George Will, as usual, has some words of wisdom, suggesting that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights be closed down.
WASHINGTON — In contemporary American politics, as in earlier forms of vaudeville, it helps to have had an easy act to follow. Gerald Reynolds certainly did.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ new chairman follows Mary Frances Berry, whose seedy career — 24 years on the commission, 11 of them as chairman — mixed tawdry peculation, boorish behavior and absurd rhetoric. Because Reynolds represents such a bracing change, it is tempting to just enjoy the new 6-to-2 conservative ascendancy on the commission and forgo asking a pertinent question: Why not retire the commission?
The first reason Will gives is to kill it before the Democrats come back to power, since they’d be sure to staff it with crazies again, but the second reason is more interesting. “[It]is that civil rights rhetoric has become a crashing bore and, worse, a cause of confusion: Almost everything designated a ‘civil rights’ problem isn’t.”
Reynolds, the new chairman, has said the CRC can serve a useful function as a “bully pulpit,” but Will is not persuaded.
But about this commission as bully pulpit: Does anyone really think America suffers from an insufficiency of talk about race? What is in scarce supply is talk about the meaning of the phrase “civil rights.” Not every need is a right, and if the adjective is a modifier that modifies, not every right is a civil right — one central to participation in civic life.
What if we went Will one better and suggested getting rid not only of the Civil Rights Commission but all our civil right laws altogether? Those laws — inconveniently, and now apparently anachronistically — were designed to prevent discrimination based on race. But for the last thirty years or more liberals and the left, which had supported non-discrimination laws, have changed sides and been affirmatively, actively promoting discrimination based on race. Many conservatives say they oppose this new discrimination, but their representatives in Congress have been too craven and cowardly to do anything about dismantling it.
Thus getting rid of the civil rights laws should be welcomed by both left and right as a bold stroke to protect both sides from the charge of hypocrisy that now so justifiably sticks to them both.
I’m not sure I follow from your analysis whether you are being serious or sarcastic, and if serious, how you would arrive at that conclusion justifiably.
Dismantling the CCR would be a bad idea politically, and I believe even as a matter of practical reality, that the CCR could play a bi-partisan healing role even though the “crazies,” as Will refers to them, are no longer there. In fact, I have confidence in the new staff to set up some systems that might lead to longer-term solutions, and hopefully they also set up some systems (like greater openness, fiscal controls, etc.) that would make more difficult or prevent future political hacks from abusing the CCR’s “pulpit.”
As to Will’s column, I agree with and understand his sentiment about potential future commissions, but disagree with his conclusion or the unstated implication (I suspect unintentional)that the current staff is only interested in talking about race and not defining “civil rights” more expansively.
I’m sorry – what purpose would getting rid of all civ rigts laws serve?
Joe – I wasn’t seriously proposing getting rid of all civil rights laws, but one virtue of doing so is that it would make honest people out of all those who claim to support those laws while favoring racial preferences, which depend on the very racial discrimination those laws were intended to bar.
It’s the “civil rights” commission, not the “racial discrimination” commission. Perhaps the best thing they could do is to set out to remind people that you can violate or defend civil rights without race being involved at all. There are plenty of civil rights violations going on in this country that have nothing to do with race. Abuse of civil forfieture and eminent domain. Gun control. Any of the civil liberties the ACLU likes to pretend don’t exist.
Brett, my understanding is that newly changed Commission will work on a properly expanded definition of civil rights that moves beyond race.
$9 million per year and 60 employees is pretty negligible in Washington terms, but it is still hard to close down a federal agency (even a small one). I agree that the USCCR is almost useless as a federal agency. One practical way to get rid of it would be to transfer the $9 million and the 60 employees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is chronically short-staffed, and where $9 million could be quite helpful