I always admire the writings of Victor Davis Hanson.  As a classical military historian and a farmer, he has a unique perspective on America.  He has seen and lived a traditionalist lifestyle, written about the common western heritage, and dealt with the world of self flagellation in academia.

With the recent nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, it is evident that, the desire for "empathy" has clearly trumped the need to interpret law as it is constructed.  Others have written on this issue extensively, so I won't go into this in much detail.  However, th below section from this work of Hanson's raises in my mind one of the core challenges America faces.  Namely, the desire of the political, elite left to raise the race issue ad nauseum.  This is not really multiculturalism, it the beginning of factionalism which, as Hanson explicitly states devolves into tribalism.  That is the opposite of the universal aspirations of America.

For America to retain its strength, it must become color blind and race blind.  Anything else enshrines parochial loyalties rather than broad, national loyalties.  This is no way for the world's strongest nation to remain strong.  It is a path leading to navel gazing and disunity.  

Hanson sums up well,

"In a weird way, I don’t think we’ve seen officials of a government as racially conscious since the days of the 1930s.  Surely in the last three decades one’s race has never been so emphasized as it is now-and large numbers of all races will begin to resent that once again we are not talking about the content of our characters, but our racial pedigrees and the degree to which we can all showcase the modern populist version of being born in a log cabin. There is a feeling I think that every Obama appointment for some reason either will fit some desirable race/class/gender rubric, or, if not, will soon have to  be “offset” one-for-one, by another PC selection to come: sort of Obama’s racial version of Al Gore’s carbon offsets. This is very disturbing, and one is surprised that sensible people seem to be happy with seeing people in terms of racial profiles rather than simple human beings with a common humanity...

one should remember the story of the last 3,000 years is the escalation of such tribalism into mayhem, as those of different races and religions went at it ad mortem. Why emulate the former Yugoslavia, or Kurd/Shiite/Sunni, or Rwanda, when the US alone had created the basis for a multiracial culture under the aegis of a shared Western paradigm?"