White colonizer, health care thief, psychopath.
The above are just a few of the names United States Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett has been called by members of the political left. Yet, she is not scheduled to say the first word to Senate interrogators until Oct. 12.
We hope the New Orleans native has instructed her seven children to cover their ears for the next month or so until she receives a hearing. Otherwise, they're likely to hear their mother described as a megalomaniacal, Pharisaical, sociopathic monster.
Before being selected as a nominee by President Donald Trump, her faith, her writings, her loyalties and even her children had come under criticism.
Just as the president became the subject of the anger from the political left after its candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was upset in the 2016 election, Barrett now seems to have become the focus of anger after the death of liberal icon and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
What, we wondered, causes so many people of one political bent to utter such hateful and untrue things about a woman they haven't met, know almost nothing about and who is, according to those who do know, a fine wife, mother, community member and jurist. Is it just politics or is it more than that?
We came across the suggestion by Tucker Carlson, a Fox News show host, that the left despises Barrett because she is content with her life, her family and her faith.
"Democrats know Amy Coney Barrett's life refutes the lies they have pushed on the rest of us for decades, [so] they must destroy her personally," he said. "Her happiness - her family's happiness - is evidence that they are frauds."
The nominee is a faithful Catholic and points to her Christian faith as the root of the joy she finds in her life.
"Attacking Christianity is the point of this," Carlson said. "Why do they hate Christianity? Because at its core, Christianity is a threat to the left because it acknowledges an authority higher than the Democratic National Committee."
The left, if it is honest with itself, would acknowledge how many of its denizens have attacked Christians and their faith - then-candidate Barack Obama's infamous 2008 "they cling to their guns or religion" comment being a prominent example - but we don't want to believe their hate of religion is so deeply rooted.
Although it doesn't excuse such behavior, we wonder how much of it is just politics.
After all, look how much as changed in 10 years. In parts of 2009 and a few days in 2010, Democrats held the presidency, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - something Republicans haven't enjoyed for more than 100 years - and a majority in the House. Pundits said the country's demographics would make it very difficult in the future to ever elect another Republican president. The world was their oyster.
But in 2010, they lost the House. In 2012, Obama became the first popularly elected president to receive fewer votes for a second term than his first term. In 2013, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led his caucus to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments. In 2014, they lost the Senate. In 2016 their presidential candidate was defeated. And in 2017, new Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell followed Reid's lead and eliminated the 60-vote rule on Supreme Court nominations.
"Elections have consequences," Obama told congressional Republicans shortly after his inauguration in 2009 when discussing his economic proposals. "I won."
Democrats have learned that - but don't like it - since Trump now has had the opportunity to nominate three Supreme Court justices in less than one four-year term.
On this page since Ginsburg's death, commentaries have noted how gracious Republicans were both in their votes and in their comments on justices such as Ginsburg nominated by recent Democratic presidents when their party also held the Senate. What we have not seen was anyone noting that Republicans didn't raise a ruckus when Ginsburg replaced the late Justice Byron White.
White, despite being appointed by Democrat John F. Kennedy, "fell more in line with the conservative bloc as the years passed," Oyez, a multimedia archive on the Supreme Court, noted. If Republicans acted as the left does today, they would have mounted a full-court press against Ginsburg, who already was known for her fiery liberal opinions.
But they understood, as Obama said, that elections have consequences.
Barrett, unless something pretty odious is found in the punch bowl during the Senate hearings, will be confirmed. The left, in the process, still has the opportunity to turn off its hate machine, lest others begin to believe its hate goes beyond skin deep and all the way to the bone.