August 20, 2024
Dear Friends and Family,
Progressivism initiated our cultural divide, and the Biden/Harris administration took it to a totally different level, as the excerpts reports. Some say it is so progressive and in so many different areas, it is nearing an explosive state, and they may be right. For these reasons, I rate it as “Significant Alarm.”
Commentary: I listened last Friday to Kamala Harris’s first speech as a Presidential candidate. I was struck by one of her early comments: we have two distinctly different choices in this campaign. I am looking forward to the future and Donald Trump is looking back at the past. The assembled people attending the speech then chanted “Look forward, Don’t Look Back.”
I pondered that concept and take exception to it. I look back to assess merit, because the candidate or employee will invariably act in the future as they have in the past. I look back to seek guidance to determine what to do and not do in the future. I look back to determine what to work on—to prioritize what needs to be done to improve. I look back to assess policy and how it aligns with my values. I cannot fathom looking forward without looking back, if my objective is betterment.
This entire series is built on the basis of looking back to assess merit and policy, what to do and not do, and prioritize what to work on so I can intelligently cast my vote. That is why I rated my concerns going forward. To recap them:
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Progressivism initiated our cultural divide, and the Biden/Harris administration took it to a totally different level, as the excerpts reports. Some say it is so progressive and in so many different areas, it is nearing an explosive state, and they may be right. For these reasons, I rate it as “Significant Alarm.”
Commentary: I listened last Friday to Kamala Harris’s first speech as a Presidential candidate. I was struck by one of her early comments: we have two distinctly different choices in this campaign. I am looking forward to the future and Donald Trump is looking back at the past. The assembled people attending the speech then chanted “Look forward, Don’t Look Back.”
I pondered that concept and take exception to it. I look back to assess merit, because the candidate or employee will invariably act in the future as they have in the past. I look back to seek guidance to determine what to do and not do in the future. I look back to determine what to work on—to prioritize what needs to be done to improve. I look back to assess policy and how it aligns with my values. I cannot fathom looking forward without looking back, if my objective is betterment.
This entire series is built on the basis of looking back to assess merit and policy, what to do and not do, and prioritize what to work on so I can intelligently cast my vote. That is why I rated my concerns going forward. To recap them:
- Governance – “Serious Concern”
- Climate Change – “Some Concern”
- Criminal Justice – “Significant Alarm”
- Immigration – “Serious Concern”
- Covid-19 – “Little Concern”
- Foreign Policy – “Significant Alarm”
- China – “Survival Fear”
- Economy – “Survival Fear”
- Culture Wars – “Significant Alarm”
Happy Learning,
Harley
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY – SEGMENT 10
CULTURE WARS – EXCERPTS
A NATION ON FIRE – SOME HISTORY: Every Democratic president since Carter has leaned more heavily into these fault lines – race, identity politics, activist judges, abortion, school indoctrination. The Biden administration has taken these race and culture wars to new extremes, once again signing up for his party’s most radical positions. This is stoking divides in ways unseen since the 1960s and 1970s. By 2021, the number of Americans who told Gallup that relations between white and black people were “very” or “somewhat” good were at modern lows – and worse than in the Trump years.
Yet in a Democratic party and a media obsessed with identity grievances, the story lines were entirely different. The Me-Too Movement. Black Lives Matter. Cultural appropriation. Climate justice. Systemic racism. Mass incarceration. Brown complicity. Trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Into this stumbled Ol’ Joe, with his fifty-year history of doing whatever his party had been doing at the moment. The campaign sprinted to the cultural left.
It jumped on prison reform, and on vastly expanded asylum rules. The campaign made “justice” (racial justice, climate justice, energy justice) a top theme, and upon taking office Biden issued an executive order, which his office described as emphasizing “the enormous human costs of systemic racism, persistent poverty, and other disparities and directed the Federal Government to advance an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.
What a difference a few letters can make. Carter Democrats believed in equality – an America in which every citizen has equal opportunity. Biden Democrats embrace “equity” – the forcible reallocation of resources and benefits, designed to ensure equal outcomes between marginalized communities and those who have benefited from discriminatory systems. An equity agenda by definition segments a country into boxes based on sex, race, gender, income – and highlights the differences and pits groups against each other. Carter in the 1970s envisioned an America that could move quickly to narrow its divides. Biden adopted an agenda designed to rip the country apart.
