November 16, 2012

By Any Means Necessary

From the NYT on the 8-7 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz's 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to ban racial preferences in Michigan government policy (e.g., racial preferences in U. of Michigan admissions), which was approved by 58% of the vote in that blue state in November 2006.
People trying to change any other aspect of university admissions policies, the court said, had several avenues open: they could lobby the admissions committee, petition university leaders, try to influence the college’s governing board or take the issue to a statewide initiative. Those supporting affirmative action, on the other hand, had no alternative but to undertake the “long, expensive and arduous process” of amending the state Constitution. 
“The existence of such a comparative structural burden undermines the equal protection clause’s guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change,” said Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., writing for the majority.

This is an extraordinarily unpersuasive argument by the Sixth Circuit majority. Before this ruling, proponents of affirmative action faced exactly the same burdens as the opponents of affirmative action faced in 2006 when they got their initiative approved. Heck, proponents don't need 58% of the vote like the ban got, they just need 50% +1 vote to amend the state Constitution. 

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

Oh, wait, gender equality is part of the War on Women, just like racial equality is racism. Sorry, my Newspeak is a couple of weeks behind the times, so my apologies.

Seriously, if Romney had won last week, do you think we'd see this particular decision this week? The majority's reasoning (such as it is) seems like a particularly blatant middle finger extended to the white and Asian voters of Michigan to demonstrate to them that racial preferences for blacks and Hispanics will be protected By Any Means Necessary (the title of the thuggish plaintiffs who triumphed in the Sixth Circuit.)

Christopher Caldwell once said: "One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong." We may have permanently made that transition last week, especially if Obama gets to replace a Republican Supreme Court justice over the next four years.

Certainly, the atmosphere has changed since Election Day toward media displays of naked racial animus. Partly this is the veil dropping once the need for politeness was over, but it's also, as Gen. Patton said, that Americans love a winner.

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

Necessary measures, when America is full of white racists.

Anonymous said...

As long as we have gone through the looking glass, let me say that I find the weakness of the legal reasoning extremely strong.

Anonymous said...

Certainly, the atmosphere has changed since Election Day toward media displays of naked racial animus.

As I've tried to emphasize around here in the past, there's a shiny bright silver lining to this dark cloud: Namely, that it's going be like a bitch-slap upside da face to all those soft squishy middle-of-the-road white moderates and centrists and slightly-less-than utterly fanatical libtard idiots who had bought into that "can't we all just get along?" bullshit in the first place.

The faster the Truth can percolate its way up through all the Frankfurt School propaganda and disinformation which is saturating the cultural landscape, and make its way into people's waking, active consciouses, the better the outcome will be for us.

IHTG said...

"Those supporting legalized murder, on the other hand, had no alternative but to undertake the “long, expensive and arduous process” of amending the state Constitution."

Hobbes said...

It should be abundantly clear at this point that govt, the courts, the MSM, and academia are going to give minorities special privileges of whatever they want 'by any means necessary' regardless of how much tortured logic and rejection of the facts they have to use to get there.

When whites continue to be treated as third class citizens, and they are not permitted fair and legal routes to have their basic rights re-established, and silenced from a fair and honest public discussion of their grievances, the govt is really toying with a civil war.

irishman said...

I know people around here are pissed about the election but come on folks, what choice did people have? Vote for the man who'll take away your kid's chance to go to college and who'll lock you out of public employment and tendering or vote for the man who will probably do the same things anyway as political triangulation to cover for throwing you out into the snow when your old and allow doctors allow you to die when you're wife is pregnant because of their "conscience".
Think I'm being hyperbolic? In Ireland the anti-choice movement got everything your anti-choice movement wants. This week a woman died needlessly because of them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/14/ireland-abortion-law-woman-death

Conservatism is cruelty disguised as piety, cowardice misrepresented as principle. So long as it's the only alternative on offer, the choice is the same as being boiled alive or burned to death.

Americans outside the south havn't changed since Lincoln's day. They prefer their chains without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Anonymous said...

white men have had more affirmative actiion than anyone

Bostonian said...

As universities increasingly take sides in politics, whether it's an "academic dream team" advising the Obama campaign or the California public universities lobbying for a tax increase, Republican support for higher education will dwindle, and it ought to. Yes, the GOP is now a minority party, but not by a whole lot nationally (they still control the House), and the GOP still holds the majority of governorships.

Indian guy said...

