Consider this entry, From Washingto to New Haven, the Rules They Are A-Changin', on the Washington Post's XX blog by Nicole Allan, the Slate intern/Yalie who coauthored with Emily Bazelon that long article in Slate entitled The Ladder.
The plaintiffs in the hotly contested affirmative action case Ricci v. DeStefano stood out among the crowd outside New Haven City Hall today. They wore dress blues and wide smiles or poker-faces that occasionally cracked into grins. They were, but for one, white, and they were celebrating their win in a 5-4 decision handed down by a sharply divided Supreme Court.
Mingling on the sidewalk before the conference, plaintiff Frank Ricci posed for photos with his family. Ben Vargas, the one Hispanic amongst the 18 plaintiffs, grinned beneath his sunglasses and crisp peaked cap. Attorney Karen Torre, surrounded by her clients and jokingly donning one of their caps, delivered a statement in boldly Obama-esque fashion: “We had the audacity of hope—that some court at some point would enforce the letter and spirit of the civil rights laws, accord to firefighters the recognition and respect that they deserve, and reject attempts to lower professional standards of competence for the sake of identity politics.”
It took some audacity indeed to invoke Obama in support of a lawsuit that called into question the country’s most significant civil rights statutes. ...
I kept thinking about the black firefighters I’ve been talking to over the past few weeks, none of whom I saw at the press conference. After decades and decades of lawsuits founded upon civil rights statutes, they have started to get ahead. Blacks and Hispanics, who make up about 60 percent of New Haven’s population, are now more or less proportionally represented within the rank and file of the city’s fire department. But their efforts to penetrate the upper management ranks have been less fruitful. Currently, only one of the city’s 21 fire captains is African-American. The anti-discrimination laws that once won them spots in New Haven’s firehouses are now the laws that have planted the smiles on Frank Ricci’s and Ben Vargas’ faces. There go the rules, changing again.
As Strobe Talbott wrote in Time in 1982:
Lenin, with his knack for hortatory pungency, reduced the past and future alike to two pronouns and a question mark: "Who—whom?" No verb was necessary. It meant who would prevail over whom? And the question was largely rhetorical, implying that the answer was never in doubt. Lenin and those who followed him would prevail over "them," whoever they were.
The funny thing is how modern American liberals consider their Who? Whom? mindset not cynical, but sacred.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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60 comments:
What I find surprising are the parallels between Lenin and Obama. What I find even more surprising is that no one is the MSM ever makes the comparison.
i wonder how many constitutional law books will include Alito's concurrence in their next editions......i wonder how many "lib" professors will talk about it in class
topical item in today's news:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090701_Phila__settled_firefighters
__discrimination_suit.html
--There go the rules, changing again.--
If this is true, and if only now whites are protected, then how could anyone not rejoice at such a change. Of course, all civil rights laws are terrible and should be abolished. They do not protect true minorities and only serve to make life difficult in the USA. Freedom of association would benefit all Americans.
Interesting stuff, but to be completely honest I feel that saying all liberals hold the views of the extreme (and then going a step further and comparing them to Lenin or Hitler) weakens your point. Lord knows we know how irritating it is when liberals find some anti-Israeli gun nut who writes hate speech and uses them as an example of "the typical conservative."
John A. those soviet era style campaign posters were more than just window dressing!
Coming from a position to the left of almost everyone who posts here, I think that many liberals can't believe that a minority could or would use their race, or another's race as a way to further some specific agenda. I think this represents a view that considers blacks/hispanics etc. as not really fully human, as not being able to do all the bad and good things that any human is capable of.
Steve said
"The funny thing is how modern American liberals consider their Who? Whom? mindset not cynical, but sacred."
Most people are run on emotion and reputation, not thought. Whole generations have been force-fed such stuff as "To Kill a Mockingbird." They cannot genuinely understand high-faluting concepts like equal protection under the law. So their inner experience on this issue consists exclusively of the positive emotion and high reputation attached to "helping the dark people" (which is how they hold it in their minds). Always useful to remember 99% of people are incapable of thought.
