Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

If more good folks who love our constitution would stand up and not be scared of liberals who defile it, this truely honorable judge would not have to put his job on the line.

Evil prevails when the good do nothing.

Anybody who states that this book was wrote strictly for profit, I believe is a fool / illiberal liberal.

My hat comes off for honorable judge Robert H. Dierker jr.

Brian

I was enriched by this examination of the subtle and scary alteration of our constitution's intended separation of powers by the activist liberal judiciary of the past 50 years. A well written book from the constitutional strict-constructionist viewpoint. Dierker's educated and experienced insights are chilling and all too familiar. This book could be considered the non-fiction version of 1984!

Why should there even be a code of silence? If a code of silence is in place then it is because the Cultural Marxists in the Judiciary have something to hide. There are easier ways for a judge to get rich than to write a book like this, so to suggest there's a nefarious profit motive is absurd. Revealing to the public how intolerant, illiberal, radical feminists, socialists are turning a judicial system that should exist for the benefit of the community into a tool where those in power rule by force is nothing less than a public service and possibly to be a career killer for the Judge. They search me at the airport and tell me if I have done nothing wrong, then I have nothing to hide. Well, the same applies to the Judiciary but even more so, for individuals have a right to reasonable expectation of privacy, to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects; but the Judiciary, being a public instituiton, and the people associated with it, should be open to review and criticizm.

To counter Mr. O'Connor, I hereby rate the Judge's book a 5....and I also have not read the book. I, too, find it unfair that someone would hurt an author's rating without reading the book first! Yes, I am wrong to do the same thing, but the unjustified 1 star review needs to be wiped out and a 5 should help...Good luck to you, Judge! I intend to buy the book, and have been keeping up with this in the news....Coming from an town where a neighbor (with a long rap sheet) got off scott-free after being charged with possession of 5 kilos of cocaine, with intent to sell, I applaud ANY judge who speaks the truth! In my neighbor's case, his (now famous) defense lawyer paid off the judge on the case. Oh, and the local Catholic church had a priest write a lovely letter for this criminal, a good-looking, con artist. His family, while Catholic, had not been to church in years, not even for religious holidays, but when they re-mortgaged their house to get their son off, the money was used to buy a judge AND a priest, who suddenly had wonderful things to say about this criminal. And this story is the truth, the whole truth, so help me God....

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.

Finally someone who tells the truth about what's really going on with the liberal democratic judges,and how conservative judges are forced to follow the liberal ways or they are forced off the bench.With books like this maybe the American people will wake up and see what's really going on in the court rooms.Kind of makes jury duty useless when the outcome is decided before the trail.

Though annoyingly arch on occasion, Judge Robert Dierker is quite articulate and persuasive in laying out his case that America's judiciary largely comprises men and women who will stop at little (if anything) to implement social and cultural changes that they deem desirable. Never mind that this social and cultural engineering is wrenching; resented and resisted by a significant percentage of the population; and is antithetical to reason, custom, tradition, morality at its most foundational, and the Constitution. Nothing matters but the establishment of their decline-of-Rome utopia.

Judge Dierker's argument that sneering fascists make up the judiciary strikes me as unanswerable -- and singularly depressing.

"Tolerance" is one of those words that have a positive connotation so it is no surprise that the Democratic Party has co-opted it as one of its watchwords. However, in THE TYRANNY OF TOLERANCE, judge Robert Dierker insists that the drive to achieve tolerance has reached such a manic level that the word now implies tolerance for some is a zero sum game that inevitably results in intolerance for others. Such a wish to force tolerance on those whom the tolerant deem intolerant is now reflective in a broad swath that cuts across all sectors of America. Those who see themselves as dispensers of tolerance call themselves liberals, but Dierker more correctly terms illiberal liberals. As a circuit judge of the Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit of Missouri, Dierker, over a twenty year career on the bench has seen it all, and during those two decades has seen a negative transformation in the basic legal framework of his court and by extension, the United States. At the core of this metamorphosis is the evolving view held by the Left of the Constitution. Originally, seen as the cornerstone of our republic, it has slowly been eroded away from meaning what it says to what a leftist judiciary says it means. Now, the illiberal liberals use it to force an agenda on the very fabric of our society, one that includes filing "lawsuits to kick the Boy Scouts out of public parks, to get sodomy into a constitutional right, to throw peaceful abortion protestors in jail, to allow abortionists to pull babies three-quarters out of the way of the womb and kill them, to crush pro-lifers' rights of speech and assembly, to nullify the reproductive rights and parental rights of men, to bankrupt the firearms industry as a means of disarming a free people, to impose racial quotas on employment, and to eliminate God from the Pledge of Allegiance." (Page 3)

It is pretty clear that Dierker is a conservative judge who takes a view of society that includes a refusal to expect a guaranteed level playing field of wealth and justice. The Left, in his view, wishes a society that is based on a Marxist redistribution of wealth and a utopian guarantee of justice for all to be achieved by legislative fiat. Historically, whenever any society is instituted under Marxist rules of wealth redistribution and socialist guarantees of employment and institutionalized multiculturalism, the result has inevitably been economic collapse as with the Soviet Union or social dysfunction as with most of multicultural Western Europe. These calamities Dierker is determined to avoid. In an overly brief coda, he notes how a concerned citizenry can reverse this decades long slide toward collapse and dysfunction. He writes that voters can demand judges who will decide issues based on what the Constitution says, and not on what agenda they would prefer it contain. Congress must be persuaded to curtail runaway judges by explicitly abolishing corrosive and divisive policies like affirmative action. And finally, Presidents must be chosen at least partly on their willingness to defy power-hungry supreme courts as Lincoln did when he authorized suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland in 1863. Dierker exhorts us to realize that it is not too late to wish to be intolerant of the perverted brand of tolerance now bandied about by the illiberal liberals.