What Moynihan understood that Sotomayor doesn’t.
In 1965, then undersecretary of labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan foresaw a problem that was about to undo the promise of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and his boss Lyndon Jonson’s 1965 launch of the “Great Society.”
In reading her dissenting opinion last week on the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, I got the distinct impression that Justice Sonia Sotomayor never read Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, likely never heard of it, and certainly had no idea of how prescient it would prove to be.
Despite the “full recognition of their civil rights,” argued Moynihan, black Americans were growing increasingly discontent. They were expecting that equal opportunities would “produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups,” but, added Moynihan, “This is not going to happen.” Nor did he think it ever would happen “unless a new and special effort is made.”
What Fats Domino could teach us about America
There’s more that unites us than divides us
A few weeks back I participated in a debate on the subject of reparations. It was sponsored by a civic do-gooder organization called American Public Square and televised, in edited form, by the local PBS station in Kansas City, KCPT.
Knowing that the live audience would be unfriendly and the TV audience less friendly still, I started with a seeming misdirection. I told of how I found myself repeatedly returning to the ’50s station on my Sirius car radio. The other presets – Elvis, the Beatles, the ’60s, Sinatra, conservative talk – did not lift my spirits the way the ’50s music did. In the 1950s, there were no songs like the ’60s’ “Eve of Destruction,” “Ball of Confusion,” or “The End.” No, in the ’50s, there was hope in the air. There was also a certain innocence. A monster 2020 hit like Cardi B’s WAP (look that acronym up on your own) would have been seen as simply monstrous.
RFK Jr. Is Flummoxed by Affirmative Action
Just when I begin to think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has escaped the gravitational pull of his party, he crashes back to earth with a thud. Grounding Kennedy this time was affirmative action. Last 
Thursday, he weighed in on the Supreme Court decision banning race-based admissions practices in higher education. So empty headed and elitist was his response that it could only have come from a liberal to the limousine born.
“‘Color-blind’ admissions tend to favor those who are already in the circle of privilege. It favors those who grew up in affluent, educated households,” Kennedy opined, adding, “Wouldn’t you like to invite in those who have been left out in the cold.” The rhetorical “you” who Kennedy addresses did not live in my Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood. In my book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I explore the fate of those who actually have been left out in the cold: the white working classes of cities like Newark.
Dems, Media Prove Anew Their ‘Flexibility’ on Russia
Lacking either a moral compass or a consistent foreign policy, Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have been guided in recent years by what they call “Rahm’s Rule” — in brief, “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Adopting that rule came naturally to President Barack Obama. In a March 2012 meeting with outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Korea, a hot mic picked up Obama telling Medvedev, “It’s important for him to give me space. This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”
The “him,” of course was Putin. Said Medvedev, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.” Vlad got the message. Obama and his cronies had no real values. They were flexible enough to be played, and he was just the man to play them.
As Sandy Berger proved, DOJ is the lawfare arm of the DNC
“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” said special counsel Jack Smith in handing down a multi-count criminal indictment against Donald Trump. “Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice.”
The nation may have “one set of laws,” but the subsequent clause, “they apply to everyone,” makes a very dark joke out of Smith’s unseemly boast.
Of course, the treatment of the Bidens and the Clintons show the DOJ’s “bedrock principle” to be so much Silly Putty, but no case in recent memory has revealed the depth of the DOJ’s corruption like that of Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger.
The 10 most perversely improbable events of the last 10 years
NFL players did not used to suffer cardiac arrest at 25.
The last 10 years has seen some improbable events: a celebrity entrepreneur becomes president; a president’s son forgets to retrieve his incriminating laptop from a repair shop; and a white guy who can’t jump dominates the NBA. Although improbable, none of these events is unnatural. All have some basis in logic and evidence. Each, for the sane at least, is less a source of alarm than of wonder.
Not so for the PIEs – the Perversely Improbable Events. Ten years ago, had someone taken the bet, anyone predicting the events that followed could have bought Epstein’s island with his winnings. Jeffrey Epstein, of course, no longer lives there. In a wildly improbable sequence of events in 2019, his prison guards allegedly feel asleep while the cameras malfunctioned, allowing the convicted pedophile to hang himself in his jail cell with his secret client list intact. Who’d a thunk it?
Grab Your Wallets: The Reparations Game Is Rigged
Two weeks ago, I participated in a debate on reparations hosted by the American Public Square and later televised by KCPT, the PBS station in Kansas City. If I didn’t know
Professional wrestling has nothing on the reparations game
beforehand that the game was rigged, I did by the time the edited debate hit the airwaves. Grab your wallets, folks. The reparations crowd is coming for your money.
The concept behind American Public Square is a reasonable one. Troubled by the increasing polarization of the electorate, former ambassador to Portugal Allan Katz founded the organization to bridge the partisan divide through civil discourse.
The programming skews left, as does the audience, but the forum provides contrarians like myself an opportunity to burst the occasional bubble. Some years back, for intense, I participated in a discussion on Muslims in which the on-site “fact-checker” came to my aid more than once, as did the ringer of the “civility bell.” I cannot say I converted anyone to my viewpoint, but in my strategically congenial way — “Honey, he’s not the monster I thought he was” — I may have forced a few people to question their assumptions.
