The Lesson of an Affirmative Action President

American Thinker ^ | January 28, 2010 | James Lewis

[neverdem]

You don't pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin. You pick them by competence only. Same thing with airplane pilots. But we have allowed the profoundly irrational liberal media to persuade the American public that we are supposed to pick a U.S. president by affirmative action. Obama was elected to universal Hosannas because he is black. It wasn't a secret. That's why the Left around the world went into ecstasies when Obama ran and got elected.

We've been using affirmative action to hire and promote teachers and cops and to popularize movie stars and media heroes. We've had a generation of affirmative action agitprop, 24/7/365. Hillary Clinton was going to dictate racial and gender preferences for medical school admissions under HillaryCare. You can bet that reverse-racism is all over the 2,200 pages of ObamaCare. It's reverse-racism forever! 

In America today, competence is suspect, and incompetence gets all the attention. Yet competence is what keeps us alive.

Affirmative action was allowed by the Supreme Court as a temporary exception to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution until blacks had the same opportunities others did. It has now been about forty years, and the goal posts have just moved farther and farther Left. Today it's not just blacks -- it's women, homosexuals, and illegal aliens. And it's no longer equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, which was the goal of Communism for seventy years in the Soviet Union, until the whole Soviet Empire crumbled as a result.

In the Soviet Union, everything was politicized. Incompetent people ran agriculture along Stalinist lines. Everything turned into a lie, and lies accelerated as they propagated through the system, in exactly the way the Climategate lies get worse and worse as they get passed along by politically correct bureaucrats and scientists. When political loyalty controls the outcomes, honesty and competence are driven out at every level of society. Nobody can point to Obama's anti-terrorist policies and say that's wildly incompetent -- without fearing they will be accused of racism.

From a temporary policy to give black people a better chance in life, we have now arrived at a Marxist goal of universal equality for everyone -- except for white, male, heterosexual, and excessively normal people. We have reversed racism, but guess what? Reverse-racism is still racism. As a direct result, corruption now pervades the big cities and Washington, D.C. That's because race, gender, and victim status have taken over as the criteria for all the benefits society has to offer.

Obama's election to the nation's most powerful office is the direct outcome of racial reasoning. It was race that put him over the top against Hillary, in a thousand media endorsements, and finally, against John McCain, who was old, male and white. Three strikes against McCain, who for all his faults is vastly more experienced and knowledgeable than the Obamessiah.

Meanwhile, blacks are still suffering from the pervasive social pathology of the inner city -- almost all self-inflicted, with the help of the welfare state. Europe shows exactly the same results, except that the victims of welfarism aren't black, but mostly white and Muslim immigrants. American blacks today are more bitter and more racially enraged than ever before, after forty years of affirmative action. Affirmative action hasn't helped women, who now have to work two jobs, one at home and one for income, especially because so many men have walked away from their families under liberal cultural values. Reverse-racism has actively hurt generations of children, who have grown up in broken homes as a direct result of pernicious social policies which Obama has actually tried to make worse. One of the first things he did was to reverse Clinton's welfare reform so that social pathology in the black community can spread its poison even wider and deeper. Obama isn't good for black people -- but then, blacks consistently vote for those who do them the most harm.

Reverse-racism has hurt Asian-Americans, who don't usually count as disadvantaged non-whites, but who by dint of talent and hard work are now among the largest ethnic groups in many colleges and universities and a majority at Berkeley and UCLA, where race engineering is banned by a California law passed by voters over the objection of the political establishment.

Any time a Muslim tries to explode a bomb on an airplane, Obama sticks his nose in the air and pretends he doesn't know what's up. But he knows, he knows. The next time an airplane blows up in flight, Obama will be history, but he will never blame himself for his own truly stupid and perverse policies. On the contrary, Obama will be around for the next forty years blaming White America for his own folly.

We've now been taught by the media to hire and elect people by the color of their skin, or by gender, or by sexual preferences -- including, in the case of Kevin Jenkins, their ability to peddle gay sexuality to kids and teachers for the Queering of the Elementary Schools.  

Is it any surprise that a president who ran as the historic first black -- that is, on affirmative action grounds -- is not just incompetent, but perverse, so that we deliberately don't check the passenger lists for young Muslim males who were brought up in radicalized cultures, even if they are already in the terror database, even if they buy a one-way ticket with untraceable cash and don't check any luggage at all on their one-way flights from Nigeria to Detroit?

Obama's anti-terror policies are not just incompetent. They are suicidal.

They are exactly like all the other social policies that are supposed to help the poor, the disadvantaged, the black, females, homosexuals -- all of which invariably end up punishing and degrading the very people they are supposed to help. Who do you suppose is in the teachers' unions that are keeping black kids from escaping the inner city ghettos? Yes, it's black and liberal teachers. Who do you suppose is actively importing Muslim radicals into Europe and the United States? Who do you suppose has done more to spread HIV? Yes, it is the very Leftists who are always telling us how much compassion they feel for those very people.

