Rush Limbaugh Program - October 1, 2007, Monday, Hour #2

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Oct. 1, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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October 1, 2007, Monday, Hour #2

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	We're truly honored today, ladies and gentlemen, to have with us at our microphones, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas.
	His new book is out today, My Grandfather's Son.
	It is a powerful, motivational, inspirational memoir.
	And I'm so happy that you're you're you're doing all of this, uh, Mr. Justice Thomas, because as a as a member of the court, you you can't say much other than what you write.
	Uh it's it's the protocol, and I have so, so long wanted people to get to know the man that I know and that so many people who know you uh uh because you're a you're a national treasure, and it's time to expose that to people.
	So welcome to the program.
	Well, thanks for uh having me, Rush.
	I really appreciate it.
	Why did you write the book?
	Why now?
	Well, well, it wasn't so much now.
	Uh I made the decision, actually, uh some years ago.
	Um when my brother died uh almost eight years ago, I realized that of the four of us who were in the house, uh I was the last one left.
	My grandparents died in the early eighties, as I record in the book, and it was a real tragedy and a shock to have your younger sibling suddenly die while jogging.
	Um I decided that there was something about our lives and the way that my grandparents had affected me and what they had done in our lives that others could use, that it would be important to them or possibly important.
	And I thought it would be very, very helpful.
	There was another reason also.
	Uh I rarely say anything uh publicly, and as a result, there's been a bit of a monopoly or oligopoly with respect to what's said about our lives.
	And so much of it has been wrong, some of it malicious.
	Whose lives?
	You and the justices or you and your wives.
	Uh my um actually I'm speaking more of my my grandparents and my brother, me in particular, that's just not wasn't accurate, and I thought it would be good to leave an accurate record.
	But by and large, the most motivating aspect of uh reason for doing it was it uh the possibility that there would be something in it that would be helpful to others.
	Uh so that's what you want readers to get out of the book.
	Well, I want them to I think that not only accuracy and uh to know more about uh how I came to be who I am and uh hopefully find something in it that would be useful to them.
	All right, well, let's start early on then.
	Why why did you go live with your grandparents?
	Well, it was rather simple story, you know, back in those days.
	Uh if your mother couldn't take care of you and your father wasn't around, the option was, the only option was to go live with uh someone who could help you.
	And in my case, as my mother likes to say, she you know, she earned about ten dollars a week as a maid, actually was fifteen dollars that included car fare, which comes about ten bucks a week.
	And she couldn't raise us herself for a variety of reasons, so she asked her father to do it.
	And in 1955, she put all of our belongings in uh a paper bag each and sent us to live with our grandparents.
	What kind of people were your grandparents?
	They were uh, I think the kind of people who made this country great.
	Uh they were good, solid people.
	They came from very little.
	My grandfather uh could barely read.
	My grandmother had a sixth grade education.
	Uh they were people who were industrious, they were frugal, as he always, as he used to tell us, uh the reason we have is because we don't spend and we don't throw away, and because we work.
	And uh so they were they're basically the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic.
	And they lived in a segregated world, correct?
	Oh, yeah, that's you just said they had little or no education.
	How'd they manage uh uh just on their own amongst themselves, even before you all showed up?
	Oh, they managed very well.
	My grandfather, as I said, was industrious.
	He'd had a variety of jobs uh and decided sometime in the forties that he would never work for anyone.
	He was also a very independent man.
	And he started uh cutting wood and then delivering it for fuel and added coal and then eventually he added uh fuel oil, and when we went to live with him, and he also added, by the way, ice, but when we went to live with him, he was just uh delivering ice and uh fuel oil, and then we became, of course, his employees, and then we farmed during the summer.
	Now, you uh I've heard it said uh, Mr. Justice Thomas that he was harsh, that he was uh very strict, uh sometimes mean with you.
	Is that accurate?
	No.
	Um, so just one of the many one of the many things going around about your story that's not true.
	That's exactly.
	It's there's a difference between someone who's harsh and someone who is hard.
	Uh life was hard.
	Uh you live in the South as my grandparents did, and you had to survive.
	That is hard.
	In order to respond to that, he had to become a hard man with very hard rules, very hard discipline for himself, uh, very hard days, hard work, et cetera.
	So yes, he was a hard man, but he was never harsh to my brother or me.
	And he was very, very demanding, but that is quite different from being harsh.
	Because he had high expectations of you.
