The Specter of Arrogance

Four years ago, the Bush folks pulled out all the stops to help Arlen Specter prevail in a primary against a mainstream Republican, Congressman Pat Toomey.

Specter repaid this effort by voting to bury the country under a veritable Everest of new debt and, finally abjuring the charade, today announced his change of parties.

Good riddance.

Consider this codswallop, recited in The Times;

"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration tobecome Democrats," Mr. Specter said in a statement released in the early afternoon. "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

He said he has experienced a change of heart since the response to his vote for the stimulus legislation.

"Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion," his statement said. "It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate."

Hmm. The Party of George Bush is further to the right than the Party of Ronald Reagan? Perhaps, instead of changing parties, Specter should bop on over for a CT scan; he’s clearly delusional.

As respects the last observation, thought, he’s entirely correct. Betraying the Party that nominated him does rather tend to sour one’s relationships therewith. And, this time, he wouldn’t have a "conservative" President of his own Party moving mountains and twisting arms to keep him in office. Funny; it may have escaped notice, but the papers do not report that Specter objected to all that GOP support, from those awful, horrible right wingers, four years ago.

"Sometimes party asks too much", the Senator opined. It will be interesting, then, to see whether the Democrats ever ask too much. The smart money is that since he has banked his political future on making Chuck Schumer happy, there will be no favor too large for the Senator to grant to the radical left.

And fellow patriot, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe– one of the other Republican votes to bankrupt the country -- held forth solemnly:

"On the national level of the Republican Party, we haven’t certainly heard warm, encouraging words about how they view moderates, either you are with us or against us. Political diversity makes a party stronger and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding."

Please. First, there was nothing the least be "moderate" about casting a vote to indebt our posterity to the tune of $1 trillion, or is there in the ongoing efforts to run perpetual trillion dollar deficits. Those are radical, absurd positions.

Second, to this day, no one has ever produced a workable definition of "moderate". The only reliable prediction one can make about a "moderate" is that he will be wrong at least 50% of the time. Republicans never insisted on lockstep agreement with some divinely ordained orthodoxy, but when the Party finally asks its members to demonstrate some modicum of fiscal responsibility, that’s simply too much for the "moderates". Phooey. If Snowe and believes that Obama, Pelosi, and Reed are "moderates", or that anything about their programs represent "moderation", there is, indeed, no place in the GOP for her. We’re better of without her, too.

As Thomas Paine observed:

"A thing moderately good is not as good as it ought to be. Moderation in temperament is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

Now, Specter having secured election as a Republican, however pale, the honorable thing to do would be to emulate Phil Gramm. When the Democrats moved too far to the left for him, he switched parties. But he RESIGNED and gave the people of his district, who may have considered Party affiliation important when they voted, the opportunity to pass judgment on the merits of his arguments.

Of course, honor is, alas, rare among politicians and entirely absent among leftists. So, Specter, elevating himself and his ego above his constituents, for crass personal reasons and ambition, bolts. Again, if his ideology demands that he sit with the Moveon, Daily Kos crowd, fine; that’s his call. But he should resign and let the people of PA decide whether they want yet another Obama stooge in the Senate. Maybe they do; Specter seems to think so. Perhaps he’s right. The honorable path would be to offer them that choice. If that’s what they want, they deserve what they get.

As respects a "small tent", the simple fact is that politics is, in the first instance, about ideas, not power. One gains power only to the extent that the people affirm the validity of one’s ideas. At present, it appears that the people want huge, expensive, intrusive government, and that’s precisely what the Obamaites intend to give them. That’s horribly wrong; it will, inevitably, produce stagnation, decline, and misery; it always has everywhere it’s been tried and we will be no exception.

If the Republican Party simply seconds the motion, what’s the point of the Party in the first place? We already have one Party supporting huge government, confiscatory taxes, mountains of debt, and flagrant irresponsibility; what possible purpose would be served by having two? If Snowe and Specter believe that represents good policy, they’re not "moderates"; they’re liberals, and there’s no point having them in the GOP. A Party profits not at all by polluting its message with "diverse" opposing views from within. Either we’re the Party of small, efficient, freedom-supporting government, or we’re not. What’s the point of having power if the policies never change? We should offer a choice, not an echo. If the people reject our message, so be it. If they want to elect Democrats, that's their call. And they'll get precisely what they deserve.