It ought to be obvious to Asians that the Democrats are more likely to appoint judges who support affirmative action, which disadvantages Asian children in college admissions. I know this. I'm Indian, and this is one reason I am Republican. But when in the recent past has the GOP made an issue of racial preferences? Most people know little about the issues, and what's obvious to iSteve readers is off the radar screen of most voters.

RT said...

So am I reading correctly that it was unconstitutional because it was constitutional?

beowulf said...

"Seriously, if Romney had won last week, do you think we'd see this particular decision this week?"

Actually, yeah you probably would. Where they did play politics is the timing. Oral arguments were in March but the opinion wasn't issued November 15. They probably had it ready to go months ago but held it up to keep it from becoming a campaign issue.

As a legal matter, equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is the wrong hook to justify, well, special protection. To sanction AA, the court should have used the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery (as well as "badges of servitude"), which is a much stronger tool since it applies to both public and private actors. The rub is, it could only be justified for affirmative action for the descendants of American slaves-- immigrants and other ethnic groups wouldn't be covered (Native Americans are a special case since they are more or less still wards of the Secretary of the Interior).

Anonymous said...

This is in accordance with Liberalisms Fourth Penumbra to the Constitution of the United States, which states that "Everything desired by the Liberal cause is mandated under the Constitution, and everything opposed to the Liberal cause is prohibited under it".

Anonymous said...

Yup.

Institutional racial discrimination appears now to be the norm in the USA, and that is unlikely ever to change.
If outright racial discrimination is aimed against white males, it is 'good and proper', but Jim Crow and all the rest was unspeakably evil as we oft reminded.
US politics resembles little else than the dynamics of school-yard bullying.
It really is grotesque to read te vericts of high court judges when they straightfacedly and unashamedly pervert the first principle of law, namely, equity and justice, and then make all these absurd, tortured and self-contradictory rationalizations for doing so. In the final analysis law is merely another 'might is right' power game, although it isn't supposed to be thus.

Severn said...

"One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong."


I assume this is why the Republican party is not more strongly opposed to affirmative action. The numbers just don't work, in a country where something like 75% of the population are on the AA train.

For some reason a lot of people either forget or prefer to ignore the fact that the biggest single group of people who get AA are women.

Unknown said...

Considering the increase in ethnic tensions, and we can expect it to increase further in the future as America darkens, will you stop promoting this a-racial 'citizenism' and finally take sides - your own side - by becoming a pro-white political commentator? Just like Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald, for example, are already doing.

- VanSpeyk

keypusher said...

Seriously, if Romney had won last week, do you think we'd see this particular decision this week?

Yes. It takes an enormous amount of time to write, circulate, and get approval of a judicial opinion, especially when eight judges have to approve it.

And it's not as if racial preferences were an issue in the campaign. If Romney or Obama said a word about them, I missed it.

By the way, have you gotten around to reading Mismatch by Sander and Taylor?

Paul Mendez said...

Certainly, the atmosphere has changed since Election Day toward media displays of naked racial animus.

And for the past week, I thought I was just being over-sensitive!

Reg Cæsar said...

Give proper credit to the ultimate source of this post's title.

Anonymous said...

no general left behind

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/?single_page=true

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/09/all-must-have-prizes.html

Auntie Analogue said...

Yes, the BAMN "veiled threat," right there in the very By Any Means Necessary name of the plaintiff: the veiled threat which, were it avowed in that same formulation by any White individual or White group, would get that White person or group slammed down real hard by Impartial Johnny Law as a prime example of Racist™ "hate crime" thoughtcrime.

Right now the Left and its whole corps de pundits (punditos? pendejos?) are busily deriding, dismissing, deploring, and dumping on the increasing talk of Secession and petitions for Secession. Why? Because By Any Means Necessary is reserved exclusively to minorities - even to illegal immigrant colonist parasites - and Whites need not apply. Leftocrat scribblers are finger-wagging that Secession is "illegal" - until it comes time (again, depend on it) for the Left to brandish "by consent of the governed" to further advance minority privilege over Whites and immmigrant privilege over U.S. citizens.

In short: get out of the way, lie down and die, White Americans, because your old unfashionable assimilationist Melting Pot is over and the Great Steamroller of population replacement is, as more judges and courts and unelected State Department refugee bloc resettlement bureaucrats and H1-B scam law firms climb aboard it and press down harder on its accelerator pedal, gathering weight and gaining speed.

eah said...

...said Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., writing for the majority.

Here is a foto of the esteemed judge.

The joke's on you, white America.

Zion said...

Yes, I've been quite stunned with what you call "naked racial animus". Coming especially from 'liberal' Scotch-Irish folk like Krugman, Chait(of course he's obsessed with it), Frank Rich, Noah Smith and many others.

