Republicans Must Wake Up
I regularly give politicians advice. They don’t ask for it, but it is the price they pay for the chance to dislodge me from a few shekels. When a politician comes hat in hand, there is one thing of which you can be quite sure: He will agree with your advice. He will invariably go one step further and claim that he practices it. In ornery moods, I tell them, “Well, you’ve been keeping it a secret from me.”
Now, I have some very particular advice which I have been urging on visiting politicians for the past 8 years or so. As far as I can tell, none of them have listened to a word of it. Actually, that is not quite true. A few of them (or their staff) remember what I urged upon them at a prior meeting, and do me the honor of repeating it. Of course, remembering advice is a long way from taking it seriously.
The particular advice I have been giving is this: America is under attack from an enemy that wants to destroy the American way of life. This internal enemy—not China, the border, the economy, or anything else—is the danger of our time. Nothing else comes close. I call this enemy the “group quota regime.” The group quota regime currently exercises control of every major institution in America—from government bureaucracies, to the military, business, education, the media (social and mainstream), culture, entertainment, sports, and even religion. The woke radicals who exercise the increasingly totalitarian power of this regime believe that a just society is one where all identity groups have equal outcomes. To achieve these outcomes, group quotas must be imposed. Accordingly, American justice, which is based on merit, and the American way of life must be destroyed.
The danger is not group quotas per se, but rather the regime’s justification for group quotas: America’s so-called “systemic racism.” The ideologues who lead the group quota regime believe (or find it necessary to insist) that but for this systemic racism all groups would enjoy or suffer a proportional amount of the blessings and burdens of life. Since black Americans are about 13% of the population, under the thinking of the woke regime they would represent 13% of the Harvard body, 13% of inmates in prison, 13% of pilots —13% of everything else you can think of. By systemic racism, these woke radicals mean a totalizing racism that has seeped into every nook and cranny of the American way of life — in all our values, institutions, and language.
The entire woke project depends on convincing us that this systemic racism is the sole explanation for inequalities among groups. If the woke radicals can convince us that we are systemically racist, evil to the core, we shall agree to throw America out. After all, why would we wish to maintain an evil regime? We wouldn’t.
In a regime of group quotas, obviously we will not get our best in the most demanding jobs. But it’s worse than that. According to the group quota regime, values like hard work, responsibility, innovation — excellence itself — are part of the systemic racism. Thus, we must scrap tests and other objective hiring, or admission, or performance standards. This, of course, makes it difficult to identify the best workers or students.
The highest performing employees don’t get to where they are on brains alone. They work incredibly hard. But under the group quota dispensation, hard work is a form of white oppression. Therefore, hard work has to go. Our inventors and venture capitalists must be innovative, but innovation is another means of oppression; it too must be relegated to the scrap yard. We have all seen this happening before our eyes for years, and at a dizzyingly accelerating pace. This is the self-immolation of civilization itself, dousing it with gasoline and lighting the match.
Worst of all, the insistence that we are systemically racist leads necessarily to totalitarianism — not maybe, not probably, but almost certainly. Equal outcomes for all groups require what the Biden administration already candidly calls not just a “whole of government” but a “whole of society” project. Is there not already abundant evidence of an emerging totalitarianism?
Since the claim that America is systemically racist cannot stand on its own two feet, it is necessary to censor those who dare to challenge the claim. Already, censorship and the threat of it have caused many of us to self-censor. Even so, not everyone will be silenced. Those who persist must be punished, fired, denied banking or legal services, even imprisoned. This will get worse. The regime’s security apparatus will increase its intimidation. Its powerful propaganda machine will, with increasing determination, cram down Americans’ throats the woke narrative: that America is systemically racist, evil, and must be (as they say in polite moments) “transformed.” The brainwashing starts in kindergarten. As we have seen displayed lately at our most prestigious universities, it continues through graduate school. In the media and entertainment business, only one narrative is permitted, in infinite iterations: America is systemically racist;whiteness is evil.
The Mechanics of the Regime
Like all revolutionary regimes, the group quota regime must: 1. Destroy the existing regime; 2. Bring into being its own regime; and 3. Acquire the power necessary to achieve 1 and 2.
It is necessary to understand that each of the policies of the group quota regime serve one or more of these purposes. Take open borders. They both give power to the group quota regime (by adding more Democrat voters) and help destroy the American way of life (by introducing, and then failing to assimilate, people with cultures different from our own).
