The Suck-ification of Reason

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Thu Jan 23 19:59:04 PST 2003



> I'm still laughing at this Peter Bagge cartoon from Reason.
><URL: http://reason.com/hod/cartoon.pb090602.shtml >
>--
>Michael Pugliese

This one slags both Libertarians and Greens. http://reason.com/0302/bagge.shtml

Here Cavanaugh makes a good point about affirmative action at state universities. I believe Adolph Reed Jr. has made this point also in a Progressive column.

http://www.reason.com/links/links011603.shtml [clip] But why is it fair to reject anybody whose taxes are paying the tab for a university? Ingrained in the principle of public education is the idea that it is available to one and all. At the grammar school and high school level, virtually every state specifically guarantees a public education to every child. There are no admissions criteria involved. Whether you agree or disagree with public education in principle (and most Americans do agree), the central argument for its fairness is that all taxpayers benefit from it. Why, then, should it be any different at the university level?

The Michigan controversy is impossible to resolve not because of differences about race fairness (only Trent Lott and Robert Byrd would disagree that a diverse and race-fair society is in all our interests), but because it is built on a paradox. Everybody is expected to pay for state universities. But only a happy few, for reasons of either race or artificially devised standards of competence, are allowed to use the facilities. That's a standard we wouldn't accept in any other public service, and it raises the question of whether the state can ever make distinctions among applicants without perpetuating the unfairness it's supposed to address. [clip]


> I'm still laughing at this Peter Bagge cartoon from Reason.
><URL: http://reason.com/hod/cartoon.pb090602.shtml >
>--
>Michael Pugliese



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