New Haven’s Poor Little Lambs
The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in favor of white firemen who claim to be victims of discrimination gives us an opportunity to attempt a little political casuistry, even before we have finished outlining a set of essential principles. It is not the details of the case that matter—what do I care about what happens in New Haven—but the rationale for making moral and political decisions.
The easiest way to begin is by ruling out false principles. One of the white firemen, a dyslexic, declared the ruling a victory for the principle that people should be judged as individuals and not as members of a group. This is utter nonsense, as he would acknowledge if the shoe were on the other foot. I can only imagine what he would say if people with learning disabilities were not accorded special privileges and resources in school! We are the creatures of the social groups in which our characters are formed, and it is only natural for me to support my group, even if this means discrimination against yours. Obviously, there are moral limits and there ought to be political and legal limits on such discrimination, but it is false to say that there is something wrong in giving my son or friend's son a job in preference to a stranger's son. To the extent I acknowledge membership in a community, say, as a Catholic Sicilian American or a Black Muslim, I will favor my own people and would be wrong not to favor them.
A related principle is of the historic responsibilities—guilt or merit—of communities. The fatuous theory of individualism, in denying group privileges, would also eliminate inherited guilt. Most of us think we are opposed to inherited guilt and we act as if we were with the one exception of the group that defines the identity that provides us with privileges. Where would Jews be without the Holocaust or complaints against Christian anti-Semitism? Where would the Irish be without the Potato Famine and the everlasting whining about signs reading, "Men Wanted: No Irish Need Apply"? Or Blacks without slavery? We are who we are not so much through our own merits or failings—though they play a significant part—as through inheritance from our parents and ancestors. For good and ill, America was at is best the creation of British and Northern Europeans who established the rule of law and the habits of diligence and thrift that have enabled later immigrants to thrive. Hardworking and intelligent parents are more likely to turn out children who become successful than lazy and stupid parents. It is simply not normal to respect a wealthy man who has inherited money from a father who was a gangster or crook. In a wholesome society, the sons of Joe Kennedy would not be allowed into a decent person's home, much less elected to high office.
So, if blacks and Mexicans owned and operated New Haven, we should expect them to act on their own behalf. But, in fact, they transparently do not own and operate New Haven, which is actually controlled by a white elite, some of whose power is based on the ability to manipulate minorities and thus to suppress the upwardly mobile European ethnics. Some of the elite is a residue of the old Yankee WASP elite; some are Jews, and some are converts from the European ethnics, children of parents stupid enough to send them to Ivy League schools that destroyed their minds and characters. Like other members of the American Elite, the people who run Connecticut are anti-Christian leftists who despise all our country's traditions. Instinctively, they aim at power through the shortest route possible—today, that is minority politicking and Marxism—but most of them appear genuine in their leftism. They really do think that black firemen fail intelligence tests because of the history of racism and discrimination.
No matter. The point is that New Haven is no more a "community" than New York City or the United States. It is a conglomeration of competing ethnic groups and social classes. When WASPS and Jews discriminate against Micks and Polacks, they are not failing in allegiance to their ethnic group, because they do not share ethnicity with Catholic ethnics. There is no moral community in which people are obliged to treat each other fairly. And, where there is no moral community, there is no social or political community. Since it is every group for itself, it often turns out to be every man for himself. That is the way American society works or rather does not work, because there is no American society.
From the perspective of natural politics, then, it hardly matters what happens in a hell hole like New Haven, unless, of course, you happen to live in New Haven. As a resident, you will want to have the most effective leadership in the fire department that the town can afford. The security of your house and the survival of family and friends depends upon the quality—mental, moral, and physical—of the firemen in the field. A dull-witted captain might mean the death of your children. Any a sick man, a moral lunatic, would not want to have the highest possible intelligence standards for promotion. (What sort of people would elect the current city government whose only concern, as expressed in interviews yesterday, was racial progress?)