The vote in 2008 was even crazier than picking your brain surgeon by the color of his skin. If the knife slips in the surgeon's hand, you might die, but the nation as a whole doesn't. But if the president has a nervous breakdown in the Oval Office, the whole world is at risk. It's a mad, mad, mad idea to elect people on the basis of race or gender.

We have been so PC-whipped as a nation that Obama's election as a black man -- not as a competent black man, not as an experienced and well-qualified black man -- was celebrated by liberals and Leftists around the world. It is the victory of brain-dead ideology over common sense. The guy in the White House today is potentially the most dangerous, mentally fixated, and irresponsible demagogue we have ever known. Those wacky ideas are once again on the rise, not just in the schools and colleges, but even at the very centers of power. The election of Obama was by far the screwiest thing American voters have ever done. It throws doubt on the whole American experiment, because we have inflicted this disaster on ourselves.

The lesson of the Obama presidency  is exactly the opposite of what our stuck-on-stupid media are telling us. It is that we must never, ever hire, promote, or elect somebody to a position of power and responsibility merely because of his race. Abraham Lincoln would not have been surprised. Neither would Martin Luther King, Jr. Even the editors of the New York Times choose schools for their kids not by race, but by educational competence. Somehow the American people have forgotten their common sense while Obama was rifling their wallets.

The captain is drunk in the deckhouse, and the ship of state is heading for the rocks. Our enemies are trying to take advantage of our failure to elect even sensible leadership. If you don't think al-Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, and the Russians will try to screw us royally under this perverse and incompetent leadership, just wait a month or two. The Chinese have taken the measure of this guy. So have the other jackals prowling around the small campfire of civilization. They know he's a pushover, and they will act accordingly. The only question is how badly we'll get burned.

The Left have advocated suicidal policies, and now they have found their way to power. But ultimately this is a failure of the American people, of our pathetic excuse for a media, and of the anti-American hatred that pervades the Left.

Yes, God protects orphans, widows, and the United States. But you can rely on pure dumb luck for only a little while before the ship of state comes to grief on that unforgiving iceberg.

[Psalm 144]

The elephant in the room.

[imjimbo]

We STILL want to see Obamas resume. We see nothing thus far, and its been OVER a YEAR-!

[Cindy]

SNIPPET from post no. 1:

"Our enemies are trying to take advantage of our failure to elect even sensible leadership. If you don't think al-Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, and the Russians will try to screw us royally under this perverse and incompetent leadership, just wait a month or two. The Chinese have taken the measure of this guy. So have the other jackals prowling around the small campfire of civilization. They know he's a pushover, and they will act accordingly. The only question is how badly we'll get burned."

[HiTech RedNeck]

He’s a pushover until even a Rat Congress decides it’s had enough. Then it’s Plugs.

[Cyber Ninja]

The "blue blakie in chief"

[matt1234]

We must not only hope that he fails but also do everything in our power to ensure that he fails. This will prevent another affirmative action president for at least a generation.

[nathanbedford]

It seems to me there are two sides to the race card used by the left. First, there is the negative side which we have seen played against people like Trent Lott and Senator Allen. Second, there is also an affirmative action side. This is plain to see in affirmative action cases, for example, in admittance to university where a finite census makes the process a zero-sum game and the inclusion of one race, based on race, means the exclusion of another race.

The first is unfortunate and tends to intimidate whites into political correctness. That is a very dangerous cultural conditioning process. But the second category describes a game which is more dangerous because it carries with it the inevitability of corrupting the rule of law and our democratic process. In other words, it elevates considerations of race over the Constitution, the equal application of laws, and the electoral process. If American cities descend into chaos because black majorities elect corrupt politicians, that is ultimately dangerous for the whole country. If black juries are routinely declining to convict for black on white violence, preferring instead the prerogative of "jury nullification" we have lost some of the rule of law.

I have previously posted these two replies which I ask you to read in this context, which is the context of preserving our representative democracy and our precious system of constitutional law. One was written before the election and the other afterward:

There are two facts about Barak Obama which stand out above all others: first, he is so inexperienced that he is unqualified to be the president of the United States of American. Second, he is regarded to be African-American.

The truth, which no one seems to be willing to tell, is that such an inexperienced individual would never be the nominee of America's largest political party if it were not for the fact that he is accepted to be black. He would simply not be nominated if he were not African-American.

One of the ways he got nominated, apart from the mainstream media like Chris Matthews anointing him to assuage their white guilt, was because he polled better than 90% of African-Americans in the primaries. Another truth that is rarely mentioned is that, quite simply, African-Americans voted their race. They voted for Obama because he is black. That is the essence of racism.