The woke radicals manufacture energy dependence and whip up climate alarmism, attacking both our economic freedom and our national sovereignty. These too work to destroy the American way of life.
The group quota regime also tries to destroy the distinction between men and women. This is designed to allow women to compete more effectively with men in the workplace, another example of group quotas.
Police forces are defunded in order to bring the black prison population (now nearly 40 percent) in line with the black share of the overall population. Still more group quotas.
And of course, the woke radicals impose quotas directly: in the armed services, flight training schools, neuroscience fellowships, engineering, education and everything else you can think of. The more important the function, the greater the need for quotas.
As I ask my politician friends, how could you be missing this? Our country is being destroyed before our eyes. Of course, they assure me they are not missing it; they are deeply concerned about it. Still (as I say) as far as I can tell, they more or less ignore it. Or perhaps they are not entirely missing it, they just fail to put the pieces together. They understand the various policies of the woke radicals as independent events, rather than battles in the same war.
I sympathize with these politicians. They have to get elected and stay in office to do any good, and I see that their constituents are not clamoring for relief from the group quota regime. In a democracy like ours, we should hope that our politicians pay attention to constituent concerns. But as all of the best politicians know, there are times when they must lead. Their constituents need their leadership. They must call attention to dangers of which their constituents may not be sufficiently aware. Or so I tell them. And, of course, they agree.
What Do We Do Now?
Let’s look at our options. Take college admissions, though the same options apply everywhere.
Option number one is more of the same. Today, we employ group quotas, but pretend otherwise. No one is fooled, but almost everyone goes along with the charade. But, as I have been at pains to point out, there are calamitous consequences of all this pretending: It destroys all the values and institutions that make up the American way of life.
Alternatively, we could stop playing pretend. We would admit select, favored minorities based on quotas and everyone else based on merit. The public, however, likely would reject this transparency for the same reasons the public rejects reparations: We would be admitting publicly that we have two classes of citizens. This the American public would not stomach.
Then there is the strictly meritocratic approach. We learned from the recent Supreme Court affirmative action cases that basing admission to Harvard on merit would mean that less than 1% of its student body would be black. Although this would make the elite squirm, it would be worth the discomfort. The current system of group quotas breeds distrust and resentment. . Such a rollback would encourage all students to treat people as individuals not as members of an identity group. At the same time, sorting by merit rather than quotas would improve efficiency and performance across the spectrum of universities, with each student attending an institution suited to his or her abilities..
The elite, however, is hardly likely to go along; instead, it will continue to cling tightly to the status quo. Even after the recent Supreme Court cases, colleges still will be able to implement quotas, even if slightly lower than current levels. This has been the experience in those states that have prohibited affirmative action. The prohibitions have an effect at first, but as soon as administrators find a way around them, the effects are all but eliminated.
Although the elites favor quotas, most Americans, even black Americans, do not. Poll after poll confirms this. To our great good fortune, today, unlike in most times, we can harness the power of the everyday man. This is where populism comes in so handy. It is at times such as these, when the elite no longer represents the common citizens, that direct access to the people is a necessary recourse. But mobilizing an anti-group quota initiative needs President Trump’s leadership. His base is organized and ready to go. It will fight if he asks them to fight. But so far Trump has not asked. He should.
Were Trump to engage this fight, he would need specific examples of the dangers of quotas. He might start with the military, since the consequences of a woke military are obvious and calamitous, and Trump’s base includes many current soldiers, veterans, and their families. They know that the group quota policies are hurting recruitment, retention, and readiness. Trump should promise to get rid of woke generals on his first day in office. He could also call attention to medical schools, which, like all educational institutions, aggressively practice group quotas. Do we want Americans, when seeing a black doctor, to wonder whether he or she was the product of affirmative action? This happens today, and it is unacceptable. Trump also might point out that we are likely to soon see airplanes falling out of the skies, the result of quotas for air traffic controllers and pilots.
Trump needs to call out the anti-American ideology of our education system. Why would a young man want to fight for a country that he is repeatedly told is systemically racist, evil? He wouldn’t. And as for DEI and CRT, who wants their 15-year-old coming home from school reporting that he was taught that he is a white oppressor? Parents don’t like their children being put on the ‘back burner” as I heard one mom put it. Trump must make it personal.
Opposition to group quotas should be an important plank in Trump’s platform. My politician friends should climb aboard. Perhaps Trump begins with a major speech on the subject. I would be happy to lend a hand.
