On April 24, Jesse Jackson came to the Institute of Politics to debate the topic of affirmative action and delivered what must be considered one of his finest speeches. For ninety minutes, Jackson performed rhetorical cartwheels, denouncing everything from the oppression of black Americans in the pre-Civil War era to the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision to the alleged lack of ice skating rinks in Washington, D.C. But not once did Jackson provide a principled defense of affirmative action. Instead, by focusing on previous injustices, and by using those injustices as justifications for present policies, Jackson affirmed what opponents of affirmative action have always held - that affirmative action is an attempt to turn the tables on past injustice by attempting to assuage present guilt for past crimes.
When dealing with this controversial topic, we must remember the words of black scholar Shelby Steele - "suffering can be endured and overcome, it cannot be repaid." And we must never forget that two wrongs do not make a right. Unfortunately, this nation cannot offer consolation prizes to the many people whom we have wronged in our history. We cannot validate current discrimination to make up for past discrimination. If we as a society come to agree (as we should) with Dr. Martin Luther King and with the civil rights leaders of the 1960s that the morally arbitrary factor of race must not play any part in our determination of the worth of our citizens, we must not waver in that decision. We must promote the color blind society that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of - the society that judges people "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Affirmative action is a deviation from that ideal and ought to be laid to rest.
However, affirmative action is not merely immoral, it harms the very people that it is intended to help. Affirmative action is the ultimate Band-Aid solution in that it deals with the symptoms of social illnesses and not the illnesses themselves. It masks the true problems facing minority communities - and in so doing, it does an injustice to those it should be aiding. Affirmative action makes it a lot easier to avoid entirely the problems of broken families, substandard education and lack of employment that beset certain minority communities.
Some believe that there is no need to solve these problems, because affirmative action will take care of them. People use affirmative action as an excuse to ignore actual modern racism. Indeed, affirmative action places blinders on society, making us all believe that our racial situation is rosier than it actually is and preventing many of us from moving towards granting true equal opportunity.
Furthermore, affirmative action promotes a culture of victimization in our society. It sends the message to certain members of society that "the system" is against them, and that no matter what they do they will not be able to overcome seemingly pervasive societal racism. In effect, it urges people not to try to better themselves and dismisses as futile attempts to do so. This certainly is not the way to "keep hope alive."
But worse than that, affirmative action is insulting to minorities in America. It tells them, in no uncertain terms, that they could not make it without affirmative action. It tells them that they need a crutch to succeed and to survive. And in that way, affirmative action is one of the most degrading and demeaning social policies in existence today.
As the son of immigrants, I have seen first hand that America promotes hard work, education and determination. We as a nation must continue to promote the values of education, strong families and diligence if ever we are to realize the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King defended in his immortal speech before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. We as a nation must promote a society that does not push you ahead or hold you back because of factors that you have no control over - factors such as race and gender.
The thunder of the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was practically drowned out by the footsteps of politicians descending on the city in an attempt to show how compassionate they were. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton both put in appearances and were shocked and horrified for the benefit of the TV cameras. Trying to use a tragedy to look presidential - or speakerly - is, while slightly nauseating, a fairly normal part of American politics, but exploiting it to further your own agenda is nothing short of reprehensible.
When Newt Gingrich attempted to draw a connection between Susan Smith's murder of her two young sons and the years of Democratic rule in Washington, the nation - especially the media - was largely skeptical. Did George Mitchell and Tom Foley really advocate infanticide? But now we are forced to watch Bill Clinton do much the same thing as he tries to link radio talk show hosts - never his closest allies - and the Oklahoma bombing. There is more talk of gun control, and it is hard to watch TV or open a newspaper without finding the words "militia" and "right-wing extremists" in the same sentence. And Clinton's approval rating has gone up eleven points.
In the first few months of the Republican Congress, Clinton has already seen the gutting of his precious national service program and most of his ineffectual crime bill. His major - only? - remaining legislative accomplishments have been gun control measures - the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban. Now those are in jeopardy too. So instead of making a constructive argument to keep them, if indeed one can be made, he has decided to do what the Democrats have done best in the past few months: try to make the Republicans look scary. First there was the hackneyed though fairly innocuous"The Republicans are the party of the rich," followed by the equally facile and even more ridiculous "The Republicans want to starve thousands of schoolchildren." Today's message is apparently "The Republicans want to kill you."
The suspects in custody may at one time have been members of the Michigan Militia. But it does not follow that all militias are the right-wing paramilitary groups dedicated to the overthrow of the government that the politics of fear is making them out to be. Neither Newt Gingrich nor Rush Limbaugh nor the National Rifle Association had anything to do with the Oklahoma bombing. The President attacks "purveyors of hatred and division" on the airwaves, apparently referring to talk radio. But hefails to recognize the distinction between talk and terrorism, between dissent and hatred.
By trying to wring political gain out of the Oklahoma tragedy, Clinton cheapens the deaths of the dozens of people killed by the bomb. When some real connection is made between the right-to-bear-arms movement and the bombing, not just the fact that prime suspect Timothy McVeigh may once have been a member of a militia movement, maybe then I'll be able to listen to him denounce right-wingers without my stomach turning. But until then, he should concentrate on the actual bombers - not anyone with whom they have ever associated - and their conviction, sentencing and execution.