As to the top liberals who drive this stuff..."who" doesn't need a justification, only "whom" does.
Being a who means never having to say you're sorry.
A question to the legally sophisticated: It appears that the New Haven FD is now going to promote the plaintiffs in this case. Is there anything in this decision that would prevent black firefighters who did not make the cut from winning a disparate impact suit against the city?
George W. Bush did all he could to destroy the country with debt and illegal immigration. But it seems like against all odds he actually appointed two sensible Supreme Court justices.
A less ideological view: the "civil rights" establishment is nothing more than the latest version of the big city machine. First Irish, then Italian, now Black. Same behavior: shakedowns, buying elections, using gangs when politics is insufficient. Unfortunately the "crusading journalists" who brought down the Irish and Italian machines have bought into Boss Jesse's ridiculous adoption of Comrade King's moral mantle. So their crusades are always for Boss Jesse, not against him.
Is your outrage real Steve? No liberals have ever envisioned civil rights as offering "equal protection", the point was, is, and will be to help disadvantaged blacks and latinos. Does this really surprise you? Do you think liberals really care about being called out on this? Liberal "hypocrisy" on this is an open secret, the same way that conservative opposition to abortion is really about preventing pre-marital sex with no consequences (why else would "pro-life" people be so opposed to contraception?). And I find it hard to see how anyone who believes in HBD can take "equal protection" seriously. If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
Some firefighters are more "equal" than others.
To liberals, "Equality" is simply a rhetorical banner to wave around when it suits their purposes.
This is especially obvious when you look at the conduct of feminists.
"Equal protection" means what liberals want it to mean, nothing more or less. They believe they have the right to define all words and terms, similar to the Divine Right of kings.
@anonymous
That's a rhetorical if I ever saw one. Any level-headed law student knows the answer. The problem with law school is that many of the students are fully mature young adults who are exceptionally bright--sometimes brighter than their professors. It's awful disheartening to your check book when your liberal law professor at your 25K a year law school can't competently defend these decisions against their students' advances.
What I find surprising are the parallels between Lenin and Obama. What I find even more surprising is that no one is the MSM ever makes the comparison.
Really?
I think a lot of them creamed their jeans over just that realization!
I have to say I think you've been missing the point of the ruling in the Ricci case. Ricci had standing to bring the suit if and only if he had a legal right to expect that his test score would result in a promotion. If the mayor's public remarks about the test gave him that right, then every nonwhite and every woman who works for an organization led by a person who has made public remarks about the value of diversity has the legal right to expect a promotion, and consequently has standing to sue when a white man is promoted. So this ruling will likely sow a bumper crop of discrimination lawsuits.
Not to harsh too much on Strobe Talbott's "hortatory pungency" but Russian as a language is kind of like that. It's easy to put together phrases like "Kto komu" in Russian. With that said, however, life has gotten vastly simpler once I concluded that politicians are in it for the power, and that the beliefs they purportedly espouse are almost invariably just the beliefs espoused by the gang they fell in with, and that said purported beliefs have as much depth and meaning to the politicians as the Crips' and Bloods' choice of colors.
Speaking of "equal protection" and "discrimination", a question:
Would it be possible for WHITE GROUPS to start class-action lawsuits against companies whose television commericals constantly portray white men (usually dads) as stooooopid imbeciles ad nauseum?
I mean, we just -cannot- portray any other group that way, and fair is fair and all, right?
M
I will at least agree that it takes some audacity to invoke Obama in this case, given his biography and how he came to power.
I don't know about Time's opinion. It seems to me that if the translation of "Who - Whom?" is accurate in all respects, then the "Who" is subject and actor and the "Whom" is object and acted upon. It is a statement that the all important thing is who runs things and upon whom things are run.
...the black firefighters...After decades and decades of lawsuits founded upon civil rights statutes, they have started to get ahead. Blacks and Hispanics, who make up about 60 percent of New Haven’s population, are now more or less proportionally represented within the rank and file of the city’s fire department. But their efforts to penetrate the upper management ranks have been less fruitful.
