With the 50-year anniversary of Brown v. The Board of Education came a surprising number of negative retrospectives. Notwithstanding the dubious prospect that Blacks would simply be better off by associating with White folks, it is abundantly clear that by virtually all standards, Black educational achievement has not been improved. Moreover, vast social changes occurred as a result of the White flight catalyzed by the decision. Suburbs, a minor factor before 1954, continue to expand, as city governments try to invent ways to lure people back. Perhaps horrible commuting traffic, and the promise of cultural events in the city center will do the trick.
But Brown also laid the path for massive judicial intervention in social matters, mostly to make Northeast White liberals feel good about themselves. No doubt, the biggest boosters of Brown were Upper Eastside types, who sent their own kids to private school, and only knew Blacks from Amos and Andy, but apparently, it’s the thought that counts. It’s certainly not the results. And this analysis would apply to Roe v. Wade, numerous reverse discrimination decisions, all Antitrust matters, as well as outrageously atheistic interpretations of the First Amendment.
Imagine a football coach who dogmatically and unapologetically held to his game plan, even after losing 100 consecutive games. You can’t, because he would be fired long before that point. Yet, we observe countless expensive government programs that continue to fail, and it doesn’t matter. In fact, the elite media provides an endless amen corner. Assuming that real life is just as important as a football contest, isn’t it time to ask how and why this phenomenon can occur?
Allow me to proffer a few explanations…
For nearly 100 years, elite academic institutions have held to a socialistic ideal. As we noted earlier, this makes its members feel better, and it doesn’t cost anything other than taxes, and what are high taxes to a masochist? Besides, what better place to harbor abstract useless ideas than academia? Add to the mix the overbearing conformity that pervades these institutions, and you have a reliable incubator for what Lenin fondly called “useful idiots.” Now, take these useful idiots, and infect them with the pride and ego that is rampant in elite academia, and finish it off with intellectual sloth. Thus, they will never think about the world in a different manner from their days as college students, but even if they do, the hubris would be too great for them to admit that they could be wrong.
Of course, not everyone on the Left is a useful idiot. Some of them really are nihilistic enough to rejoice in the dismantling of their own country. If that football coach actually were trying to destroy his team, could he have done it any more effectively than by losing 100 straight games? Paved with good intentions or not, the road to Hell still leads to Hell!
Don’t forget mindless tribalism, made ever more a factor in America by the constant appeals to race and other means for us to self-marginalize. What good is a political system when it is only motivated by how much we hate the opposing candidate? What good is a justice system if it can be so readily distorted by racial or ethnic or social class bias, and not the guilt or innocence of the defendant?
And don’t overlook the ultimate cynicism of the ruling class. For them, it’s perfectly fine to quiet the squeaky wheels, whatever the fallout, since they don’t have to live down here with the common man, right? They’ll throw us a few bones now and then. All they have to do is let the inmates think they’re running the asylum.
They just never imagined it would be so easy.