By DONALD DeMARCO
The most fundamental of all philosophical principles is that a thing cannot be itself and at the same time be something other than itself. A square cannot be a triangle. A human being cannot be an aardvark. One would expect, if not demand, that people who occupy high places in the government would not only be familiar with this principle, but honor it in practice at all times.
Yet, this principle of non-contradiction seems to be alien to certain political dignitaries. When it is violated, rational discussion comes to a halt.
The Equal Protection Clause of the United States Fourteenth Amendment states that all U.S. citizens must receive “equal protection of the laws” and that their “privileges or immunities” cannot be curtailed without due process of law.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the affirmative action policies in place at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that Harvard’s and UNC’s race-based admissions programs engage in “stereotyping” as they see an “inherent benefit in race qua race — in race for race’s sake…that “Harvard’s admission process rests on the pernicious stereotype that a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.”
He also criticized the two schools for considering Asian American applicants as a single group, writing that by doing so, the schools “are apparently uninterested in whether South Asian or East Asian students are adequately represented, so long as there is enough of one to compensate for a lack of the other.”
“The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause,” Roberts went on to write, “is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well.”
There are inequalities that are natural endowments. Treating unequals as if they were equals would be unjust. Not everyone is a Jascha Heifetz.
Putting the matter in its simplest terms, Roberts stated: “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race…. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
The Supreme Court Justices were divided on the issue 6 to 3. The ruling, however, makes it difficult to conclude that the equal protection clause is not violated when a form of racism is used to determine college admission.
“Affirmative action is the single greatest form of institutional racism in America today,” wrote rising GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. “I applaud the Supreme Court decision,” said black university president, Dr. Carol M. Swain, “the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and U.S. Statutory Law was the RIGHT thing to do! Civil Rights Laws apply to everyone.”
President Biden, who presents himself as a sworn enemy of racism, strongly objected to the ruling that condemns racism. In a speech delivered on June 29, he condemned the decision. “This is not a normal Court,” he said. In so saying, he appears to reject the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. Biden also condemned the previous year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, declaring it to be “outrageous.”
Yet what is truly outrageous is the contention that the Founding Fathers saw fit to write into the Constitution a clause that would permit abortion. The president, after swearing to uphold the Constitution, seems to be at war with it. This is a most disturbing contradiction. And it is certainly incompatible with leadership. Americans have every right to say, “Where are we going?”
Biden also seems to be at odds with Rev. Martin Luther King who famously proclaimed that we should judge a person “not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.” Can Biden have it both ways: to uphold and not uphold the Constitution and to be for and against racism?
Furthermore, Biden professes to be Catholic and is a zealous and indefatigable promoter of abortion, which Vatican II has defined as “an abominable crime.”
Where does President Biden really stand? It seems that his political ideology allows him to be two different people at the same time. This does not attest to the flexibility of politics but to its ability to contradict itself and consequently mean nothing. We should demand more integrity from the Chief of State.
In his encyclical, Pacem in Terris, Pope St. John XXIII wrote: “The same law of nature that governs the life and conduct of individuals must also regulate the relations of political communities. . . . Political leaders . . . are still bound by the natural law . . . and they have no authority to depart from its slightest precepts.” We continue to see this law violated and even contradicted by people in high places. Voters should be more sensitive to a person’s political integrity before deciding whom they should elect.
A good and consistent morality is what holds a nation together. President Biden promised, when elected, to do his best to unify the country. What he has done is far from that. The country is now more divided than it has ever been since the Civil War. The war that is now raging is one of a moral nature and is the inevitable result of disregarding the natural law.
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