started farming. We repaired our own vehicles, we farmed our own land, we built our own fence line. We raised hogs, chickens, cows, and we butchered them. So he was not rich, no. But he was a frugal, industrious man. He believed that if you worked hard enough, you could have what you needed. If you were frugal enough, you could keep what you had. And if you had things, you could help other people who were in need. He believed that you work from sun to sun, and that was our life due to our fallen nature. Another of his favorite sayings was, Theres nothing you cant do with a little elbow grease.
And the idea of taxation offended him. My first ideas about taxation had to do with the fact that we worked for everything we had. My grandfather would give whatever he could to relatives who needed itto the elderly, to people with a lot of kids, to people who had fallen on hard times. Wed harvest food and take it to folks who needed it. But the idea of someone coming and exacting from us what we had worked for, he was offended at that idea. Q: You mentioned that you had uncertainties and doubts and that you rejected your grandfather at some point. How did the lessons that he taught you carry you through?
CT: I went into the seminary at 16, intending to be a priest. During my last two years there, I was the only black student. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I am Roman Catholic today. But I got angry back in the 1960s. I turned my back on what I had been taught and I fell away from my faith. When I left the seminary my grandfather kicked me out of the house. So Ive been on my own since I was 19. And then I was really angry. I got caught up in the anti-war movement in New England. I was really an angry black kid. And then in April of 1970, I was caught up in a riot in Harvard Square. At one point it was four in the morning and we were rioting, and there were tear gas canisters going off. And we made our way back to Worcester, back to the Holy Cross campus where I was going to college, and I couldnt sleep. I kept thinking, What did I just do? I couldnt figure it out. And then suddenly I realized that I was full of hate. I remember going in front of the chapel and saying, Lord, if you take this anger out of my heart, Ill never hate again. I hadnt prayed in years, and that was the beginning of my process back. I went from anger and hatred to cynicism, and then to trying to figure things out. And over the years I came to see cynicism as a disease. So what I tell my clerks today is that Im more idealistic than Ive ever been. Thats the only reason to do the job. But it was a long struggle. I was something like the prodigal son, slowly making my way back to what I had abandoned.
The hardest part of my book to write had to do with the fact that I had been so angry and bitterangry at whites, angry at the country, rejecting the church. But finally there came a time when I was at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionit was in February of 1983and my grandmother was ill. And I saw my grandfather at the hospital and we embraced for the only time in our entire lives. And he looked at me and said that he had recognized that part of the conflict I had been through with him was that I was just like him, independent and strong-willed. I was his son, and it was as though you could see it in his eyes. And then a month later he was dead. And it was at that timethe spring and summer of 1983that I re-embraced all that he had taught me. I had come full circle. And it was that summer that I decided I would live my life as a memorial to my grandparents lives. Thats why I was so upset during my confirmation hearings, because I saw what was being done to me as a desecration of that memorial. Ever since then, when people say that Im a conservative or that Im this or that, I say, Im my grandfathers son. If that means I am conservative, so be it. Q: A lot of people tend to define you by your race and you dont seem to. Why do you think that is?
CT: Weve become very comfortable with making judgments about people based on immutable characteristics. And look what weve degenerated tolook what happened to the Duke lacrosse team, where because there are rich white boys and a poor black girl, so many people assumed an automatic narrative. What happens to the truth, then? How is that different from the stereotypes of the days of Jim Crow? I often say, I dont hire women law clerks. People are shocked. But I dont hire women law clerksI hire the best law clerks. And it turns out that 30 percent of them happen to be women. If a woman graduates from law school and I say Im going to hire her because I need a woman, that seems to me dehumanizing, and the job would be tainted. Thats my attitude. Q: Do you think we ever will see each other as individuals?
CT: We used to have that as a goal when I was a kid and when we lived under segregation. And by the way, something that we often forget is that even under segregation, we were really patriotic. When I came back home with all that anti-war talk in the 60s, my grandfathers response was: Boy I didnt raise you like this. You went up North and they put all that damned foolishness in your head. But my point is, I was raised to treat people as individuals. My grandfather would say about whites, Theres goodns, theres badns. And about blacks, Theres goodns, theres badns. The difference was good and bad, not black and white. And treating others and being treated ourselves as individuals was our goal.
