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We're
all supposed to be oh-so-exercised
over Senator Rick Santorum's apparent distaste for homosexuality,
but pardon me if I yawn. Who really cares – surely not a single
self-respecting homo of my acquaintance – especially
when, on another front, Santorum is spearheading the most
direct assault on free thought since … oh, I don't know. This
really has no American precedent. Perhaps since Madame
Mao and her Gang
of Four launched China's infamous "Cultural
Revolution"….
Okay,
so Santorum hates queers. Take it from me, bub: the feeling
is mutual. We had to listen to this nonsense all last week,
but we haven't heard very much about Santorum's proposed amendment
to Title
IX of the Higher
Education Act that would enshrine "ideological diversity"
as well as "sexual equality" in education as a condition
for federal funding. Just a few articles, here
and there.
Yet this is the most unbelievably sleazy, underhanded stealth
operation launched by Israel's amen corner since the
attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, as the point is to ensure
that universities that engage in or permit criticism of Israel
face cuts in federal funding.
According
to a piece in the New York Sun [April
15, 2003], the legislation is being promoted by Santorum
as an effort to "remedy anti-Semitism on campus,"
and, although the details have yet to be released, they are
"in the works." A Senate Republican aide who attended
the meeting said "no official method of measuring 'ideological
diversity' has been set, as the legislation has not been drafted
yet. But the aide said such factors as religion and party
registration could be used."
An
idea that has been pushed by neocon propagandist and professional
ex-commie David
Horowitz, affirmative action for campus conservatives,
is being used to accomplish two goals: 1) The suppression
of views the Amen Corner finds threatening, such as the movement
to divest universities of stocks that invest in Israel, and
2) The promotion of the politically correct neocon line on
every topic, from Israel to immigration, with specific
conservative groups – i.e. Horowitz's "Center for the
Study of Popular Culture" – to reap the material and
political benefits.
As
the government-approved "conservative" of choice,
Horowitz will finally succeed in forcing universities to sponsor
and subsidize his relentless campaign of slander and self-promotion.
This, from someone who has made a career out of attacking
affirmative action for blacks! To an opportunist "conservative,"
the idea of affirmative action is not inherently un-American
or unconstitutional – it all depends on who benefits. If it's
racial minorities, lefties, women, or any other subversion-prone
group the neocons disapprove of, using the power of the State
to redress an "imbalance" is an outrage. But in
the case of conservatives (i.e. neocons), who are victims
of "discrimination" inflicted by commie college
professors, it's a legitimate grievance that needs to be addressed
by lawmakers. This goes way beyond hypocrisy.
An
article published last year in The American Enterprise,
and posted on Horowitz's Frontpage website, "Time
to Fight Back," by Kenneth Lee, openly advocates
using the views and party registration of college professors
(and, presumably, students) to claim that the lack of campus
conservatives is a violation of civil rights laws.
"Imagine
opening your newspaper one morning and reading a Supreme Court
opinion that puts a startling new twist on an old civil rights
tactic. The Court declares that some prominent university
has violated equal opportunity laws by "engaging in a
pattern of employment discrimination...against Republicans
and Christian conservatives. Of the university's 1,828 professors,
there are only eight Republicans and five Christian conservatives.
Such statistical evidence of gross political and ideological
imbalance has been taken as a telltale sign of purposeful
discrimination in many previous civil rights cases. In this
case as well it provides prima facie evidence that individual
rights are being systematically violated on arbitrary grounds.
Justice demands compensatory action to protect the rights
of these groups. Is this a right-wing pipe dream? It may not
be as far-fetched as you think."
This
sinister nonsense more than confirms the paleoconservative
critique of the neocons. For years we have been saying
that these ex-lefties of one sort or another have imported
the doctrines and methods of the left into the precincts of
the American right, much to the latter's detriment. Now we
have the evidence. A "right-wing pipe-dream"? More
like a right-winger's worst nightmare come true. The horror
of living in a world where even ostensible conservatives speak
the language of the collectivist left is more than any real
right-winger could hope to endure.
