FROM THE
FEBRUARY 5, 2001 ISSUE

EDITORIAL
Clinton: Enough

CONNERLY
A Battle and an Opportunity.

here is a profound culture war being waged in our nation. Sometimes we fight about race, sometimes about religion, and often about political ideology. Navigating the battlefields of these issues, one by one, is always a dangerous task. But there is no terrain in America more treacherous than the three-way intersection of race, religion, and political ideology.

With the nomination of John Ashcroft, George W. Bush has boldly brought the nation to this intersection. Ashcroft is a political conservative, a Christian, and a man who believes that, as President John Kennedy put it, “race has no place in American life or law.” At another time and another place in our history, the nomination of Ashcroft would not have stirred passions or controversy. What causes such fear and animosity now? Why is Ashcroft portrayed as a “right-wing extremist,” “anti-woman,” and a “racist bigot”? And what are the consequences if this man is not confirmed?

From our inception, the premise that America is a “God-fearing” nation has been universally embraced. Just a few short weeks ago, we were not terribly disturbed when a man running for vice president, on the Democratic ticket, invoked the name of God at virtually every campaign stop. Now, abortion is a very difficult issue for most Americans. As is usually the case, reasonable people can disagree, and we need not dismiss those on either side as “extremists.” Many Americans draw on religion in figuring out what to believe about abortion. All of this is by way of saying that those who oppose abortion represent a significant and respectable segment of the American public. They are not “right-wing zealots outside the mainstream,” as Ashcroft’s opponents seek to portray him.

George W. Bush ran as “a uniter, not a divider” — but he could not have made a nomination more certain to highlight America’s culture war, and to focus attention on the major participants in this war, than that of John Ashcroft to the position of attorney general. If Ashcroft had been named to any other position, he would have endured a fair amount of opposition because of his religious convictions and political ideology. But attorney general has historically been viewed as the race domain, and Ashcroft’s appointment to that post was bound to cause an explosion. Here is what the fight is all about.

On one side are those guided by the strict construction of the Constitution, and who still find relevance and true meaning in the Declaration of Independence. They are loosely defined as “conservatives.” On the other side is the “by-any-means-necessary” (BAMN) crowd, a slice of our population that liberally interprets the Constitution, and for whom anything goes, for whom principles can be compromised or sacrificed in order to achieve some centralized, socially engineered result.

The charge against Ashcroft that transcends all others is that he is a racist. In America, this is the trump card. All by itself, it has the power to wreak destruction. Bush’s political enemies understand ideological warfare, and they know that branding someone with an “R” puts that individual on the defensive, even if there is no substance to the charge. Throw in the fear that the person will shut down abortion clinics and introduce God into the affairs of government, and you have effectively created a political monster with a bull’s-eye on his back.

Again, the Justice Department historically has been considered the domain of those who want the federal government to be “creative” and activist in defining and pursuing a legal strategy for problems relating to race. Beginning with the 1960s civil-rights movement, there has been an expectation that the department would be the agent of change and activism. As we saw in the Clinton administration, Justice has been guided less by law than by notions of “equity” and “social justice.”

On the day of his nomination, Ashcroft promised to enforce the nation’s civil-rights statutes, so that the rule of law “knows no class, sees no color, and bows to no creed.” That seems not only eminently reasonable, but a national imperative. Yet the BAMN crowd sees it as a direct attack on their power. The claim that Ashcroft’s personal beliefs will impede his enforcement of the law is specious. He is a man who has profound respect for the rule of law. What frightens the daylights out of the BAMN people is the idea that Ashcroft will, in fact, enforce the law, as it is written, and that he will seek to guarantee equal protection under the law for every person, rather than use his position to mete out privileges and “social justice.”

A central point of contention is that Ashcroft led the opposition to the nomination of Judge Ronnie White to the federal bench. This opposition, it is argued, proves Ashcroft’s “racial insensitivity,” for the judge is black. Yet Ashcroft, in his term as senator, voted to approve 26 of Bill Clinton’s 27 black judicial nominees. His record, over a long political career, of selecting, promoting, and approving minority candidates for political or judicial office stands in stark contrast to the hysterical and shrill cries of his detractors. They are simply trying to put an “R” on the forehead of a conscientious conservative.

