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Cato Daily Dispatch for August 28, 2001

McCain Endorses NATO Expansion Spree
University Racial Preference Policy Struck Down
Grandma's Got a Gun

McCain Endorses NATO Expansion Spree

NATO should take in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in its next round of expansion, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said today, according to the Associated Press.

"I believe that the Baltic states should be included," McCain said after meeting Czech President Vaclav Havel in Prague. "I think there is a certain symbolism associated with these three small nations as a part of the Atlantic alliance."

In "NATO Expansion: Folly on Stilts," Ted Galen Carpenter warns against enlarging NATO hastily and writes that "advocates of expansion act as though NATO is a political honor society that the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are entitled to join because they have embraced democracy. But NATO is a military alliance, and the decision to extend U.S. security guarantees is serious business, not cost-free political symbolism. American troops might very well die defending those countries."

University Racial Preference Policy Struck Down

A federal appeals court panel ruled unanimously yesterday that the admissions policy of the University of Georgia, which gives a slight preference in bonus points to nonwhite applicants, was unconstitutional, according to The New York Times.

The three judges on the panel said the university failed to prove that having more non-white students on campus would lead to a more diverse student body. Under some interpretations of the United States Supreme Court ruling in the landmark 1978 Bakke case, the creation of a more diverse student body might have justified the university's giving black students extra points in its admissions calculations. But the federal appeals court rejected that logic.

"Racial diversity alone is not necessarily the hallmark of a diverse student body," the judges on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit wrote, "and race is not necessarily the only, or best, criterion for determining the contribution that an applicant might make to the broad mix of experiences and perspectives" that create diversity.

In the Cato Journal article, "Affirmative Action Can't Be Mended," Walter E. Williams explains why "affirmative action, in the form of racial preferences, has worn out its political welcome." In "Setbacks Won't Stop Drive For True Civil Rights," Ward Connerly writes that "it is important for us to redefine our thinking with regard to that term, 'civil rights,' and to understand that indeed civil rights are individual rights for every citizen." The vision of American civil rights is the subject of the Cato book "Affirmative Action Fraud: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision?"

Grandma's Got a Gun

The Christian Science Monitor tells the story today of "Kate," a middle-aged Oregon grandmother whose attitude toward guns has changed as she has gotten older and now always carries a loaded pistol.

She has considered other forms of self-defense. But a Rottweiler isn't her style, and karate, she says, doesn't seem as effective as a gun.

"I think I'm sort of too old to do martial arts, and I really don't want to let anybody get that close," she says. "If you want to know the truth, I'd rather end it sooner than later. Then you just pray the person doesn't get the gun away from you and shoot you with it. It is a big concern."

The story reports that Patrick Langan, a statistician for the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Study, found that in defense against rape, robbery, or assault, guns help 65 percent of the time and make things worse about 9 percent of the time.

In "Gun Policy in the Aftermath of Littleton," Cato Fellow Doug Bandow writes that gun control is misguided and that studies show that guns are used five times as often to prevent as to commit crimes. In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun," Jeffrey R. Snyder shows that crime-rates are reduced in states that adopt concealed-carry laws.

Last year, the Cato Institute hosted a book forum featuring legal scholar John R. Lott, Jr., author of "More Guns, Less Crime." The updated edition of his book presents the most comprehensive analysis ever done on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws. Video of the forum is available on the Cato Web site.