	He had high expects uh one of the things he said, Rush, was that when we went to live with him, he said, Boys, I will never tell you to do as I say.
	I will always tell you to do as I do.
	So in order to be able to use that as his method of raising us, he put uh high standards and high expectations on himself first, and then we uh by extension had high uh expectations imposed on us.
	Do you know whether or not he had any resentment uh when your mother called and asked him to take you and your brothers?
	No, he had none.
	My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, uh his attitude was really interesting.
	His view was that you had obligations.
	Excuse me.
	You had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfill those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.
	So the freedoms that we talk about today, the liberties that we talk about today were the benefits that you got from discharging your responsibilities.
	So in our case, uh it was his responsibility to raise us, and that's what he did.
	And and you've given him uh an appropriate tribute here, but at any time when you were younger and living with him, with his rules and his um his his methods, did you did you um did you like them?
	Did you did you rebel?
	Oh, I didn't like them at all.
	You know, I was uh I was a kid, you know, when he wanted you to work and there was no end to the list of things he wanted you to do.
	You come home from school, we had to be home a half an hour after school was out and ready to go to work.
	Uh he had an endless list of things to do.
	Well, what you wanted to do is you want to play with your friends, and he would have very little to do with that, or you wanted to play team sports.
	He thought that that was foolishness.
	So yes, you did bristle under it, and uh you didn't like it, and you did not want to work, but uh you had no choice.
	Uh how did he deal?
	It was a segregated uh uh uh part of the country then how how did he deal uh with you and your brothers in in teaching you or informing you about race and what you faced in your future as a result of being African American?
	Well, he it was a reality.
	I mean, you saw it around you.
	Uh those were the days when you didn't have to sort of uh uh look hard to find discrimination.
	You could look at a water fountain and see that it said white and colored, or the fact that there was no bathroom or you couldn't go to the public uh Savannah public library, you could go to the black library.
	So it was obvious.
	Uh I think the important part was he taught us how to deal with difficult situations that even though it was bad, there was a way we had to conduct ourselves in spite of that.
	And you also had to prepare yourself to deal with a world that wasn't going to be accommodating.
	In other words, if if You look back, you you you see life uh or opportunities in life that still exists, even though uh things look bad, and he was trying to prepare us to be able to deal with the adversity and to take advantage of whatever opportunities existed.
	The uh the the racial aspect uh as it related to you, was there any bitterness on your part uh growing up at that young age.
	Uh the the the quick answer to that is no.
	I mean, you recognized it, but you were a kid.
	Uh you ran, you played, you uh you had your neighborhood, and most of all the only bitterness was uh what you thought was bitterness was you didn't want to have to work all the time.
	You wanted to play basketball or play with your friends.
	But as far as the racial issue, it was there and it wasn't something that you could ignore.
	But uh the strongest statements about race actually came from the nuns who uh would have nothing uh to do with this notion that we were somehow so different that we could be treated differently because of race.
	So what was it?
	Their attitude.
	Go ahead and finish.
	Well, I want to get into the seminary question.
	In fact, let me take a break right now because there's time to do that, and I want to get into the seminary question because uh uh I'm I'm curious about the decision you made to go there.
	We're talking with Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court about his new memoir, My Grandfather's Son will be right back and continue after this.
	And welcome back, folks.
	So again, we're talking with Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and his memoir out today, my grandfather's son.
	Uh right before the previous break, you discussed the nuns, and I wanted to ask you, uh uh how old were you when you entered the seminary?
	What what year was that?
	Why did you decide to do that?
	Well, actually the year was 1964, Rush.
	Um, and I made the decision when I made the decision in the spring of 1964.
	I was fifteen years old.
	And uh when I entered the seminary, I was 16, just turned 16 that summer.
	Well, the reason I did it had to do with the natural progression of altar boys.
	Uh and I was an altar boy and uh was very active uh in our church, St. Benedict's in uh Savannah.
	Uh and the natural progression was that you went into the minor seminary and then later on to the major seminary.
	So it was a uh a natural progression.
	Uh, I had gone out there for an event, I saw St. John Vianney Minor Seminary.
	Uh I'd always thought I had a bit of a vocation.
	Uh actually I thought it would be with the Mary Knowles, and uh I talked to my grandfather about it.
	How many black kids were there with you?
	My first year, uh 64-65 school year, there was uh another student, black student a year behind me.
	I went in as a sophomore in high school.
