Qualified Applicants
Last month, a Georgia police officer stopped a car on Highway 10 because its driver wasn't wearing a seat belt. The driver was behaving suspiciously, so the officer asked him to step out of the car. A quick pat-down revealed cocaine, and the driver was told he was under arrest. He struggled and pulled the officer across the highway and into a briar patch, until he was finally subdued with the aid of a passerby.
The driver stood nearly 7 feet tall. The police officer, Julie Ann Welch, is 5 feet, 4 inches.
This is what's wrong with quotas. You pretend everyone's equal when they're not, and you end up hiring people who can't perform the job. Stop talking about fairness. It's a non sequitur. The fact is, a police officer's job has physical demands — and if you come up short, you could wind up dead.
posted by Stephen @ 1:04 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Technology was supposed to overcome physical inequalities. Non-lethal restraint devices were supposed to be the great equalizer making physique irrelevant to qualifying for military and police employment. In an age of scientific advancement, our biological limitations were supposed to have been made moot.
This idea was so obviously false from its inception that any further mocking of it is redundant. The tragedy is that modern American society stubbornly refuses to accept the self-evedent truth of this.
Too many modern "progressive" thinkers are far too sentimental and hysterical. I know. I've worked with them when they've been on the right side of their issues. Even at their best, they're not cautious, considerate, practical, or realistic. They gush too much. They're so easily wounded and overly passionate that they fall apart spontaneously, fighting among each other bitterly for power. They're pathetic, on the whole. It is disappointing and disgusting.
There are some cases where being discerning is not the same as so-called "discrimination". The tragedy is that our society is composed solely of the walking wounded and deluded. This arises of deluded immaturity and bitterness. It amounts to arrogant intolerance masquerading as compassion. It is an odd, sick form of bigotry.
A society of unique and varied persons of equal worth is not the same as a society composed of interchangeable persons perceived identically regardless of their true natures. The former is liberty. The latter is the tyranny of the same.
It is stunning that American thinking has become so clouded as to have forgotten that. The founders of this country obviously knew this truth well. One wonders where and when we collectively went wrong.
I believe myself not to be "conservative" overall, at least in the contemporary terminology. For instance, I do not believe that a small government is ever better owing to efficiency issues and efficacy. I still insist that a restricted, restrained government strictly and immutably limited in its role is essential to liberty and a healthy society. If my demand that government be limited in role and scope, but not in size, is compatible with conservative political thought, it is only rarely and marginally recognized as such in contemporary American thought.
I do not think that it is morally wrong to insist that some jobs require employees of a certain physique. Physical laws are intrusive realities, and no affirmative action ought to infringe on them to our expense. If that is also a "conservative" perspective, then I suppose the entire science of physics ought to be condemned for its conservative bias. While we're at it, we ought to pass a federal law re-defining Pi as a whole out of distaste for it's complexity. While we're at it, why not prosecute gravity for cvil rights abuses against the "big boned"?
It is disgusting how often people are falsely branded as being intolerant for merely drawing attention to some basic physical laws, economic truths, and social realities. If it makes me conservative for thinking so, then long live conservatism. I merely hope that American conservatives recover from their collective follies, which are egregious in their own right.
If my demand that government be limited in role and scope, but not in size, is compatible with conservative political thought, it is only rarely and marginally recognized as such in contemporary American thought.
I've heard conservatives argue that, even if two-thirds of the world's Muslims are peaceful citizens, Islam can be reasonably defined as violent if the remaining third who embrace terrorism (1) are more vocal and (2) hold leadership positions. I'm not sure that I agree, but it's a reasonable argument.
The problem is, that logic cuts both ways. If we define conservatism by its most vocal advocates, then our definition is written by men who wants government crouched inside our bedrooms and listening on our telephones. We think back to the 2004 political conventions and ask how to reconcile a vision of small government with the institution of "free speech zones."
You describe a government "limited in role and scope, but not in size." In other words, government must maintain the roads but we should abolish tolls. National defense is essential; we have no business in Iraq, but we should be constantly improving our weapons and tactics. We need to stop welfare entitlements immediately — but if the disadvantaged want to improve their lives, they can avail themselves of myriad channels for public education.
The vision isn't dead — but like peaceful Muslims, it's been drowned out by the angry and the righteous.
I think, sir, that we are Whigs.
Long live Whigism.
May there be a return to those values in our country.
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