Interesting Washington Post piece on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s inquiry into Florida’s election machinery. Bottom-line: the machinery sucked – and African-American voters seemed disproportionately affected. Still I have a few caveats. Why was this commission made up of four Democrats, three Independents and only one Republican? Wouldn’t it have more credibility if it had been more balanced? These are deeply partisan waters, after all. I’m also a little suspicious of the fact that the report was leaked before Governor Jeb Bush or Secretary of State Katherine Harris had a chance to provide a prepared response. Again, if you’re trying to present a serious report about a vital civil rights matter, isn’t it unseemly to try to spin the press this way? My last point is that the report, even when weighted so far to the left, exonerates the state of Florida from the charge of deliberately aiming to disenfranchise minority voters. There is “no conclusive evidence” of a “conspiracy” of this kind. The reason that this is a civil rights matter is therefore simply because the result of incompetence, over-zealous cleaning up of the voting felons, and so on, was de facto discriminatory against minorities. But this is not the same as deliberate discrimination. And that distinction, to my mind, matters. Racism doesn’t exist unless it is deliberate and conscious on the part of one human being. I don’t buy the notion of structural racism or economic racism and so on. When this report is used to inflame racial tensions even further (as some McAuliffe Democrats clearly intend), this distinction needs to be kept in mind.
A DAMN GOOD SHOT: Who says that Britain’s famed Eton College can’t raise distinguished scions of empire any more? Eton was the school that gave us Dipendra, the heir to the Nepalese throne, or “Dippy” as his Etonian class-mates called him. He was renowned at school, according to Tunku Varadarajan, for being a “damn good shot” in his formative years. Princes William and Harry went to Eton as well. Be afraid, Camilla. Be very afraid.
MUST READ OF THE WEEK: Check out the inimitable Sam Tanenhaus in this week’s New Republic for a stunning essay-review which helps cement the case that George W. Bush is not the extremist that some on the left are now asserting. The piece is convincing because it takes the long view of what has been going on in the Republican party for a generation or two and sees Bush in that context. Who’d have thought? Political analysis that looks back longer than the last news cycle? This piece is one reason I love my own magazine, even when I disagree with it. Without TNR, American liberalism in its rightful, thoughtful sense would truly be more beleaguered.
LETTER FROM EUROPE: Great email from a European immigrant to the U.S. on my point about liberalism as a religion. (For the record, several readers have let me know that Rush Limbaugh has been voicing this argument for a few years. My apologies for not accrediting him earlier). Here’s the email: “Concerning liberalism as religion: isn’t it simply that the U.S. is experiencing an episode of good old ideological folly? (I am using the word ideology in the sense of Hannah Arendt, or L. Giussani, or in the spirit of Dostoevsky’s “Demons”). I grew up on the continent (in Italy) in the 70’s and I can still recognize a Jacobin when I see one. When I came to this country I expected to find a haven of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. I was amazed to discover that this country is now pervaded (possibly for the first time in its history) by aggressive ideologies (both left and right), without having any of the anti-bodies that continental Europeans have been developing since 1789 (including an unhealthy amount of cynicism). I also find interesting that the current ideological wave has been building up in the last few decades at the same time when the traditional WASP elite has been replaced (especially in politics, academia and the law) by newcomers whose ethnic/cultural background is much closer to our traditional revolutionaries in continental Europe. Maybe, rather than Locke and Hobbes, it is time to go back to Edmund Burke.” To this I would only add that Burke was the lubricant that made Locke work. It’s not either-or. Surely, it’s both.
THANKS: May was a bumper month for us. 172,000 unique visitors. Wow. Also close to 1200 emails in the last week or so. Their eloquence and passion and concern make me realize how lucky I am to have a site like this and readers like you. I’ve worked overtime to answer almost every one. Onward …
The Dish 