How does this work in practice? Corrosively. Consider a program the administration attempted to enact just months after Biden took office. Democrats in the initial Covid “rescue” bill included a nearly $4 billion program to forgive the loans of “socially disadvantaged “farmers. The Biden Agriculture Department later defined this to mean “one of more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian. Alaskan native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander.” Apparently, no white farmer in America has ever had trouble in the world. The program was such a blatant violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause that at least three federal courts blocked its implementation.
But the administration continued to exploit race for other political purposes. As the nation in the spring of 2021 waited for the jury to pronounce on Derek Chauvin (the George Floyd case), Biden outrageously interfered in the justice process, publicly saying that he was “praying” for the “right verdict” and that the evidence was “overwhelming.” When the jury came back with guilty counts, Biden praised the results but then went further – saying that such convictions were “much too rare” in America, essentially cheering for more police prosecutions. At a time when Americans were struggling to balance the justice for Floyd with overall support for law enforcement. Comments like these only inflamed divides.
The pro- and anti-Roe forces spent those years fighting over an issue that America isn’t today all that far apart on. Strip away the passion, and polls consistently show the same thing. A small minority of Americans are very pro-choice – advocating abortions up through the third trimester and even to the moment of birth. A small minority of Americans are very pro-life, with some against abortions even in cases of rape or incest. But the vast majority of the country is in the middle, with the view that abortion should be allowed, with restrictions. We might disagree over 12 or 15 weeks, but the views we share far outweigh our differences.
The hysteria and coercion hit its peak in early May 2022 when a draft opinion was leaked, suggesting a majority did indeed intend to overturn the precedent. Biden greeted the opinion with fury at the court – a terrible show of disrespect for the system, and clearly designed to inspire similar disrespect among his followers. He trashed the decision as “terrible, extreme.” And he claimed the justices hadn’t produced a “constitutional judgment” but rather had engaged in “an exercise in raw power.” Plenty of presidents have received Supreme Court decision they don’t like, and some outline their legal disagreements.
Biden’s contempt was worse in that it was nakedly political. He announced a flurry of emergency executive orders and actions that he claimed would help women continue to access abortion. All this was in aid of the midterm election and Biden’s claim that Republicans existed to strip rights from Americans. Biden continued through the midterms to insist that “ultra-MAGA” Republicans were a national threat, and this claim, as well as the presence of abortion initiatives on ballots, helped Democrats keep the focus on things other than the economy. But it came at the cost of further escalating the culture wars. The president’s demagoguing set the effort back by years.
Part and parcel of the Biden administration’s new emphasis on “structural racism” was the progressive embrace “critical race theory.” Teachers had been instituting critical race theory and associated curriculum in their classrooms – whether their schools approved of it or not. Moms and dads stuck at home overseeing remote learning in the pandemic, were shocked to hear educators indoctrinating even young children in the language of racial distrust and divide. The brainwashing was even more infuriating given teachers refused to return to classrooms and so were failing to educate kids on the basics – math, reading, science. CRT became a flashpoint overnight, as parents began mobbing school board meetings, demanding administrations clarify their position on racial and racist curriculums. Biden as president of the United States might have been expected to reject controversial and revisionist teaching practices, but instead the administration stirred the pot, giving its tacit support to these union demands.
The administration doubled down on its campaign to force nationwide transgender acceptance when its Agriculture Department announced in 2022 that is would henceforth hold free school lunches hostage to trans rights. Any facility that didn’t abide by the administrations trans demands could lose access to federal nutrition assistance.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023).
EXECUTIVE ACTION FRENZY: Progressivism is a political philosophy that seeks to reform society for the good of ordinary people, the middle class, the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. They want to use the power of “big government” to tax the rich, redistribute wealth, promote equal economic and social outcomes for all people, promote an extreme environmental agenda, and throw America’s borders wide open. Progressives support massive government programs and seem unconcerned about our mounting national debt. Above all, Progressives are proud of their extremism. If Joseph R. Biden never accomplishes anything else in the rest of his presidency, those 17 executive orders he signed on day one of his presidency will have made him the most Progressive president in American history.