Put simply, Republicans believe that expansion of government, higher taxes, "spreading of wealth", perpetual deficits, etc., are inexcusably irresponsible and represent generational theft on a massive scale. (That young people disproportionately support the policies and party which busies itself digging their financial graves represents one of the great ironies of politics)

History, not the GOP electorate, will pass judgment on Specter’s career, and it’s likely to be most unkind. The politicians who abet massive increase in the size and power of government enjoy only one solace: they’ll be dead before history turns their names to mud. But our children will never forgive them for undermining their future.

Diversity Trumps Ability

1960's comedian Tom Lehrer once noted that:

"The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability."

That observation, initially, elicited laughter; now, it produces sighs of resignation.

The refusal to permit something as trivial as merit to stand athwart arrigiving at the racially-correct, "diverse" result, is precisely the import of "affirmative action" and "diversity", as amply demonstrated in a case pending before the SCOTUS.

In 2003, New Haven needed to promote firefighters to serve as captains and lieutenants, so it administered an exam. The gyrations it endured to ensure that the test was "fair" are detailed in the opinion of the USDC. Alas for the "diversity" mavens, all but one of the top scoring candidates was a non-Hispanic white male. Hence, promoting on the basis of merit, measured by an entirely fair and unbiased test, would produce a lily-white cadre of promoted firefighters. Doing otherwise would, obviously, disadvantage the best candidates simply because of their skin color.

Given the choice between fairness – treating people as they deserve rather than on the basis of their skin color – and "diversity", which alternative do you suppose the wise City Fathers chose?

The Administration, like most liberals, ever willing to subordinate irrelvances like ability on the altar of pandering to minority voters, refused to promote from the results of the test.

The high scoring folks sued, making the self-evident point that the City’s refusal could only be explained by the officials’ objection to the monotone skin color of the most qualified applicants. The Clinton-appointed trial judge sided with the City. The three Clinton-appointed Judges of the Second Circuit affirmed.

Plaintiffs appealed, and the Supremes granted cert. The question presented is, in effect, may government ignore merit when promotions based upon ability produce racially disproportionate results?

Naturally, liberal organs, like The New York Times, mischaracterize the case, as one in which the test itself was problematic. Not so. The test was almost unanimously agreed to be fair. Instead, the results of the test are challenged, because the skin color of the high scorers did not match some group-think ideal.

Now, it may be that the District Court’s opinion accurately reflects the status of the law as it presently exists, that shafting one group of folks in favor of another based upon skin color is, in fact, permissible, perhaps mandatory. Indeed, the Court specifically pointed to precedent in which the Court of Appeals permitted "race norming" – adjusting scores based upon the race of the test takers – in order to achieve a "diverse" applicant pool. It will not do to blindly condemn the result at which a Court arrives simply because it’s obnoxious: to do so would be to lapse into Times-style legal illiteracy. A District Court, for instance, which declined to apply even a excruciatingly stupid precedent, like Roe v. Wade, would be violating the rule of law, however inane the result. Change, if it comes, must come from Congress or, depending upon the genesis of the rule of law involved, from the SCOTUS.

But as a matter of policy, this case demonstrates, yet again, the horrific results of race-consciousness. The public suffers: important positions in the fire department remain unfilled. The plaintiffs suffer: they lose their deserved promotions. And for what? Because the racial bean counters object to the distribution of qualifications in the population.

"Diversity" trumps ability.

The City officials are clearly entitled to some sympathy, in the abstract. Had they promoted on the basis of qualfications, the local Al-Sharpton analog would clearly have raised an enormous stink. They faced the obvious potential of an expensive lawsuit from under-qualified applicants who equate failure with racism. One can hardly blame the City Counsel for his advice – throw the qualified white guys overboard – because the law, often, seems to compel precisely that result.