	Uh there was another black student there, and uh he left after the first year, and for the next two years, from 65 through 67, uh I was the only black student there.
	And what was it that you started to say before I, as host rudely interrupted you about the nuns?
	Well, actually the nuns were a bit earlier.
	They were in grammar school in my I was in segregated Catholic schools, uh St. Benedict's and f until the eighth grade uh and then St. Pius to tenth high school uh through the uh tenth grade and repeated the tenth grade in the seminary.
	But one of the things that the nuns made clear from the first day was that we were all created equal.
	So from the standpoint of race, whites were no better or no different from us in God's eyes.
	So that was something that was reinforced at home, and it was something that we uh held on to.
	So from the racial standpoint, the clarity of that message always was preeminent in our lives, uh both at home and in our uh church.
	Now you um people are gonna have a tough time believing this.
	You taught yourself algebra uh one summer.
	Now you just got to tell us you want to play and you wanted to run around and play basketball.
	What what what what in the world was it that uh inspired you to want to teach yourself algebra, and how did you know that what you were teaching yourself was right?
	The answers were in the back of the book.
	The well actually it was a little more complicated than that.
	I was when I went into the seminary, uh I was one of those victims of new math and had not had algebra one and had no idea what we were doing in new math in the ninth grade.
	Well, when I went into the seminary, they had done the traditional uh gone the the uh traditional route and taught first year algebra.
	So my classmates had first year algebra, but when I arrived, I had not had it.
	And so the head of the school uh before our junior year in high school said we're gonna have second-year algebra.
	I said, but I haven't had first year algebra.
	He said, we're going to have second year algebra.
	So necessity being the mother of invention, or uh certainly something an impetus to go get your work done, uh that summer when we had our breaks on the farm uh in the middle of the day, I began to teach myself algebra and was able to teach myself uh most of the algebra one material by the end of the summer.
	You know what would happen in that circumstance today?
	If you walked in to a second year algebra course and told the uh teacher, well, I haven't learned first year algebra yet, the kids that had learned it would have to take it over again with you so that you wouldn't be humiliated.
	Oh, I think you would be humiliated.
	I'm listening to you describe uh your education and the teacher saying we're taking second year algebra.
	This is not done today.
	And your grandfather with the rules uh and and his high expectations of you.
	Um all of this is is profoundly inspiring.
	It's exactly why I'm happy you're here today, because these are the things that people don't know about you.
	Uh and it's it all of this sounds like a a just a pure recipe uh, Mr. Justice Thomas of of being really devoted to yourself.
	You had some great role models, uh your grandfather especially.
	Uh you came from a background that was uh uh well, I use the word unfair.
	It's it's it was just unfortunate, but y you you didn't none of this uh you you don't seem to have allowed any of it to be an excuse for not being the best you could be.
	Well, you know, the rush, the when I left for the seminary, um again, I'm sixteen and my grandfather's very clear with me.
	Uh he made me vow that I wouldn't quit the seminary, and that's something I did do later on.
	How'd he react to that?
	Well, not very well.
	Um but one the thing he said uh when I left, understanding that I would be there uh for the first time, or first member of our household among whites, uh he said, boy, don't shame me and don't shame the race.
	So there was this obligation that you had uh to do well, because we had lived with this uh assumption that if we had an opportunity, we could always, and I mean always do as well as our white counterparts in similar circumstances.
	So there was always this obligation on me to perform well.
	Uh you can talk about it, you can talk a good game, but when you took an algebra test or when you took a physics or chemistry test, the proof was always in the pudding.
	Now with respect to the uh unfortunate circumstances, I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response in responding to the misfortune you develop your in your own life.
	You developed sort of the tools you need to continue on or to do better.
	And uh yes, it was tough, it was difficult at the time, and maybe there was a little bit of self-pity from time to time, but in as a result of that, those misfortunes, I think I've been able to develop in a way or character traits that have been helpful.
	Exactly.
	It's sort of like uh the saying, without struggle there's no purpose.
	And you you clearly had struggle.
	Your grandfather threw you out of the house, right?
	You you told him this?
	Well, in 19 when I returned, I got very upset on in the seminary for racial reasons and um returned in 19 uh sixty eight.
	I was that why you uh the racial reasons are why you quit?
	Oh yes, that those were the primary reasons.
	And uh I was very upset and I quit in a huff in 19 uh sixty-eight uh after Dr. King was assassinated and uh went home, and the next day, of course, my grandfather kicked me out of the house.
