The Black Republican

I've said many times that I don't particularly care for Florida, and I'm homesick for New Jersey. Well, there is one thing about Morris County I don't miss, and that's the liberalism that's been slowly creeping out of New York, taking over the good country folk.

The head of the National Organization for Women's Morris County chapter is opposing a double-murder charge in the Laci Peterson case, saying it could provide ammunition to the pro-life lobby.

"If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder," Morris County NOW President Mavra Stark said on Saturday.

DING! You win the prize for second-most vapid Morris County resident ever.

Of course, all-time first prize in that category still goes to Jamie Denkel, who in her junior year at Jefferson Township High did a term paper for American History titled "The Attack on Pearl Harbor". Despite working on it for four months and filling 20 typed pages with writing, she never bothered to learn who Chuichi Nagumo was. "My report was about what was going on in Washington at the time..." she said.

John O'Sullivan suggests we continue the full-court press.

France, Germany, and Russia united against the United States because they think that America has too much power and that this power is used to advance what the French call "Anglo-Saxon liberalism"--broadly speaking, the free market in economics, unfettered free speech, vigorous popular democratic debate in politics, and a rooted respect for social and political equality.

What the "Gang of Three" favor for their countries is extensive economic and social regulation by government institutions that, though formally democratic, place almost all power in the hands of remote bureaucratic elites. But they know that American freedom is infectious and that it undermines their own more rigid systems--if only because the United States is beating their countries by almost every economic and social test extant. And they fear that Iraq means an extension of this destabilizing freedom to the Middle East.

For some reason, this brought to mind something that has always nagged my thoughts regarding The Great Experiment. Throughout history, every civilization has endured a rise, a peak and a fall into decadence, corruption, and tyranny. I had always considered it at least a possibility that America would experience the same fate - eventually. For the most part, what retained this as a possibility in my mind was the growing casual acceptance of deviancy in our society, such as homosexuality. Most of the great acient civilizations (Egypt, Greece, and Rome, for three examples) each flaunted their sexual deviants (especially their emperors) before collapsing into the trash-bin of history.

But while "Rise and Fall" has always been the rule, the corollary has been their autocratic political underpinnings. The closest any of the great civilizations came to democracy was the Roman Republic - which was really a rather large oligarchy. So the questions remain: Can a true liberal democracy Fall, and Will it, as a given?

Them:

What we were witnessing was, in fact, blowback from a bitter animosity that dates to the very beginning of this Bush administration. And it is about bigger things than the number of soldiers in Iraq. It is about who runs the military, and how to propel it into the modern age.

Me, in a letter to Andrew Sullivan, yesterday:

Rumsfeld is looking at a DoD - especially the in the Army corner of the Pentagon - that needs serious renovation. It's possible that he's playing a little DoD politics, and taking gambles with our men. It's possible that they didn't expect such a "hard" fight when we went in. It's possible they're overestimating the power and accuracy of the Air Force and underestimating the need to put boots on the ground. Possible - but not likely.

I've been looking for something insightful to say in the aftermath of the Supreme Court oral arguments in the University of Michigan case. John Fund was the best I came up with to start with.

How can one square Michigan's program with the Constitution's prohibition against racial discrimination? Aggressive outreach to find quality minority candidates is important, but pushing minority candidates into schools they're not ready for doesn't do them or the school any favors. Ultimately, the damage a poor education does to a kid in the lower grades can't be remedied by diversity intervention in his or her teenage years. That's why school-choice programs that provide real alternatives to help students in failing public schools may be the best and most effective affirmative action around.

Justice Scalia, as usual, was the most outspoken and effective Justice in the arguments. His near-harrassment of the lawyers for UM brought the reality of the Constitutional violations into sharp focus. Still, I fear we might see O'Connor (no relation, btw) side with the more liberal members of the court to whitewash the whole affair and claim diversity is a "compelling" reason to trample all over the equal protection clause.

Don't get me wrong. I want to see more blacks in college. I want to see more qualified blacks in college. I want to see more well-educated blacks graduate from college so they can conquer the workplace. I'm not against vigorous enforcement of remedies when illegal discrimination is found. But this case isn't a choice between the Civil Rights movement and Jim Crow. This is a choice between appeasement of those who perpetuate the myth of never-ending racism and the rule of law. This is a choice between Jesse Jackson's opportunistic blackmail of Wall Street in the name of The Cause, and Martin Luther King's Dream. Like Fund suggests, rather than perpetuate UM's unconstitutional mistake, let's solve the underlying problems in the black community and let black students get into college on their merits.