Janice Rogers Brown

The black daughter of Alabama sharecroppers, Janice Rogers Brown worked her way through college and law school as a single mother after the death of her husband. Yesterday Justice Rogers Brown was confirmed by the Senate to the federal appeals court in Washington.

Why was her confirmation delayed for over two years by Democrats who tried to label Rogers Brown a "judicial extremist?" Why would the Party of the minority groups oppose a qualified black woman with such vitriol? Could it be that Janice Rogers Brown is a black female conservative and an independent thinker?

In Rogers Brown’s speeches she often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of American liberalism.

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the Federalist Society a few years ago. "If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

She has argued that society and the courts have departed from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, turning toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens our fundamental freedoms.

In another speech to the Federalist Society: “Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”

Her friend Steve Merksamer notes: "She believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation - even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years - was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land. She brings that philosophy to her legal work."

So why did Democrats fight so vociferously against the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown? Unlimited government threatens democracy. Personal responsibility is favorable to government dependency. When government takes over community retreats and morals decline. There really is a scale of right and wrong.

Could it be that here was yet another “uppity” black, in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who refused to be confined in “Uncle Sam’s Plantation?”