Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, at the age of 83 and after three decades of demonstrating his brilliance and knowledge, is retiring. Past comments tell us what he wants as a replacement: someone of high legal skill to serve not as a politician seeking popularity or ideological objectives but as an upholder of the rule of law.
President Joe Biden apparently thinks differently. His standards are that the next justice should be Black and a woman.
That’s what he automatically said when asked about the Breyer retirement, and it is a reflection of what so much of our government and so many progressive politicians have become. They are players of identity politics, trying to serve one group or the other at the expense of other groups while study of the attributes of individuals as individuals comes in second, a plague afflicting Black Americans for ages.