MJ Rosenberg, a man who's equally racist towards whites as he seems to be towards his own kin, said it succintly recently: "The Left won the cultural war decades ago, now the political war has been won too".

For generations, as the Cultural left increased its zeal, the main population of America turned further to the right. After they could not be converted in sufficient numbers, it was simply decided to replace them entirely with a more mallable people who can be told more easily what to think, when to jump (and how high).

Obviously the situation is looking grim, for beside Asians and the Scoth-Irish, you have a growing perma underclass in the Democratic coalition.

And Scoth-Irish and Asians are both quite readily intermarried with Anglos. This won't be Yugoslavia people, it'll be a lot messier. There is already so much interkindled relationships across ethnic and racial lines at the highest echelons in this society. While most WASPs in the media are rootless, most of their families are not and that will be a deciding factor as the situation slowly descends into a place I do not wish it to go, but of which I can see no way out from based on history and the inevitable downgrading of America as a economically ravaged nation after the white base cannot hold together the strewn-apart pieces anymore(or won't because of the increasing racial hatred coming out of the media).

Lex said...

About influence of Affirmative Action on "checking black".

Anonymous said...

http://www.jewishjournal.com/nation/article/u.s._senate_resolution_backs_israels_actions_in_gaza#When:21:30:45Z

Veracitor said...

(1) I don't think the election influenced the decision itself, only the timing of its publication. I think the Sixth Circuit sat on its decision until after the election to spare the Obama campaign any embarassments.

(2) The logic of this decision would invalidate any attempt by statewide voter majorities to keep subordinate government agencies from misbehaving. For example, in California Proposition 13 requires local governments to get 2/3 voter approval to raise taxes, but a local simple majority can reduce spending. Obviously Prop. 13 violates the 14th Amendment rights of socialists.

JimTheRoy said...

Politics is illegal if the wrong result is reached.

There is no "rule of law" anymore, and certainly no republican constitutional order--hasn't been for a while.

What we have is rule by Talmudic scholarship, where with sufficient argumentation white turns into black, black into white. As long as the proper anti-majoritarian result is reached ...

The country, the territory, the state has been hijacked from its people, culture, ideas, history, mores and morals. I am simply not apart of what has been installed.

We need to salvage what we can and separate... while there's anything of value left.

Kylie said...

Bamn them to hell.

little dynamo said...

the blatant hatred and iniquity isnt hatred and iniquity, because females are doing it, for benefit of females . . . and everybody knows that women are Good, and the champions of Equality

only males do bad things, where you been the past half-century?

whats up with the War on Women, sailer?

you must be a bitter, ugly, gay misogynist living in the basement of .... etc

Anonymous said...

Here are the white, old stock American men who helped get Obama reelected. What do you suppose is their motivation? Is it just that they are so talented AA would never be an issue for them? Do they hate average whites and love average NAMs? Discuss.

Reg Cæsar said...

white men have had more affirmative actiion than anyone --anonymous [surprise, surprise]

Yes, but this is properly called "nepotism", as the recipients were closely related to those who developed the country.

Nepotism is a normal, universal impulse. "Affirmative action", or antinepotism, is the sign of a sick population.

Fun said...

Here are the white, old stock American men who helped get Obama reelected. What do you suppose is their motivation? Is it just that they are so talented AA would never be an issue for them? Do they hate average whites and love average NAMs? Discuss.

Affirmative action hurts poor whites and dumb whites a lot more than liberal high IQ nerds, who by the way, have more in common with a guy like Obama than the former groups.

DaveinHackensack said...

"Here are the white, old stock American men who helped get Obama reelected."

Some seriously talented techies there, but let's remember a key meme about Obama from 2008. When people wondered whether he'd do a good job as president given his thin resume, the response was often, "look at how well he ran his campaign". Doesn't the success of the 2012 Obama campaign, combined with the disappointment of the last 4 years, disprove that meme? We have geniuses helping get mediocrities elected.

Median household incomes have declined every year since Obama was elected, and we are $6 trillion deeper in debt. Now he goes back to the White House for four more years, while Harper Reed & friends go back to their tech startups.

Fun said...

As a non-white who understands HBD, I wish whites in the HBD-sphere actually wanted an end to institutional racial preferences for the sake of meritocracy and "citizenism". I could accept unequal racial outcomes given most capable individuals are being selected for. I could accept it because that would result in better long-term outcome for America as a whole. Unfortunately based on the comments I read from all over, many prefer a racial caste system that favors whiteness and marginalizes everything else. I understand we are in an era where AA is the norm, but if the choices are limited to A. Minoritarianism with AA or B. Majoritarianism with racial glass ceilings, then I will choose the former.

