Elena Kagan’s Thesis
[Guest post by DRJ]
RedState’s Erick Erickson says he has the full text of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s thesis and Doug Ross posts the Cliff Notes’ version, with this introduction:
“I have transcribed some of the key graphs, below. In fact, you can read her entire, 130-page thesis in 90 seconds here if you wish. I’m not joking about that.
It’s now crystal clear that Kagan was nominated for one reason: to rubber-stamp Obama’s radical agenda, including an individual mandate for socialized medicine.
She is a radical. She is a socialist. And she must be blocked at all costs.”
It takes longer than 90 seconds but read both if you have time.
— DRJ
Gag me.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 5/13/2010 @ 11:17 pmis there a color key to fill in her thesis, or would that be racist to even ask?
M. L. Keylods (fb8750) — 5/13/2010 @ 11:24 pmnever mind, i denounce you all for enticing me to even wonder….i’m just a victim of your evil bitter clingy ways.
besides, i’m late for softball practice!
OK, I wrote a senior thesis too as an undergraduate and I can tell you that I wasn’t so full of myself that I was able to fill 130 pages. Then again, perhaps my thesis wasn’t up the caliber of Sean Wilentz’s leftist standards.
That said, let me issue a challenge to any readers of this blog. This is officially a “senior thesis” right? Can anyone tell me what exactly Ms. Kagan’s thesis statement is? I have read the first 12 pages where she is supposed to be laying out the outline of her argument, but I have no idea what her point is. Her ultimate guiding principle is that NYC socialism died out right after WWI, but she doesn’t appear to be interested in drawing any widespread conclusions about why. Where she ventures into opinion she appears to be widely mistaken; for instance, page 11 when she says that America’s involvement in WWI was an issue upon which “everyone — right of left, union leader or union member — could agree.” Try telling that to Eugene Debs.
Anyway, this thesis lacking an actual thesis statement appears to be a prelue to Ms. Kagan’s singular ability to avoid taking a position on any controversial matter. I don’t think I will bother to read the rest of her academic offering, but I would assume that she won’t ever get around to expressing an opinion or making any sort of conclusion that might be open to debate. It’s just the kind of faux-intellectualism that seems to be in vogue in liberal Democrat (and academic) circles these days.
JVW (08e86a) — 5/14/2010 @ 12:04 amFrom the Doug Ross link: “…[America’s] societal traits… a relatively fluid class structure, an economy which allowed at least some workers to enjoy [prosperity]… prevented the early twentieth century socialists from attracting an immediate mass following.”
— Imagine that! People worked hard, saw the fruit of their labors, and therefore were not taken in by the politics-of-victimhood tactics employed by the Socialist Party. Well, how . . . DARE they prove that capitalism works!?!
Icy Texan (176b23) — 5/14/2010 @ 1:48 amI believe her thesis was to explain that the movement died, not because of the many theories previously extended, but due to the conflict within the party itself between two distinct groups of thought.
AS for a senior thesis being the basis from which one should forever ascribe to writer as their core belief, I’m not so sure.
I think should be directly addressed during her confirmation hearings. She is on record saying that SCOTUS candidates should answer openly and fully. She should be held accountable for what she wrote and what she has said – and asked in no uncertain terms what her views are on Socialism.
Corwin (ea9428) — 5/14/2010 @ 4:54 amTrue, one shouldn’t see this thesis as determinative, but inlight of her previous stances at Harvard Law, and in the Clinton administration, on free speech, on economic liberty, it does add up to a troubling picture
ian cormac (c19bdd) — 5/14/2010 @ 5:26 amErick says This proves Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist.
Uh, no, it doesn’t. It may prove that she WAS an open and avowed socialist when she was in college. But that’s it.
I’m sure that the administration is aware of her thesis. It will be easy for them to distance her from it and brand us as seeing a socialist behind every tree. Don’t call someone a socialist unless you can make it stick or use of the term will degenerate further into empty namecalling, which is exactly what they want.
If you are going to block her “at all costs” you had better have a lot more backup than this. They will have a counter attack ready to go, and you will have run out of ammunition.
Amphipolis (b120ce) — 5/14/2010 @ 6:10 amNot all socialists are lesbians, just sayin’.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 5/14/2010 @ 6:39 amNTTAWWT.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 5/14/2010 @ 6:43 amI hope nobody ever reads any of the crap I wrote when I was in school.
gp (72be5d) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:10 amThis is not the hill we want to die on today. She will be confirmed and will be a closet socialist on the court for years. Remember who she is replacing. I just wish good health to Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. Actually, we could do worse than Kennedy, for that matter.
The Bork hearings were an unmitigated disaster for the country. That began the era of bitter partisan warfare in Congress and the advent of stealth candidates. Unless somebody finds her CPUSA card, she is a lock. I don’t see anything wrong in ferreting out her record in the Clinton Whitehouse, though. That may be very useful when some divisive case comes up to the Court.
Mike K (82f374) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:39 amActually this thesis shows an extraordinary ignorance of history relevant to her thesis.
Sheesh.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:44 amElena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist. Period. And always had been.
A Noted Intentionalist (9eb641) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:45 amI jumped to the very end under the theory that there might be a conclusive restating of the thesis. It seems to be that:
(a) the socialist movement was plagued from the beginning by a deep internal dispute between advocates of “constructive” reform socialism and revolutionary socialism.
