Notorious RBG

The other day, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a judge of the US Supreme Court, who in recent years represented the most liberal part of it, died. Ginsburg was 87 years old. She managed to survive five (!) cancers, but pancreatic cancer eventually finished her off. Appointed by Clinton in the nineties, at first she was not the most liberal judge in the Supreme Court, but in the 2000s the situation changed - Bush appointed two judges, and the Supreme Court swung towards the conservatives. Ginsburg increasingly had to disagree and write a “dissenting opinion”. Once she publicly lowered Trump (then she apologized because it was not appropriate for a judge). As a result, she turned into an icon of young progressives: they stuck memes with her and called her Notorious RBG (by analogy with one rapper).

She went to the Supreme Court for a long time. First, Harvard Law School, where there were 9 girls for a stream of 400 people, and the dean asked them to explain why they are so good that they take places where men could study. Then there were difficulties with employment. As a result, Ginsburg moved into human rights, where she dealt with cases of gender discrimination. Moreover, she selected them in such a way as to protect not only women, but also men. For example, the case of a female pilot who was denied benefits for her husband (the same benefits were given to the wives of male pilots). Or the case of a widowed father who was kicked off by Social Security with the wording “this is for mothers.” So she first became a judge in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, then in the Supreme Court. It is in Russia that obedient judges grow out of obedient secretaries, but in the USA you can troll the court with controversial cases for years and earn a place with this.

RBG is devoted to two large films - one feature (“By gender”), the second documentary (“RBG”). From the latter, you can find out how this truly outstanding woman differed from today’s leftists:

- She said that only in the USA she, a girl from a poor Jewish family (dad is an emigrant from Odessa) could become what she became. She respected the Constitution and the American legal heritage. No “we’ll demolish all the monuments, America has never been great” for you.

- I always saw in my conservative political opponents people, not dehumanized malicious “oppressors”. People who do not understand the problems that women face. Therefore, it is necessary to explain and convince. As a result, they were friends with Judge Scalia, a conservative Catholic.

- Always relied on rational reasoning. Instead of emotional tantrums with the wringing of hands, which is so typical of today’s left-wing public.

- She was a supporter of gradual and step-by-step changes in society. This, it must be said, is quite a conservative approach in the spirit of Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek.

Well, so that the right-wingers would not be offended either: Ginsburg lived all her life married to a man whom she met at the age of 17 (he died earlier, also from cancer), gave birth and raised two children. Until the very end of her life, she was engaged in fitness and worked. An exemplary biography for a conservative person. And so strikingly different from many of today’s right-wingers, who at the age of thirty sleep in their parents’ basement with an embrace with a dakimakura.

Mihail Pojarsky 2020-09-20