The clear solution, then, is to completely abolish all official consideration of race whatsoever. The fact that every captain in the New Haven Fire Department is white is of no more concern than the fact that the entire starting lineup of some professional football teams, and most pro basketball teams, is black, or that Hispanics are grossly over-represented on the New York Mets’ roster. In all walks of life, the most qualified applicant should prevail.

Period.

New Haven allowed extraneous, group-think irrelevancies to color its hiring decisions. If that’s not illegal now, it should be.

Our Most Important Right

Recently, an academic group upon which I lurk began a debate on the subject of gun control. As most of the participants are law professors – and, hence, liberals – their comments were predictably leftist. Of course, they hate the idea of originalism – interpreting the constitution in light of the intention of the folks who framed and ratified it – preferring, instead, that courts – presumably staffed with liberal judges – inject policy considerations into their determinations. In other words, if a decision produces "good" (to wit, Politically Correct) results, it’s admirable. If the court arrives at a result to which liberals object, it’s, perforce, objectionable, whether "correctly" decided or not.

This sort of "thinking" finds its most consistent advocate in the editorial page of The New York Times. As an unabashedly leftist rag ... er, newspaper, it routinely condemns judges who arrive at decisions favoring corporations, contrary to "civil rights" plaintiffs, etc. Never mind that those decisions might be "right", in the sense of following the law as it actually exists, rather than as The Times might wish it to be; if the text and history of the constitution, or a statute, stand against the result The Times supports, they must be disregarded by an enlightened judiciary.

Few bugaboos infuriate liberals more than the Second Amendment. Or, more broadly, Americans’ love affair with firearms.

I’ve read through the "debate" with some little interest. The willingness of some to part with originalism in favor of a judicial weighing of policy effects intrigues me. Presumably, these folks only support decisions in which the policy determinations come out their way. So, for instance, the indisputable economic disaster worked by (say) higher tax rates on "the rich" should be considered when assessing an equal protection challenge to progressive taxation. Right?

But back to guns. Gun rights opponents set up a false dichotomy: a (relatively) peaceful, non-violent disarmed society, versus a more violent society in which folks – not all of them stable or reasonable – have (relatively) easy access to firearms.

Consider, though, the almost puppy-like faith of the Left in the unchanging beneficence of government. We lose a few thousand folks a year to "gun violence", they aver, and would essentially abolish private owernship of firearms to make us "safer". Let’s assume the absurd: we’d save essentially all those lives if we banned firearms. No brainer, right?

Well, no. Historically, mass murder on a truly industrial scale requires governmental involvement. How many years of firearm freedom would be required to equal the death toll in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Nazi Germany? One of the signal achievement of every tyrant, before displaying his/her truly tyrannical colors, is disarming the population.

That noted right-wing-militia supporter, Hubert Humphrey put it this way:

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

Anyone who thinks that Americans wouldn’t shoot at other Americans obviously never studied the minor unpleasantness in 1861, and never heard of Kent State. Relying for one’s freedom – indeed, for one’s life – solely upon the good faith of those with essentially unlimited power is downright nutty.

On the citizenship test, the government often asks, "what is the most important right given to Americans"? The official answer: "the right to vote". But like all other rights, if the people lack the ability to defend them, with force if necessary, the "right" to vote would become hollow. Cubans vote; citizens of the USSR voted. But, because the people lack any power whatsoever, the "right to vote" means essentially nothing.

An armed and vigilant citizenry, ever on guard against abuses of governmental power and encroaching tyranny, is America’s greatest virtue. Unlike our European brethren, we’ve never created a Hitler, a Lenin, a Stalin, or even a Napoleon; our people are not such easy marks. Threatened Americans learn quickly, and fight back. Airline passengers fought the terrorists on 911, and an American crew just took back their ship from thuggish pirates. Government must not deprive the citizens of the means to effectively defend their liberty against the gravest threat of all: governmental tyranny.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that armed power cannot be checked by ballots alone; it can only be checked by another source of armed power. If the cost of avoiding another Columbine is to risk another Auschwitz, which choice would any rational society make?