But fitness standards grow out of a wider concern, that in all competitive activities—whether in sports or business or the professions—excellence of performance is a major criterion for employment or preferment. The more important the activity—say, playing quarterback as opposed to grounds keeping—the more tend to elevate excellence as a first principle, even at the expense of our loyalty to family, friends, and ethnicity. One can only hope that, the next time New Haven's mayor has a health emergency, he is attended on by a minority physician who got through school because of Affirmative Action.
As I said in the beginning, what happens in New Haven is of small concern to us outsiders. If Connecticut had a decent constitution, it would be of no significance to the people of Hartford, and if the Constitution of the United States were still in force, the case would never have reached the Federal courts. If the people of New Haven wish to commit suicide, they are welcome to do it—at least it would eliminate the Yale faculty.
But, under the current misrepresentation of the Constitution, the federal courts do have a say in a strictly local matter. No one on the Court denies it, even Justice Ginsburg, whose intellectual and moral confusion reached undreamed of heights of folly and stupidity in her dissent. On the one hand, it is a local matter of concern to New Haven. On the other, the white firefighters have no right to the promotion that they worked for and deserve according to the rules by which they were hired, and on her third hand—the Justice is manifestly a freak of nature—it is the duty of the courts to promote a manifestly incompetent group at the expense of the more competent and of the entire city.
The best that can be said of the majority's decision is that it affirms a long-standing Western and American commitment to standards of excellence. Unfortunately, in taking up the case, the Court has inevitably confirmed the activist tendencies of the past 50 years and once again overridden the federal principle. In conceding that the justices had no choice in the matter, I am only admitting that a) the Constitution is a dead issue, and b) federalism is extinct. The response of New Haven's government, the national press, an the Democratic Party is also a sign of something, which is that America is simply New Haven writ large, a congeries of hostile ethnic groups ruled by an autocratic elite whose minds have been poisoned by the liberal education that is simply the education of liberals.
Sonia Sotomayor's cavalier dismissal of the white fireman's protest could only have been justified, if a virtually unanimous Supreme Court had upheld her. In treating a serious case as a simple question of ethnic preference—she does not like white people—she should have eliminated herself from consideration for the Supreme Court. As a bigot, she can be confirmed, if the better Democrats are willing to spit in the face of the American people in order to flatter their equally bigoted President. The comedy continues.
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It's becoming more difficult to see how an increasingly diverse country of more than 300 million people can hold together. The only larger countries are China, which is 2/3 Han Chinese ethnic, yet has its own history of division; and India, which has more real federalism than the USA, yet has periodic spates of mass ethnic violence.
Maybe there's a sociobiological limit to the size of a polity, just as there is a biological limit to the height of a man.
Brilliant essay, Dr. Fleming. Who New Haven hires as firemen is of no business of mine and in the originalist Constitutional republic the issue would never had come to the Supreme Court. If New Haven wishes to hire women who can't handle a fire hose or blacks who struggle with the mental aspects of firefighting, that is the business of the foolish people of New Haven.
But I'm glad Mr. Ricci and the white firemen won their case. I am sure they are more my sort of people than the lefties who make up the city government of New Haven. I could enjoy drinking a beer with Mr. Ricci whereas drinking with Ivy League lawyers like Sonia Sotomayor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Bill himself would be disgusting and a waste of good alcohol.
I think we must feel some satisfaction that our working-class fellow Americans have won a skirmish against the elite and their clients. I am inclined to think that they are the people among whom American redemption, or even survival, will be achieved if ever---an unlikely event in any case.
In a more enlightened age, "discrimination" used to be a social virtue (e.g. He shows discrimination in his tastes.). One of the great tragedies of our Orwellian times is discrimination's transmogrification into the ultimate socio-political sin. Even so, a "favored" class benefits from it by being a "victim" of it.
I think Prof. Wilson is on target.
Another reason why small government should be a top priority. If the government controls substantial resources (like jobs), then society becomes a zero sum game with ethnic groups fighting each other for a bigger slice of the pie. In a free, private society Italians can have mostly Italian law firms, Jews can have mostly Jewish medical groups, WASPS can have waspy investment groups etc. People favoring their own community to a reasonable degree doesn't come at the expense of others, and everyone gets along much better.