Advance Racial Equity: When President Biden issues an executive order called “Advancing Racial Equity,” he’s not advancing equality but the opposite of equality. He is favoring one racial group over another – and he’s quite open about it. For example, on January 8, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden said, “Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian, and native American—owned small businesses and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen and rebuild.”.
Picture a small-business owner who doesn’t meet Joe Biden’s priorities. Let’s say he’s a white male who employs a large number of blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and women. In Joe Biden’s America, all these minorities are now in the back of the bus because they work for a white male employer. Why? Because Joe Biden bases his equity priorities on the race or gender identity of the business owner rather than focusing on the needs of all Americans. In his misguided attempt to create equity, as defined by Progressives, he has created massive inequity, inequality, injustice, and hardship for people who need government help.
This is no way to run a country. Joe Biden’s announcement may be a good way to signal his virtue, but it’s not a good way to help people in need. Instead of picking winners and losers according to the color of people’s skin, we should simply help those who need help, equally and impartially. If we do that, we will end up helping minorities and women, who have been truly disadvantaged and who need government help the most.
“Woke” Marxist Science: Joe Biden’s decision to submit the United States to the Paris Agreement is not driven by science but by ideology. The scientific data show that America is already doing more than any other nation to reduce greenhouse emissions.
The Biden-Harris administration is in the thrall of a far-left Marxist-influenced ideology that has infected the entire Progressive spectrum, including it environmental activism wing. If we cripple our economy to reduce emissions even further while other nations continue to spew CO2 without restraint, the air won’t get cleaner, the planet won’t get cooler – but America will become poorer and less competitive. To continue cleaning up the planet, we must keep the American economy free.
Killing Women’s Sports and Opening the Border: The issue of transgender athletes came to the fore in Connecticut at the 2019 state indoor track championships. Two transgender sprinters finished first and second in the 55-meter dash, shattering the hopes of the biologically female sprinters at the meet. As Abigail Shrier explained in the Wall Street Journal
CULTURE WARS – EXCERPTS
A NATION ON FIRE – SOME HISTORY: Every Democratic president since Carter has leaned more heavily into these fault lines – race, identity politics, activist judges, abortion, school indoctrination. The Biden administration has taken these race and culture wars to new extremes, once again signing up for his party’s most radical positions. This is stoking divides in ways unseen since the 1960s and 1970s. By 2021, the number of Americans who told Gallup that relations between white and black people were “very” or “somewhat” good were at modern lows – and worse than in the Trump years.
Yet in a Democratic party and a media obsessed with identity grievances, the story lines were entirely different. The Me-Too Movement. Black Lives Matter. Cultural appropriation. Climate justice. Systemic racism. Mass incarceration. Brown complicity. Trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Into this stumbled Ol’ Joe, with his fifty-year history of doing whatever his party had been doing at the moment. The campaign sprinted to the cultural left.
It jumped on prison reform, and on vastly expanded asylum rules. The campaign made “justice” (racial justice, climate justice, energy justice) a top theme, and upon taking office Biden issued an executive order, which his office described as emphasizing “the enormous human costs of systemic racism, persistent poverty, and other disparities and directed the Federal Government to advance an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.
What a difference a few letters can make. Carter Democrats believed in equality – an America in which every citizen has equal opportunity. Biden Democrats embrace “equity” – the forcible reallocation of resources and benefits, designed to ensure equal outcomes between marginalized communities and those who have benefited from discriminatory systems. An equity agenda by definition segments a country into boxes based on sex, race, gender, income – and highlights the differences and pits groups against each other. Carter in the 1970s envisioned an America that could move quickly to narrow its divides. Biden adopted an agenda designed to rip the country apart.
How does this work in practice? Corrosively. Consider a program the administration attempted to enact just months after Biden took office. Democrats in the initial Covid “rescue” bill included a nearly $4 billion program to forgive the loans of “socially disadvantaged “farmers. The Biden Agriculture Department later defined this to mean “one of more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian. Alaskan native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander.” Apparently, no white farmer in America has ever had trouble in the world. The program was such a blatant violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause that at least three federal courts blocked its implementation.