I went to a seminary reunion about four years ago, and a white seminarian who was a year ahead of me in high school came up to me and saidhere he is, almost 60 years old, and he had tears in his eyesand he said, Clarence, you taught me something in high school. You taught me that someone who didnt look like me could be a better seminarian, a better person, a better athlete than I could. And he said, From the time I left the seminary, Ive always treated people as individuals. That was our goal back then. Q: If you were talking to a group of college students and you were to give them the most important lesson that you learned from your grandfather, what would it be?
CT: There may be a disconnect between my world and yours, because when my grandfather was raising me, people didnt talk about their rights so much. They talked about civil rights, yes, but they didnt simply talk about rights and freedom. They talked more about the responsibilities that came with freedomabout the fact that if you were to have freedom, you had to be responsible for it. What my grandfather believed was that people have their responsibilities, and that if they are left alone to fulfill their responsibilities, that is freedom. Honesty and responsibility, those are the things he taught.
Its the same thing in civil society. Were too focused on the benefits of a civil society and we think too little about the obligations we havethe obligations to be civil, to learn about our history and our government, to conduct ourselves in a disciplined way, to help others, to take care of our homes. Too many conversations today have to do with rights and wants. There is not enough talk about responsibilities and duties. Q: How do you think people in todays generation can learn that kind of philosophy with such different upbringings and such a different culture?
CT: We all make choices. My wife is my best friend in the whole world. And she had a totally different upbringing from mine, but we have the same beliefs. How? I dont think its necessarily the same upbringing that makes the difference. We have free will. We always have a choice between just doing whatever we feel like doing and doing what we are obligated to do. Ive got a strong libertarian streak, but a good lesson Ive learned is this: You cant choose right and wrong, youve got to choose between right and wrong. Theres a wonderful encyclical by Pope John Paul where he talks about the mistake that Adam and Eve made. They thought they could choose right and wrong as opposed to choosing between the two. Modern nihilists and relativists think that we can decide or make up right and wrong. People like my grandfather understood that there was right and wrong, as certain as that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And they made their choices between the two. I think anyone today can do the same thing. Q: There seems to be a lot of negativity toward you in books and in the media. Is that lonely? And if so, how do you deal with it?
CT: When people used to criticize my grandfather, hed say: Well then, dammit, theyve got a lifetime to get pleased. That was it. He never spent any more time on it. Have you ever read the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896? Thats the case that upheld the idea of separate but equal. There was one dissent in that case, the dissent by Justice Harlan, who argued that the Constitution is colorblind. How lonely do you think he was after he wrote that? Do you think he was popular? It doesnt mean he wasnt right. I never set out to be unpopular, but popularity isnt of high value to me. I set out to do my best to be right. I am who I am. Q: What is your purpose in writing your opinions?
CT: What I try to do first in my opinions is to apply the Constitution. But also, I look on the Constitution as the peoples Constitution. And so I try to make the Constitution accessible again to people who didnt go to Harvard Law School. Of course, some of it gets involved because you have to deal with a lot of case law. But I want people to understand what the cases are about.
As for how I think about my opinions, imagine a train with 100 cars. The cars are the previous cases dealing with some issuethe meaning of the Commerce Clause, for instance, or of the First Amendment. Often what our decisions do is just tack on a new caboose to the train, and thats it. But heres what I like to do: I like to walk through the 100 cars and see whats going on up front. I like to go back to the Constitution, looking at the history and tradition along the way. Because what if theres a flashing light on the dashboard up front that says wrong direction? What if were headed the wrong way?
