Bravo for Our Normal, Unbiased, American Supreme Court

Like most conservatives, I am cheering the Supreme Court decision that ruled Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment by considering applicants’ race during the admissions process. As Chief Justice Roberts put it, “those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” Yet I wish to make clear that I don’t believe this should be a conservative versus liberal debate. Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion added, “but when a university admits students ‘on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that students of a particular race, because of their race, think alike’… at the very least alike in the sense of being different from nonminority students.” For me, the idea of stereotyping students, or for that matter any persons, on the basis of race is just simply wrong. It is also unfair. Our Founding Fathers wrote again and again that we must be all equal by law at the starting line, but we are not equal at the finish line. Indeed, we fought a tragic civil war to prove this point, and then enacted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. I am most certainly not a constitutional lawyer. But I’ve always been opposed to racial preferences, no matter where they exist. Generations ago, Jewish people were discriminated against, Catholic people were discriminated against, other ethnic groups were discriminated against, and – yes – African Americans were discriminated against. Recently, Asian Americans were discriminated against. It’s all wrong. Here’s a point: John F. Kennedy helped bring in affirmative action early in his presidency. Yet Kennedy made clear that he was not in favor of racial preferences — “race has no place in American life or law.” Big hat tip to my longtime friend Ward Connerly. JFK’s idea of affirmative action was to stop racial preferences. That is a much different policy than the one that so many universities and other institutions have lately been pursuing — where racial preferences govern decisions. I believe the distinction between the JFK view and the view of today’s far-left woke people is crucial. It’s a pity that President Biden is rejecting the JFK view, and suggesting the Supreme Court is a “rogue” institution. “This is not a normal court,” Mr. Biden said. Well, yes it is, sir. It’s a court chosen through our democratic institutions. Then he rushes to direct the Department of Education to figure out “practices to help build a more inclusive and diverse student body.” In other words, they’re going to try to get around the Supreme Court decision. Abraham Lincoln talked about an America “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King proclaimed his vision that his children not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. Finally, Justice Clarence Thomas, filing a concurring opinion, talked about the originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution and pointed out that no one on the side of racial preferences was able to explain “how racial diversity yields educational benefits.” I just yearn for a merit-based, colorblind society. I believe that’s the American way. The American idea. And I’ll leave it at that. From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.

Bravo for Our Normal, Unbiased, American Supreme Court

Bravo for Our Normal, Unbiased, American Supreme Court

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