AnotherMike-
It’s not entirely unmoderated, you’re just not crossing my lines. If you’re not spamming, behaving abusively, or otherwise shutting down conversation, that I find your views misguided or distasteful is beside the point.

The statements affirm the same underlying premise: different people see/deal with/interpret the world differently. But the first statement assigns no value, just highlights the difference “will make a difference in our judging”. The second statement implies the superiority (not just a difference or perspective) of a specific group, White men.

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

“On another note, there’s the small matter of inherent cognitive differences between racial groups that provides the most parsimonious explanation for the outsize representation of Whites, and particularly White men, in intellectually demanding fields.”

Why is the first statement considering wise, but not the second.

However, things don’t have to be that way. It is also possible to help minorities in ways that indirectly help whites. For example, it’s worthwhile to spend extra tax dollars to get minorities a quality education. You’ll more than make back the investment, as you will turn out minority graduates who are more productive, put more earnings into the economy, pay more taxes, etc.

Uh, huh. “Minority-friendly” policies over the past five decades have resulted in a net transfer of over $1 trillion (yes, a thousand billion) from Whites to non-Whites in the form of entitlements consumed disproportionately by non-Whites and paid for overwhelmingly by Whites. Welfare dependency and crime among non-Whites increased significantly over most of that period.

Reality sure can be nasty and thick-headed sometimes.

Well, that’s all the pearls I’ll be casting for now. (And thank you, Julian, for running an unmoderated blog.)

This just can’t be the case, unless you think there’s something inherent in minorities which makes them more likely to need welfare or commit crimes. Equating minorities with welfare and crime doesn’t help anyone, least of all minorities. Poverty and social background have much more direct relationships with welfare and crime.

We need to communicate that minority-friendly policies don’t take anything away from whites, they just grow the pie.

I don’t think the argument can be made that all, or even most, minority-friendly policies are Pareto improvements.

If “anti-racists” a/k/a reality deniers were engaging in a lonely struggle against Mother Nature, with the inevitable consequences only theirs to bear, I’d have no problem. Unfortunately, the rest of us have been/are/will be paying the price for their delusions.

And look, we’ve just been given a fine example of how free speech will fare in a majority non-White nation: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/17/police.racism.lawsuit/index.html

If you think there’s such a thing as a right not to be offended, your franchise should be rescinded.

“Idiotic” is the right word for it.

As Julian rightly points out, such a system cannot exist at this level of selection. Of the dozen or so people who have excellent credentials for the SCOTUS, Mr. Obama himself could probably identify them all from a small fraction of their de-personalized C.V. He has some knowledge of constitutional law, you know.

I don’t think anybody is saying that “using ethnicity as a tiebreaker *forever*” is a good thing. We all understand that this goal is motivated by history. Our remembrance of history will fade, but it will only fade when racial minorities have a fair opportunity to represent themselves at the highest levels of government, business and academics.

The generation of “affirmative-action-enabled” leaders is just now reaching the pinnacle of their careers. We need a generation or two of well-mixed leadership — even if that mix has to be somewhat “forced” — so we can put the injustices of the past three centuries behind us.

The damping effect of affirmative action is not perfect, and the pendulum may swing back and forth a little bit before the long-term effects of racism are neutralized. But it will happen, and making space on the national stage for qualified people of different races is entirely appropriate.