An interview with United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas in the October 2007 edition of Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, provides more than a mere glimpse into the life of this great man… much more.

As I read the interview it occurred to me that what we have in Justice Thomas is precisely what that small group of anti-slavery Whigs, Northern Democrats, and Free-Soilers had in mind when they met in Ripon, Wisconsin in March 1854 to create the Republican Party. He is the personification of what those early Republicans knew that every black man in America could become.

Clarence Thomas was raised by his grandmother and his grandfather, whose life, he tells us, was "marked by segregation, by no education, by having no father, by having his mother die when he was nine, and going to live with his grandmother… a freed slave."

He says, "Whatever was poured into this vessel came from their way of life, and from my grandfather’s independence, his insistence on self-sufficiency, his desire to think for himself… even in the segregated South."

What makes Clarence Thomas stand out as a man among men is the fact that he has achieved precisely what generations of Democrats have tried so hard to keep him, and every other black man, from achieving. It is why Democrats turned his Senate confirmation hearings into what he termed a "circus," and a "national disgrace."

Looking squarely into the eyes of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he characterized his confirmation hearings as "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas…" He saw their shoddy treatment of him as "a message that, unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree…"

It is why Democrats insisted that each slave be counted as just three-fifths of a person. It is why Democrats enacted the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1854, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It is why Democrats fought so hard to keep Dred Scott from winning his freedom. It is why Democrats opposed the ratification of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments, outlawing slavery and giving African Americans citizenship and voting rights.

And when Republicans had won freedom, citizenship and voting rights for blacks, it is why Democrats enacted Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, and why they created the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other paramilitary organizations… to accomplish through fraud, violence, murder, and arson, those things which they could no longer accomplish within the law.

It is why Democrats opposed the First Reconstruction Act of 1867, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1857, 1866, 1875, 1960, and 1964. And it is why Democrats worked so hard to create a new welfare plantation for blacks during the 1960s and 70s.

Liberals and Democrats exist to prove the wisdom of the great socialist icons of the 19th and 20th centuries. They see Clarence Thomas as their enemy because the fact that he exists puts the lie to their very own existence. They fought hard to keep Thomas off the Supreme Court because, if he succeeded, their time-worn argument that minorities cannot succeed in America without the aid and sponsorship of the Democrat Party would be proven to be exactly what it is… just another empty scare tactic designed to keep African Americans pulling the Democratic lever on Election Day.

Thomas tells us in the interview, "My grandfather was a man who understood implicitly, without education, what it meant to do right – as a citizen, as a father, as a person. This was a man who had every reason to be bitter – who wasn’t. A man who had every reason to give up – who didn’t. A man who had every reason to stop working – who wouldn’t. He was a man who had nothing but a desire to work by the sweat of his brow so that he could provide for those of us around him, and to pass on to us his idea of right."

One need only look at what liberal social programs have done to the black family unit – at the illegitimacy and dropout rates among black teens, and at the number of young black men who are warehoused in our nation’s prisons – to see what a dehumanizing influence the Democrat Party has been in the lives of African Americans.

So, in the future, whenever you see a politician with a (D) behind his/her name, don’t think of it as an indication that they’re a member of the Democrat Party. Instead, think of it as advertising the fact that "D" is for "Dehumanize."

(Selected excerpts reprinted by permission from Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College)