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Editor's Introduction To:
Hyperdemocracy

John W. Campbell, Jr.

 

"Theodore White (among many others) describes the shift in national attitude toward welfare from 'equality of opportunity' to 'equality of result' as a fundamental change. The sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with Hubert Humphrey in the lead, had come down adamantly on the side of equality of opportunity—the nation was made color-blind. The wording of the legislation itself expressly dissociated its provisions from preferential treatment. Yet only a year later, speaking at Howard University commencement exercises, Lyndon Johnson was proclaiming the 'next and most profound stage of the battle for civil rights,' namely, the battle 'not just for equality as a right and theory but equality as a result.' A few months later Executive Order 11246 required 'affirmative action.' By 1967, people who opposed preferential measures for minorities to overcome the legacy of discrimination were commonly seen as foot-draggers on civil rights if not closet racists.

"A number of writers have pointed to a combination of two events: the ascendancy of legal stipulation as the only guarantor of fair treatment and the contemporaneous Balkanization of the American population into discrete 'minorities.'"

Charles Murray,
Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980

Cicero tells us that the trouble with oligarchy is that the government has too much power; but in a democracy, the brilliant and able have no way to better themselves without destroying the nation.

The United States was founded on a different principle, of liberty rather than democracy or equality.

We forget that at our peril.

John Campbell wrote this editorial in 1958. It could have been written today.

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