Monthly Archives: June 2014

Again, Racism on the Supreme Court

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor is at it again.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected on Sunday the notion that alternatives to affirmative action such as income or residency could achieve similar results in diversifying the nation’s colleges and universities.

And

Sotomayor strongly backs affirmative action and wrote the dissent in April in a 6-2 decision that upheld a state’s right to outlaw the use of race in determining admissions.

Because Sotomayor insists on using race as a useful, somehow, discriminant in getting ahead.

She added, in so many words, that mere merit, just being actually qualified isn’t enough; she used “legacy” questions as her excuse [emphasis added]:

Look, we have legacy admissions. If your parents or your grandparents have been to that school, they’re going to give you an advantage in getting into the school again. Legacy admission is a wonderful thing because it means even if you’re not as qualified as others you’re going to get that slight advantage.

Because adding a second wrong corrects both wrongs. Of course we should have equal outcomes, regardless of qualification. Of course who you know and what color your skin is should be included in the determining factors. Minorities, this minority Justice insists, just don’t have what it takes to succeed without that special treatment.

It doesn’t get any clearer than this.

An Iraqi Mess

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Iraqi leadership, such as it is, thinking it’s helpless to devise solutions on its own, depends entirely on the US to “wave a wand” and make things all better.

[A] State Department briefer portrayed the central Iraqi government as desperate for the Americans to solve the problem for them. “All of them look to us for answers and solutions and like a magic wand,” the briefer said. “There’s a lot of that.”

And this:

[S]oon after ISIS overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Kurdish military force known as the Peshmerga swiftly moved to seize control of Kirkuk, the strategically important city with enormous reserves of oil that the Kurds have long viewed as their historic capital in their quest for full autonomy.
…
“Just look at where the Peshmerga is now compared to where they were two weeks ago,” the [same] State Department briefer instructed reporters. “… Some facts on the ground can be created that might not be reversed.”

This is some of what comes of an attempt to lift a tribal society, reduced by a generation of barbaric tyranny, into nationhood when that attempt is cut short before the task is seriously begun. The environment created by Saddam Hussein’s butchery and madness required answers handed down from the outside just to stabilize the situation and begin to repair emotional, economic, and infrastructure damage. The task of erecting a nation—the political requirements, the societal needs, the things that must be interactively taught, not handed down from on high—had barely begun when the US left Iraq in toto.

Iran, on the other hand, while willing to “help” the existing Iraqi government does not want US involvement at all. Iran wants a puppet state west of the Shat al-Arab and the Hawizah Marshes and not the sovereign nation that might result from US aid to Iraq in this crisis. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [Supreme Leader of Iran] had this to say on the matter:

We strongly oppose the intervention of the US and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq. The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the US camp and those who seek an independent Iraq.

The US aims to bring its own blind followers to power.

Iran wants to halt the Iraqi efforts to erect a nation in place of a tribal polity buried under the ashes of Saddam’s barbarity. Iran will “take care of” Iraq and the Iraqis.

The Ground Zero Cross and Atheists

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American Atheists filed suit three years ago against having this symbol included in the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which officially opened late last month. Their suit was tossed forthwith as baseless; US District Court Judge Deborah Batts wrote

No reasonable observer would view the artifact as endorsing Christianity. [The museum curators] have not advanced religion impermissibly, and the cross does not create excessive entanglement between the state and religion.

The group appealed to the Second Circuit which responded by instructing American Atheists actually to make a case and not just bellyache, and to do so by 14 July. In so instructing, the Appellate Court cited an amicus brief provided by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which argued among other things that

Courts should not allow people to sue just because they claim to get “dyspepsia” over a historical artifact displayed in a museum.

As Eric Baxter, Senior Counsel for Religious Liberty noted,

Taking personal offense is not an injury that warrants invoking the power of the courts to shut down everything you disagree with. The Constitution is not a personal tool for censoring everyone’s beliefs but your own.

Indeed.

Don’t Lead. Act. They’ll Follow, or Not

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Secretary of State (and Secretary of the Treasury) James Baker offered A Roadmap for Restoring American Leadership in a recent Wall Street Journal, and it’s worth a careful read. While his seven steps are entirely appropriate, though, it occurs to me that they must come as steps two through eight, instead.

There are many things we need to do first, and we need to do them unilaterally, without waiting on other nations to…follow. Consult, certainly. Attempt to persuade, certainly. Attempt to get others to act, also if not in concert, certainly.

But, to paraphrase a man, some things can’t wait.  Some things need prompt action. We’re still big enough, prosperous enough, strong enough to do those things alone, and where the urgency of the matter won’t pause for consensus, we have an obligation to act first and build consensus later. See Russia’s partition of Ukraine, ISIS’ dismantling of Iraq, if you doubt that.

There’s another aspect of leading that’s missed in the multilateralist, gotta have a UN imprimatur, gotta have European/Russian/Chinese/whomever agreement to our leading before we can…lead, also. That aspect is “by example.”

We can’t set any kind of useful example if we aren’t acting.