When I was in college, my favorite political-science professor once said to me: “Mr. Connerly, the day that I can call you an S.O.B. just because I happen to be angry about something you did, and not have you think of me as a racist, is the day that we will have overcome the problem of race.” If race is central to the current drama because John Ashcroft blocked a black judge — and it is — then we as a nation have not yet overcome. The first senator to announce that she would vote against Ashcroft was Barbara Boxer of California. Boxer said that she would do so because of Ashcroft’s vehement opposition to the Ronnie White nomination. ‘‘I hate to use a charged term, but it’s my heart talking here. I really think it was a political lynching that happened there in the United States Senate,’’ she said. And there we have it.

Two years ago, I counseled GOP leaders to confront the issue of race, debate race preferences, and expose self-anointed black “leaders” for what they have become: an intensely partisan, hyperbolic, power-crazed group who care little about finding solutions to America’s problems. The New York demagogue and race-baiter Al Sharpton recently said about the Ashcroft nomination, “We are going to have a war.” Well, I would give him what he wants. But instead of fighting him and his ilk, we conservatives have usually tried to pacify or ignore them in the hope that they might go away or soften their attacks. When will we learn that, in the realm of politics, compassion is not an effective response to hand grenades, snipers, and nuclear bombs? “I love you, man” will not suffice to deter those lacking good will.

Of course, because Ashcroft is a conservative, he is subject to a level of scrutiny not given to other nominees. For example, what if it were discovered that he had once referred to Chinese people as “Chinamen,” which many people consider a derogatory term? There is no record of John Ashcroft’s having used the term, but Colin Powell did, in a 1996 speech. Facing public criticism, he apologized, stating that he meant no insult.

I raise this point not to suggest that Colin Powell should be punished for making such a remark — he is fully deserving of confirmation. But so is Ashcroft. The difference is that Powell is a “moderate” who supports race preferences, and, as such, he is protected from the level of scrutiny imposed on Ashcroft — a conservative who opposes race preferences. There is a double standard.

It seems to me that our nation is at a critical juncture on race. Conservatives and the by-any-means-necessary army offer radically different prescriptions for healing America’s racial wounds. Our nation will be a substantially different place if it embraces one approach as opposed to the other. If BAMN has its way, “diversity” will become an excuse to discriminate and a compelling rationale for admitting college students on the basis of race. If John Ashcroft is defeated, those forces will have proven once again the power of the race card. If BAMN is allowed to equate “affirmative action” with equal rights, then they will have prevailed.

Racial-identity politics has corrupted and overwhelmed the process of democracy in our nation, and nowhere is that in greater evidence than in the capital’s halls of power. It is used as one of the weapons in the ideological war to bludgeon political opponents because, in a testament to our nation’s racial sensitivity, being called a racist is one of the deepest wounds one can inflict on an enemy. So overused and overwrought is the charge of racism — or “racial insensitivity,” in the euphemism — that the force, impact, stigma, and shame associated with discrimination is cheapened. If a good man like John Ashcroft is attacked with such an unfitting charge, not only is his reputation a possible casualty of the war, so is our collective sense of moral outrage when real acts of bigotry crop up. Americans of conscience cannot let this occur.

This nomination presents a unique opportunity for us to have the dialogue about race that we were denied in the presidential campaign. Considering reckless charges of “disenfranchisement” in Florida, the witch-hunt being conducted there by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the unprincipled attacks on John Ashcroft, we must have this dialogue. Through the confirmation process, we can educate the country about the shameless exploitation of race by the race-merchants, and we can deal a blow to the BAMN ethic that has held too much sway in American life and politics.

I do not agree with John Ashcroft on every issue — but I know that he is a decent and fair man. I am comforted by the fact that he is a passionate conservative. I believe his heart is filled with an abundance of “compassion” — but I want a U.S. attorney general who will be guided by the rule of law, not necessarily by compassion. Leave that to others in the Bush administration. For eight years, we have put up with a crowd that is pro-abortion, pro-race preferences, and devoted to the “by any means necessary” ideology. I don’t think our country has much to fear from a passionate conservative in an administration of “compassionate conservatives.” No, it has much to gain.