The fires are stoked, and dissenters are marked for public execution. Consider:
Ms. Norton informs us that an extension of unemployment insurance is a matter of civil rights. How so? Because more minorities, per capita, are unemployed than others. So that the question becomes not is an extension of unemployment benefits a good idea; it becomes: Is it a good idea if more Latinos are relieved than Caucasians?
What Sen. Bill Frist needs to do is to declare publicly that a line must be drawn, that the Republican Party fervently endorses an application of civil rights laws and the defense of minorities, but that to sanctify any proposed measure purely by naming it as a civil rights measure is to abandon one's capacity to make distinctions. What is absolutely required is such a declaration from political men of manifest integrity, one that denounces any effort to proscribe speech on the grounds that it questions a program espoused by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Coming up quickly, of course, is the final showdown on affirmative action. The Supreme Court will rule in the matter of the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative-action program. The objective is to decide whether equal rights extend equally to applicants to law school who aren't members of racial minorities. One senses that the Republican leadership is holding back in arguing the case for genuine equal rights because of the avalanche triggered by Mr. Lott's indiscretion.
We will need to watch carefully how the Bush administration comports itself on the University of Michigan question. Will the Justice Department file an amicus brief defending the right course? Or has the Leadership Conference assumed veto power on the question?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/815456/posts?page=4#4