After losing a screen saver and an expired passport in the mail last winter, I filed a lost mail form but decided not to pursue the issue any further. In early March I discovered through a thread on a Harvard Internet newsgroup that other students had had similar problems. People posted stories of missing or damaged packages containing airline tickets, IRS information, and antibiotics. One student had received a taped-up package, the contents of which someone else had removed. Another student reported that a mislabeled package had spent months in a storage closet until one of his friends happened to notice it. Not knowing whether to blame these mail problems on corruption, ineptitude, or just bureaucratic inefficiency, I decided to search for an explanation.
Harvard students' mail comes to an office at South Station and is then shipped to the Central Square Post Office. A US Postal carrier delivers the mail to each of the Harvard Houses and to the Science Center. Employees of the House superintendents' offices and of the Harvard Yard Mail Center then distribute letters into students' mailboxes. They hold large packages at central windows until students come to claim them.
Mail sometimes arrives at the wrong location, either because of incorrect addressing or because the US Postal Service errs. Such letters go to Harvard's Mail Forwarding Office at 219 Western Avenue; employees at this office are supposed to send the letters to their proper destination.
The head of the Harvard Yard Mail Center proposed several explanations for my problems. First, the US Postal Service might never have delivered my packages. Another possibility was that the Forwarding Office was holding my packages because they did not have my name entered in their database. His final suggestion was the most disturbing: someone could have stolen my packages directly from my mailbox - the Science Center mailboxes remain unlocked unless students turn their locks away from the final number of the combination after closing the boxes.
When I called the Forwarding Office, which did not have my packages, an employee suggested that I should call the Central Square Post Office. The US Postal worker whom I then called said my problem sounded internal to Harvard. Maybe the university distributors had placed my packages in the wrong box.
In short, there is room for error at every stage of the mail distribution process. No one is responsible for lost mail; everyone blames someone else.
Tell people to send you important items by a service that allows you to trace mail and that accepts responsibility for lost packages - registered mail and private carriers such as UPS are fairly good. An employee of your mail office will sign for letters and packages sent by these services. They will then hold the mail until you come to claim it.
Such guaranteed services are fast and secure, but they are also relatively expensive. Harvard really should work to make regular mail more reliable. The university should place an employee in charge of searching for lost packages, recording complaints, and attempting to discover why the system is failing. Currently, there is no recourse for students with missing packages.
My experience with Harvard's postal service and the US Postal Service exemplifies the problems with large bureaucracies. The employees might be wonderful individuals, but they have no real stake in providing optimum performance. They usually do a good job, but none of them is willing to claim responsibility for errors. When students lose mail, the workers are friendly but not very helpful. Until Harvard improves its system, tell your friends and family not to send you anything more significant than a postcard by regular mail.
-Matt Selove
William F. Buckley, Jr. once commented that he would rather be governed by the first one hundred people in the Cambridge phone book than the Harvard faculty. He may have been on to something. If only he had carried his thought to its logical extreme.
Every state has a certain number of Representatives. Fire them. Who needs them? Barney Frank has no more qualifications than Joe Citizen. We need look no further than the judiciary for a more effective system. Instead of electing representatives, select people months in advance for a week of House duty. Each state would select the appropriate number of representatives through a regulated random sample of citizenry records. For instance, nine lucky guys or gals could win a trip to Jefferson City to be a Missouri Representative to the United States House of Representatives for a week.
On each Monday, in each state, the new representatives could assemble in their particular capital city in one particular room. In some cities there would be only one person, in others as many as forty. The meeting room could be equipped with a live video-teleconferencing system; each Representative would be provided a computer to access past House documents.
How much would this cost? The price of fifty office rooms, fifty video-teleconferencing systems, and about five hundred computers should be far short of a hundred million dollars. The amount of money saved by keeping current incumbents away from the money would far exceed this.
What, you may wonder, would happen to the complex checks and balances our founding parents set up? Although this may be impossible without mirrors, you should turn to yourself and take a good look. Perhaps then you will realize just who provides a check on politicians; a check which the founders did not, perhaps, comprehend.
Luckily, the Senate would still be composed of the same stale curmudgeons who operate it today. Bills that need to be ratified by both chambers would be filibustered until people forgot about them. Only bills of clear merit would get through both the House that originally passed the bill and the House that would discuss the Senate's revised version. Our founding fathers did not forsee a future in which politicians would create heaps of bills. They assumed there would be a few bills every once in a while and that would be all. With the House duty system, that is the way it would be.
Since all tax bills originate in the House, the only people citizens could blame for excessive taxes would be their peers. Since it is unlikely that there exist more than three hundred people in this country who would prefer to pay more taxes, it is improbable that a tax increase would ever pass this new House. Since it is impossible to form a party and garner support, encouragement, and a national headquarters within a week, the House duty system would conform to George Washington's belief that no political parties should exist.
Are there any drawbacks? What about wars? If that week's representatives don't want to send their children into Somalia bravely to deliver Band-Aids and chicken fingers, they will not have to. On the other hand, if they wish to declare war on Canada over some nice lumber, the Senate, composed, as you may remember, of stale curmudgeons, will most likely say no remembering their middle-aged years during the revolutionary war and how France was nice to us. This or any other bright leap of logic may stem the war-hungry representatives. It is, we may note in passing, unlikely that the general citizenry is any more bellicose than politicians. Indeed, unlike politicians, they do not have the connections to ensure a safe haven in Indiana or Moscow.
Jury duty has worked surprisingly well. House duty would translate all of the benefits of jury duty to representative democracy. There is no reason to delay.