D'you think he'll ever visit us here in Freeperland? That would be nice. Do you know he lurks? 
Posted on 06/29/2003 3:36:08 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
I have a sneaking sympathy for Dick Gephardt. Hitherto the Democratic Party's most reliably unexciting presidential candidate, the former House minority leader went bananas the other day and said if the Supreme Court did something he didn't like he'd sign an executive order overturning it.
Several conservatives did a bit of pro forma huffin' an' a-puffin' about why this makes Gephardt unfit to be president. But, speaking personally, I can't see why rule by Dick-tat would be worse in principle than the present system, whereby the nation's course for the decades ahead is effectively set by executive orders from Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court's eternal swing vote and tiebreaker-in-residence. Poised between opposing ideological quartets, Swingin' Sandra inclines not to black and white but swims in the murky gray in between. The trick for those appearing before the court is to decide the precise degree of murk at which Sandra will jump.
This last week provided some useful guidelines, with Supreme Court rulings on diversity and sodomy. Whatever your position, sodomy is a precisely defined act. It means--Well, let's not get into that, as the choirboy said to the--oh, never mind. My point is that laws ought to be about clearly defined acts and a high court should be concerned with the legal principles at stake in those acts. Whether or not you dig it as a personal philosophy, ''diversity'' makes a poor legal concept. It was not intended to be precisely defined, but instead woozy and fluffy and soft-focus. It makes a fabulous bumper sticker: ''Celebrate Diversity.'' But it makes a poor legal concept to enshrine at the heart of the U.S. Constitution, which is where Swingin' Sandra's vote put it last week.
The correct term is ''racial quotas,'' but that's too bald, too clear. So its proponents came up with the coy evasion of ''affirmative action.'' But over the years that also became tarnished. Hence the invention of ''diversity.'' Who could be against ''diversity''? Who wouldn't want to celebrate it? It's the perfect enlightened vapidity.
But whoever thought it'd fly as a legal concept? Last week, the court had before it two models of University of Michigan diversity: In the first version--the undergraduate school's system--they give you 20 points for being black. You need 150 points to get in. So, by being born black, you're 13 percent of the way there.
Tough for whitey, but he knows the rules. If Albert Gore IV wants to get into the joint, he understands Jesse Jackson XXVII has got a head start and he's gonna have to make up those 20 points somewhere else. Being a scion of the first Android American to run for president is not an approved minority group. Nor is being a Jew or Asian or a Pacific islander from Tuvalu.
Cruel, but it's all there in the fine print. Down the road at the Law School, the same thing goes on in practice, but it's all swathed and swaddled in vague, soothing multiculti mumbo-jumbo and is ''flexible enough to consider all pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular qualifications of each applicant, and to place them on the same footing for consideration, although not necessarily according them the same weight,'' whatever that means. But whatever it means, it's less vulgar than handing out points for pigmentation.
As Swingin' Sandra put it, approvingly, the Law School (like Sandra) ''engages in a highly individualized, holistic review . . . flexible, non-mechanical . . . soft variable . . . nuanced judgment . . . potential to enrich . . .'' Zzzzzzzz.
Which is the point. The court's message is: As long as we don't see how the sausage is made, you're OK. Take your ''soft variables'' into the smoke-filled room. Worse, the court has dignified ''diversity''--a flag of activist convenience, a wily obfuscation--as a compelling state interest, and on its promoters' terms.
''Diversity'' doesn't extend to, say, some dirtpoor piece of fundamentalist white trash. Her presence wouldn't ''enrich'' anyone. ''Diversity'' means ''more blacks.'' That's why traditional African-American colleges are exempt from its strictures: As 100 percent black schools, they're already as diverse as you can get.
As a general rule, the more noisily an institution proclaims its commitment to diversity, the more slumped in homogeneity it gets--at least when it comes to the only diversity that matters, not diversity of race or gender or orientation, but diversity of ideas. Take the New York Times and its star columnist Maureen Dowd. Of all the various aspects of the judgment, the one that took Maureen's fancy was that a black man had had the effrontery to vote against quotas for blacks! Pronouncing Clarence Thomas ''barking mad,'' she declared, ''He knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.''
Really? He didn't get into Yale on merit? Only because he was black? How does she know? And, by taking it as read that he's only there to make up the race numbers, doesn't she inadvertently confirm Thomas' point? That the cult of diversity stigmatizes all blacks: No matter how high they soar, the assumption of white liberals like Miss Dowd is that it's because of white liberals making allowances for them. How dare that uppity nigra be so ungrateful to Massa Sulzberger and all the fine ladies up at the big house who got him into the nice Liberal Guilt Academy for the Exotically Disadvantaged! ''It's poignant, really,'' sighs Maureen. ''It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race.''
