Myths, legends, and anthropology all state that the power to name a thing is the power to control or destroy it. A simple and devastating public relations technique is, therefore, to attach a memorable and accurate name to somebody. The Allies, for example, named General Fedor Bock "Der Sterber" ("Let's go get killed") due to his callous remark that it was the function of the German soldier to die for Germany, and they made sure his soldiers knew it. This article will similarly name Sonia Sotomayor, a jurist who seems to confuse the role of the U.S. Supreme Court with that of Congress, "Sonia Quotamayor" for her support of affirmative action race preferences, and also her personal status as a goal or a quota.

Sonia the Quota, aka Sonia Quotamayor, proved what most people have known for years. Affirmative action means hiring, appointing, or promoting people for the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Sotomayor is obviously not where she is because of her character or her qualifications. Her own words prove that she is grossly unfit to serve in any responsible judicial capacity in an equal opportunity society.

[W]e ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. It is this view that works harm, by perpetuating the facile notion that what makes race matter is acknowledging the simple truth that race does matter.”

Acceptance, acknowledgment, or tolerance of race as a factor in employment, college admissions, housing, and so on, is discrimination by definition.

Race discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because he/she is of a certain race or because of personal characteristics associated with race (such as hair texture, skin color, or certain facial features). …National origin discrimination involves treating people (applicants or employees) unfavorably because they are from a particular country or part of the world, because of ethnicity or accent, or because they appear to be of a certain ethnic background (even if they are not).

If you treat one person favorably for the color of his or her skin (or ethnicity), you are discriminating against another, and no amount of hand-waving will change that.

Sotomayor Lacks Basic Competence in High School Civics

Quotamayor's open endorsement of race discrimination comes as no surprise, because her basic competence as a jurist is open to serious question. She thinks only the parts of the Bill of Rights she likes, as opposed to the entire Bill of Rights, applies to the states.

Sotomayor's panel rejected the claim [regarding a chuka stick] on the ground that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. Relying on the Supreme Court's 1886 decision in Presser v. Illinois, it explained that it was "settled law that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose" on the individual's right to bear arms.

It is true that Presser v. Illinois ruled,

…State legislatures may enact statutes to control and regulate all organizations, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations except those which are authorized by the militia laws of the United States. Saying the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution limited only the power of Congress and the national government to control firearms, not that of the state and that the right peaceably to assemble was not protected by the clause referred to except to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The context of Presser was, however, the organization of a private army as opposed to the exercise of the individual right to keep and bear arms. The ruling said, in effect, that you can have weapons, but you cannot raise a private army or paramilitary organization that is not answerable to a state or Federal government. That is, the United States is not a feudal country whose king relies on a multitude of armed vassals, each with his own personal army, for national defense. An armed gang, whether the Mafia, Medellin cartel, or club-wielding New Black Panthers outside Philadelphia polling places, is another version of a private army, and it is contrary to public policy.

Note also the archaic statement to the effect that "the right peaceably to assemble was not protected…" This would obviously not hold water today. In addition, the very decision that Sonia the Quota cites adds that states can not prohibit the private ownership of weapons!

It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.

The Presser decision, then, reinforces the obvious (except to diversity appointees like Sotomayor) principle that the intention of the Second Amendment is to arm the people not with colonial muskets, but with weapons similar to those of the contemporary Armed Forces.Those were revolvers and breech-loading rifles in 1886, semiautomatic handguns and magazine rifles in 1920 and, quite frankly, automatic rifles today. (In practice, though, aimed semiautomatic fire is superior to spray and pray.)

It is also quite possible that Quotamayor is simply not up to date on Constitutional law, which means she is not qualified to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The incorporation of the Bill of Rights (or incorporation for short) is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to 1925, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government. Under the incorporation doctrine, most provisions of the Bill of Rights now also apply to the state and local governments.

Sonia the Quota

"Sonia the Quota" is straight from her self-description. She openly admits  that she lacked the qualifications to get into Princeton based on the content of her character, so she had to use the color of her skin (or, more precisely, her ethnicity).

Affirmative action played a role in her admittance to Princeton, she recalls, and she remembers it drawing the scrutiny of an adult at her Catholic school in the Bronx. "The first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was going to get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not," she recalls.

Princeton, therefore, passed over at least two highly qualified candidates so they could fill an affirmative action quota with a grossly unqualified one.

The bottom line is that affirmative action is not equal opportunity. It relies on the fatally flawed premise that two equal wrongs (Jim Crow and Crow Jim) somehow add up to a right, and a purported jurist who believes two wrongs make a right has no place in any U.S. court of law. The admitted fact that she got there because of the color of her skin rather then the content of her character reinforces this conclusion.

Cartoon by Richard Terrell of Aftermath

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.