But the administration continued to exploit race for other political purposes. As the nation in the spring of 2021 waited for the jury to pronounce on Derek Chauvin (the George Floyd case), Biden outrageously interfered in the justice process, publicly saying that he was “praying” for the “right verdict” and that the evidence was “overwhelming.” When the jury came back with guilty counts, Biden praised the results but then went further – saying that such convictions were “much too rare” in America, essentially cheering for more police prosecutions. At a time when Americans were struggling to balance the justice for Floyd with overall support for law enforcement. Comments like these only inflamed divides.
The pro- and anti-Roe forces spent those years fighting over an issue that America isn’t today all that far apart on. Strip away the passion, and polls consistently show the same thing. A small minority of Americans are very pro-choice – advocating abortions up through the third trimester and even to the moment of birth. A small minority of Americans are very pro-life, with some against abortions even in cases of rape or incest. But the vast majority of the country is in the middle, with the view that abortion should be allowed, with restrictions. We might disagree over 12 or 15 weeks, but the views we share far outweigh our differences.
The hysteria and coercion hit its peak in early May 2022 when a draft opinion was leaked, suggesting a majority did indeed intend to overturn the precedent. Biden greeted the opinion with fury at the court – a terrible show of disrespect for the system, and clearly designed to inspire similar disrespect among his followers. He trashed the decision as “terrible, extreme.” And he claimed the justices hadn’t produced a “constitutional judgment” but rather had engaged in “an exercise in raw power.” Plenty of presidents have received Supreme Court decision they don’t like, and some outline their legal disagreements.
Biden’s contempt was worse in that it was nakedly political. He announced a flurry of emergency executive orders and actions that he claimed would help women continue to access abortion. All this was in aid of the midterm election and Biden’s claim that Republicans existed to strip rights from Americans. Biden continued through the midterms to insist that “ultra-MAGA” Republicans were a national threat, and this claim, as well as the presence of abortion initiatives on ballots, helped Democrats keep the focus on things other than the economy. But it came at the cost of further escalating the culture wars. The president’s demagoguing set the effort back by years.
Part and parcel of the Biden administration’s new emphasis on “structural racism” was the progressive embrace “critical race theory.” Teachers had been instituting critical race theory and associated curriculum in their classrooms – whether their schools approved of it or not. Moms and dads stuck at home overseeing remote learning in the pandemic, were shocked to hear educators indoctrinating even young children in the language of racial distrust and divide. The brainwashing was even more infuriating given teachers refused to return to classrooms and so were failing to educate kids on the basics – math, reading, science. CRT became a flashpoint overnight, as parents began mobbing school board meetings, demanding administrations clarify their position on racial and racist curriculums. Biden as president of the United States might have been expected to reject controversial and revisionist teaching practices, but instead the administration stirred the pot, giving its tacit support to these union demands.
The administration doubled down on its campaign to force nationwide transgender acceptance when its Agriculture Department announced in 2022 that is would henceforth hold free school lunches hostage to trans rights. Any facility that didn’t abide by the administrations trans demands could lose access to federal nutrition assistance.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023).
EXECUTIVE ACTION FRENZY: Progressivism is a political philosophy that seeks to reform society for the good of ordinary people, the middle class, the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. They want to use the power of “big government” to tax the rich, redistribute wealth, promote equal economic and social outcomes for all people, promote an extreme environmental agenda, and throw America’s borders wide open. Progressives support massive government programs and seem unconcerned about our mounting national debt. Above all, Progressives are proud of their extremism. If Joseph R. Biden never accomplishes anything else in the rest of his presidency, those 17 executive orders he signed on day one of his presidency will have made him the most Progressive president in American history.
Advance Racial Equity: When President Biden issues an executive order called “Advancing Racial Equity,” he’s not advancing equality but the opposite of equality. He is favoring one racial group over another – and he’s quite open about it. For example, on January 8, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden said, “Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian, and native American—owned small businesses and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen and rebuild.”.
