December 23, 2002
AN OPPORTUNITY ON RACE:
The Other Trent Lotts (BOB HERBERT, December 23, 2002, NY Times)The G.O.P. has spent more than 30 years demonizing Democrats for trying to help racial and ethnic minorities. It has spent more than 30 years stomping on the voting rights of blacks. And it has gone out of its way to pack the federal courts with judges who are hostile to the interests and the rights of minorities.The party won't be rid of these sins and their consequences until its leaders acknowledge them, and take meaningful steps to do better. Many of the officials and operatives who threw Trent Lott overboard have voting records and campaign histories that are as bad as Senator Lott's, or worse. The real lessons of the Trent Lott experience are lost on them.
Mr. Lott may be gone as Senate Republican leader, but the G.O.P. is still hot for the racist vote. It's a vile addiction that's guaranteed to bring a great deal of additional grief--for the party, and for the rest of us.
Mr. Herbert is half right here: the GOP has been partial to a racialist (by which we mean that one race is pitted against another, though no judgment is necessarily made about the "superiority" or "inferiority" of any race) form of politics for about thirty years now. However, he's either oblivious to the Democrats parallel addiction or else willfully covering it up. There are five issues in today's politics where one or both of the two major parties are driven primarily by racialist considerations. If Democrats can face up to their own divisive exploitation of race, perhaps both parties can work together on these issues:
(1) Education Vouchers: The Democrats get a pass on their opposition to vouchers, which merely has a detrimental effect on blacks and other minorities, because their opposition is almost solely a function of their being a wholly-owned subsidiary of organized Labor. Republicans who oppose vouchers, on the other hand, generally do so because they are trying to appease suburban white voters, mostly Northeastern women, who don't want a whole mess of black kids suddenly showing up at Junior's school. The two parties could demonstrate that they are serious about helping blacks, and unwilling to pander to whites, by voucherizing public education.(2) Hate Crimes Legislation: This is one where it is mainly Democrats who are on the hook for racialism. Enforcement, prosecution, and adjudication of such crimes is necessarily so subjective as to be prone to misuse. The only way to ensure that such legislation is utilized impartially is to make it like those la3ws that add five yearsto the sentence of someone who uses a gun in the commission of a crime. These hate crime laws should be amended to add five years to the sentence of anyone whose victim does not fit their own racial, ewthnic, sexual, sexual orientation, physical fitness, age, income, etc. profile.
(3) Slavery Reparations: This one's exclusively the Democrats' domain. On its face, a scheme which imputes guilt to one race ("demonizes" them in Mr. Herbert's term) in its entirety and transfers money to just one racial group must be seen as racialist.
(4) Affirmative Action: Here too it is Democrats who almost exclusively advocate the distribution of spoils on the basis of race. Such laws and regulations should either be repealed altogether or "white", "male", and "straight" should be added to the list of groups who warrant special treatment.
(5) Immigration: This last is an issue where both parties--and perhaps as high as 70% of all Americans--are implicated. Motivations vary--among Democrats there's, once again, a union influence, but also a favoritism towards Haitians and a hostility to Cubans, Asians, Indians, white Europeans, etc.--while among Republicans there's mostly just a strong anti-Latino component. At any rate, the two parties can get right with God by allowing for more open immigration across the board--with limitations only for criminals, political undesirables, and the like. Legitimate concerns about the assimilation of such immigrants could be allayed by imposing a neutral system which requires people who've been here for seven years to have jobs, speak English, and become citizens by that team or else leave.
We see here a series of reforms in which no particular political interest would be served, only the cause of a color blind society would be advanced. Both parties would be required to alienate certain constituencies to prove their anti-racialist bona fides, but it would break the "vile addiction" of both parties to racial politics and America would be the better for it. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 23, 2002 9:30 AM
Well, I'm against vouchers because I'm for the First Amendment.
However, if we get 'em, and the Catholic church gets any money, I want a refund to my Mom for all the money she spent sending me to their third-rate schools. The
bishop of Nashville had a swell marketing tool: Send your children to my school or burn in Hell!
You get both.
Posted by: oj at December 23, 2002 8:26 PMHarry,
What exactly in the First Amendment prohibits vouchers?
You use the example of Catholic schools. Do you realize that students at Notre Dame University qualify for Pell Grants, G.I. Bill tuition, and every other Federal college assistence program? Did you realize that in 2000, Al Gore proposed expanding a preschool assistance program that allows parents to put their kids in preschools run by churches? Do you realize that Catholic hospitals can accept federal Medicare funds?
Yeah, I realize it. It ought not to happen.
One thing about it is the utter moral bankruptcy of the Catholic church. I was taught, growing up, how we had to pay and pay and should be glad that, unlike other countries like France, our government did not interfere
in religion.
Turned out, that was not a matter of principle but only tactical. Now they figure they can establish state religions and moral teachings go out the window. I want a refund.
Admittedly, school vouchers flirt perilously will Jefferson's famous "wall of separation." But the danger here is more with the state's influence on the church, not the other way around. There is a reason why we call it the Spanish
Inquisition, not the Catholic or the Christian Inquisition: it would not have been possible without the blunt, terrible instrument of the state.
And exactly why is the Catholic Church morally bankrupt? Appalling numbers of its earthly representatives certainly are (as they always have been), but their bankruptcy consists precisely in their rebellion from Catholic moral teaching. The Law stands; the enforcers and teachers have fallen.
School vouchers don't flirt in the least with the Constitution's establishment clause, however they may flirt with Jefferson's "wall of separation."
Posted by: pj at December 25, 2002 8:06 AMThis interesting post makes it clear why the Bushies' Negro vote chase is so futile as to be nothing more than a loss of nerve and a formula for sweeping electoral defeat. Affirmative Action is the key. In practice it is, of course, a gigantic fraud. Its primary beneficiaries are Negro and Hispanic elites who, objectively, have no need of it. It is a system of robbing Peter to buy the votes of Paul, and if the Republicans waffle on their opposition to it, Peter will most definitely look for electoral alternatives. The notion that the Democrats would ever voluntarily give up buying votes with other peoples' interests is equally unrealistic: why would they ever do so? This issue is going to have to be faced honestly and bravely, for it cannot be wished away.
Posted by: Lou Gots at December 25, 2002 1:32 PMIf the freedom to tax is the freedom to destroy
(a thought I believe would get votes around
here), then the freedom of religion principle
requires that government money, as well as
government officials, keep out of churches.
It is the glory of our system that we have,
at least until recently, restrained ourselves
from indulging in our religious tastes at the
public trough.
Those who know our religio-political history
are aware of how bad it was when the state
did interfere.
Funny, though, 160 years ago, it was the
Baptists defending the First Amendment, not
something they've been known for recently.
40 years ago, the Catholics did. Now they've
been bought by the fisc. We are reduced to
the 7th-Day Adventists to defend the Constitution, and how many hear
them?
The Supreme Courts of the past
three decades have thrown the First
Amendment overboard, not just the religion
clause but the free assembly one, too.
Harry:
The "freedom of religion principle" is a figment of your imagination, rather than an integral part of our Constitution. Government can freely fund religion; it just can't impose one particular religion on all of us.
Can't do the one without doing the other.
And even if it could, it cannot mulct you to support my religion.
Harry - the power to tax is the power to destroy - what does freedom have to do with either taxation or destruction?
I agree that government shouldn't tax us to fund religion, I just don't think educational vouchers that some parents choose to use in religious schools is government funding of religion. The Supreme Court thinks the same way.