Honest opinion about government from Daniel Boorstin:
We must return to the ideal of equality. We must recognize that many of the acts committed in the name of equal opportunity are in fact acts of discrimination. We must reject reactionary programs, though they masquerade under slogans of progress, which would carry us back to Old World prejudices, primitive hatreds, and discriminatory quotas. Our cultural federalism, another name for the fellowship of man in America, must once again emphasize what each can give to us. We must reject the clenched fist for the open hand. We must aim, more than ever before, to become color-blind. We must aim to create conditions of equal opportunity�by improving American schools beginning at the very bottom, and by ruthlessly applying the same standards of achievement to all Americans regardless of race, sex, religion, or national origin�the same standards for admission to institutions of higher learning, for graduation, for the Civil Service, for elected office, and for all other American opportunities. We weaken our nation and show disrespect for all our fellow Americans when we make race or sex or poverty a disqualification�and equally so when we make them a qualification.
Democracy and Its Discontents, 1971, 1974
Senior historian of the Smithsonian Institution, Daniel Boorstin is an extremely versatile intellectual. Until 1969 he was Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of American History at the University of Chicago, where he taught for twenty-five years. He earned degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale and practiced law in Massachusetts. He is known for his numerous books, including The Americans (a trilogy), The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1964, 1971), The Genius of American Politics (1953), and The Decline of Radicalism (1969). He also edited the twenty-seven volume Chicago History of American Civilization series.
Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.