Of course these days community identity is a tricky thing. People of different backgrounds who reject the dominant, corrupt culture are being pushed together into something of a common "American" community. Also Catholics are rediscovering that the Church can function as its own culture and civilization in dark times. We live in exceptional times, for better and for worse.
Despite my agreement with the opinions expressed, including those of my fellow parishioner, Signor Leaberry, regarding the Ricci case, I maintain that the decision may be a minor victory for fairness, but as to altering the long range consequences of the racial war which has neutered our constitutional form of governement for four decades, I am very skeptical. I happened to be in the Court the day of the arguments, and, my immodesty notwithstanding, I predicted the outcome: after all, both sides knew that Justice Kennedy's vote would decide the issue. Sadly, all this decision really did was to give the firemen, and only them, due process, something the four dissenters were unable and/or unwilling to allow. Interestingly, it was Souter, not Ginsburg, who played the advocatus diaboli during the oral arguments. There is more to write, but not now. Keep in mind that the decision was handed down on the last day of "the Term," something very rare, except, of course, if there was a tension amongst the majority as to the scope of the decision. The real question was sidetracked, and Kennedy, no doubt, was the reason for that reluctance to pursue this issue further and completely ban affirmative action. Justice Alito, who was the most active justice on either side during the arguments, wrote a blistering rebuke of Ginsburg's screed, which as Professor Fleming noted, was nearly delusional in its approach to law. But the key to what was missed is to be found in Justice Scalia's short, but pointed, concurring opinion. For he knew that the Ricci case was ripe for turning back the racial quota system now in place throughout this nation, on which will continue to grow despite the Ricci decision. Scalia's words remind me of the refrain:
the saddest words of tongue and pen, are simply these: it might have been.
I too agree with Prof. Wilson... this kind of victory for good normal people is all too rare. Why criticize it at all.
It's sad that so many so-called "conservatives" think that this opinion was decided correctly and that it should've been a 9-0 decision, instead of 5-4. Of course, best case scenario, it shouldn't have been decided by the SCOTUS at all, but since it was, it should've been 0-9. Like so many cases these days, all 9 based their opinions on the deified 14th Amendment. Well, the problem with that is that it was never legally ratified, or pretending for a moment that it was, it's now obsolete, according to Mr. Gutzman, since it was only intended for recently freed slaves.
I am glad the white fireman won their case. Hopefully, it will encourage the minorities involved to study harder and meet the standards set for higher rank and performance. I know that is an ideal that may be squashed by political correctness in New Haven and Washington D.C., but its a hope.
I thank Vatvince and James V. Kruse for getting at the heart of the two main issues here: The moral issue of a legal system that is not only racist but designed to produce failure and dependency and the constitutional issue of the 14th amendment. On the latter case, we do not need to cite a featherweight like Mr. Gutzman, since Forrest McDonald wrote coherently on the illegality of the ratification. Legality only matters, however, in a regime that observes the traditional rule of law. In the US, the constitution is is--as our legal affairs used to say before the lady's retirement--whatever happens to strike the fancy of Sandra Day O'Connor. These days, I suppose it would be Mr. Kennedy.
I think it is a bit of a moral and emotional stretch to get worked up over the fate of New Haven firemen that none of us knows or is likely even to meet. Populist sentimentalism, combined with misguided optimism, is one of many fatal vices of American conservatism. I do not think it is at all clear that blue-collar workers in America are either more sensible or more deserving than their social superiors. That was probably true back in the 60's and 70's, but I see no evidence of it now. What I see in the American working class are sports fans, TV watchers, porn consumers, and people who act like children in public. They are the people, white and black, who ran out the other day to buy so many Michael Jackson albums that he had the top 5 albums in the country the day he died. They won't stay married to their wives or take care of their own children, and their incessant demands for health and welfare services have bankrupted the country and empowered the current regime. The hardhat rebellion ended a long time ago, and the reason there is no new George Wallace is that there is hardly anyone to vote for one. The populist delusion is one we cannot afford. The heart of America is possibly more corrupt than the head. <br.