	Uh I was nineteen at the time, and uh I've been on my own ever since uh nineteen you got kicked out of the house.
	Uh were you upset with him?
	What what did you do?
	Well, he was upset because I had broken a promise.
	Uh he'd exacted a promise from me to uh not leave the seminary and I had done just that and he felt uh as he said that uh if I was going to make decisions like a man, then I should live like a man.
	And uh that day I was to uh leave his house.
	And um the yes, he was upset with me, and I in turn was very, very upset with him.
	Were you ashamed?
	Were you ashamed?
	No, I was more uh I was too self-centered to be ashamed.
	I thought I was justified in both uh my decision to leave the seminary and in my anger and animus uh toward uh uh then my Catholic faith and uh toward others.
	That's Justice Clarence Thomas, and we will be back and continue as we roll into some other areas, the uh the court and his uh later life after this.
	Stay with us.
	And welcome back, folks, once again to the EIB Network, Rush Limbaugh with the privilege of talking today with Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas about his new book, uh a memoir, my grandfather's son.
	All right, let's um move forward just a little bit.
	You end up going to Holy Cross after quitting the seminary and being kicked out of your grandfather's house.
	Were you recruited?
	No, I wasn't.
	Uh actually it was all it was serendipity.
	My uh my chemistry teacher from the seminary uh had asked me, Sister Mary Carmen had um asked me to apply to Holy Cross uh when she learned I was thinking of leaving the seminary and I refused.
	And she knew I had always been a very, very good student, so that she figured it'd be no problem uh for me to uh go to Holy Cross.
	Well, I wasn't really interested.
	I was gonna go to Savannah State or someplace near home.
	And um she had someone send me an application, a friend of mine who had been at Holy Cross, and out of respect for her her and him, I filled it out and I was accepted, and so after my grandfather uh surped uh quickly uh had so uh uh quickly kicked me out of the house, I had no choices uh but to go to Holy Cross.
	I was accepted there.
	Uh they worked out financial aid of work study, loan, and uh some grant, and I went there.
	Uh but it was total serendipity or in actually I think it was more providential than anything else.
	You um uh became a radical.
	I know this from stories you've told me, but uh I uh the audience would be fascinated to uh uh understand and learn how you became a radical because that's the one thing people wouldn't associate with you today.
	Well, um I think in that era in the late 1960s, uh, if you were a young black male and you saw what was happening around our society and the race area, uh it was not uncommon to become angry and to feel that the sort of quiet way that you'd lived your li your life and the way that my grandparents had lived theirs,
	that it wasn't it was too uh little a response to such a clear uh immorality of racism.
	And uh it was the era of black pride and the era of uh black power, and you got caught up in that.
	And it felt liberating.
	You felt uh uh uh uh finally able to respond in a way consistent with uh uh in an appropriate way.
	And so like so many young blacks of that era, I became uh at least self-described a radical and uh got involved in a lot of marches and protests and and uh I actually felt quite justified in doing so.
	Uh how long were you a radical and and because I know you stopped being one?
	What what uh what what did you rethink that?
	Well, uh actually I started rethinking it uh shortly after I started it.
	I when I got to Holy Cross, I was involved in so many things, and in the I got there in the fall of nineteen uh sixty-eight.
	And in the spring of nineteen seventy, I was involved in a a disturbance to free uh political prisoners in Cambridge.
	It was in April, mid-April nineteen seventy, and after I returned uh I um was very shaken by what I had just done.
	I was out of control and uh felt being almost manipulated by others with larger agendas, and I got back to Holy Cross uh campus in the wee hours of the morning and I was in front of the chapel there and on my way to breakfast, and I asked God to take the anger out of my heart, and if he took it out of my heart, I would never hate again.
	And that was the beginning of the process of trying to be far more constructive in my life and to do positive things as opposed to trying to harm others uh in this self-justified way.
	Now you ended up uh eventually at Yale, and uh before I you uh you tell me how you liked it at Yale, there's something that I want to put on the table for you to deal with uh on the program as you have in the book.
	One of the raps against you, one of the big criticisms of you uh has been that you used all of the prescriptions of affirmative action to get to Yale and any other places you went there after, but that you took the ladder with you once you got there and you denied it to anybody else.
	Now, uh is it true, once and for all, that you got into Yale because of affirmative action.
	Oh, well, th they didn't call it that back then.
	It's kind of interesting.