(b) that internal battle destroyed the socialist movement.
Neither the opening nor the conclusion seem to provide a mechanism of action for the destruction of socialism, though.
——–
The failure of socialism to garner success here is a legitimately ineresting historical question. And, assuming that her thesis is right about the state of scholarship in 1981, the biggest contribution of the article seems to be the re-evaluation of the effect of WW1 on the movement; that part is certainly more interesting and concrete than the part about internal disputes (although my dislike of the internal disputes section may be a result of my frustrated desire to find a smoking gun, and my interest in the WW1 section may be explained by the fact that I am very interested in the almost complete erasure from our national memory of just how contentious that war was).
aphrael (73ebe9) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:54 amAmphipolis – it doesn’t even prove that she was an open and avowed socialist in 1981.
It proves that she was interested in the history of socialism, and it strongly suggests that she was interested in change … but one does not have to believe that socialism is the correct change in order to believe that the history of the failure of the socialist movement contains interesting lessons for those who wish to be involved in other movements.
aphrael (73ebe9) — 5/14/2010 @ 7:56 amAha! There’s *a* smoking gun, from page 83 (which is listed as page 88 due to insertions):
“Within one year of Hillquit’s prediction, however, the Socialist Party succumbed once more to intra-party conflicts. The renewed battles grew primarily from Lenin’s seizure of power in October 1917. While all initially supported the revolution, the left and right wings of the Socialist Party interpreted differently the Bolshevik uprising’s mandate, The revolution persuaded the right-wing to abandon it’s anti-war stance at the same time it convinced the left wing to reassert its opposition.”
aphrael (73ebe9) — 5/14/2010 @ 8:03 amOne could infer, that the downfall was the focus on revolution, which apparently wasn’t extreme enough
ian cormac (c19bdd) — 5/14/2010 @ 8:15 amhence Reed and the Communists. whereas they were able to succeed to a degree with FDR, ‘the kernel of
the maximum demand, with the minimal pose’ that’s
Van Jones, but the same argument applies
What’s all this talk about Elena Kagan’s faeces?
E. Litella (9eb641) — 5/14/2010 @ 8:21 amaphrael 15 – I agree. I could also infer that she seemed sympathetic to socialism in college, but that is no indictment.
Throw this one back in the lake. It is too small.
Amphipolis (b120ce) — 5/14/2010 @ 8:29 amShe’s a rubberstamp and what is far more troubling than her youthful socialist bent is that she is not able – much less inclined – to understand the plain language of a federal statute or, if she does understand it, she rejects it if it runs counter to the results she wants.
Generalmalaise (fc86d7) — 5/14/2010 @ 9:34 amThanks aphrael, I should have done what you did and fast-forwarded to the end to see what her conclusion was, hoping that would give some sort of indication as to what she was trying to say.
Upon further review I think you are correct in stating that the thesis was that internal battles destroyed the NYC Socialist Party. Still, I think this thesis could have used some strong guidance to make it clear and to the point (Prof. Wilentz must have been busy cobbling together an anti-Reagan screed while Ms. Kagan was working on this magnum opus). Her first seven pages discuss the failure of the American socialist movement to gain traction, then she acknowledges that “a part can never truly reflect the whole” yet transitions straight away into the implications for the NYC Socialist movement.
Actually, the more interesting thesis had Ms. Kagan chosen to pursue it might have been her assertion that Morris Hillquit and Victor Berger who “molded the party in their image,” not the more well-known Eugene Debs. I actually may try to read the rest of her work after all, though I still assert that 130 pages is a little bit prolix for an undergraduate work.
JVW (08e86a) — 5/14/2010 @ 9:43 amElena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist.
IOW, she’s not an ultra-leftwinger, but I’m sure she’s quite liberal nonetheless.
I was reading the readers’ forum at Time.com regarding a columnist for Salon, Glenn Greenwald, who apparently believes Kagan isn’t “progressive” enough. It’s amusing how a variety of the posters appear to share that sentiment, some of them also claiming — get this! — that Obama isn’t a liberal or liberal enough too.
What is peculiar is how quite a few of such ultra-liberals at the same time tap dance around the word “liberal,” favoring the squishy word “progressive.” If they’re so devoted to leftism, or even ultra-liberalism, then they should stop couching their terms and say “hell, yes, I’m a liberal, and I want leftists on the Supreme Court and in the White House!” If they want their sentiments fully known and clearly stated, they need to drop the BS of the rather euphemistic and vague “progressive.”
Mark (411533) — 5/14/2010 @ 10:17 amI don’t know about the content, but her writing runs circles around Michelle Obama’s. Her thesis was just plain embarrassing. That would have been a C paper at the public university that I graduated from.
Vatar (bbc421) — 5/14/2010 @ 3:47 pmthis is stupid^
youdontknowme (a00bab) — 11/10/2010 @ 11:15 amCan I just say what a help to find somebody who really realizes just what they’re talking about on the internet. You actually know how to bring a problem to light and make it vital. Even more people require to read this particular and understand this side of the story. I cannot believe you’re not more popular as you positively have the gift.
shoes (d4385c) — 4/20/2011 @ 2:20 pm