Here's a game we can all play: It's poignant, really. Maureen knew that she couldn't make a powerful argument if her life depended on it, given the fact that she got into the New York Times thanks to her gender. It makes her crazy that people think she's where she is because the buttoned-down white guys running the Times needed a fluffy-chick quota hire but . . .
American liberals have had great success inventing evasive language to advance their agenda, ever since ''abortion'' became ''choice.'' Only the other week, with the cooperation of foolish, short-sighted Republicans, ''welfare'' morphed into ''tax credit.''
But one purpose of a court of last resort should be to reject the seduction of euphemism, to demand plain language and clear meaning.
''Diversity'' narrows the mind, it pigeonholes us into identity-group stereotypes, some approved, some not, but all so limiting that Maureen Dowd's ''diversity'' can't even grapple with the concept of a ''black conservative.'' Indeed, a ''diverse'' culture can't even be honest about its racist past.
Lester Maddox, Georgia's last segregationist governor and a white restaurateur who closed his business rather than be forced to serve blacks, died last week, and neither ABC, CBS nor NBC could bring themselves to tell viewers that this man was (gasp!) a Democrat. Imagine that: a racist Democrat.
Oh, come on, nobody's that diverse.
Thanks for the Steyn interview Annaz!! Im looking forward to the next one!
Both suffer from the same problem of being amorphous. "Diversity" is definitely in the eye of the beholder and can be interpreted in just about any way the colleges need to in order to advance their agenda.
I am so glad that Steyn decided to focus on the "diversity" ruling (let's stop saying this is an "affirmative action" ruling -- the rules of the game have changed and it is now "diversity") vs. a column on the sodomy ruling. Both are outrages, really; but, with the "diversity" ruling, my "equal protection under the law" constitutional right has been taken away from me for the purposes of college admission (and employment I imagine). The same with my children, and (because Sandra decided to arbitrarilly pull a number 25 out of the air) perhaps my grandchildren.
Okay, so I don't have a college education, so perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but isn't that the practical effect of this ruling --- to remove the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution from certain ethnic groups?
Thanks for the Steyn interview Annaz!!
That's why Ann Coulter's books hit such a raw nerve - the truth is painfull.
Socialists stay up nights, figuring how they can devise hate crime laws that will eventually make Annie's books criminal acts -- and how they can maneuver spineless, "me, too" Republicans into going along with it.
Yes, Liz. Even some of us with college educations are still able to read that.
My point is that laws ought to be about clearly defined acts and a high court should be concerned with the legal principles at stake in those acts.
I couldn't agree more.
D'you think he'll ever visit us here in Freeperland? That would be nice. Do you know he lurks?
Homerun.
The only explanation is to start with the following examples of quota and stealth appointments to the court itself---most markedly the female ACLU lawyer quota [Ginsburg] and the republican fluff head woman from a western state quota-first female on the court--does it make you proud, girls [O'Connor]; and then the quota for how can a republican appointment to the court be made when the president appointing him will not have a clue as to how leftist his positions will actually be--yeah that quota--thank you, Warren Rudman, you sanctimonious snaky blowhard[Souter].
We really should save a fair share of the blame for Orrin Hatch-who has been chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for far too long and had a hand in Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. I guess the Mormon numbskull quota had to be served --but, at least, here it is voters not the intelligentisia giving us the mediocrities [though it is the elite judiciary committee that elects him its feckless chairman, on quota principles of some kind, no doubt] Talk about simpering airheads!
It all started with the Nixon administration trying to appear "mainstream" with quotas for blacks and women. This has destroyed intellectual life in the universities and the resulting generation has now had its effect. One by product has been that young men are no longer going to college because the whole education game has been rigged against them into a feminist fantasy playland from pre-K through graduate school. Wouldn't you really like to be a young boy starting your educational career in these times when fanatical feminst haters of males have been in positions of influence for a generation and have adopted educational principles that "celebrate girls" in order to let "girls rule". That is the situation now, folks, like it or not. A well-meaning teacher cannot even turn the tide. That is why the rules curriculum has to be enforced with such a heavy hand. This is our current diversity delivered to you from a hand behind closed doors. This is the mechanism that has just been enshrined as constitutionally permissible as a compelling state interst to merit the use of suspect race classifications in educational admission decisions! All because swign vote Sandra Day O'Connor felt this is the murky way to go.
Well, when you have quotas and loss of principle up and down the line, you end up with this kind of s_ _ t.
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