The Week

François Mitterrand n’est pas . . . comment diton “chutzpah-impaired” en français? On the eve of Williamsburg, he joined Olof Palme, Andreas Papandreou, and four other socialist honchos in calling on the United States to get its economic house in order. Through his Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, he called France’s current recession “the crisis of a system that is not ours—it is the crisis of the capitalist system.” The real problem, it seems, is the U.S. budget deficit. It has caused high interest rates and an excessively muscular dollar. The American wit William Safire comments: “After years of blaming his recession on our recession, he is now blaming his recession on our recovery.” A French translation should be forwarded to President Mitterrand. N’est-ce pas?

By a vote of 8 to 1, William Rehnquist dissenting, the Supreme Court has now ruled that private schools are ineligible for tax-exempt status if they practice racial discrimination. This decision involves profound issues both legal and philosophical, and they go far beyond the immediate matter of racially discriminatory practices. One such issue might be termed the status of the tax dollar. To what extent does the Federal Government “own” that dollar, which, after all, it did not generate? Where are the limits, if any, on the government’s power to dispose of that dollar in the pursuit of social policy? In numerous cases before the courts, it has been argued, sometimes successfully, that racial “imbalance” is presumptive proof of racial discrimination. Will quotas soon be a prerequisite for a school’s tax-exemption? Will Ivy League colleges that practice reverse discrimination—i.e., that discriminate against whites—lose their tax privileges?

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François Mitterrand n’est pas . . . comment diton “chutzpah-impaired” en français? On the eve of Williamsburg, he joined Olof Palme, Andreas Papandreou, and four other socialist honchos in calling on the United States to get its economic house in order. Through his Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, he called France’s current recession “the crisis of a system that is not ours—it is the crisis of the capitalist system.” The real problem, it seems, is the U.S. budget deficit. It has caused high interest rates and an excessively muscular dollar. The American wit William Safire comments: “After years of blaming his recession on our recession, he is now blaming his recession on our recovery.” A French translation should be forwarded to President Mitterrand. N’est-ce pas?

By a vote of 8 to 1, William Rehnquist dissenting, the Supreme Court has now ruled that private schools are ineligible for tax-exempt status if they practice racial discrimination. This decision involves profound issues both legal and philosophical, and they go far beyond the immediate matter of racially discriminatory practices. One such issue might be termed the status of the tax dollar. To what extent does the Federal Government “own” that dollar, which, after all, it did not generate? Where are the limits, if any, on the government’s power to dispose of that dollar in the pursuit of social policy? In numerous cases before the courts, it has been argued, sometimes successfully, that racial “imbalance” is presumptive proof of racial discrimination. Will quotas soon be a prerequisite for a school’s tax-exemption? Will Ivy League colleges that practice reverse discrimination—i.e., that discriminate against whites—lose their tax privileges?