Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Sacrifice and Public Service

Despite the batty narcissism and degenerate power mongering emanating from the White House, public life in America these days is rich with sterling examples of what it means to be a dedicated and selfless public servant.

Role models of dedication and duty appear all across American culture, from nurses and doctors, grocery clerks, pharmacists and post office employees in a pandemic performing essential services, to first responders, good cops, EMTs and firefighters on the front lines, from feminist activists supporting gender equality and opposing patriarchy, to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and anti-climate change protesters taking to the streets in a dangerous and potentially deadly environment, from teachers and social workers risking their health and their lives to help others, to men and women in the armed forces putting their lives on the line every day for their country.

A lot of us wondered, though, if we’d ever see a truly heroic figure in American politics again, a public servant who unambiguously put the common good ahead of her own self-interest.

In the titanic struggle for political power going on right now in our ideologically polarized nation, Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), the first Jewish woman to serve on the Court, has become such a hero or, as the New York Times called her, a cultural and feminist “icon.”

When she died last week at 87 of metastatic pancreatic cancer, it was clear to not only left-of-center Americans, but also to many young people trying to find their place in politics, that Ginsburg put her principles, ideals and values above her own physical well-being. Suffering through colon cancer and four bouts with pancreatic cancer — among the most painful of all diseases — RBG held out as long as she could to protect the rights of women, of all marginalized people, championing equal justice under law, trying in every way she could to prevent the Supreme Court from turning into a conservative “Tea Party” defender of fiscal elitism, gender bias, dumbed down education and institutional racism — a Court with a six to three conservative majority.

Fate wouldn’t let her win out. But the immense courage and conviction she displayed over the last years of her life, working on as a cutting edge legal thinker, despite the profound miseries of cancer, makes her for many people seeking inspiration a trusted guide for how to become honorably involved in public life, devoted to the betterment of the lives and opportunities of others. The example of her devotion to duty is an antidote to the cynicism and lassitude that have plagued American politics for decades. If RBG could push on despite the excruciations of her illnesses, so can we rise above the hardships of our times and make our own contributions. Her life gives the clearest sense I can imagine of what it actually takes to be an agent of social change.

She wouldn’t have wanted to be called a martyr. But she withheld nothing of herself; she gave everything she had, even after her beloved husband, Martin Ginsburg, died in 2010. Hers is a legacy of sacrifice that can energize and empower generations of activists.

What were the ideals that Ruth Bader Ginsburg lived and died for? First and foremost, I think, was equal justice under law. She was an American idealist, totally committed to the values of the Declaration of Independence. She believed in gender equality. She loathed the patriarchy. She thought institutional racism and “caste” in America was an abomination.

In 1972, she co-founded the Woman’s Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Involved in more than 300 gender discrimination cases from 1972 to 1974, she argued six of those cases before the Supreme Court, winning five. She wouldn’t join the Court herself until 1993, when President Clinton nominated her.

If you go online, you’ll find a record of her Supreme Court opinions, as well as an array of her choicest public remarks. She had this to say, for instance, about abortion rights: “This is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It’s a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she’s been treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

She said of her legacy, “We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman.”

Her views on activism are long range and communitarian: “Fight for the things you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

When it comes to equal rights for women, Ginsburg’s clear about what equality means. Quoting 19^th century women’s rights activist Sarah Moore Grimké, Ginsburg said in her first oral argument before the Supreme Court in the 1973 equal pay case Frontiero v. Richardson: “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” She describes feminism in egalitarian terms: “Feminism [is the] notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents and not be held back by manmade barriers.”

In keeping with her commitment to always going full steam ahead, she said, “I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability.” There’s no doubt she will be.

Here’s to RBG, all 100 pounds of her, working as hard as she could every day to the end, showing us all what it means to love your country, to be a patriot in the sense of risking everything for others, and a fearless friend and defender of anyone oppressed who’s in need of an equal chance under law to be and to do their “very best.”

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it