.... this essay about affirmative action is essential reading. Dr. Stephen Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College, shows considerable intellectual courage writing such a piece. A sample paragraph: We need to face reality. College admission and employment generally is a competitive zero-sum game. Affirmative action started as a well-intentioned way to redress inequalities, but it has become an ethical and practical quagmire. It is now effectively pitting races against each other, and rigging the results so that individual merit differences are discounted. Liberals are afraid that eliminating affirmative action is the same as turning away from those who are less fortunate, whereas conservatives and libertarians think that, when the State gets out of the way, individuals and families make themselves more prosperous. If the State  must  be involved in the redistribution of social outcomes through college admissions, then it should stick to a problem it can actual...