Yes, I am painting in very broad strokes, but the virtuous workers I run into are either quite old or self-employed. Across the country, firefighters' unions are bleeding cities dry. Here in Rockford, they are fighting the mayor who has tried to follow the lead of other cities in cutting one man off the hook and ladder team. To justify their bloated budgets and manpower, they cruise bad neighborhoods in emergency vehicles, picking up drunks and addicts whom they take to the emergency room. The treatment for each drunk costs the taxpayers on average $10,000. The police and firemen's unions are just as bad as the teachers unions. I reserve my sympathy for people who work in the private sector and do not bully the rest of us into providing a lavish income and set of benefits.
Dr. Fleming, I do not know the dyslexic fireman named Ricci. However, your blanket characterization of blue-collar workers as "sports fans, TV watchers, porn consumers, and people who act like children in public. They are the people, white and black, who ran out the other day to buy so many Michael Jackson albums that he had the top 5 albums in the country the day he died. They won’t stay married to their wives or take care of their own children, and their incessant demands for health and welfare services have bankrupted the country and empowered the current regime", may not apply to Ricci or any of his co-workers. Maybe, they are faithful to their marriages and to family life (which is a basic constituent in support of any community), behave as cultured adults in public, enjoy classical music and support the local symphony orchestra, occasionally attend a sporting event, take their families on vacations, avoid TV and pornography like the plague, and live Christian lives. I have known some in the past. I agree that many persons, not just blue-collar workers, are caught up in the vices you have mentioned, yet, you seem to be picking on these particular men to confirm the points in your essay. Frankly, I am glad the Supreme Court found in their favor (and no use whining that the Supreme Court did not have constitutional jurisdiction in the matter, because that is the way it is and there is no way back), just as I was glad when I first heard in school about the victory of the Catholic forces over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571, even though I never knew Don Juan of Austria or Cervantes.
I said, explicitly, that I was painting with a broad brush and that my point was to obviate the sentimentalizing that is going on about people no one in this conversation knows. I deliberately did not " pick on" the New Haven firemen. Until someone gives me some comparative evidence that blue-collar workers are morally better people than white-collar workers--and I do not believe such evidence exists--then I shall be justified in refusing to grant them some Wordsworthian immunity to original sin. When there is a clear battle at stake between Christian and anti-Christian, we naturally sympathize with the Christian. When there is a case of injustice, as there was in New Haven, we are justified in saying--as I did say--that on balance the right side won without pretending that it is a victory for the nation or for truth, justice, and the American Way. As for the question of jurisdiction, I also explained why even justices who might know better were compelled to rule. But people who say "there is no way back" are conceding my most dismal point. Because, if states and local communities cannot regain power over their affairs, then nothing the Supreme Court will do can possibly arrest the steady decline. I should have added to my indictment, people who cook up crystal meth in their mobile homes.
Affirmative Action has contributed greatly to the degeneration and demnoralisation of the country, so any setback to it is worthwhile.
Having spent most of my life associating with college professors, give me blue collar folks any time.
There are good and bad in every social group, though the odds against decency are pretty low among professors, preachers, journalists, and writers. There are, however, people who run their own businesses as well as engineers and scientists and even a few lawyers that are at least as virtuous as the people driving trucks or working on the assembly line. I agree entirely that opposition to affirmative action is good thing, and I believe I sketched out the moral grounds for that assertion. What has happened in this discussion, though, is what always happens: a basic question of principle gets lost in sentiment and personality, which is why I put into my first paragraph: "It is not the details of the case that matter—what do I care about what happens in New Haven—but the rationale for making moral and political decisions." Not that it had much effect.
The Ricci decision may buy us 5-10 years but Obama will appoint at least three more justices. Scalia is in his 70s. Thomas is in his late 50s but is grossly overweight (I have seen him in person). So Obama will likely appoint four justices who think like Sotomayor over the next seven years.
