Ward Connerly's ACRI and the Fight for America’s Core Principles...

I’ve been VERY busy the past six to eight weeks, with huge amounts of mandated overtime at work, numerous medical appointments (voluntary on my part) and other demands, that have combined to limit my online time.

All of that has meant less time at home, which is bad for my wife and I because we really do always have a great time together and it’s meant less online time, with much of that consumed in discussion with the gracious and generous Seane-Anna (PoorGrrlZone) and John Lofton (of American Thinker) in various comments sections.

Recently, I was honored to have been invited by Mr. Ward Connerly to an ACRI (American Civil Rights Initiative) forum at the Reagan Library, coming up this week (Wednesday 6/17 and Thursday 6/18). The invitation came in response to an entry I posted below, New Haven and Race as Handicap.

I have been able to get the time off and I’m heading out to Simi Valley, CA.

Over the past few decades, there have been so many battles on so many fronts (tax policy, government spending, welfare reform, tort reform, race/gender-based preferences, etc.) that it’s been hard for many Conservatives to keep up.

Behind virtually ALL of those issues is a direct assault on some basic American principles.

Ward Connerly and the good people at the ACRI have been fighting for two of America’s most fundamental principles; (1) Equality BEFORE the LAW and (2) Equality of OPPORTUNITY – the RIGHT to compete and be compared on the SAME set of standards.

Both those principles are under a relentless assault from the radical Left and they now have supporters in government, like Attorney General Eric Holder, among others.

As there are really no principles more fundamental and valuable, there is also no fight more vital!

I’d like to thank Mr. Connerly and the good people at ACRI (especially Mr. Connerly’s executive assistant, Jennifer Bollenbach) for their incredible kindness and generosity in extending their invitation to me.

Ward Connerly is an American Treasure

We take an almost perverse pride in taking our Liberties for granted in America. On the one hand, it’s good in that we are so inculcated in individual Liberty that we take it for granted, but it’s dangerous in that in taking that for granted, many Americans have lost sight of just WHAT individual Liberty really is.

First, it is NOT “doing whatever one wants, so long as you don’t harm anyone else.”

That is license and it is NOT a part of any legitimate American tradition.

Individual Liberty is, in essence, self ownership, the complete and full responsibility for ourselves. That requires an extremely limited government, almost completely restricted from the economic sphere and only less restricted when it comes to the criminal and civil justice systems.

In that regard, Ward Connerly is a man who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. A man motivated by an adherence to the strict principle of individual Liberty.

After his appointment to the University of California board of regents in 1993, Connerly began to discuss his views on affirmative action. In 1994, after listening to Jerry and Ellan Cook, whose son had been rejected at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School, Connerly became convinced that affirmative action, as practiced in the University of California, was tantamount to racial discrimination. Jerry Cook, a statistician, presented data showing that whites and especially Asians were being systematically denied admission despite having better grades and test scores than other students who were being admitted. This was never denied by the administrators of the UC system, and led Connerly to propose abolishing these controversial programs, though his proposal would still allow consideration of social or economic factors.

In 1995, he became the chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign and helped get the initiative on the California ballot as Proposition 209. The Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations, the ACLU, and the California Teachers Association opposed the measure. It passed by a 54% majority. Connerly, in 1997, formed the American Civil Rights Institute. Connerly and the ACRI supported a similar ballot measure in Washington which would later pass by 58%.

Following the 2003 Supreme Court rulings in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, Connerly was invited to Michigan by Jennifer Gratz to support a measure similar to the 1996 California amendment. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative appeared on the November 2006 Michigan ballot and passed by better than 2 to 1 with 58% of the vote.

This year, Ward Connerly’s ACRI has targeted four states (Missouri, Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado) for ballot initiatives to end race/gender-based preferences.

As Missouri Civil Rights Initiative spokesman, Tim Asher said, "It would go back to obviously the idea of trying to ensure that people are judged based on their merit and things other than just the color of their skin."

While Bridget Williams, President of the AFLCIO called it, “unacceptable," while many local civic and clergy expressed similar outrage. "As Americans, we have not yet achieved the goal of complete equitable society and one of the most effective ways to achieve that goal is affirmative action," Williams said.

To date, three other states, California, Washington State and Michigan, have banned affirmative action’s racial and gender preferences.

“Equal opportunity” is just THAT, the ability to compete UNDER THE SAME STANDARDS as anyone else.