RIP to the best U.S. Supreme Court Justice we never had

Robert Bork died yesterday.  While he did not serve for upwards of 25 years on the Supreme Court as he should have been allowed to do, Bork still made his mark on the American political and cultural landscape, including leaving an indelible impression on my political and social evolution.

I have a well-loved and dog-eared copy of Bork's 1996 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah.  During the mid-1990s, when I was still solidifying my political beliefs (for instance, I used to consider myself "pro-choice" on abortion), Bork's book was instrumental in teaching me about how our country used to be, and what it was becoming.

When I was reading Slouching Towards Gomorrah, I often thought about what could have been had Bork rightly taken his place on the Supreme Court.  That he was rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate after being nominated by Ronald Reagan was bad enough; what was intolerable were the lies and vicious slanders said about Bork by some of those Democrats - especially by the "Lion of the Senate," the execrable Ted Kennedy.

On the floor of the Senate chamber, Kennedy - the cowardly killer of Mary Jo Kopechne, and overall abuser of women - had this to say about Robert Bork:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, school children could not be taught about evolution, writers and artist could be censured at the whim of government.

Lies all, but what did that matter to Kennedy and his leftist, nihilist goons? The ends justify the means, right Comrade? In the end, I like to believe that Bork had the last laugh. Kennedy died a bloated, drunken caricature of himself, while Bork remained a respected author and pundit. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson