Choice, Conflict, and the Zero-Sum Game of Identity Politics

Peter Schuck\u27s Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance is an impressive capstone to an extraordinary career. Schuck\u27s work has included consumer advocacy, public service, residence at a Washington think tank, law-school teaching, and scholarship on issues ranging from product liability and cost-benefit analysis to citizenship and race, ethnicity, and immigration. A former Nader\u27s Raider and aide to Joseph Califano, Schuck has written what might be construed as a latter-day neoconservative manifesto at a time when the neoconservatives themselves have abandoned social policy, not to mention their original convictions about the limits of governmental action. Echoing but hardly parroting Ronald Reagan\u27s slogan, Getting guv\u27ment off our backs, Schuck\u27s subtitle points to a politically astute, but intellectually rigorous perspective that an independent soul like the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan might have endorsed