Informed Speculation

Time Magazine presents 5 Things You Need To Know About John Roberts, and I like what I see, particularly number 4:

Although times–and people–change, Roberts’ early writings on civil rights give a sense of his instinct: one shouldn’t use discrimination to battle discrimination. He took a dim view of initiatives to redefine the Voting Rights Act, which he thought should ban only intentional efforts to disenfranchise black voters–hard to prove–and not practices that some civil rights activists claimed had the effect of limiting black voting rights. He argued that Congress could reject court-ordered busing plans on the ground that they did not prevent segregation but promoted it by encouraging “white flight.” He complained that theories about “comparable worth,” advocated by even some Republican legislators to achieve pay equity between women and men, were “anticapitalist” and could lead to reverse discrimination. “It is difficult to exaggerate the perniciousness of ‘comparable-worth theory,’” he wrote. “It mandates nothing less than central planning of the economy by judges.” When a group of female Republican House members wrote the White House in support of the theory, Roberts drafted a memorable response: “Their slogan may as well be, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to their gender.’”

One shouldn’t use discrimination to fight discrimination…how sad that such clear logic seems so novel…