The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault (Hardcover)

~ Robert H. Dierker Jr. (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

After an unpleasant experience when "femifascists" reacted to Dierker's unfavorable ruling on a sexual harassment case and targeted him for complaint to a judicial board, the Missouri circuit judge decided it was time to expose what he sees as abuses by radical liberals of the judicial system. He cites several instances, from legal cases and from his own time on the bench, of liberals exerting influence on the courts and, thereby, circumventing the intentions of the U.S. Constitution. He specifically focuses on their efforts to incorporate provisions of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, which was originally aimed at ensuring equality to freed slaves, to make legal decisions regarding sex discrimination binding across all states. Dierker is concerned with the liberal focus on sexual issues, including equal rights for women and homosexuals. Noting the use of due process by liberals to "reform" American culture, Dierker cites recent cases involving the right to assisted suicide and gay marriage. From a decidedly conservative perspective and 20 years on the bench, Dierker cautions against liberal totalitarianism. Vanessa Bush
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Product Description

For the first time, a sitting judge blows the whistle on America’s out-of-control courts.

A judge for more than twenty years, Robert Dierker has enjoyed a distinguished legal career. But now that career may be on the line. Why? Because he is breaking the code of silence that has long kept judges from speaking out to present a withering account of how radical liberals run roughshod over the Constitution, waging war on the laws of nature, the laws of reason, and the law of God.

Even those outraged by America’s courts will be shocked by Judge Dierker’s story of activist judges, deep-pocketed special interest groups, pandering politicians, and others who claim to stand for tolerance, equal rights, and social justice, but actually stand for something quite different—something closer to totalitarianism.

Citing not only Judge Dierker’s own experiences but dozens of other recent court cases, The Tyranny of Tolerance shows how the courts enable left-wing activists to ram their dangerous agenda down the throats of the American people. Consider:

• Why do the courts claim the power to tax us?
• Why is a Christian fired when he voices opposition to his employer’s favoring homosexuals?
• Why are airline pilots sued and sent to “diversity training” for recommending that suspicious-looking people of Middle Eastern appearance be kept off planes?
• Why does a judge who defends a monument to the Ten Commandments in a courthouse lose his job?
• Why are speech codes imposed on employers, university students, lawyers (and judges!), while “artistic” indecency is protected from even the mildest regulation?
• Why are peaceful abortion protesters thrown in jail, their right to free speech crushed?
• Why are white and Asian students denied admission to colleges and universities in the name of “diversity”?
• Why is an enemy fighter captured in Afghanistan granted access to U.S. federal courts, overturning judicial precedent safeguarding the president’s wartime powers—to say nothing of common sense?

With this passionate insider’s account, Judge Dierker reminds Americans what’s at stake in the battle for the courts: the Constitution, the success of the war on terrorism, the freedom to worship God, the ability to keep our families safe, the institution of marriage, and much more.

Fortunately, Judge Dierker shows how we can defeat the radical liberals’ tyranny of tolerance. By wresting back control of the courts and restoring the legal, moral, and religious principles embedded in the Constitution, we can ultimately reclaim the republic the Founders bequeathed to us.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Crown Forum (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030733919X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307339195
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #735,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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55 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highlighting a fundemental problem, December 31, 2006

By	N. Perz (St. Louis) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Before the idiocy begins over whether or not the author should lose his job, perhaps a discussion about the book?

While I am a "liberal" in the conventional (and hopelessly ambiguous popular sense), TToT makes some valid points that need to be addressed by the public and the legal community. What is unfortunate, however, is the vitriolic and condescending nature of his rhetoric. (In fact, had I not already known the author to be an excellent judge, I would have dismissed the book outright as another rant from the very idiot-fringe that the author so despises)

There is a serious (although I would not necessarily say pervasive) problem in our legal culture in that law is manipulated as a means to personalized ends with little regard for internal consistency or philosophical principals. Beliefs are customized to fit personal goals rather than the other way around. While this is a fundamental hypocrisy for all of us as individuals (for some more than others), judges and lawyers are supposed to do better than this when working in the law.

TToT begins with a scathing attack on radical feminism and its effect (from the author's view) on the law. While I'm sure that most everyone will agree that the examples cited by Dierker are egregious, it also highlights the shortcoming of his argument: he picks the worst examples from the idiot-fringe of the ideological Left and implies that these views are controlling modern jurisprudence. This is a consistent theme to his approach. A bit of a straw-man, in my opinion.

Affirmative action is another big topic. It's really impossible to deny that affirmative action is reverse discrimination. Even its defenders (including the U.S. Supreme Court) seem to acknowledge it as such otherwise, why would they go to such lengths to create convoluted justifications of it? This is probably the best example of our subverting legal principles to facilitate "feel-good" public policy that allows our society to both avoid the guilt of injustice and avoid doing the heavy lifting necessary to fix the real problem.

The discussions of free speech and establishment of religion reveal similar shortcomings. But keep in mind, the author is using the worst examples to make the problems appear more severe than they really are. I was also disappointed at the unsophisticated nature of the "abortion" discussion. He could have at least acknowledged that dominion over one's own body (arguably at the very least, if not obviously) implicates a fundamental liberty interest. Each side to the abortion issue has compelling (and irreconcilable) moral/legal arguments.