	Um that's the the what I attempt to deal with in the book is those of us who went to school back then and uh and certainly only Yale in my case, uh they the program they had at the time, they called it preferential treatment.
	It was kind of odd because at the time Yale claimed that it was uh accepting us on merit.
	Uh they had had apparently some difficulties.
	And the way I applied was the way I had applied to every place else, and that was uh I came from where I came from uh earlier in the interview you said that I had had this misfortune, and that's what I had basically said.
	I had overcome those odds and done extremely well at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, uh done extremely well at Macley Conception Seminary and then at Holy Cross, and my hope was the to have the same opportunity to do extremely well at Yale.
	And when I was accepted, I thought it was on those circumstances, but then later on, and I did fine at Yale, but later on all of that was concerted converted into race, and what I blame myself for is that I should have seen that coming.
	Your enemies, or Yale.
	Did Yale say it?
	Yale never said it when I was there.
	What happened was when I attempted to get a job after Yale, it was clear from the law firms that their assumption was that I had no business at Yale.
	So I could not get a job after Yale law school.
	I tried Atlanta, I tried New York, I tried Washington, D.C., and the reason I wound up in Jefferson City is the only person who would look me in the eye uh and say that he would give me an opportunity, uh the same opportunity as anybody else to do my best was Senator Dan, then Attorney General Dan Forth.
	And uh as a result of that I wound up in Jefferson City, Missouri.
	So the um uh the the criticism here that that you uh in your later life somehow oppose affirmative action and thus deny uh other minority students the uh uh advantages or the opportunities you had uh is not true.
	Oh, absolutely not.
	Uh the one of the things that we were all for even then was to help disadvantage kids.
	I mean, who's against that?
	You know, I don't care what color you are, the kid from App the white kid from Appalachia, the Hispanic kid, the mixed race kids.
	I don't make those false distinctions and have never made those sorts of distinctions.
	You help kids in the places that they are.
	You if they're suffering from s d how many kids, for example, at Yale grew up in the same circumstances that I did.
	How many of them would have done as well under the same circumstances?
	Uh our point was that there were things that we learned going through that misfortune and getting ourselves out that were intangible and it would go on and allow us to do well in life.
	Well I've proven that to be true or demonstrated that.
	That was my grandfather's point.
	And rather than sort of make it all racial, just simply say, look, give these kids a chance and see how well they do.
	Let them perform.
	In your business, you often talk about the fact that you've had all these jobs and so many people thought you weren't going to do well, but individually you got out there, you worked hard, you had opportunities, you took full advantage of them, and voila, you're the star you are.
	Well, there are kids in the same position, and it doesn't have to be based on race and I think virtually any fair-minded person understands that.
	And I try to, what I attempt to do in my own life, Rush, is to help others, whether no matter what their race is, no matter what their sex is, who are having difficulty, other people who are demonstrating that they want to do well and if given a chance, they will do well.
	But that's individual to individual.
	You know, uh many people are unaware of uh your writings on the Supreme Court because uh most Americans probably don't have the time or inclination to read opinions and be both uh uh the dissent and the affirmative opinions and so forth.
	But I read yours uh and they're remarkably simple to understand and uh you you you just talked about uh liking and enjoying very much working with uh with young kids who need help.
	Uh you have spent a lot of time trying to explain things to kids who are illiterate.
	Now has that that that probably has helped you uh uh be able in your life to take the complex and make it understandable and you even apply that in your writings on the court I think so often, Rush, when we get uh in these positions, uh we tend to condescend to uh the rest of the population and our fellow citizens.
	I don't do that.
	Uh I grew up in uh circumstances that weren't the best economically or the best educationally for the people around me.
	I never went back home and condescended to them.
	They are my family.
	They're my neighbors, they're human beings.
	And so what I try to do and every day, wherever I am is to look at that person no matter what they're doing and to see a fellow human being.
	So in writing opinions, you are trying to take something if it's complicated, you're trying to explain it in a way that every, as many people as possible can understand it.
	You're making their Constitution and their laws accessible to them.
	We talk about accessibility in terms of people with say disabilities in a wheelchair where a curb is like the great wall of China if someone is in a wheelchair.
	Well you can use language in writing about the court or about the Constitution that make is sort of makes the con uh uh puts a great wall of China between them and their Constitution.
	My idea is simply to uh be able to explain it to my all of my fellow citizens.
