Suicide of a Superpower_Will America Survive to 2025?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

  In an amicus brief supporting the University of Michigan’s right to discriminate against white applicants to increase racial diversity, General Motors and dozens of Fortune 500 companies declared, “There can be little doubt that racial and ethnic diversity in the senior leadership of the corporate world is crucial to our Nation’s economic prospects.”

  After GM went belly-up, perhaps it is unfair to bring up the episode. But how does GM, de facto, become a better company if the number of white male executives who made it the greatest company on earth is reduced? And if “diversity in the senior leadership of the corporate world is crucial to our Nation’s economic prospects,” how did we become the greatest manufacturing and economic power in history before the coming of the Age of Diversity?

  Today, there are countless thousands of bureaucrats—government, corporate, academic, media—beavering away to insure diversity in the bureaucracy, the corporate suite, the workplace, the student body, and the newsroom, who deal annually with hundreds of thousands of complaints regarding ethnic, race, and gender bias. The cost of enforcement and compliance runs into the scores of billions of dollars. Eight years ago, Forbes put the cost of diversity training at $10 billion.53 Enormous sums have been transferred from companies to diversity lawyers and aggrieved workers in class-action suits. In December 2010, Congress voted to send 75,000 black farmers and ex-farmers an average of $50,000 each to compensate them for alleged racial discrimination, two decades ago, by the Department of Agriculture.54

  In May 2011, the Department of Agriculture voluntarily offered $1.3 billion to Mexican American and women farmers as compensation for the discrimination they suffered in the previous thirty years, plus $160 million in loan forgiveness. Lawyers for the Mexican Americans farmers protested. The $50,000-per-farmer settlements offered were below those of African Americans, some of whom were getting up to $250,000. Moreover, Mexican-American farmers had to produce the applications they made for USDA loans that were denied, a standard that black farmers did not have to meet.55

  Frederick Pfaeffle, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for civil rights, met with farmers in Florida to expedite the settlements. However, as the Associated Press reported, “No farmers in Florida had come forward with discrimination allegations.”56 The search for victims continues.

  “Every large company or institution must have a vice president for diversity—if not, as is increasingly the case, a chief diversity officer,” writes John Derbyshire. “The CDO at Washington State University has an annual budget of $3 million and a full-time staff of 25.”57

  All this bureaucracy makes us less free. Does it make us a stronger and better country? No, answers Thomas A. Kochan, one of our more respected human resource scholars. After a five-year study of diversity’s impact on business, he concluded, “The diversity industry is built on sand. The business case rhetoric for diversity is simply naive and overdone.”58

  Diversity training itself may even damage corporate efficiency, writes Hans Bader in Openmarket.org, for it often “triggers workplace conflict and lawsuits, by compelling employees to talk about contentious racial or sexual issues, with resulting acrimony, and remarks that are misinterpreted or perceived as racially or sexually biased.”59 Anyone who has been in a debate on a racially charged issue like the false allegations of the rape of a black woman by members of the Duke lacrosse team knows how fast the room temperature can rise.

  Even President Obama cannot satisfy the diversiphiles. His press office, though integrated, failed to pass muster with CNN’s Roland Martin:

  I got an e-mail Tuesday listing all of the various press folks and contact information, and hardly any African-Americans or Hispanics were listed. Granted, the deputy press secretary is African-American and the director of broadcast media is Hispanic. That’s not sufficient.… Just because there’s a black president doesn’t mean that issues like diversity should be cast aside.60

  One wonders what Roland Martin is complaining about, for whatever the conditions in Barack Obama’s press office, affirmative action has been flourishing in the federal government—even under George W. Bush.

  Though just 10 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force, African Americans comprise 18 percent of all federal workers, 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of State Department employees, 37 percent of Department of Education employees, and 38 percent of HUD employees. They comprise 42 percent of the employees at the EEOC and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 55 percent of employees at the Government Printing Office, and 82 percent of the employees at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.61

  The federal Office of Personnel Management has hiring “targets” for women, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans—but none for white males.

  When the Obama administration proposed shutting down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants whose losses of $150 billion have had to be borne by taxpayers, the Washington Post warned, in a story headlined “Winding Down Fannie and Freddie Could Put Minority Careers at Risk,” that 44 percent of Fannie’s employees and 50 percent of Freddie’s were people of color.62

  And if diversity is so beneficial, why do so many famous diversiphiles pay premium prices to live in communities far from the loveliness of which they sing? Writing to Senator Moynihan, James Q. Wilson saw desegregation as both complementary to and compatible with the freedom of people to separate and socialize with their own.

  Erecting walls that separate “us” from “them” is a necessary correlate to morality since it defines the scope within which sympathy, fairness, and duty operate. The chief wall is the family/clan/village, but during certain historical periods, ethnicity defines the wall. The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.63

  In short, good fences make good neighbors.

  COURT SEATS AS SET-ASIDES

  For decades, the Supreme Court has been the target of demands for greater diversity and a broader representation of women and minorities. President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor was hailed as a great step forward.

