Why should today’s White youth be held accountable, via affirmative action measures, for Jim Crow laws? Why should they be accountable, via affirmative action measures, for the enslavement perpetrated not by their parents but by people who acted several generations ago?
Many readers are by now well aware of Mr. Obama’s decision to confer what amounts to amnesty upon a certain class of illegal immigrants.
According to Mr. Obama, Congress didn’t act (apparently settled immigration law doesn’t constitute action), so Mr. Obama decided to unilaterally create what amounts to legislation that never passed (the DREAM act.) What an affirmative actor!
The constitutional infirmities of this decision are pronounced and involve the functional equivalent of the repeal of statutory schemes by the executive (for good summaries, click here and here).
President Mr. Obama’s justification for his unconstitutional policy edict presents conservatives with an opportunity to begin unwinding a grotesque policy that has, for many decades, been enormously destructive of individual liberty. That policy is affirmative action.
In Mr. Obama’s illegal immigration policy speech of June 15, he states:
They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life, studied hard, worked hard, maybe even graduated at the top of your class, only to suddenly face the threat of deportation to a country that you know nothing about, with a language that you may not even speak.
[…]
