Justices Brennan and Marshall

Though I have become accustomed to The Times editorial board’s liberal tendencies, it nevertheless irks me to read editorials as left wing and misinformed as “Making History” (Oct 6).

The editorial bleeds from start to finish with child-like adoration of liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall.

Brennan and Marshall, according to you, are “the consistent and unfailing champions of the highest American ideals of justice.” They are the court’s sole “protectors and guarantors of enlightenment in the law.” Brennan is even a “prophet.”

Meanwhile, the evil conservative monsters--Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia--stand “at the opposite end of the political spectrum,” devising fiendish conspiracies to enslave the free American populace.

But as is typical of most liberal arguments, your little fairy tale is based more upon myth than reality.

You make a serious error of judgment and at the same time clearly display your own frustration with an increasingly conservative Supreme Court by automatically equating liberalism with “enlightenment.”

Are we to believe that all liberals are enlightened and all conservatives unenlightened? Defining the term is far more complex than The Times’ explanation of the word.

Actually, the definition of enlightenment depends upon one’s personal outlook. Like most conservatives, I view Brennan and Marshall’s unwavering support for racist racial quotas, adamant opposition to the death penalty, and unquestioning approval of mandatory school desegregation schemes as narrow-minded, unenlightened positions.

The Times is certainly entitled to its beliefs, but you do your readers a disservice by presenting your opinions as established facts in such absolute, extreme terms.

I am confident most of your readers understood your editorial for what it was: a last attempt by a bunch of liberals to discredit conservative judicial thought as the Rehnquist Court convenes for the first time.

JAMES R. BOZAJIAN

Tarzana