A pox on multiculturalism.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.

HOWEVER UPSETTING at the time, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and its subsequent enforcement was a good and necessary thing for the nation. Americans all knew in their hearts that it was a moral imperative. Yet, what often begins as virtue, when pressed to the extreme, turns into vice. To redress past wrongs, governmental programs encouraged affirmative action. Soft-hearted liberals became soft-headed as they replaced one form of discrimination with another Affirmative action metamorphosed into quota systems and minority preference programs, and some civil "rights" begot civil "wrongs" and now civil unrest.

Children were used as pawns in school busing programs that upset nearly everyone, yet never achieved their purpose. Welfare became a monster of society's own making, as the citizenry was reluctant to criticize the disvalues produced by this dependence. "Sensitivity" legislation was passed that made "hate" crimes a special category--hate often being confused for dislike of antithetical value systems. Academe went one step further in prohibiting free speech that was considered offensive to minorities--an affront to the First Amendment. Educational institutions also were given far from uncertain "suggestions" to enroll and graduate minorities who couldn't qualify for admission otherwise.

Police and fire departments and other public agencies have been required to overlook a lack of qualifications and hire on the basis of minority status. The use of minority firms, in preference to experienced and established ones run by whites, often resulted in shoddy work. Such charges have been expressed sotto voce in reference to the much-delayed new Denver International Airport and elsewhere.

The hopeful outcome of integration only produced resentment and increased freely chosen segregation by minorities themselves. In academe, blacks and Hispanics wanted their own teachers, counselors, study programs, and organizations, as did women. They separated themselves in the cafeteria and dorms. Ethnic studies departments seldom were pillars of intellectual research, their very raison d'etre being political activism.

Paradoxically, the armed forces, which liberals seem to hate, are about the only successful example of integration, although problems persist with gays and women.

Integration having failed, next came the contradictory propagandist push toward multiculturalism and diversity. Pres. Clinton says he wants his administration to look like the...