"Sixty-three years of age, he grew up under segregation in Savannah, Georgia. The idea of freedom has purity and preciousness for him as it has for few others in public life, whatever their partisanship. Breaking the chains of bondage is more than a metaphor for Thomas. He could have stayed a self-absorbed leftist, as he was for while in college, but instead he embraced his roots and his American heritage.

Besides the school of the post-slavery era, Thomas knows well another form of despotism: bureaucracy—the form of soft or benign tyranny Americans experience today. In its compassionate goals, it can be more insidious than the slavery of Justice Thomas’s ancestors."

Do yourself a favor and read Masugi's tribute here.