The problem with this development for white voters is that people like Chris Matthews ask us to unilaterally disarm in the face of this racism. We are told at every turn that criticism of Obama's inexperience is thinly disguised racism. The mainstream media who tell us that, as well as black voters who are motivated by racism, are not just playing some abstract game, they are trying to attain political power over all voters, including white voters.

That is, after all, what politics is all about: who gets to enforce their desires at the point of a gun about who gets what and who pays for it. In extreme instances, the chief executive commits our sons, and now daughters, to die on some battlefield. The stakes are almost infinite. They involve our blood and treasure.

If the game of politics is to be rigged by racism, by blacks voting their color, it is folly for white people to play a different game. If blacks can vote for Obama because he is black, whites can vote against him because he is black. If blacks can vote their race, whites can vote their race too, and do so free of taint or accusation of racism.

The mainstream media, and Chris Matthews is the prominent example, perhaps unconsciously, have been struggling to divert white voters’ attention away from these realities and away from voting their own self-interest, or even the interests of the nation as a whole.

The best that can be said of Obama is that he is inexperienced and unqualified for office. The worst that can be said of this campaign is that it is racist at its core.

............................................................................................................................................................

Colin Powell has actually done conservatives a very great service in his remarks which unfortunately will probably go largely unremarked as our attention gets diverted to Rush Limbaugh.

For years now on these threads I have been asserting that Tip O'Neill had it wrong, all politics is not local, in America, all politics is racial. Colin Powell has just confirmed that for us on two levels. First, and least important, his slip in admitting elsewhere that he voted for Obama, at least in part because of his race, confirms what many of us have been saying for some time, Obama was elected only because he was black and would not have been elected had he been white. Powell provides anecdotal evidence of the racism of the black vote in America. P> It is significant that he thinks the Republicans are in electoral trouble for a long time to come-and he is right. As Powell moves from the "white" party to the party of mixed race, he does so knowing that it is safe to do so. The election of a mixed-race president has preceded by a few years the demographic reality. Powell is intelligent enough to know that there is not the slightest chance that Obama will actually close the borders and freeze illegal immigration. He knows Obama and the Democrats will enfranchise on a wholesale basis immigrants who, for the most part now, will be of color, that is, Brown. So we are going to become a nation of color and there is no political means available to stop the demographic tidal wave which is impending over our political destinies.

This is usually the time in which the writer is obligated to state that his objection is not to the color of the voter but to his policies. I hear no objection from Powell about the policies or politics of either Obama or the people who elected him. I hear an obeisance not to the principles which moved Afro-Americans and other of voters of color but to the voters themselves and that because of their color. This is the essence of racism.

Why must I as a writer on this forum perform obligatory ritual disclaimers of racism on my part when Colin Powell is telling everyone that these groups must be pandered to solely because of their color or their race? Explicitly he says that principles of the conservative/Republican party must be put aside to accommodate what is in the "hearts and minds" of people of color. Why? For no reason other than that they will be in the majority. Is it fair to assume that Colin Powell thinks that white racism is legitimate today because whites are still in the majority? What about what is in my heart and my mind as a white person will that count when I go into the minority?

So long as more than 50% of the electorate votes because they are people of color or because they are guilty because they are white, principles, any principles even liberal principles if they have any, are irrelevant. Color and demagoguery conquer all. In playing this race card the Democrats are flirting with the death of democracy as well as constitutional government and the rule of law.

In America all politics is racial -and that is a truism owing no thanks to conservatives.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"Any time a Muslim tries to explode a bomb on an airplane, Obama sticks his nose in the air and pretends he doesn't know what's up."

Oh, he knows.

Did ya notice, he seemed almost happy at Ft. Hood, givin shout outs, even MooseHell wore a bright blue dress that almost looked good. Yet he appeared really steamed at the failed Detroit attack?

It's like he was pissed it didn't happen.

[TalBlack]

“You don’t pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin.”

No, but the medical schools began dumbing down entrance standards in favor of women in 1970 and no one cared, so Obozo didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.

[Mikey_1962]

They are a little late. I've been calling him the Affirmative Action Candidate and then President for 2.5 years.

[mulligan]

It is bad policy. Wake up politicians.

[fightinJAG]

I agree with this author. This situation is drifting into unchartered, dangerous territory.

[Old Badger]

Excellent analysis and well written ........... thank you for plainly stating the truism.

[Retired COB]

Affirmative action hasn't helped women, who now have to work two jobs, one at home and one for income,

The only minor disagreement I have with the author is that I believe the spouse has to work outside the house to pay the additional taxes that our government has heaped upon us. At that, all she could hope to do is break even with the relative earning power of a single paycheck in the 50's after deducting for child care, a second vehicle, more car insurance, etc.

Very good and well thought out article.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Most of the single moms I know work 3 or 4 jobs.

[Oceander]

Geraldine Ferraro said it best, before she got "bussed" by Obama's thugs, so I'll just throw up a little graphic to emphasize the basic point: