The Two Faces of Nidal Hasan
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Nidal Malik Hasan was two men.
One was the proud Army major who wore battle fatigues to mosque; the other, the proud Arab who wore Muslim garb in civilian life.
What brought Hasan’s identities into fatal conflict was his belief that Iraq and Afghanistan were unjust wars, and his shock that he, a Muslim, was to be sent to serve in one of those wars, against fellow Muslims — a sin against Allah meriting damnation.
Hasan was conflicted by a dual loyalty — to the country he had sworn to protect, and to his perceived duty as a Muslim. When Hasan told his neighbor that morning, “I am going to do good work for God,” the call of jihad overrode his oath of loyalty as an American soldier.
Hasan proceeded to shoot, wound or kill 44 U.S. soldiers, and die on what he saw as the side of right, the side of Islam, against America. “Allahu Akbar!” — “God is great!” — Hasan shouted as he began firing.
An Internet posting by “Nidal Hasan” compared suicide bombers to medal-of-honor winners who throw themselves on grenades to save fellow soldiers. Hasan had decided to become a suicider for Allah.
Though this was an act of treachery against his fellow soldiers, of treason in wartime, of terrorism and mass murder, Hasan must have seen himself as a hero and martyr.
Few ever commit atrocities like this. But conflicts in identities and loyalties are common in the cauldrons of war.
“Let none but Americans stand guard tonight,” said Washington at Valley Forge. Irish Catholics deserted the Union army to fight beside Mexican Catholics in the San Patricio battalion against what they thought was American aggression. Honored today by Mexico, the San Patricios were hanged when captured by Winfield Scott’s army.
In Scott’s march to Mexico City was Robert E. Lee. The hero of Buena Vista was Col. Jefferson Davis, who had married the daughter of his commanding officer, future President Zachary Taylor. Davis went on to serve in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce and the U.S. Senate.
Yet, in 1861, Davis and Lee would depart the service of their country to wage war against the United States on behalf of their new nation and the kinfolk to whom they belonged and whom they believed had a right to be free of the Union. Were they traitors — or patriots?
This is not to compare the deeds of the San Patricios, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, all of whom declared themselves openly and fought heroically and honorably, with the crimes of Maj. Hasan.
But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal.
Whence came this idea? No previous generation believed this.
In World War I, Wilson feared that if he went to war, German-Americans might march on Washington. FDR was so fearful that the blood ties of Japanese citizens and residents would trump their loyalty to the United States he ordered 110,000 transferred from California to detention camps for the duration of the war.
In Arkansas last year, a Muslim opposed to the U.S. wars shot two soldiers at a recruitment center, killing one. In Kuwait, before the invasion of Iraq, a Muslim soldier threw a grenade into the tent of his commanding officer, killing two and wounding 14.
This is not to suggest that all American Muslims or Arabs should be citizens under suspicion. Muslims have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, as German-Americans died fighting against Germany in two world wars. But it is to say this:
America is unraveling. No longer are we one nation and one people. Tens of millions have come and tens of millions are coming whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind, and to the faith they carry in their hearts. And if, in our long war against “Islamofascism,” we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.
There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth, the Universal Nation of Ben Wattenberg’s warblings.
And, yet, we are surprised by ethnic espionage in our midst, the cursing of America from mosques in our cities, the news that Somali immigrants are going home to fight our Somali allies, and that illegal aliens march under Mexican flags to demand American citizenship.
Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
[...] way to mitigate Pat Buchanan’s concern would be for the United States to not constantly involve itself in wars around the [...]
If the racist actions of many American unions in the mid-20th century taught us anything, not to mention that actions of police, individuals, the KKK, and other groups, it would seem that the codified American identity you describe was one forced, often at literal gunpoint, upon those who were not Euro-Christian.
Perhaps the unipolar economic windfall of World War 2 has finally backfired on the US – all those huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, have ended our country’s brief flirtation with hard-line cultural assimilation.
The frontier settlers were as mixed a bag as any group I can think of, religiously, ethnically, and culturally, not to mention politically. They were not inherently bad Americans by any stretch, despite their diversity.
Hasan killed those men not because of some traitorous, anti-American impulse; he did not hate America if he was a man in uniform. But he forced himself to choose between the Empire and his faith, and the sane choice won. It’s a tragedy that he couldn’t have simply left the military instead, and pursued more peaceful means of combating US militarism, but the choice behind this massacre is one that most Americans would make.
Imagine a Tennessean Baptist, serving during a Long War that was widely believed to be a war on Christianity, and you can see my point.
Zac,
Bullshit.
To adapt your frame, Hasan didn’t make any kind of ’sane choice’ between your definitions of Empire and Faith. You could say he – refused – to make a choice, and just randomly murdered a bunch of innocent people instead, but the only ‘defence’ for such an act is that he was driven insane by the stories he heard as a psychiatrist and was not responsible for his actions.
There’s very little about your post that’s not morally repugnant, and I say that very judgementally. It quite literally stinks of a kind of passive-aggressive Know-Nothingism, the stench of which offends the nose and the conscience equally, because the half that isn’t lazy racism is ahistorical bullshit.
Which is where we came in.
The government is a puppet, and when small it matters little who pulls the strings. But along the timeline given – from the revolution to today, the buppet is both large and dangerous, but also profitable. So while a few of us – where I can include Buchanan and those here on most things – fight to cut the strings, most fight to grab them so they can pull them.
In a world were we just peacefully traded with a sound currency and were the example to the world, nothing like this would have happened. There would be a muslim psychiatrist somewhere working to pay off his student loan. Instead we have Empire! and micromanagement which creates the conflicts.
Diversity is at most an annoyance unless some faction has government goons doing violence on their behalf.
SF has for years had “Chinatown” and it was no threat to the culture – I would suggest Castro street is a much larger threat. It is one thing to ask to follow a few rules that all cultures have in common and another thing entirely to demand everyone change their clothing, diet, and everything else to look like the British. The thing I fear about Buchanan is he desires the latter, but unless hearts are changed to the former it won’t matter. But Acton and Wilberforce are long gone from the discussion.
The only thing which can be worse than diversity is the facade of uniformity.
“and the sane choice won.” Really?
“Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?”
Capitalism, individual rights! You see, there is a limit to capitalism, and that limit is being reached rihgt now. Reducing man to his economic dimension was Marx’s stupidity, and it ended up with a catastrophe. The neo-liberals and neo-cons profess the same kind of political anthropology, working hand in hand with the multicultural left. As the Lord says, you shall know them according to their fruits. These are the fruits.
Nidal Hasan’s loyalties between his religion and his country is not unique to Muslims.
Christians will tell you without hesitation that when it comes to a choice between their religion and their country, their religion will trounce patriotism every time.
Whenever people tell you they talk to God and that God speaks to them…watch out! They are a prayer away from using violence to target anyone who “displeases their God”…from presidents who they regard as anti Christs to doctors who perform abortions.
Hasan is a coward and a murderer.
And that imam should be charged as an accomplice/accessory to murder.
Norris,
I see that the Christians I was talking about are ones you’ve heard of – ones who would consider using violence if they felt their religious beliefs were under attack. The killing of Dr. Tiller (frighteningly enough, at church!) is a sobering reminder of the existence of such people.
Jack,
Fair enough, I phrased that really badly. What I meant was, broadly speaking, do we really expect someone to choose their government and its ills over their religion? It was kind of a dumb distinction to make, but I tried to distinguish between the basic choice at hand (state vs. church, to put it one way) and the way he carried it out – shooting up random people isn’t exactly striking a blow for one’s faith, nor is it sane.
Tony,
Your first paragraph, I can agree with. I think what I directed at Jack, above, explains why I agree.
But your second paragraph… what a buffet! Can you break down what you mean by Know-Nothing, lazy racism, and ahistorical? I would like to, literally, know more about what you meant.
P.S. I’m white, if that changes things at all for you.
Alex,
Couldn’t agree more, for the most part! Hardline individualism separates people systematically into ever-smaller groups, especially when mixed with consumerism, among other things.
As far as Marx’s idiocy, it was important at the time that Marx (or anyone!) finally called out the economic rationale underlying a great many things, but it’s long past time that we all say “okay, got it” and make our analytical methods more sophisticated again.
Don’t tell me Patrick Bucahan drank the Kool-Aid. The Fort Hood mass murder is being treated as a case of Islamic terrorism for no other reason than Major Hasan’s name. Never mind that base commander General Cone said that the shooter was killed and two soldiers were arrested. And pay no attention to Nidal Malik Hasan’s deep involvement in the war on terror.
Fort Hood Shooting ‘Oddities’
By Lori Price, http://www.legitgov.org Updated: 11 Nov 2009
‘Three people are involved. That, by definition, means it is a conspiracy.’
Curiouser and Curiouser: -Video surfaces of alleged shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, attending Homeland Security Task Force conference –Major Hasan’s name appears on page 29 of The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute’s ‘Thinking Anew—Security Priorities for the Next Administration’ –Proceedings Report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force – April 2008 – January 2009. The report is dated 19 May 2009.
http://www.legitgov.org/attack_on_fort_hood_051109.html
Besides, bright successful people do not commit mass murders, and what timing! The shootings took place just five days before John Allen Muhammad execution. Now, the beltway sniper serial murders are also being treated as Islamic terrorism, but the propaganda campaign did not begin until after the execution. That prevented lots of embarassing questions from Islamic terrorism unbelievers.
John Allen Muhammad was not even a real Muslim. He belonged to The Nation of ‘Islam’. Besides being convenient, the beltway sniper case is highly suspicious. See the “Beltway Sniper” section of “How CIA/MOSSAD/MI6/RAW Staged False Flag Terrorist Campaign for Political Propaganda Purposes .” http://groups.google.com/group/total_truth_sciences/browse_thread/thread/cd3bdb76b43083e4
My only criticism is that the article overlooked the amazing discovery of a bullet fired by the murder weapon in a tree stump in Tacoma Washington.
Hasan could have risked a court martial and refused to report for duty over the immoral and unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as other officers have done. He could have gone to prison also. Murder of unarmed men is the coward’s way out. Multiculturalism turned a blind eye to numerous warning signs and the officers in his chain of command are gutless wonders whoring for promotion instead of making command decisions that might have prevented this murder.
God first, America second…
Pat Buchanan is onto something true here: But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good……
“And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth [run by a ruling class that specifically loves this disunity -- ed], what holds us together then?”
Why, nothing, nothing at all. I suspect the game will have become unraveled by then.
America the Melting Pot (or better yet, America the Stew) can only exist in peace. Foreign wars only excacerbate ethnic tensions to the point where the Ft. Hood shootings take place. The blacklashes that have taken place over the years that have frayed the U.S. civil liberties, whether it was the Red Scare, Brown Scare, McCarhyism, Japanese Interment, TSA Airport strip searches, blacklists have come in large part because of war and foreign entanglements.
How can we live in the same nation together if we can’t trust each other? So we get the government to enforce discipline over us and create bogus nationalist ideology because we are afraid for our security. A fear created by war and empire.
“[A] nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal. Whence came this idea?” Indeed! I’d like to see any evidence that we’ve declared diversity a national goal. And no, the blathering of professors or the media is not evidence.
“And if, in our long war against “Islamofascism,” we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.” So why don’t we give up the long war. Talk about off-shoring jobs! Globalization has nothing on government contracting.
“Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then.” Only if “we” excluded blacks, Hispanics, communists, and Jews to mention just the most obvious groups.
Indeed! I’d like to see any evidence that we’ve declared diversity a national goal.
He must be talking about Norway.
Norwegian Shooter wrote:
“Indeed! I’d like to see any evidence that we’ve declared diversity a national goal. And no, the blathering of professors or the media is not evidence.”
How about U.S. law governing, say, private employment, the private provisioning of services, private housing and etc., etc.? If I’m not mistaken a finding of illegal racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or other discrimination involving some if not all of same can be made solely upon statistical evidence of a lack of such diversity.
It’s not as simple as it might sound however: If, say, a company only employs two people, or a landlord only has two tenants, the fact that they are both white Christian males isn’t enough of course. But if a company employs thousands, or a landlord rents to thousands, with those thousands drawn from a diverse pool, and yet that workforce or tenant pool isn’t diverse in this or that specified (racial, ethnic, religious or etc.) way, I believe that can be enough to find an illegality all on its own.
See also the extraordinary efforts made by the federal government to achieve same amongst those who work for it, not least via its affirmative action programs.
Acknowledge that while it’s somewhat of a different way of stating it, what’s the difference between declaring homogeneity illegal … and declaring diversity a goal?
Not stating that I believe diversity is wrong, just noting that I at least think it essentially has been made into a national goal. At least as clearly as any other I can think of except, maybe such things in the past as … winning (only some) of our wars (because indeed with some stalemates were our real goal), going to the moon or etc.
If only the WASPs had kept out the Irish we wouldn’t be hearing from Pat Buchanan.
Wait a minute…
TomB, you are absolutely mistaken. Any type of minority quota, no matter how small, has consistently been struck down by the courts.
Discrimination occurs to individuals when they are given different treatment because of their minority status. Now, these individuals can form a class for a joint action, but you never have a class suing an employer for not having enough of their class in whatever positions. They win their suit by showing that their class was systematically discriminated against. The key evidence is how non-class members were treated in similar circumstance.
Another example, redlining. A community doesn’t claim that they don’t have enough prime whatevers, but that they are only offered sub-prime whatevers because of where they live. Get it?
Homogeneity has never been declared illegal.
Your last paragraph is ridiculous.
Norwegian Shooter:
Re-reading what I wrote I can only conclude you misread it in haste. Thus in short form I’ll just repeat that I believe that as regards proving all sorts of private yet still illegal discrimination, purely statistical evidence of a lack of relevant diversity can alone be enough evidence, despite being circumstantial, to support a finding of such illegal discrimination.
As best as I can parse it the basis for your misunderstanding(s) would seem to lie in your statement that “[t]he key evidence is how non-class members were treated in similar circumstance,” which is understandable given how common it is for laypersons to believe that circumstantial evidence is either not allowed in courts, or isn’t alone sufficient to prove something legally. As to both misconceptions however it most assuredly is, right up to and including murder.
As to finding ridiculous my feeling that diversity has been made into a national goal your position seems to be that only the imposition of some “minority quotas” would so qualify. But of course there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and of course there is no specific, technical way for any “national goals” to be established in the U.S. Constitution, or indeed otherwise either.
Thus I think it’s well within the bounds of reasonable generalization to stick with my opinion. Especially considering that I know of no better evidence of what a nation’s goals are than what its laws say. And, again, looking at ours and the hundreds if not thousands of affirmative action measures they contain, and then at the similar plethora of our anti-discrimination laws and regulations as well—applicable even to the most private and minute behavior, such as outlawing same on the part of a little old lady who only wants to rent her one upstairs room to, say, “a Christian gentleman”—that’s enough to persuade me, whether making me appear ridiculous or not.
Because a goal isn’t being pursued by one in the most direct way possible doesn’t mean it isn’t still a goal. On the other hand how one believes there is no goal in mind when a nation passes literally thousands of laws all to the same end I just don’t know.
Cheers,
TomB, cheers right back at ya.
Show me the money. List any laws or cases where “purely statistical evidence of a lack of relevant diversity can alone be enough evidence, despite being circumstantial, to support a finding of such illegal discrimination.”
The bit about wars where stalemate was our real goal is ridiculous on its face. Comparing the goals of diversity and going to the moon is also ridiculous. Has a president ever said, “in x years, there will be y% of z’s in our xyz”? And if he did, would the entire nation rally around that pledge? That’s rhetorical. The answers are no.
“purely statistical evidence of a lack of relevant diversity can alone be enough evidence, despite being circumstantial, to support a finding of such illegal discrimination.”
This is the very definition of “disparate impact”, by which entire industries have been order to discriminate to achieve, yes, “diversity”:
“A substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decision which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group.”
http://www.uniformguidelines.com/uniformguidelines.html#129
The Citizens for Legitimate Government article was a firecracker. Here is the thermonuclear bomb:
Veterans Today
Military Veterans & Foreign Affairs Journal
TERRORIST HASAN WAS BUSH HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
“Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do.”
Do any of us wonder why President Bush would have a terrorist helping with his transitional policy? This put Hasan, under investigation for ties to Al Qaeda, at the heart of our government’s counter-terrorist planning organization with full daily access to nearly all major leaders in Homeland Security, Defense, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other key agencies. He was one of them, along with representatives of conservative “think tanks” that advised the Bush Administration on a daily basis. Was he there because he reminded them of an Islamic version of Dick Cheney? Please, someone, let’s hear an explanation for this.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9315&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Norwegian Shooter:
Okay, I’ll take your challenge, but first a comment on what Mr. Dale noted because it is in fact an even more powerful proof of the strength of the diversity policy/goal of the U.S.
That is, and I will get to it, the sub-issue you and I were talking about was what evidence can prove discrimination in court cases alleging many kinds of *intentional* discrimination. But of course regardless of what evidence is sufficient to prove such a case one can still say that the government itself isn’t really involved in such private cases; that … “okay maybe its laws allow such cases to be brought and won by private individuals but that’s still not a showing that diversity is really a national goal.” (Which of course was the big issue we were debating.)
It is here then that Mr. Dale’s citation comes into play because what he cites to are the regulations establishing the standards by which a simply huge number of federal governmental bodies—including the feared EEOC— adjudge when *they* find illegal discrimination and issue orders and find violations regarding same. That is, when—as a matter of law— they will simply *conclude* discriminatory intent, period. And they are, as one can see by following Mr. Dale’s link, packaged essentially as a warning to companies about what their hiring practices must do.
So what must they do, and what must they not do? I quote from Section 3:
“The use of any selection procedure which has an adverse impact on the hiring, promotion, or other employment or membership opportunities of members of any race, sex, or ethnic group will be considered to be discriminatory and inconsistent with these guidelines….”
And there you have it; a warning from a huge number of Federal agencies that if you employ a hiring procedure which has a purely statistical adverse impact, you are toast. And I shall for the purpose of brevity abstain from quoting the innumerable other things in these regulations which simply reconstitute that.
However, appropos again of talking about whether a “national goal” of diversity exists I would note where “intent” comes in because it is very interesting: In Section 13 of these regulations it talks about affirmative action and specifically says therein as follows:
“Nothing in these guidelines is intended to preclude the use of lawful selection procedures which assist in remedying the effects of prior discriminatory practices, or the achievement of affirmative action objectives.”
In other words, if a company’s hiring practices *do* show an adverse impact, *but* they are for “the achievement of affirmative action objectives,” then *this* is not illegal. And as we saw with that _Bollinger_ University of Michigan Supreme Court case, it has been held that at least as to higher education, it can discriminate against whites if its purpose is to achieve diversity. Remember Sandra Day O’Connor’s celebrated line in her majority opinion to the effect that “well, maybe we’ll outlaw this in 25 years or so, but it’s okay now”?
So anyway, on to our smaller point about the ability of one to win any number of kinds of discrimination cases solely through the use of statistical evidence and your challenge to me to show that this is okay.
Actually, ordinarily, that would be tough because, as I said in my earlier post, it’s just a routine, understood and utterly unremarkable idea that one can win cases with purely circumstantial evidence. Again, even murder cases. And thus as you can imagine who challenges this? To the law and the courts, proofs are proofs.
Here however with five minutes of work I can find two Supreme Court case specifically validating my earlier supposition:
In TEAMSTERS v. UNITED STATES, 431 U.S. 324 (1977), after talking about the role of statistics in discrimination cases *generally* (and not just employment discrimination cases)—and then even jury selection discrimination cases too— the author of the majority opinion Justice Stewart specifically said as follows:
“Statistics are equally competent in proving employment discrimination.”
And indeed NS, if you just glance at any damn near any discrimination law book you will see almost as a matter of rote that of *course* statistics play a simply huge role in many many such cases because of course many if not most discriminators don’t go about announcing that they intended to discriminate. And of course in big big cases especially, where a huge company has been accused of systematically practicing discrimination over an extended period of time, well my goodness of course you can see that if it *wasn’t* for statistical evidence damn near none of those cases could even be brought. And this too is commonly observed.
Plus, with just an offhand glance, I would also note to you the Supreme Court case of HAZELWOOD SCHOOL DISTRICT v. UNITED STATES, 433 U.S. 299 (1977).
This was a case about alleged discrimination in the hiring of teachers and in it Justice Stewart again wrote the majority opinion (1977 was a big year for discrim cases apparently), and he essentially laid out what is the somewhat involved matter of what lawyers call “burden shifting” in many discrimination cases.
“Burden shifting” involves the question of which party has the burden at what point in a case of doing what to win, or at least to continue. And as to the most important *first* burden of a plaintiff in such discrimination cases Justice Stewart happened to say as follows:
“Where gross statistical disparities can be shown, they alone may in a proper case constitute *prima facie proof* [433 U.S. 299, 308] of a pattern or practice of discrimination.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Now of course one can observe that defendants are free thereafter to bring forth whatever evidence that is admissible to try to refute this, but Justice Stewart’s words are clear as a bell: If they do not “statistical disparities … alone” can constitute proof of discrimination, period.
As noted I found this with a mere five minutes of flipping damn near random discrimination-related pages and I have no doubt there’s much more even though, as I also noted, to the law generally proof is proof, circumstantial or not, and so it’s just not really remarked upon much. When you can be convicted of murder, and I suppose even sentenced to death when that sentence is applied, based solely on circumstantial evidence, well I think that says it all.
But, getting back to that “meta” issue of whether diversity is a “national goal” I think that Mr. Dale’s link is even more important than these court cases that we were talking about because there we see the regulations the government itself (and not just some private person) is imposing across the board on our huge huge corporations with their millions upon millions of employees. And as we saw, a pure and simple “disparate [i.e. statistical] impact” in one’s hiring procedures is enough to bring the force of the entire Federal government down upon one’s head. And you can well imagine that same is not lightly ignored, especially considering that, in general, not just compensatory damages and attorneys fees are awardable against discriminators, but punitive damages are too.
Lastly, you are right that no President has to my knowledge ever said that “diversity is our national goal.” (Although I wouldn’t be surprised if one or the other has come really close.) And you of course are entitled to whatever standard you wish in judging whether a national goal has been established. But, again, I just think your standard is a little high, and indeed not even all that valid. A President can say whatever he wants; what if Congress has disagreed?
Moreover of course politicians can be a bit promiscuous with words, can’t they? Do you doubt, for instance, that we could find any number of Presidents and Congress-creatures too for that matter who have said that “energy conservation is one of our highest national goals”? And yet our taxes on gasoline are as I understand it about the lowest in the world. So is this really a true “goal” at all, or merely puffery?
I think a more *systemic* analysis has more validity then, since we are passing judgment on an entire system, and I can’t think of anything more validly systematic than looking at where the purely rhetorical ends and the reality is announced which is where the nation gets down to writing what it finds is legal and what is illegal.
Cheers,
Go Pat go. E Pluribus Unum is long dead. Every cultural and ethnic group has its own “history” month now. “American” history is now trumped by “diversity,” which is seen as an incontrovertible good in its own right. The U.S. has become that polyglot flophouse that T.R. warned us about.
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger#Supreme_Court.27s_decision
(…)
The Court’s majority ruling, authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, held that the United States Constitution “does not prohibit the law school’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” The Court held that the law school’s interest in obtaining a “critical mass” of minority students was indeed a “tailored use”. O’Connor noted that sometime in the future, perhaps twenty-five years hence, racial affirmative action would no longer be necessary in order to promote diversity.
(…)
Norwegian Shooter wanted to know of a case in which homogeneity was punished:
“The suburban county just north of New York City agreed Monday to create hundreds of affordable homes in heavily white communities and encourage nonwhites to move in.
The agreement, reached with the help of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, settles a $180 million lawsuit brought by the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York against Westchester County.
‘We’re clearly messaging other jurisdictions across the country that there has been a significant change in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and we’re going to ask them to pursue similar goals as well,’ said deputy secretary Ron Sims.
The agreement also calls for Westchester to pay the federal government $21.6 million, which the government will then return to the county to help pay for the housing. The county will add $30 million to its capital budget for housing. An additional $10.9 million will be paid to the anti-discrimination center, its lawyers and the government.”
Paul Craig Roberts:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/privilege.htm
(…)
How did we end up with racial quotas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly forbids them? It was primarily the work of one man, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) bureaucrat named Alfred Blumrosen, now a Rutgers University law professor. Blumrosen’s thoroughgoing and illegal rewrite of the Civil Rights Act was accepted by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971). A brief history of the Civil Rights Act’s transmogrification will help the reader understand the impotence of statutory law and the Constitution when assaulted by unaccountable federal bureaucrats and crusading justices.
(…)
Blumrosen ignored the act and its statutory prohibition against regulatory interpretation. He bet that he could get away with rewriting the act because of the courts’ deference to the regulatory agency. Blumrosen redefined discrimination to be statistical disparity or under-utilization of blacks. If an employer’s work force contained a smaller percentage of blacks than blacks comprised of the local population, the company was discriminating. Anything that had disparate impact, such as employment tests, Blumrosen declared to be discriminatory. Having eliminated intent, he was able to shift the act’s focus from specific discrimination against individuals and initiate agency proceedings against employers even in the absence of complaints of discrimination.
Griggs (1971) was the first test of the Blumrosen Civil Rights Act. Chief Justice Warren Burger declared that the illegal “administrative interpretation of the act by the enforcing agency is entitled to great deference.” The Court ruled that Duke Power was discriminating against blacks, because the company’s requirements for promotion—either a high school diploma or a passing grade on Wonderlic and Bennett intelligence and mechanical comprehension tests—were “built-in headwinds for minority groups.” The Court ruled with Blumrosen that discrimination did not require intent, only consequence.
Blumrosen’s rewrite of the Civil Rights Act required employers to adopt racial quotas in order to avoid federal lawsuits. Private employment and promotion quotas are held to be legal because of the fiction that they are “voluntarily adopted” and not required by federal statute. They are required, of course, to avoid federal lawsuits.
(…)
The script deleted my link to the story. I’ve found it reproduced here:
http://www.newsday.com/county-north-of-nyc-to-market-housing-to-nonwhites-1.1359770
It’s an AP story by Jim Fitzgerald. But the AP seems to have removed the story from their site…
“Norwegian Shooter wanted to know of a case in which homogeneity was punished:”
Recall all the “busing for racial balance” ordered by federal judges.You have to quite disingenuous not to see that as punitive action against homogeneity.
Shouldn’t someone who persists in denying the patently obvious-like Holocaust deniers- be banned as a troll?
Sample Google hits:
diversity officer job description 144,000
cno* diversity 1,270,000
*chief of naval operations
An example from Utah:
http://www.diversity.utah.edu/
Just have time for Dennis Dale right now. Disparate impact is exactly what I was talking about. It deals with the process, such as hiring decisions. Not any actual level, such as 5% of VPs are black. I take the earlier arguments as saying that there is some amount of diversity that is a minimum, and if something is below that minimum, it is illegal discrimination. Is that what was meant?
To equivocate, I’ll say that my original quote of there is no national goal of diversity is hyperbole to counter Pat’s original hyperbole that there is. Just what makes something a national goal – short of the moon example – is pretty nebulous, but a fun subject to debate.
But I’m not giving in quite yet. First, I want to disagree with the idea that homogeneity, by itself, is illegal. It is was causes the homogeneity that can be illegal. All-white golf clubs are obviously not illegal. On the other end, no-one claims that everything should be represented in the exact proportion of a given population. In between, that’s the reality. Okay, that said, I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend. I’ll start choppin’!
Phaedon, you are confusing what causes illegal discrimination, the tort, with remedies to illegal discrimination, such as the quotes you provided. Here are some additional quotes from the story:
“A federal judge ruled in February that when Westchester sought federal housing and development funds, it failed to analyze, as required, how race could affect access to fair housing.”
And remember, there is no coercion here, just marketing:
“Whites cannot be excluded from buying or renting the homes, but the agreement calls for Westchester to market them throughout the county and in nearby areas with large nonwhite populations.”
icr – on Grutter v. Bollinger, same quote ff.:
“It implied that affirmative action should not be allowed permanent status and that eventually a ‘colorblind’ policy should be implemented. The opinion read, ‘race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time.’ ‘The Court takes the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its use of racial preferences as soon as practicable. The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.’ [Clarence Thomas reference]
The decision largely upheld the position asserted in Justice Powell’s concurrence in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy, but held that quotas were illegal.”
…
“The case was heard in conjunction with Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), in which the Court struck down the University of Michigan’s more rigid, point-based undergraduate admission policy, which was essentially deemed a quota system.”
Also remember the defendant is a public university. Very different from a private employer.
TomB, why did you insert “purely statistical” into your sentence based on the Section 3 quote?
Section 13, it says “the use of lawful selection procedures” are allowed. If a company’s hiring practices do show an adverse impact, then they are illegal and they can’t be used to remedy the effects of prior discriminatory practices.
I’m not arguing against circumstantial evidence or using statistics! Where did you get that? Here’s how adverse impact is shown. A group of black applicants are hired at a 10% acceptance rate. A group of white applicants, statistically the same as the black group on other measures, are hired at a 25% acceptance rate. That’s adverse impact. Same qualifications, different results. Of course, showing the black group is essentially the same on other measures than the white group is the hard part, but the point is stats are absolutely essential. What I’m saying is if 99% of all hires are white, that by itself does not make the hiring practices illegal.
Disparate does not mean statistical!!! Cheers.
icr – I stopped reading Roberts after this quote:
“When we say that race should be a factor, we mean that skin color is a factor that mitigates or trumps the requirements for admission in order to make certain that some percentage of those with privileged pigmentation are admitted on terms not open to white applicants.”
Uh, no. That is not what it means. Making sure that some percentage are admitted is a quota, therefore, not legal.
icr – again confusion about remedies. Bussing is a remedy to deal with the illegal practice of discriminating against minority students by separate and not equal schools.
To step back a bit, remedies such as bussing and affirmative action are never perfect. These two in particular have caused large negative impacts themselves. But to guarantee equal rights before the law, something has to be done. You can’t just say “illegal discrimination” and walk away.
So can anyone show that a certain level of homogeneity – the result, current condition, etc. – is by itself illegal?
Norwegian Shooter wrote:
“TomB, why did you insert “purely statistical” into your sentence based on the Section 3 quote? … Disparate does not mean statistical!!!”
Because … yes it does as shown by the very title of the Uniform Guidelines Section 4 D. entitled “Adverse impact and the “four-fifths rule.”
And they don’t call it a “rule” for nothing.
“Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then.” Only if “we” excluded blacks, Hispanics, communists, and Jews to mention just the most obvious groups.
That’s why PJB said ‘core’ . There are white, British descended Kenyans, but nobody pretends they are like the dominant people — or really peoples — of Kenya. There are Ainu Japanese citizens, but nobody pretends they represent the mainstream. There are Uighur Chinese — but nobody pretends the Han aren’t the core ethnic group of China.