2Degrees said...

I think I know what the next stage in affirmative action will be. The Hispanics will be declared "people of the land", or however you say that in Nahuatl.

They will argue, using the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that they have a special claim to land and resources of the ENTIRE American continent. I don't live in the US, but I suspect it already applies to individual tribes.(Am I right?)

We already have this is NZ and, as a whitey, I am prepared to go along with it to an extent. If you are declared tanagata whenua (people of the land), you have all sorts of rights to land and resources that other New Zealanders do not have. Some Maori even claim ownership of all water in NZ and insist that everyone else pay them to use it.

What is annoying is that all these special rights are gradually growing to include non-Maori Polynesians. At the moment, they do not have a claim to natural resources, but they do have access to a large number of other set-asides.

The court that decides who gets what is called the Waitangi Tribunal and it is stuffed with politically correct fanatics. Also, I don't remember being indigenous gave me any special rights in Britain. In fact, it is now a thought crime to even suggest that there is any such thing as a native Brit.

Pope Solo said...

"Reg Cæsar said...

white men have had more affirmative actiion than anyone --anonymous [surprise, surprise]

Yes, but this is properly called "nepotism", as the recipients were closely related to those who developed the country."


-Actually western societies have been the most open and fair regarding equal opportunity compared to pretty much anywhere else on earth. Pretty eye opening to see how much favoritism, corruption, etc go on in non-western countries- try living in one for a while like I did. In fact, it is BECAUSE of this, that non-whites were allowed to complain, riot, etc- anywhere else they would have been shut down in a heartbeat. And even what they complain about- that we basically promise to have equal opportunity- many countries have no Bills of Rights and Constitution equivalents.

Its pretty ironic really, as the this has probably been one of the primary reasons the West has done so well- allowing the best and the brightest, even if born into someone else's family or into poverty, to climb to the top, permits the best and brightest in the land to be in the top positions. It also promotes civic unity as being more important than family unity, which strengthens the bonds within the nation, and letting people rise to their ability promotes peace as people feel they have a fairer deal. Now this same philosophy is wielded as a club to stifle us, to intentionally promote based on things OTHER than competence/merit, and tear the country down.







ben tillman said...

Here are the white, old stock American men who helped get Obama reelected. What do you suppose is their motivation? Is it just that they are so talented AA would never be an issue for them?

No one is so talented that AA would never be an issue for them. In fact, the more talented you are, the more AA hurts you. Look at the Supreme Court.

ben tillman said...

Affirmative action hurts poor whites and dumb whites a lot more than liberal high IQ nerds

No, no, a thousand times no.

At the top, where there are no qualified Blacks, Blacks still have to get 13% of the spots. At the bottom, it's quite possible that MORE than 13% of the qualified job applicants are Black, in which case AA is unnecessary.

AA pushes Blacks up the ladder. Why is that so hard to grasp?

ben tillman said...

Unfortunately based on the comments I read from all over, many prefer a racial caste system that favors whiteness and marginalizes everything else.

We're talking about resources that belong to us. How do you figure there's anything wrong with keeping them for ourselves? Where's your empathy?

Mr. Anon said...

"eah said...

...said Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., writing for the majority.

Here is a foto of the esteemed judge.

The joke's on you, white America."

Without affirmative action, this man would never be a federal judge. Without affirmative action, blacks would have no significant role in this country other than as basketball players, actors, and assorted other step-n-fetch-its.

Anonymous said...

"white men have had more affirmative actiion than anyone"

From evolution, yes. Otherwise no.

Anonymous said...

As a white person who understands HBD, I know that there is no real point to understanding what the non-whites (like Fun) our elites have invited to our countries think. I already know that they vote for their own interests in racial spoils and against the white majority in aggregate, and with much greater majorities than our own weak racial bloc voting. I know that if they actually cared about fairness instead of their own tribes, they wouldn't do this.

Hearing exhortations towards fairness from some random non-white is very rich. I am normally inclined towards fairness, but in this system fairness is a mug's game. I realize that there is no convincing the non-white tribes to vote against their interests, so there is no point trying.

The only thing that matters in this context is getting our de facto parties to fight for us to the same extent that the various left parties fight for non-whites. And getting our people to vote for them.

It is an open question whether our deluded people will wake up before we are minorities ourselves, due to anti-white media ownership and staffing. But it is important that those who do understand this at least try to fight it, by voting, activism and having more children, etc.