Like so many things, affirmative action is just something whitey will have to live with. I don’t even vote anymore as the GOP just gives us Obama-lite. Better the full-blown, unapologetic racism of the Democrats.
@13, Dr. Fleming says, "But people who say “there is no way back” are conceding my most dismal point. Because, if states and local communities cannot regain power over their affairs, then nothing the Supreme Court will do can possibly arrest the steady decline."
Dr. Fleming, there is a thread in some of your wide writing about the traditional approach to the master/servant relationship. I may be remembering something wrong, but I thought you have said something to the effect of the proper and improper way to "struggle" against an authority, i.e. not to rebel or be subversive but to submit to the law, even unjust ones, as long as they do not force us into bad.
Could you expand upon this distinction? Does the situation change depending upon the morality or intra/extra-cultural nature of the master?
We seem to still be living in a time where we have direct, albeit small, access to the "master" federal government. I think of it as playing tug of war with a dog. If you wait for that right moment when the dog readjusts his grip, you can pull the rope out and win.
But I also think we live in a time of hedging our own bets. I do not know if decent American survival truly is possible from the time, place, and inertia.
I would also be interested in any observations people have on how long it takes, or what events would bring about the agglomeration rather than continued fracturing of our cultural identity? I know almost no one my age who does not refer to themselves (loosely) as a "mutt".
If what Tom Fleming says about blue-collar workers is correct, I suspect it is a dismal verdict that applies mainly to the Midwest and maybe (for all I know) to the South. As for the Pacific Northwest, we seem to have a higher caliber (in terms of character and temperament) of blue-collar workers. Blanket judgments can lead one astray here.
@16 "Thomas is in his late 50s but is grossly overweight..."
Clarence Thomas also defends the prerogative of government school authorities to strip-search 13-year-old girls to see if they are hiding Advil (or anything else) between their unmentionables and their private parts. If this "justice" goes, good riddance! Jurisprudence doesn't come much worse than his one-man dissent in Safford Unified School District v. Redding. For the most part, he has been an eager supporter of our fascist school/police state throughout his tenure on SCOTUS.
BTW, with all respect due TJF, I wear my outrage over the mistreatment of Samantha Redding and my pleasure at her vindication proudly on my sleeve, even if I do not know her personally.
I am a man of working-class background who has been a reader and subscriber to Chronicles for over 20 years. I also happen to be a descendant of the 17th and 18th Century pioneers. After receiving Dr. Fleming's letters asking for a financial contribution, I have sent a check on many occasions. Regarding the vices Dr. Fleming ascribes to blue-collar workers, what he writes has some basis in fact. I still find them to be more sensible than the college professors I know.
Mr Zaretzke, I have known blue-collar workers from all three regions you have mentioned, and the only difference between them was accent, not the level or deepness of their white-trashiness. Having known people who moved to the Pacific Northwest and then came back years later, all I can say is that blue-collar types in that region used to be about as decent as blue-collar types in the South or Midwest, but that was years ago, and now they are equally trashy. That's not even considering the twenty year olds of all three regions, those brainwashed nihilists, who are now the lack of hope for the future.
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Though it was nice to see the one small victory that came out of this court case, and I really was pleased to see it, I guess Stand Watie was also pleased when he won the last Confederate victory. With the fall of the empire looming, it really doesn't matter.
#22 Allen WIlson:"Though it was nice to see the one small victory that came out of this court case, and I really was pleased to see it, I guess Stand Watie was also pleased when he won the last Confederate victory. With the fall of the empire looming, it really doesn’t matter."
Yes, this is my sentiment as well. I think Pat Buchanan represented the better half of what was left of the blue collar vote and he garnered 2% in his last run. (30% during his best days almost two decades ago) Like Stand Watie, it was a back water effort for the right side but the war had been decided long before. Paraphrasing General Pickett to General Lee when asked to regroup his regiment after the famous "Charge", " General, I have no regiment left to regroup."