And she accidently lets out the dealbreakers of affirmative action. Oops, civil rights.
The more people who need need it, the less affordable it is. When the recipient population underperforms for reasons that are irremedial, AA does not merely give people a chance. From entry-level to CEO, the argument is always the same: they're good enough to be proportionally represented in that level, discrimination snd disparate impact keep them from rising further. In fact, very few members of AA-receiving minorities could have gotten the job on merit, so of course they don't qualify for a better job based on merit.
Lastly, the black mostly- government-worker middle class is extremely brittle. It exists at the sufferance of the productive(white) middle class, and is no more than a couple of laws or court decisions from returning to the void.
Affirmative action looked like a ratchet. Ricci showed that it can be turned back. Now we need someone to bring RICO cases against, say university administrations and trustees that have been prohibitted from discriminating and conspire amongst themselves violate the law.
It looks like paleocons will have to make their own long march through the institutions, except demography ain't on our side.
STeve, aren't you missing the obvious.
The Who is women "plus" Gays, Blacks, Hispanics etc. The Whom is White Males.
Women, for example, are concentrated in according the BLS, professions and management, where they are about 9% more than men (professions) and a lesser amount (can't recall) for management. This is tailor made to increase opportunities by forgetting about Disparate Treatment and caring about Disparate Impact -- screwing over Straight White Men to advantage women.
High divorce rates, dropping marriage rates, and disposability of marriage makes this a winning strategy for women.
You cannot expect a White Woman not to show hatred and disdain (which drips off her words) for Straight White Blue Collar men. Or worship of Black/Hispanic men as "oppressed" and possessed of some magic totem quality of goodness.
Because those are the wedge issues to create more AA for White Women. Against their eternal and natural enemy, White Men. [Not for nothing are White Men considered by most women to be the second most lacking in testosterone on average behind Asian Men. One thing women hate about Men is low testosterone.]
This is only going to get worse. Obama's base is White Women "plus" various non-White groups and Gays. He must therefore keep rewarding them with ever bigger AA patronage stuff at the expense of his enemies, White Men. His hope is to create some Chavez-Zelaya female-dominated plebiscite over-ruling the Constitution and allowing him to rule by decree for life, simply expropriating to "share the wealth" with his backers. It's his way, as you noted in your book. It's his whole model of political philosophy.
And AA is an integral part of it.
What do I have in common with all of the other people in this country that live in a fantasy world?
I keep hearing that a "majority of Americans oppose affirmative action" and yet this same nation of sheep voted for a Democratic supermajority.
According to Google Norm Coleman has finally been defeated in Minnesota, giving the Democrats a supermajority in the Senate.
The disconnect between how Whites vote and what they profess when asked is just....ugh.
And despite all of this Ricci is proud that he finally got his promotion after five years of litigation.
Yeah, everything's gonna be "fair" now, meaning exact proportional representation in everything, beginning with banks, media, and law.
Peter A:
If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
As a clumsy 5-9 Asian, I'm poorly suited to the NBA. Draft me already. At least nobody dies when I miss a shot.*
Liberal "hypocrisy" on this is an open secret...
To cranky conservatives, perhaps. To mainstream liberals, the open secret is white racism. Just ask Bezelon, Obama, Ginsberg, etc etc.
conservative opposition to abortion is really about preventing pre-marital sex with no consequences
That's why the Religious Right supports stem-cell research. There's a way to kill fetuses without sex. How cool!
* My jocular tone notwithstanding, you disgust me, Peter. Yes, my disgust is real. Steve has proposed sensible ways to help blacks. Look them up if you care to.
If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
Reason one is that this is not what liberals say they are doing. They claim that people are in fact equal and that only discriminaton prevents equal outcomes. If they want want to come clean about their motivations then we can move on to reason two.
Reason two is that "society" has no legal or moral power to do such a thing, and that it lacks the wisdom to do it even if it had the power.
