Lunch with Janice Rogers Brown

The confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was a nice victory for the Bush administration and the conservative cause. More generally, the confirmation of opponents of an imperial judicary to positions on courts of appeals and, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court represents an important triumph.
However, there was no triumphalism in Judge Brown’s luncheon address to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Federalist Society today. Drawing on conservative theorists like Frank Meyer, Judge Brown argued that erosion of our freedoms and, more importantly, the philosophic underpinnings of these freedoms, have caused a critical mass of the body politic to become too comfortable with the “parasitic state.” As a result, our liberty is profoundly threatened. In the past decades, according to Judge Brown, conservatives have won some important battles but not the philosophical war.
I can quibble with some of what Judge Brown said, but tend to agree with her broad thesis.