The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

I didn't vote for the guy, but I salute President Dubya's aggressive position on the affirmative action case involving the University of Michigan's admission policies coming before the supreme court. It's enough already -- of pretending that reverse discrimination is an ethical remedy for the low numbers of blacks in colleges and graduate schools (or the professions). Affirmative action blatantly contradicts what should be a fundamental tenet of American law and civil behavior -- that citizens should not be rewarded or punished based on skin color. Period. Bush's aggressive stance puts and end to years of disgraceful temporizing on this issue by national leaders afraid to anger a voting bloc.

I have never heard an argument in favor of affirmative action that makes sense. Last night, Lou Dobbs had Jesse Jackson on his 6:00 pm CNN show. Dobbs himself was admirably persistent in his questioning of Jackson, and Jackson could not come up with an argument besides the tired canard that black people must be compensated in social preferences for two centuries of slavery. As far as I'm concerned this bogus argument only provides an excuse for further failure, while affirmative action itself only reinforces the stigma of supposed inferiority.

The remedy for low numbers of blacks in colleges and grad schools? Oppose the rampant anti-intellectualism in contemporary black culture that militates against academic achievement. Support behavioral norms and academic standards in the public schools. Give up the "multiculturalist" campaign that divides Americans by ethnicity and race rather than integrating them into a common culture. Promote the speaking of standard English, even if it requires effort to do so. Affirmative action, along with the broader victim politics that spawned it, have functioned as a self-reinforcing feedback loop for perpetuating racial animosity, division, and failure. It's time to break this vicious cycle.

Pet theory du jour: It seems that we have been in an extraordinary quiescent period in the War on Terror. Why have there been no attacks on American or western interests in recent weeks? I think it is because the jihadistas of the world are waiting for all hell to break loose in late January or February when the US commences military action against Iraq. Why squander your resources now when you will need them to chasten the great Satan in wartime? I expect the world scene to remain eerily quiet until the action begins. And we are headed for action.