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Another Professor Endorses Affirmative Action
by Glenn Woiceshyn
[A version was published in the quarterly University of Toronto Magazine, in a response
to a column by Prof. David Rayside, Autumn 1995 edition.]
Dear Editor,
According to professor David Rayside (Summer 1995), governments should enforce wealth
equalization via affirmative action programs. In other words, the goal of wealth
equality supersedes the rights of individuals and equality before the law. Furthermore,
governments should enforce policies that are blatantly racist and sexist.
Rayside's message is clear. Forget the history of disasters caused by statism. Forget
that individual rights is the cause of prosperity. Who cares if you are ambitious,
hard working, efficacious and deserve more income than those who aren't. Your individuality?
You are nothing -- your group identity is everything! Individual responsibility?
You must pay for the alleged historical injustices committed by those who share your
assigned group identity.
Why are people to be sacrificed on the altar of wealth equalization? Rayside doesn't
say. He doesn't say because there is no rational basis for holding equality of wealth
as a moral standard. At best this egalitarian philosophy is motivated by envy. At
worst it's motivated by hatred -- for individual freedom, initiative and success.
Rayside's main beef with affirmative action is that such a "noble" goal
may be difficult to achieve in practice. My main beef is that affirmative action
is irrational, immoral and unjust -- and that is why it is impractical.
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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