Consider
the consequences of capitulating to the affirmative actionists
in this way: every college professor (and presumably every
student) would be given a political vetting by government
bureaucrats, educators, and the courts. Unlike most racial
minorities, or at least the official racial victim groups,
members of discriminated-against ideological minorities are
not so readily identified. Each candidate for a professorship,
and, to be consistent, each and every student applicant, would
be forced to undergo a full interrogation by political commissars.
Now
there is a job that suits Horowitz to a tee! And certainly
David
Frum seems eminently qualified for such a post.
In
order to fill the "conservative" quota, and thus
achieve "ideological diversity," the neocons would
get to hand out choice academic positions to their supporters,
while holding the threat of government-initiated "civil
rights" prosecutions undertaken by a sympathetic Department
of Justice over their enemies' heads.
Barry
Goldwater and other libertarian-oriented conservatives
of the fifties and sixties were right to oppose "civil
rights" legislation as a fundamental violation of individual
rights. Under a system consistent with property rights, there
can be no valid legal obligation that forces an individual
to associate or do business with someone not of his choosing.
This is the traditional conservative position, one upheld
in the old days by traditionalists like Russell Kirk and quasi-libertarians
such as Frank S. Meyer, no matter what their other differences.
The
neocon position, however, is quite different: their heroes
are Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and even the suggestion
that "civil rights" don't trump property rights
requires a trip to a re-education camp, as Senator Trent Lott
discovered to his dismay. As "big government conservatives,"
which is how Fred Barnes once described them (and he ought
to know!), the neocons are not hostile to a centralizing,
regulating State power – just as long as they
get to do the centralizing and regulating.
In
the case of mandating "ideological diversity" in
the universities, the neocons would have the ghoulish satisfaction
of turning a weapon wielded by the left against its inventors.
But authentic conservatives can only shudder and wonder: are
we to be spared nothing?
Lee
correctly notes that, in spite of energetic protestations
by the drafters of the original [1964] Civil Rights Act –
who swore up and down it would not mandate racial quotas –
history has confirmed the Goldwater-libertarian critique:
"As with so many other laws," Lee avers, "administrative
agencies and courts gradually transformed the plain language
of the statute to mean something very different." Instead
of fighting this, however, as an intolerable intrusion of
Big Government, Lee gloatingly describes the advantages of
conservative capitulation. He cites the infamous
blackmailing career of Jesse Jackson, who extorted millions
from Coca-Cola and other corporations, and writes:
"Republicans
can learn a lesson or two from this. Armed with the alarming
statistics on the preceding pages about the lack of ideological
diversity on college campuses, Republicans can browbeat universities
into making their faculties more diverse. … And as Jackson
does with corporations, Republicans can target universities'
pocketbooks. By informing state legislatures as well as fair-minded
alumni about the lack of diversity of ideas on the American
campus today, conservatives can tighten the cash spigot until
schools take affirmative steps to remedy current imbalances."
Yeah,
that's right: conservatives need to hold up Jesse Jackson
as a role model. You too can be an extortionist, a poverty
pimp, and a world-class sleaze-bag, Lee exhorts us, if only
you'll give up all this "principle" nonsense and
"appropriate the language and logic of liberals' most
sacred shibboleth: affirmative action."
Real
conservatives, paleo or otherwise, can only retort: like
hell we will, and leave it at that.
But
it is fair to ask what provoked such an outburst of rare honesty
in the first place. I mean, we always knew the neocons
were conniving, unprincipled, power-hungry opportunists, but
why, all of a sudden, are they so carelessly flaunting
these rather unpleasant characteristics? What's really going
on here, aside from the usual greed for patronage? According
to the New York Sun,
"The
possibility of withholding funds arose at a March meeting
between top Senate Republicans and Jewish activists who reported
rising incidents of anti-Semitism and an increasingly anti-Israel
agenda among college professors. A legislative solution would
alter the funding formula under Title IX of the Higher Education
Act to include not only sexual equality but also 'ideological
diversity' as a precondition of receiving the funds."
