Posted on 06/23/2003 7:15:56 AM PDT by Brian S
Supreme Court rules in favor of U. of Michigan Admissions Policy
Read again, the SCOTUS is simply saying that race may be ONE of the criteria used by a Universiy when considering admitting a student, but it may not be the compelling factor.
Actually, the people who voted for Perot also helped with this decision, since Clinton got to appoint two Justices.
All kidding aside, I looked into moving to the Carribean. There are really no places left to go. One of the few remaining places that offers economic and personal privacy is Belize. Forget the Carribean, Caymans or St. Maarten. All have been destroyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which was designed to destroy tax havens. OECD was started by the greatest tax haven in the world (unless you are one of its citizens), the good old USA.
We were also very interested in Switzerland (my wife is of EU nationality), but when they joined the UN I threw that out the window.
Being 30 you may squeak in under the wire, but save your money anyway.
[T]he University of Michigan Law Schools mystical critical mass justification for its discrimination by race challenges even the most gullible mind.
Gee, I wonder who that was directed at.
Lemme 'splain. In European Communist countries the governments instituted admission policies at the universities (which were all state run) to correct past injustices and admit previously disadvantaged classes. The advantaged classes whose children were denied those extra points and often the admission were the sons and daughters of the despised "intelligentsia" and former aristocracy. These were in a manner perfect self-perpetuating policies - only a voiceless minority was against them, and those admitted and graduated from universities, that is the countries' new elites, would never admit to others or to themselves that they benefitted from discrimination. But in the end, many lives were broken. Somebody please explain to me the difference between then there and here now!
Actually, no...I see friends, neighbors and fellow Americans. You know -- people. I'm not fixated on race as a way to divide us, like you and the USSC are. Besides, I don't get out much.
The semantical microscope always tires and bores me. I didn't say not to discuss race. The USSC ruling is divisive and offensive to me. So are your personal insults.
Hmmm...the only part of my post you didn't microscopically examine was my suggestion on reading material. Mind like a steel trap...closed.
That's a big win for me, since that's exactly the main reason I found this UMichigan undergrad policy so unfair.
To get to law school, the students must first do undergraduate work. Let's see how many students will be able to benefit by the AA policy at the law school level.
It might become superfluous to have AA for the UMichigan law school if the minority applicants made it through a rigorous undergraduate selection process.
"However, what you -- and many people -- do not acknowledge is the singular importance in the development of those ideals into what has become the American vision of English philosophy and the classical liberal tradition which is almost exclusively the product of the British Isles. With respect to all of the other cultures and languages that go into the American melting pot, lose the essentially Anglo-Saxon attachement to individual rights and liberty, the Anglo-Saxon nonconformists suspicion of state religion, and the commitment to empiricism and an essentially Whig intepretation of history, and you will destroy this country.""Continental philosophy - whether the Thomist synthesis, Cartesianism or the later German and French system-builders just don't do the same things, they are compatible with fascism and tyranny in a way English thought is not. Come ye from anywhere, be ye of any creed or color, but understand, for all our faults, we've got the basics right here -- don't mess with them."
"My point is that the arivees of diverse origins should not try to remake this country in the images of the places they left because this country was more attractive."
Like (Frederick) Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators. Because I wish to see all students succeed whatever their color, I share, in some respect, the sympathies of those who sponsor the type of discrimination advanced by the University of Michigan Law School (Law School). The Constitution does not, however, tolerate institutional devotion to the status quo in admissions policies when such devotion ripens into racial discrimination. Nor does the Constitution countenance the unprecedented deference the Court gives to the Law School, an approach inconsistent with the very concept of strict scrutiny.
A close reading of the Court's opinion reveals that all of its legal work is done through one conclusory statement: The Law School has a compelling interest in securing the educational benefits of a diverse student body. Ante, at 21. No serious effort is made to explain how these benefits fit with the state interests the Court has recognized (or rejected) as compelling, see Part I, supra, or to place any theoretical constraints on an enterprising court's desire to discover still more justifications for racial discrimination. In the absence of any explanation, one might expect the Court to fall back on the judicial policy of stare decisis. But the Court eschews even this weak defense of its holding, shunning an analysis of the extent to which Justice Powell s opinion in Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), is binding, ante, at 13, in favor of an unfounded wholesale adoption of it.Justice Powell's opinion in Bakke and the Court's decision today rest on the fundamentally flawed proposition that racial discrimination can be contextualized so that a goal, such as classroom aesthetics, can be compelling in one context but not in another. This we know it when we see it approach to evaluating state interests is not capable of judicial application. Today, the Court insists on radically expanding the range of permissible uses of race to something as trivial (by comparison) as the assembling of a law school class. I can only presume that the majority s failure to justify its decision by reference to any principle arises from the absence of any such principle. See Part VI, infra.
B
Under the proper standard, there is no pressing public necessity in maintaining a public law school at all and, it follows, certainly not an elite law school. Likewise, marginal improvements in legal education do not qualify as a compelling state interest.
What the leftists said on yesterday's talk shows:
When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day, said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich also made a pledge to put affirmative action into federal law as president. If this president doesn't want to let us be one nation, then it's time to elect a president who will let us be one nation, Kucinich said.
The president has divided us, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said. He's divided us by race by using the word 'quotas.' There's no such thing as a quota at the University of Michigan, never has been.
Al Sharpton said Democrats shouldn't be talking about getting more blacks in high places, but getting the right blacks. If we doubt that, just look at (Supreme Court Justice) Clarence Thomas, he said. Clarence Thomas is my color, but he's not my kind.
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said the decision would particularly affect minority-owned media, but predicted it will be temporary. It is wrong; it is un-American, he said.
Could you please point me out to one of these "personal insults"?
There are none, from me to you that is...there are plenty coming from you to me.
I'd say you're projecting here.
One last thing on the Gramsci vs. Tocqueville Culture War. This is a great quote from, believe it or not, Lew Rockwell, on John's piece:
Gramscians want to transform America, while the Tocquevillians want to transmit American values to the next generation. But in fact what his "Tocquevillians" too often do is transmit the transformations wrought by the Left.
I think it sums it up perfectly. It was discussed on FR here.
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