	We are speaking with uh Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court about his memoir, My Grandfather's son, and we've got more coming up right after this I'm gonna ask him about the confirmation process.
	Don't go away.
	And welcome back folks to the EIB network and L. Rushbow we are talking with Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Clarence Thomas about his new book memoir it is, My Grandfather's son.
	I have to know this I want I want people to hear it.
	And I waited until you had set the table with this this brief biography of your life to ask this question how did you and Jenny get through your confirmation process?
	I mean because that had to be one of the toughest survival experiences of your life and you've uh uh people should know this you went through that most people cannot possibly relate to what that was like even though they have hardships that was televised the allegations made against you the thing that I've noticed I'm not sucking up here.
	This is I want people to know this the thing I've noticed is you I don't hear any bitterness today about anything that's happened or been said about you.
	I don't hear any time I've been with you.
	No bitterness whatsoever, and and I haven't heard lingering bitterness over this, but I still am curious how in the world you got through this.
	Well, first of all, Rush, I don't really have the luxury to be bitter.
	Uh I don't have the luxury of having negative things in my life.
	Uh when you are trying to do your best, you don't have that support from our backup or insurance from your family or from those around you who can sort of help you compensate or make up for your mistakes.
	You don't have the luxury luxury of having those sorts of negative things in your life.
	With respect to my wife and I, my wife's my best friend in the whole world.
	We had only been married four years when we went through the confirmation.
	She was 34 and I was uh 43 years old.
	Uh neither of us had ever been treated like that in our lives.
	And uh to be honest with you, no one had seen a precedent for that before or since.
	And the ultimately we realized that it was something that she and I, with God and our prayer partners would have to work through.
	And we saw it as spiritual warfare, and we treated it that way.
	So most of our time was actually spent together, she and I, uh and okay from time to time, actually on a daily basis, our prayer partners, always in prayer or surrounded by music, our religious music, and hoping and praying that we could survive this and that it would turn out okay.
	At what point did you decide to get aggressive uh in your own defense?
	And I remember uh your very vividly your description of the whole process as a high-tech lynching and Kafka-esque uh that had to be uh strategically uh planned for the right time to do it.
	When did you come up with that idea?
	Well, I never really did, Rush.
	I didn't plan anything.
	You were just reacting then to what was happening to you.
	I I never really wanted to be on the court.
	Um I don't like Washington.
	Um when the President asked me uh, just like my call to become a priest, my vocation, uh I think when the President asked you to do something, you should do it.
	Now most people would say, but it's the Supreme Court.
	Well, maybe they are interested in it as a personal bit of ambition, but I was not.
	So it wasn't something I was trying to get.
	It wasn't a prize.
	What was important to me was that my family, I mean, I don't have a whole lot.
	I had my good name, I had and I was too prideful about that, I would admit.
	Um but the my grandparents had cobbled together this life.
	They had never been bitter, they weren't upset with anybody.
	They they got these two little boys, they raised them, they were law-abiding, they were religious people, they were frugal, they were hard working.
	And we they made us work, they made us adopt those things.
	And here, for no reasons other than people disagreed with me or they thought that a black person shouldn't particularly have these views, uh, they were going to set upon me and undermine or destroy the little bit we had cobbled together.
	And at some point I think that you are obligated to stand and defend that, to defend the honor.
	And uh I think I would have shamed my grandfather if I had not stood up and defended what he had given us and defended the legacy he had left us to def to uh provide for ourselves and for our uh kids.
	Well, I know exactly why they opposed you, and I know exactly why they tried to destroy you.
	And I also am going to mention this in our next segment, which by the way will set a record, Mr. Justice Thomas.
	No guest has ever gone longer than one hour on this program.
	You are the first.
	We have a little less than a minute.
	Well, it's uh it's our honor and privilege.
	So we got a little less than a minute here, but uh need to ask you.
	You said you didn't like Washington, you don't like it, uh you never thought of the court, you did it uh in in accepting the honor and the uh the request of the President.
	Uh you got about thirty seconds here.
	Do you see yourself as being on the court at the pinnacle of your profession?
	Um I don't see it that way.
	I am honored to be a part of uh defending what we think is the best country in the world and the best constitution uh in the world, and I'm honored to be in this role for my fellow citizens, and I can't complain about it in one in any way.
	I can't wait to comment on this until we get back.
	And we will be back, folks, uh shortly after our top-of-the-hour break.
	Uh one more segment, at least, with uh Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court.
	Be right back.

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