Freedom from Quotas

One of the lessons we supposedly derived from Watergate was that Congress must protect its rightful powers from the Executive. It was improper, we were told, for the Executive to thwart the legislative will through fund impoundments, secret initiatives, or subtle twisting of the laws that Congress in its majesty enacted.

For some peculiar reason, this weighty lesson is not applied to other controversies of more recent vintage. Like, for instance, quotas. In the wake of the Allan Bakke case, virtually everything imaginable has been said about quotas, both pro and con: that they are a form of reverse discrimination, that they are constitutional (or not), that they are needed to sustain the progress of minorities, that they are demeaning to minorities, and so on.

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M. Stanton Evans

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One of the lessons we supposedly derived from Watergate was that Congress must protect its rightful powers from the Executive. It was improper, we were told, for the Executive to thwart the legislative will through fund impoundments, secret initiatives, or subtle twisting of the laws that Congress in its majesty enacted.

For some peculiar reason, this weighty lesson is not applied to other controversies of more recent vintage. Like, for instance, quotas. In the wake of the Allan Bakke case, virtually everything imaginable has been said about quotas, both pro and con: that they are a form of reverse discrimination, that they are constitutional (or not), that they are needed to sustain the progress of minorities, that they are demeaning to minorities, and so on.