On 2/20/2022 12:23 AM, John Levine wrote:
> According to Mike Anderson <prabbit237@gmail.com.com>:
>>> Two or three Catholic justices would not be surprising. But six?
>>>
>>> https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-3-demographic-profiles-of-religious-groups/
>>
>> For that matter, how many Catholic presidents have we had? Well, there
>> was JFK and then there's Biden and also.....ummm....wasn't Catholic the
>> religion of.....Well, I'll be. There's only been TWO Catholic
>> presidents. Looks like there's some discrimination going on here as
>> well. We should sue to have more Catholic presidents elected!!!!
>
> Let's not pretend we know nothing about US history. The only serious
> Catholic presidential candidate before JFK was Al Smith in 1928. The
> Klan burned crosses to protest his nomination and he was clobbered by
> Hoover, partly due to anti-Catholic bias, partly due to a belief (soon
> shown to be disastrously wrong) that Republicans would bring continued
> prosperity. Even in 1960 there was plenty of muttering that JFK would
> take orders from the Pope.

3/4 of the population is Protestant. We elect based on a >50% margin (at
least in the electoral college.) So it stands to reason that we'd
usually elect Protestant presidents and there's no "bias" other than
that we vote for those who are more like us. That's why, if there was
one Catholic and one Protestant on the ballot, we'd wind up electing the
Protestant (and many Catholics, who may otherwise be very GOOD
candidates, may decide "why even bother?" in part due to the "one man,
one vote, winner-take-all" system.) In fact, if it was a ticket like
that and we elected PURELY on religious grounds, we'd never have had a
Catholic at all in office as the election would always be a 75/25 (or
there-abouts) split.

My remarks about how we've only elected two Catholics was more of a
sarcastic statement about how looking *JUST* at the religion of the
elected/appointed persons and comparing that to the general population
and ignoring other aspects is not a valid way of looking at it. You do
have to look at the underlying aspects, such as that tendency to vote
"for our own kind" (but also you have to take in to consideration that
sometimes things really do happen by chance, as well.)

Just as example, let's look at the Royal family of England. How many
African-descendant people have been King or Queen? None, right? Is that
an issue with some sort of bias against those with darker skin or is it
simply a matter of how the original Anglo-Saxon ruler was lighter
skinned and being part of the Royalty is based on who you're a
descendant of? (Of course the answer is obvious here.) So saying that
"all of the kings and queens were white men and women and thus there's
extreme racist actions going on" would be utter nonsense.

But if you said "all of the CEOs of all Fortune-500 companies have been
white men" (or whatever the percentage is. I know it's not really 100%
but it's definitely not the 28% or so that you'd expect based solely off
randomized population) and that such was an indication of racism and/or
sexism in the US, you'd have a very valid point. Was it TOTALLY due to
racism/sexism? No. But it's largely due to it.

But the whole point is that pure numbers/ratios without context is
meaningless as to trying to prove something and that was the main point.

>> If there's only nine judges, it doesn't take much to skew the
>> numbers. And for a long time, the court was mainly or all Protestant but
>> we didn't get up in arms then.
>
> Well, yeah, and there weren't any Black justices until 1967. The US
> has a long and ugly history of bigotry. Fortunately, it has receded
> somewhat in recent years. As we saw in 2020, Biden's religion was a
> non-issue, but look at all the faux outrage that he might appoint
> a Black woman to the court.

And I'm not disagreeing with the "The US has a long and ugly history of
bigotry" statement at all. Unfortunately, our country, as much as we
like to think it's the "absolute best place to live and everything is
wonderful", is far from perfect. We like to look down on the other
countries and say "but for the grace of <some deity>, go we" but we
ignore the fact that, in some ways, we are leading the charge into the
depths of hell and we even manufactured a large part of the hand-basket.

> On the other hand, if I were a Republican president, and I knew that I
> wanted to fill the court with judges that would outlaw abortion, but
> I couldn't actually ask them if they would do that, what would be a
> strong indication that they would do so?
>