The new Trump administration has a generational opportunity to eliminate anti-merit identity politics, which have infected and crippled so many American institutions, and to restore merit. Governors and legislators in places where Republicans won mandates in this election also agree.
For nearly a century after the Pendleton Act of 1883, our federal government used stiff tests to fill positions; competency was a nonpartisan goal. In the twentieth century, leaders agreed that we needed bright individuals to win wars, improve science, and accomplish wonders like the moon landing. By the 1970s, fewer than 10% of test takers had achieved high enough scores on government PACE exams to qualify for senior leadership.
Those tests were discontinued in the late 1970s. Because of racial discrepancies in the results, activist judges concluded that even if the tests predicted job success, they were prohibited due to their “disparate impact.” The government soon began recruiting people who would have failed these tests—less qualified people from all backgrounds. The Democratically controlled Congress under President Jimmy Carter in 1979-80 made it more difficult to hold government personnel accountable. Since then, the bureaucracy has only become dumber.
The idiocy has escalated over the last decade, with a concentration on identity politics making merit an anti-priority. As the Biden administration attempted to retain in amber different sorts of racial favoritism and discrimination, and its failed bureaucracy continued to waste billions of dollars on a regular basis, Republicans gradually became aware of the rot.
A fight began in the United States to challenge some of these policies. Legal battles escalated, and in 2023, the Supreme Court reversed its previous affirmative action verdicts, signaling the end of the notion that “well-intentioned” racial discrimination is acceptable in America. It is not.
Yale and Princeton, which admitted fewer higher-scoring Asian-Americans this year than last, may have illegally disobeyed this order; if so, Trump’s triumph means their time is up.
Unfortunately, this rot persists even in states that supported Mr. Trump by ten (or thirty) points. However, a few courageous leaders have begun to pay attention. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken direct aim at the “woke” aspects of state government, particularly in colleges.
As chairman of the Cicero Institute, I’ve witnessed this debate firsthand at the state level. Our team drafted legislation to end coerced “loyalty oaths” to diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) ideology in public universities, and we were successful: versions of those laws have been implemented in many states. Eliminating DEI loyalty oaths is a must-have change for leaders who understand how America operates. But it’s a little start. Why not be bolder and fight for merit wherever it is under attack?
Identity politics is a sort of left-wing politics that spreads like a virus, sponsoring activists and ideologies in whatever city or university it infects. If we do not capitalize on the requirement today, we may still lose to the virus tomorrow.
The good news is that the fight will go to the federal level in January. The Justice Department will no longer defend racial discrimination in academic settings. The Congress will no longer attempt to appropriate funds on a racial basis. Cabinet appointees will no longer brag about their dedication to DEI — and lack of attention to results. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy & Co. will battle for merit in Washington.
Conservative leaders must understand, however, that these poor ideas will not go away peacefully. There’s a lot of money at stake for woke NGOs, universities, and others that profit from government corruption; even red states continue to finance awake departments, ideologically-captured colleges, hospitals, and unaccountable far-left nonprofits. Thousands of K-12 teachers in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia receive higher pay for taking classes from radical-left “Departments of Education.” These institutions teach kids how bad our culture is and how evil capitalism is; in each of these states, state schools have departments that universally embrace radical identity politics and pass that view on to students, which is funded by taxpayers. That isn’t academic freedom; it’s subsidizing your enemies!
This ideological infection will not vanish just because we won at the polls; if we continue to subsidize the radicals, the virus will simply hide, incubate, and spread itself again at a later period. Instead of rewarding degrees at Woke-U, why not defund the radicals and institute merit-based testing for teacher advancement?
Why not attach community college funding to students’ long-term professional performance, such as average earnings, to incentivize what works and reward exceptional schools while defunding the woke-stupid alliance? Why not clean up every institution that receives state funds?
Boldly tackling identity politics and other neo-Marxist nonsense is a popular issue among voters. Even in my own state of California, when voters who favor Democrats 60-40 are asked to weigh in on specific topics such as affirmative action, they strongly support race neutrality and common sense.
Red state legislators and governors, the electorate is on your side. The law and the courts are on our side. Administrators at woke institutions want you to be soft, but your obligation to our society calls.
Merit-based accountability leads to a successful, high-growth future, whereas identity politics leads to a nightmarish, zero-sum society of exploitation. The only question now is whether leaders have received the memo, and who has the intelligence and bravery to act.