Amy Coney Barrett at the Constitution Center

Seven days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I headed over to the Constitution Center to hear Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a discussion with the Center’s CEO, Jeffrey Rosen. Justice Barrett was there to help celebrate Constitution Day and also to promote her new book, Listen to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution. From the superficial to substantive: I was curious regarding the kind of audience Justice Barrett would attract, since at previous NCC events most of the people I managed to meet were liberal, some of them even far left.

Upon entering the vast outdoor space in front of the building where security had installed a series of checkpoints, I could tell from the dress of the attendees that conservative types had the upper hand. Many men wore suits or sports jackets indicating a career in law. Left-leaning men in Philadelphia generally tend to wear baseball caps and inappropriate attire like jeans or shorts though some like to ape ‘conservative’ dress by donning a bow tie. There seemed to be less women at this NCC event--I attributed this to Justice Barrett’s vote on Roe-- though the women present, like the men, dressed up, a far cry from the shag carpet look of so many lefty Birkenstock ladies with their short hair, dangling earrings and Native American jewelry. (This uniform is a shout out for so-called reproductive rights.) Justice Barrett’s book was for sale in the Center’s bookstore; a long line of buyers snaked into the lobby. After the on-stage Q and A with NCC CEO Jeffrey Rosen there would be a book signing. The Times book review of Listen to the Law was typical of the Times when it comes to conservative issues. At one point, the reviewer—a woman with dark Gen Z bangs one can could easily imagine at a ‘No Kings’ really—wrote not only was the book a work of “studied blandness” but the work caused her to ask the question: “But what happens when one of the people who’s supposed to be playing by the rules insists that he’s king? When the Supreme Court decides he is immune from consequences, effectively saying he can do as he pleases?” Justice Barrett is a ‘Catholic type’ I recognize from the Irish side of my family. Her look has always reminded me of my younger sister Mary, who has five children including a boy with Down syndrome. Justice Barrett with her husband Jesse has 7 children, including one with Down syndrome.

On stage, she touched briefly on the difficulty of raising such a child as Mr. Rosen asked how she manages being the mother of 7 children and working as a Supreme Court Justice. Justice Barrett stressed her love of self-discipline and time management skills by providing one autobiographical tidbit: she gets up at 5 a.m. every morning. She presented as a likeable woman who wanted the audience to like her even more despite her occasional scripted responses formed in such a way so as to minimize controversy. Sitting in the audience about 12 rows from the stage, to me she appeared almost “actress-y,” slimmed and toned and dressed all in all- black with a hairstyle common among Hollywood women of a certain age. She enunciated and projected well, speaking neither too fast nor too slow, and she made interesting occasional eye contact with the audience. At one point I was certain she was looking directly at me. Mr. Rosen never brought up Roe or affirmative action (Justice Barrett voted with the majority to effectively end race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities) as direct questions, but waded slowly and artfully into the waters of controversy by brining up so-called Constitutional originalism, a theory codified and made popular by Chief Justice Scalia, who believed the Constitution should be “interpreted as it would have been understood by those who ratified it at the time.” Justice Barrett said she favors “original public meaning rather than original intent.” As a law clerk for Scalia, Barrett talked about his impeccable work ethnic, his profound intelligence and also his sense of humor, especially when they’d go to lunch together from time to time. Collegiality among her colleagues on the Court was important, she emphasized. Before each session the Justices shake hands and after conferences and verbal arguments they all have lunch together. The “do not dialogue” with the opposition tactic popular among the Left—from the killing of Charlie Kirk to blocking and unfollowing people on social media--- is recognized among the Justices as the death knell of communication and the ability to work together.

Justice Barrett’s appearance at the NCC, coming as it did so soon after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, made Mr. Rosen’s question about the current polarization in the country stand out as the most important question of the evening. But here Amy Coney Barrett skipped town. She kicked the perfect opportunity to dive head first into the issue she brought up by default earlier when she mentioned the collegiately of the justices who-- while they may disagree on the bench-- yet agree to shake hands, have lunch and be civil to one another despite their differences. Kirk, meanwhile, was shot dead because his views posed a threat to the left, but rather than dialogue with him, a leftist furry porn conservative-hater eliminated him. Rather than say something about Charlie Kirk, Justice Barrett that evening—she could have at least mentioned that she mourned his passing-- cited non contemporary examples of polarization (historical) while stating she had faith in the Constitution to sooth the hurt and violence of today’s political polarization. Talk about a Mary Poppins moment. It was a clear cut evasion of the question—Mr. Rosen saved this question until the end of the discussion and framed it delicately-- and it told me that here was a Supreme Court Justice who will never be a truly great Justice like Scalia precisely because the eyes of history demand visionary boldness. And that’s a shame because I really liked the woman in black with the Down syndrome child. But I wanted her to burst forth like Zarathustra. By evening’s end there was a feeling of disappointment in the air. Attendees stood up and made a robotic bee line to the coat check. There was no buzz. The next day a WHYY Facebook post highlighted Justice Barrett’s appearance at the NCC. Left-leaning women offered comments like, “Shame on Philly,” inferring that because Philly is blue and generally Left the NCC should never invite a conservative to speak. At this point I did my best to defend Justice Barrett online. Additionally, some of the WHYY comments segued into comments about Charlie Kirk’s (alleged?) killer, Tyler Robinson. I saw countless examples of the “violent” political polarization Justice Barrett refused to get specific on. These comments were made after all the facts were known about Tyler Robinson: how he grew up in a conservative, Mormon Republican household but went his own way ideologically as people in their early 20s are wont to do regardless of how they were brought up. In Robinson’s case, he got involved with a far left trans boyfriend into pornographic furry culture who held a special contempt for conservatives. This ideology festered in Robinson’s mind until at last he became another version of his boyfriend who was considered so dangerous his own family didn’t even want him in the house. The left, of course, invented another narrative—Tyler was MAGA and killed Kirk because he wasn’t conservative enough, as if that holds any weight. Has anyone ever met a MAGA conservative-hating trans-porno-addicted furry- loving anti-conservative conservative? Finally, there was the deadpan reaction to the assassination of Kirk among some of my Democrat and gay friends, who although they offered a “That’s tragic” when referring to his death, after that they closed down completely and had nothing else to say as if they wanted the topic to go away. But even that was better than what Justice Barrett did on stage when she smiling and being nice to NCC CEO Jeffrey Rosen. Thom Nickels