The case under discussion illustrates this nicely. Far from "helping" blacks to "succeed", we see the New Haven government simply giving blacks promotions, much as our colleges simply give blacks degrees. Doing this does not "help" blacks or anybody else.
Sometimes I think that the entire purpose of affirmative action is to help white liberals to feel good about themselves at everyone elses expense.
It's easy to put together phrases like "Kto komu" in Russian.
It sure is easy. But the Who-Whom? that Steve refers to in this case actually is "Kto kogo?" In the context of Lenin's original speach, it means "who's going to win over/defeat who?" In its shortest form, the phrase came to define the class war that Bolshies were constantly fighting.
Hmm...besides being liberals what do Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter have in common? Let me think....
"I keep hearing that a "majority of Americans oppose affirmative action" and yet this same nation of sheep voted for a Democratic supermajority."
The GOP didn't exactly run on an anti-affirmative action platform in 2008. In fact, until the Sotomayor nomination, we hardly heard anything about affirmative action from the GOP or the conservative establishment for many years. It clearly isn't something they care about very much.
"besides being liberals what do Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter have in common?"
They have Rs in their names?
Souter is a New Hampshire Episcopalian.
While reading the liberal hypocrisy of online publications regarding the Ricci vs Destefano case, I decided satire might be appropriate. The following is an example I posted at CBS News Online.
...
Since the CBS News editorial staff supports affirmative action shouldn't the ethnic makeup of CBS News management, like the New Haven Fire Department management, be changed to lessen its disparate impact on disadvantaged minority groups?
...
And what about the ethnic makeup of CBS News bloggers? A casual inspection of the biographies of white CBS News bloggers show an unfair differential access to parents and colleges the disadvantaged did not have, in addition, there are too many of them. In fact, this special access obviously reflects a bias, either intentional or unconscious or a combination of both, against minorities. Bloggers Brian Montopoli, Andrew Cohen, Sharyl Attkisson, and Mark Knoller, among others, must go to lessen the disparate impact they are having in the public sphere.
...
Perhaps once Justice Ginsberg leaves the court she could dissolve the CBS News bloggers and management staff and reformulate it to reflect her ethnic ideal.
Let me elaborate on my comment about the MSM taking note of the Lenin-Obama connection. I consider Limbaugh & Co. to be part of the MSM. I have never heard any of them make the comparison. A few writers at NR have, but I think they are about the only ones.
That's why the Religious Right supports stem-cell research. There's a way to kill fetuses without sex. How cool!
Thank you, 5-9 clumsy Asian dude.
[PS: Got any sisters?]
Eric Hoffer wrote in 1964 that the civil rights movement was a fraud. He was in favor of true civil rights, to be sure, but he saw right through the leadership of the day. Working on the Oakland docks will teach you a thing or two.
What will blow your minds is where he made this statement: in a cover story in The New York Times Magazine! Sounds like it might have been worth the Sunday price that week.
Hoffer addressed the black side of the equation here. The white side of the rights revolution needs its own analysis.
Republican flacks like to remind everyone that more elephants than donkeys voted for the Civil Rights Act that year. True, but what is that, but the Stupid Party being stupid, and the Evil Party being evil?
So on one side of the aisle, the liberal ideals were taken to heart, if naïvely, while on the other, it was the same "who-whom" they'd been practising for 150+ years.
So relatively low IQ white men like Frank Ricci are getting creamed in America by relatively high IQ Jews like Emily Bazelon. Isn't this the iSteve vision for how society is supposed to work? Wouldn't "more testing" just reinforce the superiority of Emily Bazelon to Frank Ricci?
If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
Because poor and middle class whites are made to pay the tab. If Ted Kennedy, Obama and Feinstein paid for AA out of their OWN pockets, most people would just laugh at them and move on. But forcing those who are negatively impacted to fork out the money is outrageous.
If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
Because we don't want stupid people in positions where we need smart people.
Wouldn't "more testing" just reinforce the superiority of Emily Bazelon to Frank Ricci?
In what area? Generating sociological theories that have no basis in reality? Commentary on extruded, rococco laws that make no sense and contradict each other?
