Time for revolution?

We’re going to ‘Bork’ him [Clarence Thomas].~ Florence Kennedy, at a feminist NOW rally, July, 1991

As I begin preparation for my teaching duties at Savannah State University, a historical black college founded in 1890 and the oldest HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the state of Georgia, I have mixed emotions. Frankly, I fear for the intellectual integrity of my students – people whom I’ve never met.

In less than a week, I will be teaching various courses on global politics, political philosophy, law and the judicial process, yet the lofty ideas and ideals I will seek to convey to my youthful minions at SSU will undoubtedly be contradicted by the glaring realities of the rule of law – how powerful men and women in expensive suits break the law with impunity and often go unpunished or receive much less punishment than you or I would receive if we did just some of what these people have done.

How can I teach my young students the values of venerating the rule of law and tailoring their lives to its laudable ideals when all around them are scoundrels in suits whose lives exemplify the cynical credo “Following the law is for suckers!”

Take, for example, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. As Detroit continues to implode, the latest events in Motown regarding this embattled mayor devolve to their inevitable end of infamy – a prison term (brief though it may be).

One has to inquire: How can a man like Mayor Kilpatrick, who is obviously guilty of multiple felonies, continue as the leader of a major city like Detroit and be the front-runner for a third term in 2009?

A week ago, Ronald Giles, a controversial judge on the 36th District Court, who was appointed by the mayor and is reported to be in Kwame’s back pocket, finally succumbed to national pressure and did the right thing. After the mayor violated the court’s order and his parole not to leave the city without alerting the court for the second time, Judge Giles finally acted like a real judge rather than Kwame’s crony and put the mayor in jail overnight on Aug. 7.

A night in jail did not deter Kilpatrick’s lawless ways, for on Aug. 12 Giles heard testimony that the mayor violated his bond for a third time, and this time Kwame’s crony behaved as taught, gave a wink and a nod and did not put the mayor back in jail. Is this justice?

While in jail a week ago, the wheels of justice were grinding on other acts of infamy to which the mayor would have to answer – most recently the charges brought by Michigan’s attorney general, Mike Cox, regarding an incident about two weeks ago where the mayor allegedly cursed out and shoved two Michigan state police officers. Why?

The police were trying to serve a subpoena, not to the mayor who was unexpectedly at the home of his sister, Ayanna Kilpatrick, but to the mayor’s friend and recipient of over $100 million in city contracts, Bobby Ferguson, a man with a criminal record who himself is on bond for numerous criminal acts, including fraud, bribery, parole violation and assault.

Last Friday afternoon, the mayor’s father, former Wayne County Executive Bernard Kilpatrick, paid the $50,000 cash bond to free his son. I wonder how much of that money is illegal payola funneled to his dad’s consulting firm by Mayor Kilpatrick under the pretext of benefiting Detroit? Do you see the naked cronyism and illegal transfer payments of taxpayer dollars from crook, to crook, to crook?

If you wonder why our youth are so jaded to the rule of law, virtue and truth, just last week a blue-chip group of Detroit’s movers and shakers – including business mogul Peter Karmanos, Art Blackwell, Highland Park’s financial manager, prosecutor Kym Worthy, federal Judge Damon Keith, Conrad Mallet, former justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and now CEO of Detroit Medical Center and a lawyer from the mayor’s office – quietly met at the world headquarters of Compuware in downtown Detroit for the express purpose of hammering out a plea deal where the mayor can plead to several misdemeanor charges so that he won’t have to give up his law license.

What, you may ask, would a pathological, narcissistic megalomaniac need with a law license? His Honor says, “So that he can take care of his family.”

Some of you may remember 17 years ago during the long hot summer of 1991 when Clarence Thomas, one of the few noted black conservatives in America even to this day, savagely and unjustly had his character assassinated by a gutless cabal of liberal pols, leftist pressure groups, feminists, judges and academics. All came out against this honorable man whose entire life has been a singular dedication to the ideas that made America the greatest nation on earth – rugged individualism, liberty, truth and that Horatio Alger pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps worldview.

Justice Thomas slept with no other man’s wife. His wife did not beat two strippers and chase them out of the mayor’s mansion. Justice Thomas has never mistreated those under his charge and as head of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission treated everyone with dignity and respect. (He was later vindicated for allegations involving Anita Hill.) After witness testimony and his “high tech lynching” speech, even his many detractors had to concede privately that Justice Clarence Thomas was a man of impeccable character, superior judicial intellect and represented the best ideals America has ever offered.

Why is Kwame Kilpatrick defended by Detroit’s brain trust while Justice Clarence Thomas is reviled to this day? In a sane world, there would be no rational argument here, but as George Orwell said, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

I’m feeling kind of revolutionary today, so I will tell the truth: Kwame Kilpatrick is an irredeemable man of the lowest ilk, and I rebuke all of those people propping him up to protect their jobs or their illegal bribes or the myth that black people, by virtue of race alone, are better qualified than anyone else to help black people. MLK said it is not the color of your skin, but the content of your character that makes the man (or woman).

Where is the NAACP? Where is the Urban League, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. John Lewis, the Congressional Black Caucus, the feminist organizations, the ACLU and all the others who crow about “social justice”?

Where was social justice 17 years ago for Clarence Thomas when these people and many other organizations came out in unison against this honorable man? These radicals and leftist pressure groups have ridiculed virtually every judicial opinion Justice Thomas has written, though his legal works are paragons of moral truth, liberty, originalist jurisprudence and comply with the original intent of the Constitution’s framers to the letter.

In a recent poll that asked black people whom you trusted more as a leader, Clarence Thomas got just 30 percent, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received 50 percent and Democrat presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama 90 percent. That poll speaks volumes on how deceived people have become in rightly judging character.

Liberalism, or the apotheosis of the God-state dominating every aspect of our lives, is killing my people in Detroit and is killing America. Unless we unite to prevent this menace of promoting the criminal and incompetent while demonizing the virtuous and honorable, then, dear reader, I have just four words for you – Let the revolution begin!

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Ellis Washington, former editor at The Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). See his law review article “Reply to Judge Richard Posner.” Washington’s latest book, “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust,” can be pre-ordered by calling 800-462-6420, promotion code “UPREPUB.”

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