Comments
by Scoper...
The Real Power of the Robe
(Part I)
What is an "activist judge?"
A judge who tries (usually with success) to legislate from the bench, in
clear violation of Constitutional separation of powers. Ideally the term
is an oxymoron, because activism trumps justice every time. And when a
judge tries to make the law instead of carrying out the law, generally
everybody loses.
Federal Judge James McMillan
was just such a man. He's dead now and can't defend himself, but that's
OK. Since 1969, parents in the Charlotte, North Carolina area have been
unable to defend their children against him. Indeed, the Ghost of McMillan
jumped up again this month and said, "Boo!"
Some background is in order.
Back in the days of Woodstock and flower-power, McMillan ordered Charlotte-Mecklenburg
schools to be desegregated by busing the youngsters, black and white, all
over the city in accordance with some grand central plan. I don't use "central
plan" by accident: the old Soviet Union had a lot of them.
The "reasoning" behind this
should make your jaw drop in disbelief. From Reconstruction until Brown
vs. Board of Education, many school systems assigned students to schools
on the basis of their race. In 1954, it became illegal to do that. McMillan
didn't stick his nose into it until 15 years later, saying, in effect:
we've got to correct the earlier injustice of assigning students based
on their skin color BY ASSIGNING STUDENTS BASED ON THEIR SKIN COLOR!
Say what?
In other words, it's quite
all right to do something to someone BECAUSE he's black or BECAUSE he's
white, as long as you do it for the "right reasons." With this, Martin
Luther King's dream of a color-blind society dies a year after he does.
The buses started rolling
in Charlotte in 1970 (one of the first places that was done, by the way.)
They've been rolling for 30 years, millions of miles and at considerable
expense to the local taxpayers, helped along by the Supreme Court, which
upheld McMillan's ruling in 1971. The same court that decided (rightfully)
in 1954 that it was a crime to treat people differently on account of race
now says race must be the very BASIS for treating people differently. Look
at his skin, make your decision.
There were riots, bombings,
mass demonstrations, police dogs, fire hoses and assassinations over this
very issue. But when the GOVERNMENT is doing the choosing, suddenly everything's
fine. And that, my friend, is the theory behind forced busing. Would you
like an aspirin?
Back to Charlotte. There's
no evidence that a single child has been helped by being shuttled to a
different school. There's plenty of evidence that schools overall are in
worse shape today than in 1970. Not because of, or in spite of, busing,
but because "activist judges" fixed a "problem" that didn't exist, except
in their left-leaning, statist minds. What if all the time, money and material
expended on buses to "desegregationville" had been applied to improving
educational standards? Hmm.
But wait. The Charlotte busing
saga is far from over. In 1976 and again in 1981, parents claim student
assignments based on race violate the Constitution (mostly for the reasons
outlined above.) The courts disagree, and the buses keep rolling.
In the 1990's, a previous
Charlotte-Mecklenburg superintendent sets up "magnet schools," offering
curricula such as foreign language immersion, science and mathematics-intensive
programs and more. They're supposed to draw the best and brightest students
to them "like a magnet," and they do. They're an instant hit, but there
aren't enough of them, so a "lottery" is devised to allocate scarce magnet
classroom seats.
You guessed it: a race-based
lottery. There's a lawsuit, plunging the whole integration issue right
back into the federal courts, culminating this month with a judicial bombshell
of outrageous proportions, rendering the school board impotent, and setting
parents' heads to spin. I'll tell you all about it next time.
|