Picture a small-business owner who doesn’t meet Joe Biden’s priorities. Let’s say he’s a white male who employs a large number of blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and women. In Joe Biden’s America, all these minorities are now in the back of the bus because they work for a white male employer. Why? Because Joe Biden bases his equity priorities on the race or gender identity of the business owner rather than focusing on the needs of all Americans. In his misguided attempt to create equity, as defined by Progressives, he has created massive inequity, inequality, injustice, and hardship for people who need government help.
This is no way to run a country. Joe Biden’s announcement may be a good way to signal his virtue, but it’s not a good way to help people in need. Instead of picking winners and losers according to the color of people’s skin, we should simply help those who need help, equally and impartially. If we do that, we will end up helping minorities and women, who have been truly disadvantaged and who need government help the most.
“Woke” Marxist Science: Joe Biden’s decision to submit the United States to the Paris Agreement is not driven by science but by ideology. The scientific data show that America is already doing more than any other nation to reduce greenhouse emissions.
The Biden-Harris administration is in the thrall of a far-left Marxist-influenced ideology that has infected the entire Progressive spectrum, including it environmental activism wing. If we cripple our economy to reduce emissions even further while other nations continue to spew CO2 without restraint, the air won’t get cleaner, the planet won’t get cooler – but America will become poorer and less competitive. To continue cleaning up the planet, we must keep the American economy free.
Killing Women’s Sports and Opening the Border: The issue of transgender athletes came to the fore in Connecticut at the 2019 state indoor track championships. Two transgender sprinters finished first and second in the 55-meter dash, shattering the hopes of the biologically female sprinters at the meet. As Abigail Shrier explained in the Wall Street Journal
Once male puberty is complete, testosterones suppression doesn’t undo the biological advantages men possess … It should be no surprise then, that the two trans-identified biological males permitted to compete in Connecticut state track finals against girls – neither of whom was a top sprinter as a boy – consistently claimed the top spots competing as girls. They eliminated girls from advancement to regional championships, scouting and scholarship opportunities and trophies, and they set records no girl may ever equal.
The Democratic Party has become the party of open borders. Even while American schools, churches, and small businesses remained shut down due to COVID-19 President Biden opened the border. Never in American history has a president’s priorities been so completely upside down. He placed irrational demands of his radical base above the safety, security, and jobs of Americans.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021)
INSIDE THE TRANSGENDER EMPIRE: The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activists’ teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.”
It is clear that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. This is the great project of the transgender movement: to abolish the distinctions of man and women, to transcend the limitations established by God and nature, and to connect the personal struggle of trans individuals to the political struggle to transform society in a radical way.
According to survey data, up to 80% of trans individuals suffer from serious psychopathologies and one-quarter of black trans youth attempt suicide each year. “Gender-affirming care” largely fails to solve these problems, yet the doctors use these failures to justify even more extreme interventions up to the final one: genital reconstruction.
Source: Imprimis: Inside the Transgender Empire by Cristopher Rufo (September 2023)
DISPARATE IMPACT THINKING IS DESTROYING OUR CIVILIZATION: Many thought that STEM – the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics -would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses:” racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in cause-and-effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness. As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”
Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass-fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students – and that is precisely the point.
The average Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) score for black applicants is a standard deviation below the average score of white applicants. Some medical schools have waived the submission of MCAT scores altogether for black applicants.
Standards are falling in the legal profession. State bar associations are also busy watering down standards to eliminate disparate impact. In 2020, California lowered the pass score on its bar exam because black applicants were disproportionately failing. Only five percent of black law school graduates passed the California bar on their first try in February 2020, compared to 52% of white law school graduates. The lack of proportional representation among California’s attorneys was held to be proof of a discriminatory credentialing system.
The pressure to eliminate the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) requirements for law school admissions is growing, because it too has a disparate impact. As a single mother told an ABA panel, “I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a lawyer just due to not being able to successfully handle this test.” Note the assumption: the problems always lie with the test, never with the test taker. The LSAT requirement will almost certainly be axed.
Uncomfortable Facts: We need to face up to the truth: the reason for racial underrepresentation across a range of meritocratic fields is the academic skills gap. The reason racial overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is the crime gap. And let me issue a trigger warning here. I am going to raise uncomfortable facts that many well-intentioned Americans would rather not hear. Keeping such facts off stage may ordinarily be appropriate as a matter of civil etiquette. But it is too late for such forbearance now. If we cannot acknowledge the skills gap and the behavior gap, we are going to continue destroying our civilizational legacy. Let me also make the obvious point that I am talking about group averages. Thousands of individuals within underperforming groups outperform not only their own group average but great numbers of people within other groups as well.