Mr. Zaretzke, alas, adds to the confusion and the distraction. The topic at hand is not the virtues or vices of the working class but the moral and political criteria by which we can analyze this case. To the extent the virtues and vices of the working class are at all relevant, it is whether the firefighters of New Haven have, by reason of their superior populist virtues, a higher claim on our sympathies than anyone else. I agree entirely with David B. on the comparative virtues of workers and professors. Many years ago as the most junior member of a department I had no wish to stay in I opined that few professors had the brains to manage a chain shoe store in a mall. Robert brings up a point I was too lazy to look up but wanted to introduce, namely, the declining number of working class men who supported Buchanan. But one could multiply instances. I recall my Arkie redneck barbers justifying the attack on David Koresh on the grounds 1) they liked Clinton and 2) "You can't go against the government." These were, for the most part, upstanding Baptists, patriots, Navy vets--wonderful men in most respects--but this is what they had come to.
I thank Dr. Fleming for the comment. My college professor friends agree with everything the Democratic party does. They say, "I'm a party man. I support the party." When I would try to explain to them the difference between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives, they couldn't understand what I was talking about. One said, "paleos and neocons, they are all the same to me." Another time he told me, "Anything those conservatives are for, I'm against." This man was once the president of the national organization for college political science professors.
'whether the firefighters of New Haven have, by reason of their superior populist virtues, a higher claim on our sympathies than anyone else'
I guess that they might if the court decision actually would change anything for the better for everyone in the country in the long run, but of course that's a utilitarian argument. To the extent that they see themselves as standing up for all white Americans everywhere, then I think they do deserve our sympathies, but the needs of people closer to home must trump any sympathies we might have for them. If someone with whom I am friends becomes a victim of racist discrimination, of course he deserves more of my sympathy, and whatever help I can offer, but of course I would be just as powerless to do anything for him as I am to do anything for the firefighters in New Haven.
“paleos and neocons, they are all the same to me.” Another time he told me, “Anything those conservatives are for, I’m against.”
Well, at least you have discoverd an honest scoundrel who believes in something -- even if it something paltry like his very own "self" as in it is "all the same to 'him'." Conservatives are a rotten lot these days and in the publics mind, neo-cons really are conservatives. Buy him the gift that keeps on giving -- a years subscription to Chronicles!! You will be the first real conservative he learns to respect -- and perhaps even support.
In Orange County, supposedly an anti-union, conservative, Republican area, firefighters (formerly "firemen"), make $175,000 a year in pay and lavish benefits. At 30 years of sleeping on the job, they can retire with almost full pay. No wonder, whenever an opening occurs, hundreds of people apply, a clear indication that pay could be reduced.
The median income for everyone in OC is about $60,000 -- about one third that of the firemen. Median home prices, despite the recent drop, still are $500,000. So you need to make $100,000 a year just to afford a shotgun shack, which means your wife has to work, almost no matter what -- unless you're part of the privileged class of government workers.
So, excuse me while I don't shed a tear for them, or for Mr. Ricci, in a job that easily could be privatized, or turned into volunteer fire departments.
In Orange County, supposedly a conservative (etc., see above) area, Ron Paul got 4% of the vote.
As to the blue-collar and other working folk Dr. Fleming brought up, those are the people I know best, and he's right. The real problem is that the churches today, mostly, are cowardly and pathetic. "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" (1 Corinthians 14:8).
In OC, the typical Protestant follows such locals as "Pastor" Rick Warren and his "Purpose Driven" drivel, or the "Rev." Schuller the Possibility Thinker (parodied during his Drive-In preaching days in the great 1966 movie "Lord Love a Duck"), or Paul and Jan "Hairdoo" Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network (whose network, strangely, sometimes runs old Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen programs).
Catholics have been stuck, since 1969, with the thin gruel of a vernacular Mass done in bad English or Vietnamese or Spanish, which has dropped belief in the Real Presence from more than 90% to around 20%. (The Vietnamese Mass, when chanted, is hauntingly beautiful, even though I only understand "Jesus" and "Amen." Yet now they're polluting it with sappy modern American hymns translated into Vietnamese.) Sermons tend to be slightly Catholicized versions of Rick Warren.