Bang up job, Emily.
anon:
"So relatively low IQ white men like Frank Ricci are getting creamed in America by relatively high IQ Jews like Emily Bazelon. Isn't this the iSteve vision for how society is supposed to work? Wouldn't "more testing" just reinforce the superiority of Emily Bazelon to Frank Ricci?"
I expect Bazelon earns a lot more than Ricci, due to higher IQ as well as nepotism. If she were as strong and fit as him, she'd potentially make a better firefighter - but she'd most likely rather be doing a better paid job.
So, Bazelon and Ricci are not in competition. Ricci is more capable than the people he actually is in competition with.
BTW I suggest you read The Bell Curve: Intelligence & Class Structure in American Life (1994). It's mostly not about race, its main theme is the IQ-based meritocracy the US has had for decades. Which, yes, has helped put Ashkenazi Jews at the top of the pole in many fields of American life.
I'm not saying that AA makes any sense, just that I personally can't understand the deep outrage about this. Maybe you had to have a relative who worked as a fireman. In Boston there have always been plenty of unqualified firemen and cops who were Sully's second cousin or Billy O'Neil's neighbor's kid. Sure it's wrong for an unqualified black man to get promoted, but in the big picture it doesn't compare to the crap Goldman Sachs is doing to this country or the injustice of a company like Cabela's getting $400 million in TARP money.
And I still want Tom V to explain why "pro-lifers" oppose easy access to contraception and don't demand that women who abort their children be charged with first degree murder. Please explain. It's clearly about sex, not about sacred fetuses.
What I find surprising are the parallels between Lenin and Obama. What I find even more surprising is that no one is the MSM ever makes the comparison.
Because it's really a senseless comparison if you know anything about Lenin. Just inflammatory rhetoric on Steve's part. The list of politicians who pit one ethnic group against another is pretty much infinite and just in the US you could point to Strom Thurmond on the right and Huey Long on the left as people who played the "who, whom" game at a far more aggressive level than Obama.
testy sed
"One thing women hate about Men is low testosterone."
Because blue collar men are known for their lack of testosterone.
Past all the fog and smog, it boils down to this: are liberals so insane that they suggest men who failed a competency exam be placed in command of first responders where their lack of knowledge and good judgment could kill someone? I think liberals have truly just gone nuts. Even the Obama administation urge a vacatur and remand in this case. So the American left has truly gone over the edge.
steve did a few articles on how certain jewish groups are were conferred protected, affirmative action status by ronald reagan.
i want somebody to explain how the civil rights rules developed for black americans somehow were transferred to "latinos" and "hispanics".
i don't even understand how mexicans get affirmative action. it doesn't make any sense. at all.
Anonymous: So relatively low IQ white men like Frank Ricci are getting creamed in America by relatively high IQ Jews like Emily Bazelon. Isn't this the iSteve vision for how society is supposed to work? Wouldn't "more testing" just reinforce the superiority of Emily Bazelon to Frank Ricci?
This might be the most profoundly important comment that I have ever seen posted at iSteve - or anywhere on the Internet, for that matter.
This Fourth of July weekend, take a little time to pause and give thanks that there was once society which could have produced a set of towering intellects who had the strength of character to resist the temptation to impose their superiority on their fellow countrymen.
There are only a handful of instances of that sort of humility and integrity and virtue in all of recorded human history, and we lucky few had the Providential fortune to have been born into that legacy - even if said legacy is now passing into the annals of forgotten time, like a handful of sand, trickling out between our fingers, and into an ocean of ignobility and despair and Death.
Wouldn't "more testing" just reinforce the superiority of Emily Bazelon to Frank Ricci?
Based on what we've seen of the two it is by no means obvious to me that Bazelon is in any way superior to Ricci. Bazelon seems as dumb as a box of hammers.
So relatively low IQ white men like Frank Ricci are getting creamed in America by relatively high IQ Jews like Emily Bazelon.
IQ has nothing to do with it.
