Justices, too, are multi-dimensional.

Proof of this came from the Supreme Court of the United States yesterday, as Justice Clarence Thomas broke ranks with his conservative brothers to join four liberals in finding that North Carolina's redistricting violated the Constitution.

The opinion written by liberal Justice Kagan found that two districts that bunched African Americans together, diluting their political clout in neighboring districts, was racially motivated and therefore unconstitutional.  Justice Thomas, arguably the Court's most conservative member, made the vote against North Carolina a 5-4 decision.  Why?

Well, I think one might reasonably conclude that his race trumped his political philosophy.

If so, then his siding with the four liberals on the SCOTUS bench is a good example of the complexity of human beings and our political doings.  We are witnessing another example in reaction to the Trump Administration's proposed budget.  Proving yet again that he will say almost anything that's convenient in the moment, Mr. Trump's budget disavows his campaign promise not to cut Medicaid.  And even some very conservative Congressmen are troubled by that proposal, coming as they do from states which in the past eight years have vastly expanded medicaid coverage.

Like Justice Thomas, these conservatives have multiple interests and concerns.  Consequently, as Mr. Trump and his White House are learning, just because your party has majorities in both houses doesn't guarantee that everything you send up the to the Hill will be embraced.

Justice Kennedy is more complex than Justice Thomas.  He has often swung back and forth between the conservatives and the liberals on the Court.  Back in 1993 the Court approved gerrymandering, if done purely for political purposes, as opposed to being racially motivated.  Justice Kennedy has indicated a willingness to revisit that issue, if an effective legal yardstick could be articulated to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable political manipulation of boundaries.  Word has it that such a test case is working its way toward SCOTUS now.

My point this morning is simple:  Concern for civil rights and civil liberties is not a liberal monopoly.  Nor is concern for the social safety net.  Protecting rights and benefits in a time of conservative dominance of the federal government may be a matter of taking the time to learn what practical considerations may surmount pristine conservative principles for individual decision makers and addressing those concerns.   This, I think, may be a better approach than insisting upon maintaining a strident "us v. them" posture in our politics.