WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Connoisseurs of "The Simpsons" on Fox may recall the episode from the early 1990s where Sideshow Bob was being sent back to prison for yet another attempt on the life of Krusty the Clown. The
defiant Sideshow Bob explained how he would get out of jail to menace Springfield’s favorite entertainer once
more: "You can’t keep the Democrats out of the White House forever! I’ll get you yet!"

Something like this sentiment must have overcome the editors at California Lawyer magazine, whose May
issue carries a photo of Governor Gray Davis with the following boldface caption: "Now that a Democrat is in
the corner office, there’s a new sense of what’s possible." It’s a nice line to call up next time you
run into someone who says there’s no such thing as media bias. The premise here isn’t even subtle:
Democrats are the agents of Progress, while Republicans are the roadblocks of Reaction. Maybe California
Lawyer is still peeved at Pete Wilson for cutting off dues to the State Bar on account of the relentless
politicization of what is supposed to be a professional association rather than a hack-haven.

But this is nothing compared to the howler that appears in the pages of the latest edition of the otherwise
venerable Wilson Quarterly. In "Was America Born Capitalist?" historian Gordon Wood labors to arrive at
an emphatic "No." Wood has been part of an ongoing project among historians to convince us that America’s
Founding Fathers were really a bunch of communitarian socialists.

In this latest article Wood has come down with a case of the vapors. "Of all the ‘isms’ that afflict us,"
Wood begins, "capitalism is the worst." Worse than racism? Worse than fascism? Worse than feminism? It
boggles the mind. Wood apparently means it, too. His second sentence, which could be parody, is even worse:
"According to many scholars, capitalism has been ultimately responsible for much of what ails us, in
both the past and the present, including our race problem, our grossly unequal distribution of wealth,
and the general sense of malaise and oppression that academics in particular feel." Last time I checked the
historical record, it was in socialist nations where you found the worst racism, the most oppression, and a
sense of malaise among the population, while capitalist nations led the way in improving civil rights and race
relations. Capitalist populations are generally happier, too, according to surveys. The malaise seems
to be limited to college professors, which may be why they dress so badly. Maybe we should subsidize Prozac
prescriptions for tenured faculty members.

On the positive side of the ledger, Sunday’s New York Times Magazine offered a cover feature by James Traub
about the aftermath of Proposition 209 in California that was mostly positive. Traub thinks California’s
color-blind college admissions process is "the future," and he thinks it works. A careful reading of Traub’s
story makes clear that the post-Prop. 209 world is seeing a decline in corrosive race consciousness on
campus. Hard to believe this could have happened in a capitalist country while a Republican was governor.

--By Steven Hayward