Among
those at the meeting was Wayne
Firestone, director of the Center for Israel Affairs for
the Hillel Foundation, sponsor of numerous pro-Israel campus
groups, who opined "Everywhere I go, this is the lead
topic. This is drawing a lot of interest." Santorum is
likely to introduce the legislation, but the Sun notes
that "he is not alone." Several representatives
of top Republican congressional leaders attended the March
meeting, where the main topic was how to tweak "civil
rights" legislation to curtail Israel's campus critics.
"Senators at that meeting discussed an investigation
or commission as alternatives to legislation," we are
told, but more likely is a government-funded "study"
that serves as a prelude to a political purge of academia
– and the installation of neocon party-liners as the
official, state-approved representatives of "conservatism."
The
canny Firestone, however, held out some hope that a government-mandated
full-scale ideological cleansing could be avoided, if the
intended victims decided to cooperate "voluntarily":
"If
left to their own devices, universities aren't going to do
this. They clearly need a push. I'm not surprised they're
skeptical, and I'm sure they'd resist an external effort.
It'd be easier to get at it if they did it internally, like
with a peer-review panel."
In
other words: lay off Israel – or else.
Academia
is taking a wait-and-see stance, according to all reports,
but cowardice in the face of this kind of open assault is
certain to be fatal. Yet the neocons have the Left in a bind.
The advocates of affirmative action and the civil rights revolution
can hardly denounce the principle involved, which is the justice
of the idea that some compensation for "discrimination"
is legally enforceable. No doubt they will fall back on a
variant of the idea that the forces represented by the neocons,
far from being powerless minorities, are practically all-powerful,
dominating not only the institutions of government but also
our evil decadent capitalist society at large. Not that that
will win them any court cases, or a single vote against this
pernicious legislation in Congress, never mind public support.
It
is no accident that the amendment to Title IX of the Higher
Education Act is being sponsored by Senator Santorum, Republican
of Pennsylvania. This hater of gay people is such a lover
of Israel that he also co-sponsored (with
liberal-leftie Barbara Boxer!) the "Syria Accountability
Act," which imposes trade sanctions on Israel's front-line
enemy in the Middle East and the next stop on the neocons'
Invasion Tour. Sanctions are an act of war – and a U.S. war
on Syria is just
what Ariel Sharon has ordered up. Santorum, with the shameless
complicity of Boxer, is more than willing to oblige.
Santorum
must be stopped, but we need to go beyond mere defensive measures:
the neocons will only come up with yet another government-based
scheme to tilt the playing field in their direction. Throughout
our history, criticism of the American government has often
been the target of government attempts to curtail it. But
this is something new.We must ask, in opposing Santorum's
bill, since when is it a crime for an American to criticize
the policies of a foreign country?
Those
who call for an "investigation" of the growing resentment
on American campuses toward Israel's draconian policies are
the ones who ought to be investigated. There is, after all,
a limit to how much influence a foreign country can have on
the policies and politics of the U.S. before it begins to
threaten the very foundations of our republic. The inordinate
influence of Israel's de facto agents on the American political
process – that is what needs to be thoroughly investigated.
It is intolerable, and we have put up with it for far too
long. The legal requirements outlined in the Foreign
Agents Registration Act must be strengthened, if necessary,
enforced to the hilt, and applied equally. Yes, even when
it comes to organizations like Hillel – and U.S. Senators,
too.
NOTES
IN THE MARGIN
Funniest
first line of the month (unintentional humor category):
"If I was ever to volunteer for the role of American colonial
puppet, I would hope to play my role with the same panache
that Ahmad Chalabi has brought to the part."
– Christopher Hitchens, "Lay Off Chalabi," Slate, April 24,
2003.
Rumor
has it he's lobbying to be put in charge of occupied France,
but from what I hear Rush Limbaugh has first dibs on the job.
I
just can't help myself – I just have to point you in
the direction of Matt
Barganier's latest column. Snazzy and dazzling, he zips
right along, slicing and dicing the War Party to pieces so
small they can barely be detected by the human eye. Here is
a writer who makes reading on the internet enjoyable.
So, enjoy!
–
Justin Raimondo
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