My job is to apply the Constitution. And heres a useful lesson: You hear people talk all the time about the Bill of Rights. But you should always keep in mind that the Bill of Rights was an afterthought. Thats why its made up of what are called amendments. It was not in the original Constitution. The rights in the Bill of Rights were originally assumed as natural rights, and some people at the time thought that writing them into the Constitution was redundant. Read the Declaration of Independence. We should always start, when we read the Constitution, by reading the Declaration, because it gives us the reasons why the structure of the Constitution was designed the way it was. And with the Constitution, it was the structure of the government that was supposed to protect our liberty. And what has happened through the years is that the protections afforded by that structure have been dissipated. So my opinions are often about the undermining of those structural protections.
People need to know about that. Many might say, Well, they are writing about the Commerce Clause, and nobody cares about that. But they should care about it. The same is true of the doctrine of incorporation. The same is true of substantive due process. People should care about these things. And I try to explain why clearly in my opinions. Q: In your opinion in Morse v. Frederickwhich had to do with whether a student had a right to hold up a sign saying Bong Hits for Jesusyou talk about the history of education, and about instilling a core of common values and how thats a responsibility of schools. How do you respond to people who say that there isnt a common set of values that schools should instillthat morality is relative?
CT: I did look at history, and more people should. There was an article in the Washington Times just today on how poorly our kids today understand civics. The title of it is: Colleges Flunking Basic Civics Tests, Average is F in U.S. History. There is our problem: We think we know a lot about our rights, but we know nothing about our country and about the principles that our liberty is based on and depends on.
Have you ever read Modern Times, by Paul Johnson? I read it back in the 80s. Its long, but its really worth the effort. One point it makes clearly is the connection between relativism, nihilism, and Naziism. The common idea that you can do whatever you want to do, because truth and morality are relative, leads to the idea that if you are powerful enough you can kill people because of their race or faith. So ask your relativist friends sometime: What is to keep me from getting a gang of people together and beating the hell out of you because I think you deserve to be beaten? Too many people think that life and liberty are about their frivolous pleasures. There is more to life. And again, largely what relativism reflects is simply a lack of learning. Q: I read a quote where you said that you dont argue ideas with brutes. Who were you referring to?
CT: Can a diehard Packers fan have a civil conversation with a diehard Bears fan right after a close game? Thats what Im talking about. There are some people now who are so wrapped up in their interests that thats all they care about. They dont even read the opinions that I write. It is their interests that govern them, not the thought process or the Constitution. Theyve got to have their way or theyll kill younot physically, necessarily, but certainly with calumnies. There are people today who seem unable to transcend their interests to the point necessary to have a civil discourse.
CT: My grandfather was a man who understood implicitly, without education, what it meant to do rightas a citizen, as a father, as a person. This was a man who had every reason to be bitterwho wasnt. A man who had every reason to give upwho didnt. A man who had every reason to stop workingwho wouldnt. He was a man who had nothing but a desire to work by the sweat of his brow so that he could provide for those of us around him, and to pass on to us his idea of right. Another thing he said always stuck with me. When my brother and I went to live with him in 1955 as kids, he told us: Boys, Im never going to tell you to do as I say. Im going to tell you to do as I do. How many people can say that? And I asked my brother once, Did he ever fail to live up to his promise? No. Q: Where do you think that you find the courage to make the unpopular stands that you do?
CT: I take my clerks to Gettysburg every year. They go over to stand where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Do you know that speech? He left it for us, the living, to finish the business. I take that very seriously. And my clerks get the point. We are here to further the business that Lincoln was talking about. And then you think also about the people who lost their lives there. Was that in vain? Will we allow the people who have fought our wars for our liberty to have died in vain? In recent years Ive had some wounded vets here in my office, young kids who have come back from Iraq missing limbs, blinded, in wheelchairs. And people say that I take hits? Do I look wounded to you? These kids have given a lot more. What a price people have paid for us to be right here. I think of them like I think of my grandparents. One of the things Im always trying to do is to make sure that everything they did was worth itthat if they were to appear right now they would say, Youve made our sacrifices worth it. Thats all I want.
I’m sure he’s supporting either Thompson or Hunter.
This sounds like an article you’d be interested in.
I spend hours at a time going back through the archives. Even in articles 10-15 years old, the truths spoken then are still valid.
SCOTUS bump
He is a MAN.
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