Here are the relevant facts. In 2019, 66% of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic and to read a graph. Only 7% of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically in a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. Fifty percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only four percent were advanced.
According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only 3% of black high school seniors were college ready in 2023. The disparities in other such tests – SAT, LSAT, GRE, and GMAT – are just as wide. Remember these data when politicians and others vilify Americans as racist on the ground that this or that institution is not properly diverse. But in light of these skill gaps, it is irrational to expect 13% black representation on medial school faulty or among a law firm’s partners under meritocratic standards. At present you can have proportional diversity, or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.
As for the criminal justice system, the bodies speak for themselves. Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in the same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are just 13% of the population. The country turns its eyes away. Who is killing these black victims? Not the police, not whites, but other blacks. As far as interracial violence, blacks are a greater threat to whites than whites are to blacks. Blacks commit 85% of all- non-lethal violence between blacks and white. A black person is 35 times more likely to commit an act of non-lethal violence against a white person than vice versa. Yet the national narrative insists on the opposite idea – and too many dutifully play along.
These crime disparities mean that the police cannot restore law and order in neighborhoods where innocent people are most being victimized without having a disparate impact on black criminals. So, the political establishment has decided not to restore law and order at all.
Civilization at Stake: It is urgent that we fight back against disparate impact thinking. As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the Left wins, and our civilization will continue to crumble. We must stop apologizing for Western Civilization. To be sure, slavey and segregation were grotesque violations of America’s founding ideals. For much of history black Americans suffered injustice and gratuitous cruelty. Today, however, every mainstream institution is twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many underrepresented minorities as possible. Yet those same institutions grovelingly accuse themselves of racism.
The West has liberated the world from universal squalor and disease, thanks to the scientific method and the Western passion for discovery and knowledge. It has given the world plumbing, hot showers in frigid winters, flight, clean water, steel, antibiotics, and just about every structure and every device that we take for granted in our miraculously privileged existence – and I use the word “privilege” here to refer to anyone whose life has been transformed by Western ingenuity – i.e., virtually every human being on the planet.
What do we do in response to such civilization immolation? We proclaim that standards are not racist, and that excellence is not racist. We assert that categories like race, gender, and sexual preference are never qualifications for a job. I know for a fact that being female is not an accomplishment. I am equally sure that being gay or being black are also not accomplishments. Should conservative political candidates’ campaign against disparate impact thinking and in favor of standards of merit? Of course they should! They will be accused of waging a culture war. But it is the progressive elites, not their conservative opponents, who are engaging in cultural revolution!
Lowering standards helps no one since high expectations are the key to achievement. In defense of excellence we must speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down.
Source: Imprimis: Disparate Impact Thinking is Destroying Our Civilization by Heather MacDonald (February 2024).
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021)
INSIDE THE TRANSGENDER EMPIRE: The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activists’ teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.”
It is clear that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. This is the great project of the transgender movement: to abolish the distinctions of man and women, to transcend the limitations established by God and nature, and to connect the personal struggle of trans individuals to the political struggle to transform society in a radical way.
According to survey data, up to 80% of trans individuals suffer from serious psychopathologies and one-quarter of black trans youth attempt suicide each year. “Gender-affirming care” largely fails to solve these problems, yet the doctors use these failures to justify even more extreme interventions up to the final one: genital reconstruction.
Source: Imprimis: Inside the Transgender Empire by Cristopher Rufo (September 2023)
DISPARATE IMPACT THINKING IS DESTROYING OUR CIVILIZATION: Many thought that STEM – the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics -would escape the diversity sledgehammer. They were wrong. The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy. Nature magazine declares that science manifests one of “humankind’s worst excesses:” racism. The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in cause-and-effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness. As a result of this falsehood, we are eviscerating meritocratic and behavioral standards in accordance with what is known as “disparate impact analysis.”
Consider medicine. Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass-fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students – and that is precisely the point.
