Ragin’ against Kagan?

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote a bachelor's thesis for the Princeton History Department in 1981 entitled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City 1900-1933." Christopher Beam, writing in Slate, says that

Conservatives have now pounced on Kagan's Princeton thesis as evidence of socialist sympathies. It's like a treasure hunt. Whoever finds the most inflammatory quote wins.

Well, maybe. The only pouncing I have seen so far is on RedState.com, which has this:

This proves Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist. The woman declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates.

Maybe other conservatives have pounced, as it were, but most of the major conservative sites I looked at either ignored it or dismissed it. Even RedState has complained more about the fact that Princeton ordered them to remove the document from their website on copyright grounds than it has about the thesis itself.

There are two questions here. First, should someone in Kagan's position be held responsible for what she wrote as a history student in college? In the decisive sense the answer is no. Students need freedom to explore ideas. They should not be held responsible for what they write for their professors in the same way that a professor is held responsible for her published articles or a judge for his written opinions. A college paper is not a statement of professional opinion.

That doesn't mean that she shouldn't be questioned about the content of the thesis. If a nominee for the Federal courts or for some executive branch post were found to have made virulently anti-American or anti-Semitic statements in a college paper, it would be irresponsible of the Senate to ignore the fact.

That said, what does General Kagan's college thesis prove? Not much, so far as I can see. The White House has promised to post this and another thesis "soon", which probably means "not for a long time." You can view it here. I can't claim to have mastered the entire body of the argument, but it looks like a very competent thesis.

Ms. Kagan took issue with two claims in the scholarship: one was that the American Socialist movement in the early twentieth century was never a serious contender for political influence. To the contrary, she argues that it was initially a growing movement that showed real promise. The other is that the movement ultimately collapsed due to outside forces, including the rise of communism in Russia. To the contrary, as I understand her to argue, it collapsed due to internal contradictions and especially due to a refusal of various factions to compromise. She focuses exclusively on the New York Socialist movement, using that as a microcosm to interpret the national movement, a very sensible move.

Her bottom line is stated in the paper's conclusion:

The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle and entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

This indicates that the twenty-one year old Princeton history nerd had sympathy for radicals in general and socialists in particular. One would guess that she was a "moderate" socialist, in the sense that she was in favor of moderation within "radical" circles. She saw the failure of the socialist movement nationally as a sad story.

Does this matter? Yes. The Supreme Court is an essentially liberal institution, in the classical sense. According to classical liberalism, the rights of individual persons are primary. Collective rights, as in the rights of society as a whole, are secondary. Socialism is the view that the interests of society as a whole take precedence over individual rights, and especially over property rights. A socialist court would be contrary to the original intent, the design, and the very logic of the Constitution.

So it would be fair, I think, for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask General Kagan whether she considers herself, today, a socialist. That question would matter only if she said yes. Then, I think, the Republicans would attempt a filibuster, and they would probably succeed.

If Kagan refused to say, we could probably assume the answer is yes but I doubt that that would enough to derail her nomination. If she said no, that would largely be the end of it. In no case would her college thesis be dispositive.

Comments

[caheidelberger]

Perhaps related: in 1988, I ran for student body president of Madison High School on an anarchist platform, advocating abolition by plebiscite of the student council. I also wrote a senior government paper advocating anarchism.

[KB]

Cory: at what point were you corrupted?

[A.I.]

Does that mean, KB, you prefer anarchy over liberalism?

[Stan Gibilisco]

Cory, I'll go ya one better. In college I concocted a form of government in which every single controversy, every single issue, would be decided in a court of law on a case-by-case basis.

A government not of "laws" but of "men."

I never seriously advocated that system, I guess, but in college, I never seriously advocated anything.

[KB]

A.I.: yes, in the same way that I would prefer fighting vampires a handful at a time to fighting waves of zombies. In general, anarchists (real ones) are both more entertaining and more harmless than socialists.

Cory and Stan: I am not about to tell you all the nutty things I believed when I was a lot younger. I will say that for a brief time, in junior high, I considered myself a communist. It alarmed my Grandmother, which was entertainment enough. I