This new essay at the Library of Law and Liberty makes several strong arguments against affirmative action. For one thing, Dalrymple notes that affirmative action defenders often willfully mischaracterize arguments made against it:
These arguments from which attention is thus diverted are intellectually and morally very strong, despite often being presented by opponents as precisely the opposite, that is to say as bigoted, reactionary, racist, and even proto-fascist. Perhaps the most curious thing about the diversionary tactic is that it presents the attempt to ignore race as a valid criterion of occupational selection (an attempt that will almost certainly never be wholly successful) as openly or disguisedly racist. One is reminded of the notorious response to the man who protested that he was anti-communist: ‘I don’t care what kind of communist you are!’