The average Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) score for black applicants is a standard deviation below the average score of white applicants. Some medical schools have waived the submission of MCAT scores altogether for black applicants.
Standards are falling in the legal profession. State bar associations are also busy watering down standards to eliminate disparate impact. In 2020, California lowered the pass score on its bar exam because black applicants were disproportionately failing. Only five percent of black law school graduates passed the California bar on their first try in February 2020, compared to 52% of white law school graduates. The lack of proportional representation among California’s attorneys was held to be proof of a discriminatory credentialing system.
The pressure to eliminate the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) requirements for law school admissions is growing, because it too has a disparate impact. As a single mother told an ABA panel, “I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a lawyer just due to not being able to successfully handle this test.” Note the assumption: the problems always lie with the test, never with the test taker. The LSAT requirement will almost certainly be axed.
Uncomfortable Facts: We need to face up to the truth: the reason for racial underrepresentation across a range of meritocratic fields is the academic skills gap. The reason racial overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is the crime gap. And let me issue a trigger warning here. I am going to raise uncomfortable facts that many well-intentioned Americans would rather not hear. Keeping such facts off stage may ordinarily be appropriate as a matter of civil etiquette. But it is too late for such forbearance now. If we cannot acknowledge the skills gap and the behavior gap, we are going to continue destroying our civilizational legacy. Let me also make the obvious point that I am talking about group averages. Thousands of individuals within underperforming groups outperform not only their own group average but great numbers of people within other groups as well.
Here are the relevant facts. In 2019, 66% of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic and to read a graph. Only 7% of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically in a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. Fifty percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only four percent were advanced.
According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only 3% of black high school seniors were college ready in 2023. The disparities in other such tests – SAT, LSAT, GRE, and GMAT – are just as wide. Remember these data when politicians and others vilify Americans as racist on the ground that this or that institution is not properly diverse. But in light of these skill gaps, it is irrational to expect 13% black representation on medial school faulty or among a law firm’s partners under meritocratic standards. At present you can have proportional diversity, or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.
As for the criminal justice system, the bodies speak for themselves. Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in the same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are just 13% of the population. The country turns its eyes away. Who is killing these black victims? Not the police, not whites, but other blacks. As far as interracial violence, blacks are a greater threat to whites than whites are to blacks. Blacks commit 85% of all- non-lethal violence between blacks and white. A black person is 35 times more likely to commit an act of non-lethal violence against a white person than vice versa. Yet the national narrative insists on the opposite idea – and too many dutifully play along.
These crime disparities mean that the police cannot restore law and order in neighborhoods where innocent people are most being victimized without having a disparate impact on black criminals. So, the political establishment has decided not to restore law and order at all.
Civilization at Stake: It is urgent that we fight back against disparate impact thinking. As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the Left wins, and our civilization will continue to crumble. We must stop apologizing for Western Civilization. To be sure, slavey and segregation were grotesque violations of America’s founding ideals. For much of history black Americans suffered injustice and gratuitous cruelty. Today, however, every mainstream institution is twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many underrepresented minorities as possible. Yet those same institutions grovelingly accuse themselves of racism.
The West has liberated the world from universal squalor and disease, thanks to the scientific method and the Western passion for discovery and knowledge. It has given the world plumbing, hot showers in frigid winters, flight, clean water, steel, antibiotics, and just about every structure and every device that we take for granted in our miraculously privileged existence – and I use the word “privilege” here to refer to anyone whose life has been transformed by Western ingenuity – i.e., virtually every human being on the planet.
What do we do in response to such civilization immolation? We proclaim that standards are not racist, and that excellence is not racist. We assert that categories like race, gender, and sexual preference are never qualifications for a job. I know for a fact that being female is not an accomplishment. I am equally sure that being gay or being black are also not accomplishments. Should conservative political candidates’ campaign against disparate impact thinking and in favor of standards of merit? Of course they should! They will be accused of waging a culture war. But it is the progressive elites, not their conservative opponents, who are engaging in cultural revolution!
Lowering standards helps no one since high expectations are the key to achievement. In defense of excellence we must speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down.
Source: Imprimis: Disparate Impact Thinking is Destroying Our Civilization by Heather MacDonald (February 2024).
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
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