Contrarian columnist and New Hampshire U. S. Senate
candidate Andy Martin juxtaposes the chaos in the White House today with the turbulence
at the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Andy says that “affirmative
action,” supposedly prohibited by the 1964 Act, is undermining the safety and
security of the United States
and promoting incompetent public officials such as Attorney General Eric Holder
and President Barack Obama. Andy predicts that our “great national experiment”
with affirmative action in electing Obama to the presidency will end badly and
scar the United States
for a generation. Andy remains committed to civil rights and racial quality but
notes that President Obama’s incompetence will leave a legacy that will linger long
after Obama is gone.
Andy charges that affirmative action ultimately creates a
sense of arrogance and entitlement for its beneficiaries. The negative
consequences of affirmative action explain the current disorder in the Obama
White House. Eric Holder had it backwards in a recent ABC News interview; he is
not the target of racism. Rather, he has been the beneficiary of affirmative
action and that has made all the difference in his attitude towards public
service. Holder was promoted to a position for which he was manifestly
unqualified; Holder is now angry that the public views his performance
unfavorably.
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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
“The
Last Days of Affirmative Action; President Obama’s incompetence will undermine
racial preferences forever”
(MANCHESTER, NH)
(July 17, 2014)
Dear Fellow American:
This commentary is my reaction to
the recent remarks by Attorney General Eric Holder that he and President Barack
Obama are the victims of racism. Holder’s remarks force us to confront the unfortunate
reality that our civil rights laws have created. We must also confront the results
of the “affirmative action” remedies that have bedeviled our society for almost
fifty years.
As a candidate for the United
States Senate I am committed to equality of opportunity, not equality of
outcomes. We should not and cannot tolerate diminished standards and lowered
expectations of competence in our public officials and employees.
Affirmative action has been a
controversial subject since it surfaced in the late 1960’s. Let’s review the
history before we see how affirmative action gave us a president who is totally
unqualified and completely incapable of discharging the duties of the office. In
addition, affirmative action has created a sense of entitlement and ultimately
arrogance in both President Obama and some of his appointees that is destroying
both his administration and our society.
1. My own personal civil rights
background
I
grew up on a college campus in a home that was very hospitable to civil rights.
My home town in Connecticut had a generally color-blind environment. In first or
second grade, one of my closest friends was Norman Hunter, who lived in the
projects. Children, of course, are often color-blind; those of us who grow up
in such environments are fortunate indeed.
As a college football player, my
roommate Art McCaskill was an African-American. Together we followed the civil
rights battles taking place in the south. Art came from Centralia, Illinois where race and class were sharply defined and where
resistance to civil rights occasionally became violent. We remained close
friends after college.
My own church has been very
heavily involved in aid to Africa and helping to encourage the struggle for liberation in South Africa. I remain as committed to civil rights today as I was as a
college student. There is no place for bigotry or hatred in our society.
2. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the greatest pieces of legislation in
American history. The law remains so today. Earlier this month we celebrated
the signing of the 1964 Act on July 2, 1964.
But the 1964 Act was sold to Congress and sold to the American people as a law
that prevented and precluded “affirmative action.” Affirmative action is
loosely defined as mandatory steps by government and private industry to ignore
the qualifications of individuals and to hire and promote on the basis of
racial quotas or “goals” for racial and ethnic enhancement.
How did a law that barred
affirmative action become a law that mandated affirmative action? The federal
courts were importuned to ignore the statutory language and to invent
“remedies” that “redressed” genuine problems; unfortunately the courts did so
in a way that countermanded the specific intent of Congress.
Adding to the problems created by
the growth in demand for “affirmative action” was the fact that our federal
courts have historically created a doctrine of “standing” that effectively bars
individual from challenging general government actions except in the narrowest
of circumstances.
This week legal scholars debated
whether Speaker John Boehner can sue President Obama for violating the
“faithfully executed” clause of the Constitution. The reason? Boehner may lack
“standing” to sue on behalf of Congress and the amorphous “public interest” even
though the merits of Boehner’s claims are painfully obvious.