Anonymous said...

obamna

Truth said...

"At the top, where there are no qualified Blacks, Blacks still have to get 13% of the spots."

Now Ben, this is, of course, moronic. How many black Fortune 500 CEO's are there again?

Nexin said...

""At the top, where there are no qualified Blacks, Blacks still have to get 13% of the spots."

Now Ben, this is, of course, moronic. How many black Fortune 500 CEO's are there again?"

I think the people at the top have enough connections, wealth and intangible goodwill to ensure that they rarely have to deal with AA forcing them out or threatening their position.

Instead, they cut a deal with the left to sacrifice others on that altar, pledge to increase diversity in their company, putting the load on the current and/or next cohort of peon workers.

Truth said...

"
I think the people at the top have enough connections, wealth and intangible goodwill to ensure that they rarely have to deal with AA forcing them out or threatening their position."

You mean they're not smarter and more talented than YOU are?

Truth said...

"Without affirmative action, blacks would have no significant role in this country other than as basketball players, actors, and assorted other step-n-fetch-its."

You have no prominent role in this country now.

Svigor said...

"white men have had more affirmative actiion than anyone"

If you're only counting Jews in Israel, sure.

But really now, the idea that whites (the real ones, not the fair weather phonies) get more AA than Chinese do in China, Africans do in Africa, Arabs do in Arabia, Indians do in India, etc., is laughable.

Ohhh, wait, you were being tendentiously selective and just want to vent your bigotry and racist hatred for whites, my bad.

Do carry on.

PLM said...

"Truth said...

"Without affirmative action, blacks would have no significant role in this country other than as basketball players, actors, and assorted other step-n-fetch-its."

You have no prominent role in this country now."

Yes, Truth is in a position to pick on people over this, because as we all know, he is a Nobel Prize winning Physicist billionaire who created his own Silicon Valley Startup at 16 that now employs 80,000 people.

Uriah said...

" Truth said...

"
I think the people at the top have enough connections, wealth and intangible goodwill to ensure that they rarely have to deal with AA forcing them out or threatening their position."

You mean they're not smarter and more talented than YOU are?"


As usual, Truth misses the entire argument and instead fails in his attempt to make an ad hominem out of it.

Truth said...

"As usual, Truth misses the entire argument and instead fails in his attempt to make an ad hominem out of it."

Well, my good man, the part of the phrase "ad hominem" that you did not include in your response, is, "attack." the phrase ad hominem translates to "to the man" which without the "attack" is totally impotent.

So, whom did I attack here? I did not even make an inference, much less an attack, I asked a question, which, in the Socratic tradition, is what I normally do. The question summarized being: If black people are behind black people because they are stupider, why are you behind so many white people that you need to be concerned with a trivial affair such as affirmative action, which he himself admitted does not effect rich, successful white people.

It stands to logic, (from the viewpoint of my 85 IQ in any event) that if black people lack of accomplishment stems from low-IQ, then this gentleman's lack of accomplishment vis-a-vis successful whites, must stem from the same root cause. Of course it could be that he is a genius, and "duh man beez holin' him down", this is why I asked the question, for which, I have yet to receive an answer.

Truth said...

"Yes, Truth is in a position to pick on people over this, because as we all know, he is a Nobel Prize winning Physicist billionaire who created his own Silicon Valley Startup at 16 that now employs 80,000 people."

I'm not denigrating a group of people's contributions.

EdD said...

"Seriously, if Romney had won last week, do you think we'd see this particular decision this week?"


Was this supposed to be a non-sequitor, or a rhetorical question? Ever since Romney was first anointed in the media as "the presumptive nominee", there has been an all-pervasive tendency to also make him a presumptive conservative.

The truth is that Mitt Romney doesn't have a conservative atom in his body. If Romney had won last week, liberals throughout the government web would be quietly smirking and laughing up their sleeves at the presumption by hapless GOP voters that conservatives had one of their own at the helm of the nation.

The very idea that things would be one iota different had Rombama won instead of Obamney would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

Face it, GOP voters: your party bosses don't allow conservatives into their big tent, except as loyal, hold-your-nose-and-vote, rank and file members. The big tent is for roping conservatives in so that we can be collectively cornholed by the liberal party structure while they make sure that none of our conservative principles are ever put into policy.

Romney is almost as conservative as Hilary Clinton. Once conservatives wake up to the obvious truth about their beloved GOP, maybe we could form an actual conservative party to counter the two liberal parties we currently labor under.