Max Boot is a study in the mediocrity of treason.
The fake conservatives most likely to defect to the other side and then spend the rest of their career scribbling denunciations of conservatives for the Washington Post were never very bright to begin with. Jennifer Rubin is a case in point. As is Max Boot.
Boot helpfully provides evidence of that with a column about the unimportance of academic merit in college while, unintentionally, recycling every single cliche that was used to bar Jews from higher education.
This is an agonizing debate. On one side are smart Asian-American students who study hard. Many are first-generation immigrants whose parents toil at bodegas or dry cleaners, sacrificing everything so that their children can get an education. It is heartbreaking to tell those kids that they can't get into the school of their choice.
But if Asian-Americans predominate in elite institutions, that means opportunities are being denied to African-Americans, Latinos or whites who also grow up in poverty but in cultures — whether in the inner city or Appalachia — that stigmatize rather than celebrate learning. Many minorities must also cope with racial discrimination, crime, broken homes and police abuse to a far greater extent than Asian-Americans do, and they lack access to test tutors.
It's not a debate. It's rationalizing discrimination.
But that's the question. Should colleges represent students who work hard and aspire. Or make excuses for those who don't because they come from a bad neighborhood. Students who work hard can and do succeed from anywhere. Unless they're denied that opportunity for the sake of diversity. Even though they're a minority.
But the wrong minority.
Harvard found in a 2013 review that if it selected solely based on academic achievement, the number of Asian-Americans would rise from what was then 19 percent to 43 percent — compared with a U.S. population that is just 5.7 percent Asian.
That paragraph isn't connected to anything before or after it. It's another random cliche tossed in there. But the message is as obvious as it is racist. If we go by merit, the Asians will take over.
The left likes to pretend that it's the right that traffics in gutter racial paranoia like this. But nope. It's the left.
The same people who will lecture you about white privilege will also explain that if you go by merit, the Asians will take over. And they're the group that pretends to be racially enlightened. This is what that looks like.
As an immigrant born in Russia, and a product of the meritocracy (I have a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree from Yale University),
That doesn't prove meritocracy. It just goes to show that Yale has low standards. But we knew that already.
Also, if you replace Max Boot with an engineer from Shanghai, the resulting columns might actually consist of coherent and developed ideas instead of random thoughts dashed out on a napkin while clicking through Slate clickbait.
"You learn more about life if you go to class with people who are different from you — who have different abilities, different geographic origins, different social classes, different sexualities, different religions, different political views and, yes, different ethnicities."
That's another random cliche. It's used all the time to justify diversity. But learning about life by hanging around different people isn't what college is for. That's what life is for.
College is not a leftist finishing school.
"You don't necessarily want a student body made up entirely of bookworms — and I say that as a bookworm myself. You can't achieve a diverse class simply by taking the top test scores."
No, but you can achieve ability, talent, competence, dedication, etc... The stuff we used to value when we were a great nation. And now the stuff that China values. But once we have properly diverse classes, then we'll really be in a position to take on a booming economy where merit actually matters. And Max Boot will be replaced by a bot who can string along random prog cliches into a diverse word salad.