Obama is not “faithfully
executing” the law. He is contemptuously and intentionally violating our
nation’s statutes. Under the judge-created doctrine of standing, however, no
one may have a legal right to challenge Obama’s illegal behavior. (Memo to file
if I get to the U. S. Senate: we need to amend the U. S. Constitution to give
Congress “standing” to challenge the president in court.)
3. My own efforts at
“affirmative assistance”
After
law school I remained in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois for several years. I had the occasional need of an
electrician. One of my closest law school friends knew a porter at his
fraternity that did electrical repairs; I became friendly with John Mitchell.
Like many African-Americans, John M. had been treated harshly by life. He had
the survived the hard knocks but was still struggling to succeed. He did not
have an electrician’s license. With my encouragement and financial assistance
he obtained the license. Eventually I helped him get an electrical contractor’s
permit as well. But at each stage John was insistent that he must have the
“qualifications” before we approached the next step. He did not want to be
promoted without being qualified for his new assignment. He did not want to be
the beneficiary of affirmative action.
4. Affirmative action begins to
poison the workplace
My own belief is that many African-Americans
and other minorities have never wanted individuals to be promoted on the basis
of quotas when those persons lack the experience or qualifications to do the
job. The reason: failure of an unqualified individual could taint the
perception of an entire ethnic group.
The hydraulic pressure created by
government-based liberals to undo the damage of centuries of racial deprivation
and to do so in the course of a few years unfortunately created during the
1960’s and 70’s an environment where individuals were promoted without being
qualified for their new positions. The consequences and public reaction to the
problem of unqualified people working in government has been acute resentment
by citizens who have had to deal with these unqualified public employees.
Most minorities have succeeded on
the basis of their own merit. In business it is very difficult to manage a
plant or a product line if you are unqualified, whatever your racial or ethnic
background. Likewise, in the military, affirmative action cannot be a factor
when lives are at stake. Overall, the 1964 Civil Rights Act has succeeded in
opening the world of opportunity to minorities, and that is precisely as it
should be.
But affirmative action, which in
many instances hardened into “quotas,” has left lingering distaste in the
mouths of many Americans. In one of his reelection campaigns Senator Jesse
Helms ran a powerful anti-affirmative action commercial that may have turned
the tide in his reelection.
The net effect of promoting some unqualified
individuals based on quotas has been that the gains of those individuals who
succeeded and prospered because they were qualified have been diluted by the
promotion of the individuals who were unqualified and only advanced because of
affirmative action quotas.
The disastrous consequence of
affirmative action in the White house is that beneficiaries such as Obama and
Holder have developed an elevated sense of entitlement to special treatment. Entitlement
often hardens into arrogance and contempt for ordinary Americans. Both Obama
and Holder appear to suffer from this syndrome.
When Holder was interviewed by ABC
News earlier this week he claimed that he and Obama were being attacked
politically because of the innate racism of American society. Nothing could be
further from reality. Americans are opposing Obama because of his policies and
politics, not because of his racial background.
5. Obama steps onto the
national stage
One
of the challengers of analyzing affirmative action is that the results of that
policy take decades to manifest themselves. Although affirmative action began
decades ago a presidential candidate who had been the intended beneficiary of
affirmative action did not appear until 2008.
When
Senator Barack Obama began to be seriously considered as a presidential
candidate I enhanced my research into his family background and personal
history. That research is still continuing, a decade later.
Many Americans and especially the
mainstream media wanted to promote the election of an African-American
president. They overlooked Obama’s deficiencies and lack of experience and
presented him to an unsuspecting and vulnerable voting public. People were
afraid to oppose Obama because they were afraid of being called racists.
6. The “Incredible Shrinking
Obama”
When
Obama entered the White House he claimed that he would be a transformative
president. Instead, he has become the “incredible shrinking president.” Obama
is the only recent occupant of the White House who has not grown after entering
the Oval Office. Usually the challenges of the presidency cause occupants to
“grow” to meet those challenges. Obama has done the opposite. He is visibly
shrinking before our eyes. Almost every day some Obama policy or promise, such
as “lead from behind” or “you can keep your doctor,” is discredited.