While he makes a lot of good point on the public policy issues, he falls down on the "zipper issues." This, I think, reveals the fundamental hypocrisy of the "conservative" position: they want limited government just small enough to fit into everyone's bedroom. (Does anyone really believe that's what the Framers intended by their Constitution?) It's not that they don't want "judicial activism," it just that they want the courts to promote their particular beliefs (of course, at that point, it's magically no longer judicial activism).

If you think sodomy (homosexual or otherwise) is immoral, than don't do it. If you think pornography is vile, then don't buy it. Why should the law or the government care about what consenting adults do on their own time? Last I checked, this was still a free country. Freedom applies to "perverts" too (Dierker's term, not mine). TToT isn't really making a legal argument by this point; it's really just a personal rant about public immorality (which is fine--it is a free country after all).

The gay-marriage issue is another hot topic for TToT and another example of how the "conservatives" abandoned legal principle for personal preference (just as the "tyranny of tolerance" perpetrated by "illiberal-liberals" is accused of doing). It seems to me that if "equal protection" means anything, it means that the government cannot discriminate against arbitrary classes of persons based on immutable characteristics (race, gender, alienate, illegitimacy, etc.) unless it serves a (very) compelling public purpose. Homophobia aside, how can one seriously argue that sexuality is not an immutable characteristic? No one makes a conscious decision about their sexuality.

Now, if marriage were just a religious sacrament, then there'd be no problem. Churches can discriminate against anyone they want. The government, however, has created a legal status of marriage that conveys rights and privileges. How does one construct a serious legal argument for denying one class of personal these rights and privileges while granting them to another when there is not compelling public purpose in doing so (other than preserving the dominate culture's particular view of "family values"?) (Besides, if homosexual people want to know what it's like to lose half of their stuff in divorce court, how is that the government's concern?)

But I digress. Bottom line is, TToT isn't a systematic or deep analysis of the contradictions in our legal system. While I personally take issue with many of Deirker's arguments and his manner of presenting them, he does make a good number of valid points that need to be considered and addressed by anyone who professes to be an "officer of the Court." While perhaps lacking in his eloquence, Deirker is a sort of Socratic gadfly pulling at the fraying threads holding together the hypocrisies so many "liberals" stitch together to justify their worldview.

There's nothing unethical or unprofessional in his writing this book. I shudder when I imagine the PC-police and other intellectual pigmies gathering their forces in the St. Louis area to try to punish the judge professionally for speaking truth to power. Hopefully, that won't happen. It would be a shame (and rather ironic) to see this "tyranny of tolerance" show it's face in such a way.

Overall, I'd give the book three start but I have to give him an extra one for having the stones to publish this knowing what kind of reactions he'd have to put up with.

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. O'Connor's Review, January 5, 2007

By	CDB (Michigan) - See all my reviews

Mr. O'Connor tosses out an open-ended and unsupported question about Judge Dierker's judicial ethics for having... written a book based on his judicial experience, legal philosophy and social views.(!?!)
If that activity consititutes a breach of some unidentified judicial ethical standard, it would have been a great shock to the late Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, William Rhenquist, who wrote a handful of books as a sitting justice of that court. It will also be a shock to the Judge who is arguably America's leading scholar-judge, the Hon. Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (and the University of Chicago Law School), who has written more than two-dozen books on a vast array of topics, and who maintains an active weblog on which he and a fellow member of the U of C faculty share their views. And, a review of Amazon.com will turn up about ten titles written by current Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The late Justices William O. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall wrote books, articles and reminiscences of all kinds. I could go on and on and on with examples. The list of books written by sitting judges, in their own names, as judges, would fill an entire library of moderate size.

As an attorney in the State of Michigan, familiar with the life and writings of Justice John Voelker a/k/a Robert Traver, I am aware of no ethical rule that required him to publish under a pseudonym, and I know of nothing in our state's history of ethical decisions that would demand that commercial publication was somehow acceptable under a pseudonym, but not in a judge's real name. I do not impugn the memory of Justice Voelker, of course. I just don't understand how his example proves anything that Mr. O'Connor posits to the users of Amazon.com with regard to "The Tyranny of Tolerance."

I think Mr. O'Connor owes Judge Dierker an apology and the rest of us an explanation.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Needle of Truth out of the Haystack of Judicial Deception , May 27, 2007

By	Kenneth D. Willis (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Political Correctness is a passive aggressive form of tyranny but one of the most dangerous tyrannies nonetheless. It is passive because it is subtle and has the power to make its victims feel guilty for opposing it and thus easier to subjugate. It is dangerous because by the time we get fed up with it and decide to stand up to it most of the damage has already been done.

The Judicial code of silence is just such an example of this damage. How can sitting judges, with more job security than most Americans can dream of, be bludgeoned into silence so easily? Nothing more perfectly demonstrates the tyranny of political correctness, masquerading as "tolerance."

Judge Dierker as written a good book. He is bold and courageous for doing it and will no doubt suffer career ostracism, if not death threats, for it. He reminds me of the scientists who break their own code of silence to speak out on the hoax of anthropogenic global warming. The machinations of both of these elements of political correctness have the goal of transferring more control over the personal lives and finances of ordinary Americans to a government in the hands of the enemies of truth, justice and the oh-so-politically incorrect "American way."

If you are one of those who is fed up with being pushed around and dictated to by mad power hungry moonbats this book is for you. It affirms that you are not alone.