In a recent tirade against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Pat Buchanan lamented that the new hypocrisy of affirmative action has supplanted the far clearer, more righteous “old bigotry” of days gone by. “One prefers the old bigotry,” Buchanan claims, because, “at least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated ‘with the base alloy of hypocrisy.’”

Buchanan goes to a place where few conservatives dare to tread — waxing nostalgic about the good old days of institutional racism and sexism.

What’s the point of diversity?
With the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, there seems to be a high wire act being performed by people on all sides of the debate. It seems we like the idea of diversity, but we aren’t comfortable with people openly acting on behalf of the ethnicity they represent.
It’s problematic for our society to find ways to live out the ideal of a pluralistic nation. We want to be inclusive of all peoples, but the inclusion of people who are drastically different from us makes us …