7. The Obama presidency is
unraveling, both him and his policies
Today
there is a growing public frustration with President Obama and many of his appointees
such as Eric Holder. Foreign policy is in a shambles. Our southern border is
being invaded by illegal aliens. The economic “recovery” is insipid at best.
Tens of millions of Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. Valiant
soldiers are being “fired” and dumped on the street at a time when national
security risks are increasing and we need a strong military. Even minorities
are protesting. Why is Obama neglecting urgent needs in our cities and instead
requesting billions in aid for illegal aliens?
Economic hardship is rampant among
young people. In a situation similar to that which existed during the Great
Depression (1929-1941), when family formation was postponed for over a decade,
today young people cannot afford to marry, cannot afford to start a household,
cannot afford to purchase and furnish a home. We should not be surprised that
there is policy-based hostility to President Obama. What is surprising is that
he and Holder respond by crying “racism.” Their sense of arrogance and entitlement
is overwhelming and overweening.
8. Obama will leave a legacy of
bitterness and hostility
The
incompetence of both Obama and Holder will leave a legacy of bitterness and
resentment when they finally exit government. Affirmative action also undermines
our confidence in the professional accomplishments of other persons operating
under the umbrella of preferential treatment. Is Jeh Johnson competent to serve
as a cabinet officer? I have no idea. But many voters will question the
qualifications of all of Obama’s minority appointments precisely because he is
making those appointments not based solely on merit but rather on the basis of
affirmative action.
Obama’s arrogance, and his
delusional belief that he and Holder are victims of “racism,” is an insult to
the American people who voted for Obama twice. Voters are against Obama not
because of his race but because of his socialist agenda and total incompetence
(unless you subscribe to the far-fetched theory that Obama wanted to send the
whole world into a tailspin and that creating worldwide disaster was indeed his
“policy”).
8. America will be “open for business” after Obama leaves
When
Hillary and Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 they stripped the White
House of every article they could carry off, almost down to the floor boards.
And, as part of their congenital greed, they sold off pardons to Marc Rich and
other Democratic Party contributors. Money, money, money. Since then the
Clinton Spin Machine has constantly injected vapors into the American psyche in
order to make people “forget” just how bad the Clintons were.
But today the years in which Clinton served in the White House look pretty good by comparison with
Obama’s. That is because an out-of-control President Clinton was handcuffed by
the American electorate in 1994. Clinton was prevented from implementing his harebrained schemes
and Hillary Clinton’s “Hillarycare.”
The Clintons have now become wealthy entertainers. Like stand-up comics
or “experts” they traverse the nation collecting hundreds of thousands of
dollars for “speeches” which offer very little substance and a huge dollop of
nostalgia for the “the years before Obama.”
When Obama leaves the White House he
too will probably earn hundreds of millions of dollars and the public will
conveniently forget what an incompetent “leader” Obama was while in office. The
United States
of America
will open for business the day after Obama is finished. We will start undoing
and repairing the damage that eight years of Obama inflicted on the American
people. Obama’s successor will inherit the mess Obama leaves behind.
Every American citizen will have
been diminished by the first and very likely last affirmative action president.
Affirmative action will “die” with Obama. The great national experience in
“enhanced incompetence” will have ended with him. Affirmative action? R.I.P.
The bottom line: we need to think
deeply about why Obama is destroying America, and why he seeks refuge in delusional claims of racism. Obama’s
and Holder’s senses of entitlement and arrogance, and their contempt for our
history and our Constitution, pose a danger to every American.
Faithfully,
Andy Martin
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Executive Editor and publisher of the “Internet Powerhouse,” www.ContrarianCommentary.com.
He comments on New Hampshire, national and international events with
more than four decades of investigative and analytical experience both in the USA and around the world. For more, go to:
www.AndyMartin.com
He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of
Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City
University of New York (LaGuardia CC, Bronx CC).
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