And then there was the scandal, which broke in 2002 but which since at least the early 1980s was known to those who read The Wanderer and other orthodox Catholic publications. And though only about 4% of priests were involved (a rather high number, actually, given the number of victims each could attack), about 2/3 of bishops were involved in the coverups.
There are exceptions. In Orange County, we have the great Norbertines, but they can't be everywhere. The Latin Mass is celebrated in a few more places. And Bishop Brown will retire soon.
But...in conclusion...
It's an old quote among conservatives from C.S. Lewis in "The Abolition of Man," but worth repeating again: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful."
Small town and rural America eagerly provide most of the cannon fodder for the Empire. So much for their conservatism. I live in a small town in Oklahoma, and every time a native son comes home in a coffin, the motorcycle club and everybody else turns out to "honor their service" instead of throwing bricks through the windows of the local recruiters' offices. The South is especially egregious in this respect. The actual sons of Confederate veterans rallied 'round the flag in 1898, and they have been doing so in disproportionate numbers every time the government runs another war up
the flagpole.
Rural Americans may be gun owners, but as long as they are addicted to meth, Bud Lite, and television, there will be no redemption of our republic from them.
But won't any applicable moral and political criteria be inevitably abstract, and therefore useless, without a grounding in real-world experience? And what better reality, for analyzing affirmative action, than a sense of the true character of non-elites today--the people who are injured by "benign" discrimination?
The curious thing here is the profoundly self-hating, suicidal nature of the WASP segment of the white elite. The essential tribalism of blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Jews all follows Dr. Fleming's basic outline of the tribal instinct - extended into the legal realm naturally. The response of folks like Ginsburg, Sotomayor, et al predictably falls in line with tribalist behavior. No so the WASP elite - an elite who despises its own ethnos with a hatred beyond comprehension. The nihilistic embrace of suicide is not present among the various groups who make up the legions of legume pods the body-snatchers' utopian project is intended to serve. Only among the WASP element - like the Bush family, McCain, Lindsay Graham - does this suicidal impulse trump all else. They are the truest of believers in the multicultural cause, more fanatical about their ideology than the wildest jihadi in the Umma is about Islam.
Paul Gottfried and Larry Auster had an interesting exchange a couple of weeks ago on the issue [DELETED]
Note: I'm using the terms "body-snatchers" and "pods" here in the context of the series of articles at Brussels Journal by Takuan Seiyo, entitled "From Meccania to Atlantis."
There are a good many unexamined assumptions in this question, such as 1) That all general statements are abstract and therefore not grounded in experience, 2) that general principles-- abstract or not--cannot ever serve as guidelines for moral conduct, 3) that one knows how to make a clear distinction between elite and non-elite, and 4) that his distinction runs along the line separating working class people from middle and upper class people. None of these assertions, it strikes me, has more than a bit of validity, especially the last, since affluent physicians, these days, are as much slaves of the system as firemen. What you seem to be saying, really, is that principled discussions are either impossible or must take a back seat to considerations of interest or sentimentalism about the poor down-trodden workers. Next we shall have to hear a recitation of the graffiti on the Statue of Liberty or the peroration to the Communist Manifesto. "Workers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but your shame and independence!"
I note, by the way, a certain reluctance among populists to take up John Seiler's provocative characterization of firemen as overpaid public employees, which is what they are, all too often.
"The point is that New Haven is no more a “community” than New York City or the United States. It is a conglomeration of competing ethnic groups and social classes. When WASPS and Jews discriminate against Micks and Polacks, they are not failing in allegiance to their ethnic group, because they do not share ethnicity with Catholic ethnics. There is no moral community in which people are obliged to treat each other fairly. And, where there is no moral community, there is no social or political community. Since it is every group for itself, it often turns out to be every man for himself. That is the way American society works or rather does not work, because there is no American society." Dr. Fleming's analysis could well have been written by E. Michael Jones. Ricci et al are my people and it is good to see them win one, constitutional niceties aside.