  Nixon and Ford were the last presidents to maintain WASP hegemony on the Court. Nixon sent up six nominees, Ford one. All seven were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants: Warren Burger, Clement Haynsworth, Harrold Carswell, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist, and John Paul Stevens.

  Even before Nixon, however, Democrats were into the “new” ethnic politics. Most of the older ethnics—Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Greeks—were out. Since 1940, no Democratic president has named an Irish Catholic to the Court. No Democratic president has ever named an Italian or Polish Catholic. The party of the Daleys, Rizzos, and Rostenkowskis is dead. Not since JFK named Byron R. White half a century ago has any Democratic president named a white Christian man or woman to the Court, though white Christians remain the vast majority of all Americans.

  Seven names have been sent up since 1962 by Democratic presidents: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—one African American, one Puerto Rican, and five Jews. This is the Democratic Party’s idea of diversity on the Court. It might also be labeled: no white Christians need apply.

  Under President Reagan, Republicans got into the diversity game, though their approach seemed more inclusive. Reagan’s first choice was Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman nominated. His second choice was Antonin Scalia, the first Italian American. His third was Robert Bork, a white Protestant. When Bork was rejected by the Senate, Reagan chose Douglas Ginsburg, a Jewish colleague of Bork’s on the U.S. Appellate Court for the District of Columbia. When Ginsburg’s name was pulled because of a marijuana incident in college, Reagan went with an Irish-Catholic from his home state of California, Anthony Kennedy.

  George H. W. Bush nominat
ed David Souter, a white Protestant, and the African American Clarence Thomas. In replacing Rehnquist and O’Connor with John Roberts and Sam Alito, George W. Bush replaced two white Protestants with two white Catholics, one of whom is only the second Italian American nominated. Thus the Court today consists of six Catholics and three Jews, but not a single Protestant for the first time in U.S. history, although Protestants make up one-half of our entire population. The historic character of this change was noted by the Associate Dean of Notre Dame Law School, Richard Garnett:

  When the Supreme Court first met in 1790, there were only about 30,000 Catholics and 2,500 Jews in the United States. The Court’s first Catholic did not join the bench for almost 50 years, with Roger Taney’s selection in 1836. It would be 80 more years until the confirmation of the first Jewish justice, Louis Brandeis.64

  The day confirmation hearings began for Elena Kagan, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, in a New York Times op-ed, “The Triumphant Decline of the WASP,” rhapsodized over our first WASP-free Supreme Court. “It is a cause for celebration that no one much cares about the nominee’s religion,” wrote Feldman, congratulating the WASPs on their dethronement.65

  Unlike almost any other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.66

  Religion may not be an issue to Professor Feldman, but it is to others. For the most underrepresented group on the Supreme Court is evangelical Christians. More numerous than Catholics and Jews combined, who hold all nine seats, Evangelicals have not held a single seat in modern times. George W. Bush tried to remedy this with his nomination of Harriet Miers, but failed.

  While Republicans demand strict constructionists and Democrats demand justices who will retain Roe v. Wade, tribal politics is now the norm for both parties in making nominations to the Court and other positions of power. And, for the first time, fewer than half of the nine cabinet-level officers and fewer than half of the top White House aides are white males. Minorities and women are coming to dominate the federal government as they do the Democratic Party.

  This “reflects both the changing face of the nation,” said ex-White House communications director Anita Dunn, “as well as this president’s very strong belief that different backgrounds do make for stronger decision-making.” Princeton University’s presidential scholar Fred Greenstein said that the diversity of Obama’s power elite “suggests a true changing of the guard.”67 Indeed, throughout the federal government, civilian and military, the guard is changing.

  DUMBING DOWN THE NAVY

  “Naval Academy Professor Challenges Rising Diversity,” ran the headline.68 The positive character of the opening paragraphs caused one to wonder: Had some faculty sorehead protested because more minority youngsters were coming to Annapolis?

  Of the 1,230 plebes who took the oath of office at the Naval Academy in Annapolis this week, 435 were members of minority groups. It is the most racially diverse class in the nation’s 164-year history.

  Academy leaders say it’s a top priority to build a student body that reflects the racial makeup of the Navy and the nation.69

  Eventually the Washington Post got around to the charge by Bruce Fleming, an English professor at Annapolis for twenty-two years, that a double standard had been used to create a class that was 35 percent minority. According to Fleming, who once sat on the board of admissions, white applicants to the Academy had to have all As and Bs and scores of 600 or higher on both the English and math parts of their Scholastic Aptitude Test to qualify for a “slate” of ten applicants, from which one is drawn. But if you checked a box indicating you are an African American, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian:

  SAT scores to the mid 500s with quite a few Cs in classes … typically produces a vote of qualified … with direct admission to Annapolis. They’re in and given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.… Minority applicants with scores and grades down to the 300s, and Cs and Ds also come, though after a remedial year at our taxpayer-supported remedial school, the Naval Academy Preparatory School.70

  If this is true, the Naval Academy is running a two-tiered admissions system of the kind that kept Jennifer Gratz out of the University of Michigan and was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. If true, the Academy is racially discriminating against hundreds of white students every year, who studied their whole lives for the honor of an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. If true, what Annapolis is doing is worse, because it was premeditated and programmed, than what the New Haven city government did in denying Frank Ricci and other white firefighters the promotions they earned in competitive exams. At least New Haven could say it acted out of fear of being sued.

