and American Express could gain thengood will of working with civil rightsngroups and the opportunity to addressntheir interests in the bill. Public relationsnis important to consumer-drivennbusinesses such as AT&T, which inn1989 was threatened with a boycottnduring labor talks.”nBig Business, furthermore, is alsongetting dressed for the day when whitesnwill be a minority in the United States,nand, unlike some people, its hard-eyednmanagers know very well that the racialnand demographic revolution is going tonchange some things. William Coleman,nwho was President Ford’s transportationnsecretary and is now chairmannof the NAACP’s Legal Defensenand Educational Fund, is pretty explicitnabout this. “A chief executive officernof a major corporation today has tonrealize that by the year 2000 more thannhalf of his work force will be womennand/or minorities,” he says. “It’s inntheir best interest to get the best qualifiednpeople.”n1 he eagerness of corporate magnatesnto clink their glasses with the civilnrights elite, even at the expense ofnsmall business, the qualifications ofnwhite male workers, and the freedomnof their own firms, was matched by thendefection from Mr. Bush’s ranks ofnMissouri’s Republican Senator JohnnDanforth and a flying squad of liberatednRepublicans last summer. Mr. Danforth,nafter the House failed to musternenough votes to override a veto of thenDemocrats’ civil rights bill this year,nsponsored his own bill in opposition tonboth the President’s and the Democrats’.nIf Mr. Bush doesn’t buy thenterms of the Danforth measure, thenMissouri Republican and his band ofnstalwarts could help override his veto innthe Senate.nAnd, finally, Mr. Bush’s own bill isnnot all that different in basic conceptnfrom what the Democrats are pushing.nThe major objection to the Democraticnmeasure is that it would requirenemployers to prove that they’re notndiscriminating in hiring practices onnthe basis of race and sex. It reverses fivenSupreme Court decisions that relievednemployers of that burden. (It’s amazing,nafter all the whining during thenWarren and Burger eras that thenCourt’s rulings were the voice of God,nhow quickly Congress can gut thenCourt’s decisions if they transgress thendivine revelations of the civil rightsnscriptures.) Though Democrats makenmuch of the absence of the wordn”quota” in their legislation, Mr. Bushnis no doubt correct when he argues thatntheir bill’s requirement that employersnwould have to prove they’re not discriminatingnmeans in effect that businessesnwould have to establish racialnand gender quotas.nBut, as liberal pundit Michael Kinsleynrather gleefully points out, Mr.nBush’s own bill does pretty much thensame thing. While the Democrats’nmeasure demands that employersnprove that hiring standards have “significantnand manifest relationship ton. . . job performance,” Mr. Bush’s billnwould require them to prove that anhiring practice “serves in a significantnway . . . legitimate employmentngoals.” The opacity of such weaselwordsnas “manifest” and “significant”nis such that whole armies of bureaucrats,nlawyers, and judges can makensport with them for decades, and bothnliberal Democrats and conservativenRepublicans nowadays don’t evennblink at passing federal legislation thatnprescribes what “goals” employersnmust have, whether their “goals” aren”legitimate” or not, and how the “legitimatengoals” must be legally fulfilled.nThe whole upshot is the very unpleasantntruth that Republicans andnmainstream conservatives are no morenreliable than the hard left when itncomes to resisting the perpetual revolutionnthat “civil rights” involves. Weddednto an ideology that espousesn”equality of opportunity” as the solenlegitimizing principle of the “Americannexperiment” and to the system ofnproduce-and-consume capitalism thatnthe egalitarian slogan is supposed tonjustify. Republicans care for propertynrights and limited government onlyninsofar as they can be persuaded thatnthese are effective instruments of thensummum bonum of economic growthnand mass affluence. Married to corporatenand political interests that arenthemselves dependent on immigrantsnand minorities as workers, consumers,nand voters, the Republican Party andnmainstream conservatives are unable tonresist the demographic, racial, political,nand cultural revolution these interestsnand their underclass allies drive.nBut many Middle Americans whonnnhave long since tumbled to the Democrats’nprostration to special interestsnand elites seem to remain blind to thensame phenomenon among Republicans.nLast June, just before the Housenpassed the Democrats’ bill, the WashingtonnPost interviewed white ethnicnworkers in southwest Chicago, the locationnof “trim 1950’s style neighborhoodsnthat are home to thousands ofncity workers and utility company employees.”nThe debate about the civilnrights bill there, reported the Post,nconcerns “more than a political struggle”nbetween Democrats and Republicans.n”It’s about who gets hired andnwho gets promoted, who gets aheadnenough to send his kids to college andnwho gets left behind.”nThe Democrats, city fire fighternMike Callaghan told the Post, are “creatingna new class of the downtrodden,nand that’s us. The guys they are steppingnon are middle-class white Americans,nand we are leaving in droves tonvote for the Republican Party.” Facednwith the disintegration of their culturenand their way of life, citizens like Mr.nCallaghan now encounter the last, logicalnturn of the leviathan state’s meatngrinder in the politically engineeredndestruction of their jobs and careersnand the material security the leviathannhas always claimed to guarantee them.nBut Mr. Callaghan ought to benadvised that Ceorge Bush, the BusinessnRoundtable, Senator Danforth,nand the other chiefs in the Republicannwigwam aren’t very different fromntheir Democratic rivals and that simplynchanging parties won’t save MiddlenAmerican scalps. Mr. Bush, of course,nwill make sure that Mr. Callaghannknows all about Willie Horton and thenPledge of Allegiance and will wavenplenty of yellow ribbons to stir authenticnMiddle American patriotic juices.nBut after the President wins his vote,nhis mind will wander off to the NewnWorld Order, a thousand points ofnlight, and other luminescent cow droppingsnthat do nothing to protect thencore of American civilization from itsncoming cultural and economic dispossession.nIf the “new class of the downtrodden”nin America’s suburbs andnfarms wants to save itself from thatndestruction, it will have to do morenthan vote Republican. One visit, itnturns out, wasn’t enough. How wouldnWashington like to have another? <^nNOVEMBER 1991/11n