"Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said Friday the head of
the Justice Department's voting rights division should be fired for
saying voter ID laws hurt the elderly but aren't a problem for
minorities because they often die before old age," the Associated Press
re****ts from Wa****ngton:
John Tanner's remarks came during an Oct. 5 panel
discussion on minority voters before the National
Latino Congreso in Los Angeles. Tanner addressed
state laws that require photo identification for
voting, saying that elderly voters dispro****tionately
don't have the proper IDs.
"That's a shame, you know, creating problems for
elderly persons just is not good under any
cir***stance," Tanner said, according to video
posted on YouTube. "Of course, that also ties into
the racial aspect because our society is such that
minorities don't become elderly the way white people
do. They die first.
"There are inequities in health care. There are a
variety of inequities in this country, and so anything
that dispro****tionately impacts the elderly has the
opposite impact on minorities. Just the math is such
as that," Tanner said.
It is useful to know that Obama has a tendency to wish to punish people
for expressing ideas with which he disagrees--an authoritarian impulse
sadly common on the left. But what exactly did Tanner say that Obama
finds so invidious? Surely not that "there are inequities in health
care" or that minorities tend to have shorter lifespans. Such
observations are common in liberal grievance politics.
Liberals are fond of "disparate impact" arguments, which take the form
of implying that institutions are racist because they engage in
practices that are disadvantageous to minorities vis-à-vis whites.
Disparate impact has become the legal standard in employment law, and
activists have sought to apply it to criminal law too, arguing that if
blacks are incarcerated in dispro****tionate numbers, it must be because
the system is biased.
Tanner is applying similar logic to voter ID laws. Others have made an
analogous argument with respect to Social Security, likewise drawing
liberal fury. We have here, not surprisingly, a
heads-I-win-tails-you-lose double standard: When disparate-impact logic
is employed in the service of a liberal policy--even in ways that
perpetuate ugly stereotypes--it amounts to a stand against racism. When
it is employed to criticize a liberal policy, disparate-impact logic is
itself racist.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
|
