If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
I like that concept. It elaborates only slightly on the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, but it isn't from one of his speeches--he reputedly hated public speaking--nor is it from his writings. Rather it came from Calvin Coolidge.
Now consider this well-reasoned piece from PowerLine:
The Ethnicity Is the Foundation of the Qualification
We have watched the evolution of the race debate in this country from the foundational principle of equality which served us reasonably well even unto Martin Luther King's vision of "being judged on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin," to the convoluted application of equal opportunity in affirmative action.
The principle of correcting a society which harbored discrimination by blatantly enforcing racial preferences is overwhelming everything we do. Once we start with the concept that a body of nine must somehow reflect proportionality of a population of 300 million we are on an impossible slope. Denial of access based on race or gender would be wrong, but mandating that seats on that very limited body be allocated in quotas is even more egregious. We've had women on the court now, but simply because a woman leaves, does not mean that has become a female seat on the bench. We've had African-Americans, but when Clarence Thomas leaves the court it should not be assumed that the next justice must be black. There should be no restriction on a Hispanic justice nor on a member of any other minority, however defined. But there should not be an expectation either.
A Latina should have as much opportunity to rise to the federal bench as any other qualified individual. But, at its most basic, the simple characteristic of heritage and gender don't predispose someone for the position. When the individual seems to have historically taken that identity and described it as a unique qualifier for the job should sound alarms in even the most egalitarian.
You may recall the Supreme Court rulings on the University of Michigan--one covering the law school and the other dealing with the undergraduate university. (University of Michigan) Sandra Day O'Connor managed to mangle the law into having it both ways on offering compensating evaluation criteria for admissions that benefited race. There is little doubt that the issue is not resolved. In fact, O'Connor herself suggested that her opinion was only temporarily relevant and should be reversed at some future, more diverse time.
So, how do we think a Justice Sotomayor might rule on extra credit for skin color in the future? Will equality be trumped by empathy?
2 comments:
Multiculturalism is a profound corruption.
Clever the way they did it, and you can only admire their tenacity.
It took them forty years, but they worked their fingers right into the cracks and pulled us apart.
An interesting sidenote on the diversity issue, is that most textbooks discussing probability of stability in a democracy list homogeneity of the populace as one of the major factors.
Diversity of ethnicity, language, religion, culture, heritage, etc. leads to schism. Look around at the most and least stable nations in the world for quick verification.
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