Re: NBC: A Setback for the Censors; By George Will

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:31:32 GMT, David <acomp1ete1y@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Seti apparently thinks people like me, who think it's ok to take skin
color into account in situations like this, are racists. I think the
Supreme Court ruling ruling was bad; hence his (?) statement.

Nobody should be called a racist solely because they agreed or
disagreed with the Supreme Court decision.

I agreed with the Supreme Court decision. Think it's about time that
people not be used as pawns, against their will, in social engineering
experiments, which usually do more damage than good while the social
planners pretend otherwise, as well as shift power to government
bureaucrats at the expense of individuals which I almost never think
is a good thing.

I notice that the reaction from some of the liberal side of the aisle
has been nothing short of hysterical.

But at the end of the day, I think the decision will probably make it
more likely that individuals will be empowered for the better -- and
that the public school experience for those most in need of an
improved public school education will be much improved. And if that
ultimately ends up being the case, then I think most liberals will end
up being pleased as well.

The Wall Street Editorial
Editorial Page
Race and the Roberts Court
Brown v. Board of Education has not been overturned.

Friday, June 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Liberals were already wailing about a radical turn in Supreme Court
jurisprudence, and yesterday's decisions really brought out the
sackcloth and outrage. But the end of this first full term of the John
Roberts-Samuel Alito Court presented no sweeping departures, instead
hewing to the incremental conservative judging that was its hallmark
this year.

The most contentious opinion determined that programs engineering the
racial composition of school districts in Seattle and Louisville were
unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 5-4
majority, expressed the bedrock principle in a single sentence: "The
way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop
discriminating on the basis of race." But the majority was in effect
only a plurality. Anthony Kennedy concurred but wrote his own, more
narrow opinion that said schools can be "race-conscious," though race
can't be the only or controlling factor.

Nonetheless, Stephen Breyer filed an emotional 77-page dissent arguing
that the "radical" decision undermined "racial equality" and even the
Court's "moral vision." John Paul Stevens excoriated the majority for
its "cruel irony" in rejecting racial classifications on the basis of
the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, and noted his "firm
conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would
have agreed with today's decision."

Justice Stevens is taking liberties with the memory of Byron "Whizzer"
White, to name one, and in any event his comment misstates how
contorted the Court's race jurisprudence has become. As the Chief
Justice and Clarence Thomas explained in separate opinions, the
majority's narrow reasoning was consistent with Brown, the 14th
Amendment and the Court's multiple precedents on race.
In both the Seattle and Louisville districts, school planners were
reassigning kids from their neighborhood schools to new ones based on
racial composition, even if it was involuntary. The schools argued
that the diversity test established by 2003's Grutter v. Bollinger
decision allowed them to sort in this way--i.e., that their programs
yielded educational and social benefits.

Chief Justice Roberts argued that these efforts were invalid because
the districts "have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the
interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme measures they have
chosen--discriminating among individual students based on race."
Grutter said schools must "narrowly tailor" programs to serve a
"compelling interest" based on a "highly individualized, holistic
review."

The schools in this case were using "a binary conception of race" that
recognized only white or black. As for the Brown precedent, that
ruling said it is unconstitutional to deny students opportunities
based on government-enforced racial segregation. The segregation here
was concocted by the education bureaucrats themselves.

Leave aside the evidence that "diversity," in of itself, does little
or nothing to improve student performance. Leave aside also the
evidence that the best way to achieve greater racial diversity in
schools is through the freedom to choose either public or private
schools with vouchers, scholarships or tax credits. At least this
decision curbed the excesses of the racial-classification policy that
has been promoted by too many courts in recent decades. How far it
will be curbed will depend on how lower courts parse Justice Kennedy's
concurrence.

Likewise, the Court's 5-4 ruling on price floors in Leegin Creative
Leather Products v. PSKS moved in a promising direction but not as far
as it might have. Since a previous Supreme Court ruling in 1911,
antitrust policy has held that resale maintenance agreements--where
manufacturers set the lowest price at which their goods can be
sold--were automatically restraints on trade. But economists have
since revised our understanding of price floors, concluding that a
blanket ban can actually harm competition by favoring some
distributors over others and deterring some marketing practices.
"In sum, it is a flawed antitrust doctrine that serves the interests
of lawyers--by creating legal distinctions that operate as traps for
the unaware--more than the interests of consumers--by requiring
manufacturers to choose second-best options to achieve sound business
objectives," Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority. But instead of
revisiting the dogma itself, the Court only returned the case to its
originating circuit. Moving forward, alleged price fixing will be
decided on a case-by-case basis, known as the "rule of reason."

Would that that same rule also applied to commentary on the Roberts
Court overall. Its incrementalist decisions have moved the Court
marginally back to the center from the narrow liberal majority that
has dominated for more than a decade. The shift is welcome, but far
from radical.

(end of editorial)
.

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