"I'm not saying that AA makes any sense, just that I personally can't understand the deep outrage about this. Maybe you had to have a relative who worked as a fireman. In Boston there have always been plenty of unqualified firemen and cops who were Sully's second cousin or Billy O'Neil's neighbor's kid. Sure it's wrong for an unqualified black man to get promoted, but in the big picture it doesn't compare to the crap Goldman Sachs is doing to this country or the injustice of a company like Cabela's getting $400 million in TARP money."
Segregation in the south probably wasn't that bad, either. Occasionally a black is wrongfully punished but overall the economic status of blacks has been placid since 70s. And we would have less crime and more freedom.
If races aren't equal, why shouldn't society tip the scales to help those who aren't well suited to succeed?
"Society" meaning wealthy white people, never have to deal with this garbage. Its not for them to decide or lecture Frank Ricci.
Because blue collar men are known for their lack of testosterone.
Lol. Start busting your hump outside and you start to realize your T is increasing...
You do all realize Ricci is Italian American, right? There was a time, not so long ago, when we WASPS rightfully considered Italians no better than blacks. English, Scotch, Germans and Dutch were the cornerstones of this once proud country. The negative impact of Southern European and Irish immigration was just as harmful as Mexican is now.
I suggest you read The Bell Curve: Intelligence & Class Structure in American Life (1994). It's mostly not about race, its main theme is the IQ-based meritocracy the US has had for decades.
America does not have an IQ based meritocracy. The country runs on money, nepotism and cronyism, much like every other country on earth.
Which, yes, has helped put Ashkenazi Jews at the top of the pole in many fields of American life.
No, it is money, neptosm and cronyism which has done this. On some level I'm sure you understand that Barney Frank and Henry Waxman and Ruth Ginsberg do not wield the power they do because of their gigantic intellects.
anonymous said...
On some level I'm sure you understand that Barney Frank and Henry Waxman and Ruth Ginsberg do not wield the power they do because of their gigantic intellects.
I know what you are getting at, but Barney Frank specifically serves in the Congress and has the power he has because the people of Massachusetts are idiots. This is the same state that fields the gentile Ted Kennedy, who pursues the same agenda as the three you mention above.
I absolutely agree with you, Peter, about Goldman Sachs and the TARP.
Besides affirmative action, I have a big problem with legacy admissions in colleges. Given what we know about her background, Emily Bazelon is a probable beneficiary of such policies.
because the people of Massachusetts are idiots
Of course they are. That's why Massachusetts has consistently had the highest standard of living in the US since the US was founded, and why no one ever goes to Massachusetts for higher education. People from Massachusetts are idiots, people from South Carolina and Mississippi are frickin' geniuses. Got it.
South Carolina has been adding people for the last several decades because it has been able to maintain a relatively high standard of living despite having a large Black population.
On the other hand, those storied colleges in Massachusetts that help provide such a high standard of living are a legacy from previous generations and once the students in those colleges graduate from college they often leave MA, and head south.
Just because Massachusetts has done well in the past doesn't mean it will do well in the future.
...give thanks that there was once society which could have produced a set of towering intellects who had the strength of character to resist the temptation to impose their superiority on their fellow countrymen.
Though the gist of your argument appears tenable and pleasantly nostalgic, I must mention the more than a few glaring, countering exceptions to such romanticism: the Trail of Tears, Southern chattel slavery, Manifest Destiny, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Tammany Hall, social Darwinism of the latter 19th century, lack of universal women's suffrage until the early 20th century, etc.
Simon: ...Which, yes, has helped put Ashkenazi Jews at the top of the pole in many fields of American life.
Anonymous: No, it is money, neptosm and cronyism which has done this.
So money, nepotism, and cronyism explain the facts that 28% of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, 56% in Economics, 37% in Physics, and 41% in Physiology/Medicine are Jewish? Swedes must be some fierce pro-Zionists!
http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
DAJ: "...glaring, countering exceptions to such romanticism..."
Ah yes, the good old liberal guilt trip, a standard leftist rhetorical device for at least the past 50 years.
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