  Yet, the Chief of Naval Operations and Academy superintendent appear proud of what they are doing. Fleming quotes CNO Admiral Gary Roughead as saying, “diversity is the number one priority” at the Naval Academy.71 Roughead’s predecessor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullins, has described diversity as a “strategic imperative.” The Academy website calls diversity “our highest personnel priority.”72 Superintendent Vice Admiral Jerry Fowler has been quoted as saying he wants graduating classes that “looked like” the fleet, where 42 percent of enlisted personnel are nonwhite.73

  A recent incident involving the elite color guard at Annapolis testifies to the absurd lengths to which our politically correct Naval Academy will go to remain in sync with the temper of the times.

  Leaders of the U.S. Naval Academy tinkered with the composition of the color guard that appeared at a World Series game last month [November 2009] so the group would not be exclusively white and male.… The net result was that one of the six who marched on Yankee Stadium’s field, Midshipman 2nd Class Hannah Allaire, was selected because her presence would make the service academy look more diverse before a national audience.74

  What would Nimitz, Spruance, and “Bull” Halsey think of this?

  Academy graduates and retired officers were outraged at the removal of a midshipman from color guard honors because of his race and gender. Yet, in Military Officer, Roughead described today’s Navy officer corps, NCOs, and civilian leadership as too male and too white: “If you look at the Navy today, it looks like America, but if we look at just the officers, I see a bunch of white guys. The same is true for our senior enlisted and senior civilians. The nation will be more diverse in 2040 and I believe the Navy must look like its nation.”75 Is it also the admiral’s goal to have the navy consist of 50 percent women and 27 percent folks over 60, with a significant fraction of gays and lesbians? Because that is what the admiral will have to shoot for if he wants the navy to “look like its nation.” Or do we want the finest navy we can put to sea without regard to race, color, creed, or political correctness?

  How do Roughead’s diversity midshipmen do at Annapolis?

  They are overrepresented, says Fleming, in “pre-college lower track courses, mandatory tutoring programs and less-challenging majors. Many struggle to master basic concepts.”76 Though unqualified for college work, they will soon be operating the most complex weapons systems in the history of naval warfare: carriers, Aegis cruisers, and nuclear submarines. What would Admiral Hyman (“Why Not the Best?”) Rickover, the tough-minded genius who built our nuclear navy, think of Roughead’s affirmative-action fleet?

  “[W]e’re dumbing down the Naval Academy,” says Fleming, and “we’re dumbing down the officer corps.” Supporting his contention, 22 percent of incoming plebes in 2009 had SAT scores in math below 600, as compared to 12 percent in 2008.77 This is also an issue of justice. If hundreds of Hispanic and black youth were rejected by the Naval Academy, year in and year out, though they had superior grades and SAT scores, Roughead and Fowler would be explaining to a congressional committee why they ought not to be relieved of their posts for
blatant race discrimination.

  In July 2010, the Washington Times unearthed an e-mail from a “Diversity Accountability” admiral to flag officers, directing them to prepare a list to “identify our key performers by name,” as CNO Roughead “is interested in who are the diverse officers with high potential and what is the plan for their career progression. He may ask what is being done within to ensure they are considered for key follow on billets within the Navy.” The message added, “The list must be held very closely.”

  Of course it must, for it amounts, as the Times wrote, to “blatant invidious discrimination.… If you are a white male, it might be time to set sail and seek opportunities elsewhere.”78

  Were this being done to promote white officers over black officers, those responsible would be instantly cashiered. The secrecy with which the navy is doing this testifies to the shamefulness of it all. Yet the navy only seems to be following Ivy League tradition.

  BIAS, BIGOTRY, AND IVY

  A dozen years ago, the Wall Street Journal carried an essay by a Jewish Harvard graduate, Ron Unz, about racial and religious underrepresentation at our elite colleges. According to Unz, at Harvard, Hispanic, and black enrollment had reached 7 percent and 8 percent, slightly less than their respective 10 and 12 percent of the population. And this had been a cause of protests by black and Hispanic students demanding proportional representation.

  Unz also found, however, that nearly 20 percent of the student body was Asian, and 25 to 33 percent was Jewish. Asians were then 3 percent of the U.S. population and Jewish Americans 2.5 percent. When Unz, himself Jewish, factored in foreign students, athletes, children of alumni and faculty, what emerged was a student body where white Christians, then 70 percent of the U.S. population, were down to 25 percent of Harvard’s enrollment.79

  The composition of the student bodies at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, and Stanford was much the same, wrote Unz. And as Hispanics, Asians, blacks, and Jewish Americans vote heavily Democratic, the picture that emerged was of an Ivy League elite salving its social conscience by cheating white Christians out of first-class tickets into society’s top tier, and giving them instead to Harvard’s preferred minorities.