Motus Mentis

Victor Davis Hanson’s family has lived for generations in the agricultural heartland of California — an area that is now, after decades of ruinously misguided policymaking, in the vanguard of America’s decline into third-world decrepitude. Nobody tells this dismal story better than Dr. Hanson does in his periodic dispatches. His latest is here (with thanks to TBH for the link).

An excerpt:

Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.

Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico ”” all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.

Terrible governance was also a culprit, in the sense that the state worked like a lottery: those lucky enough by hook or by crook to get a state job thereby landed a bonanza of high wages, good benefits, no accountability, and rich pensions that eventually almost broke the larger and less well-compensated general society. When I see hordes of Highway Patrolmen writing tickets in a way they did not before 2008, I assume that these are revenue-based, not safety-based, protocols ”” a little added fiscal insurance that pensions and benefits will not be cut.

A coarsening of popular culture ”” a nationwide phenomenon ”” was intensified, as it always is, in California. The internet, video games, and modern pop culture translated into a generation of youth that did not know the value of hard work or a weekend hike in the Sierra. They didn’t learn how to open a good history book or poem, much less acquire even basic skills such as mowing the lawn or hammering a nail. But California’s Generation X did know that they were “somebody’ whom teachers and officials dared not reprimand, punish, prosecute, or otherwise pass judgment on for their anti-social behavior. Add all that up with a whiny, pampered, influential elite on the coast that was more worried about wind power, gay marriage, ending plastic bags in the grocery stores ”” and, well, you get the present-day Road Warrior culture of California.

When you’re done with Dr. Hanson’s piece, read this related item, from Kevin D. Williamson.

I haven’t commented on the Chick-fil-A affray — so much creeping totalitarianism, so little time! — but Mark Steyn has, and you can read it here.

This is a horrible story, and a frightening glimpse of the road ahead. To his credit, Michael Bloomberg publicly refused to join the mayors of Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco in their Two Minutes’ Hate.

I rail often about our swaggering, authoritarian mayor, Michael Bloomberg. (He gave me yet another reason to do so, just last night — and for a really tangy rant about Hizzonner, check out the inimitable Fran Lebowitz, here.)

One issue I think he’s clearly on the right side of, though, is the battle over the application test given to those hoping to become a New York City firefighter. Because black applicants failed the test at higher rates than whites, and because the only allowable explanation for such “achievement gaps” is institutionalized racism, the aggrieved parties filed a lawsuit arguing that the test must, ergo, be racist. Unsurprisingly, they won. Mayor Bloomberg rightly thought this was outrageous, and said so loudly and often.

Even more outrageous is the court’s remedy, recently announced. John Derbyshire picked up the story in his latest podcast. Here’s a transcript. Decide for yourself.

This next story is kind of an old chestnut; but it’s in the news, so we have to report it.

It’s the story of the New York City firefighter exam. You may recall that back in 2007 under the left-liberal George W. Bush administration, the federal Department of Justice sued the city of New York under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. See, the city had been selecting new firefighters from the pool of applicants by administering a pair of written exams. Black and Hispanic applicants failed these written exams at a higher rate than white applicants.

Those exam results triggered one of those rounds of litigation we are all so wearily familiar with. A group of black firefighters joined the Justice Department as plaintiffs, a Clinton-appointed federal judge of far-left-liberal opinions was asked to rule, and we were off to the races. So to speak.

Three years ago Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled in favor of the Justice Department and the black co-plaintiffs. Six months later he further ruled that the city had practiced, quote, “intentional discrimination” by deliberately devising the written exams in such a way that black and Hispanic applicants would find them more difficult than white applicants found them.

Nowhere in the judge’s ruling was it explained how the city had done this. Judge Garaufis offered no examples of exam questions that would be plainly harder for blacks and Hispanics to answer than they would be for whites. Nor has anyone else been able to point to such questions. In fact, no evidence of intentional discrimination was offered at all, at any stage of the proceedings. Judge Garaufis just declared it to be so, like the Pharaoh in Cecil B. deMille’s Ten Commandments: “So let it be written, so let it be done!” In discrimination lawsuits, evidence is not required.

Judge Garaufis then proceeded to ponder an appropriate remedy for the aggrieved plaintiffs. This week we learned of that remedy.

First, Judge Garaufis imposed race quotas on the New York City Fire Department. The quotas are perfectly explicit. Out of every five firefighters hired from now on, two must be black and one must he Hispanic.

This is a bit peculiar, as in October last year Judge Garaufis declared from the bench that his remedial plan would not include quotas, despite, quote, “the city’s misleading and inflammatory statements to the contrary.” Those misleading and inflammatory statements turned out to be dead-on accurate. To put it slightly differently, Judge Garaufis turned out to be a shameless liar.

To further remedy the pain and humiliation suffered by these discriminated-against applicants, the judge has ordered that any black or Hispanic individual who failed either written exam ”” not both, but either ”” with a score of 25 out of 100 or higher must be placed on the priority hiring list, and will also receive monetary damages, including, quote, “non-economic damages.”

If you look at the actual exams ”” just google “New York City Firefighter Examinations,” they’ve been posted many times on different websites ”” you’ll see that they consist of multiple-choice questions, with four choices per question. Thus if, on either one of the exams, you answered all the questions at random, without even reading them, you would score 25 out of 100 or higher half the time for that exam. If you did it for both exams, since you only have to score 25 or more on one of them, you have a 75 percent chance of eligibility for that priority hiring list and those monetary damages, without having even read a single question!

The blacks and Hispanics who failed the written tests are to receive back pay ”” the estimate is $129 million ”” and, quote, “retroactive seniority” and, quote again, “a retroactively higher salary,” once they’ve been hired through the new quota system.

Some of these test fails go back to 2003. So: You’re a New York City firefighter. You studied hard, passed the exams, got hired, and have been fighting the city’s fires for nine years. Now suddenly one day here come DeShawn and Miguel, loaded up with nine years back pay and benefits, with seniority equal to yours in spite of not having spent a day on the job, and in spite of not having passed the exams. No: make that because of not having passed the exams.

That’s where our beloved Republic has come to with this race-guilt insanity: Failure is rewarded, excellence is punished.