Posted by Andy
Idly wondering which items in your arch-conservative Apostles’ Creed Jeff would disagree with. The wisdom of Iraq perhaps. But free markets? Illegal immigration? Legislated rather than court-imposed abortion law? Understanding for, if not necessarily agreement with, opponents of gay marriage? Left-wing anti-Americanism? Israel? Media bias? The U.N.? As for affirmative action, state-sanctioned racial discrimination in hiring and education is so blatantly unconstitutional (notwithstanding the sad precedent of Jim Crow) that one can only marvel at the readiness of the courts and received liberal opinion to look the other way lo these many years. But I suppose the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is another of those dead ideas.
Incidentally, despite the later pioneering work of the liberal idol Richard Nixon, the civil rights acts of the 60s did not endorse affirmative action. Proponents, notably including Hubert Humphrey, went out ot their way to assure skeptics that reverse discrimination was not envisaged. The pitfalls of subsequent enlightenment are perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the Jayson Blair fiasco at the New York Times. Despite the Times’ long-winded but evasive explanation, no reasonable person can possibly believe that Blair’s incompetence and duplicity would have been tolerated for so long had Howell Raines & Co. not been sentimentally committed to diversity at any cost.