"Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness..." As are Right-Wing zealots. cf. The Patriot Act.

Social Security

"Anyone whose first reaction after a terrorist attack is, "Why do they hate us?" is just an intolerable d--che. (Gee, hawkins can say it but i can't!)" That was my 2nd reaction. My first was anger, and my revenge was to keep doing my job. It took me about 5 minutes to ask myself that question. Anyone who hasn't honestly considered that question in the near-twelve years since 9-11 is an idiot and a bully.

"Liberals are actually bothered by people who do love America." No we're not. We're bothered by idiots who say stuff like this.

AliveInHim: "My own mother was in a lesbian relationship..." I'm glad that your mother suffered no discrimination as a result of her Lesbianism. But it it extremely dubious to generalize about the treatment of all LGBT people in the USA from that one (or any other single) example.

Did they ever file a joint 1040?

It is true that the majority of the discrimination against LGBT people, being based on their sexuality, comes into play only WRTO their intimate relationships with other people as opposed to strictly as individuals. But even strictly as individuals, we have still seen employment and housing descrimination. Certainly their ability to serve in the Armed Forces has only very recently, and at great effort, been granted to them.

I am astounded that you have never learned about the many ways that LGBT people are not equally protected under the law. For example the GAO (Govt Accountabily Office) lists over 1000 rights/advantages that are denied to LGBT couples, such as the inability to use Married Tax Filing statii.

"Very few people of any kind would have AIDS if it weren't for gay men." This may be the case in the USA, but certainly not in Africa.

I think that this is a justifiable, and the original, use of the word 'diversity'. Perhaps Dr. Sowell could appreciate the lack of diversity among commentators in scholarly journals in the late 19th century. But it's so out-of-hand now that some men accuse gentlemens clubs of discrimination because the dancers are all women!

It seems to that the word 'diversity' is a particularly good example of the process that Dr. Sowell decries. It's easy to see how the word first came into use for a particular use, and how it's gotten out-of-hand to the point where it's now used as an accusation or as an attack, in situations where it's use makes no sense. It's original use was in situations where blacks, jews, & various other minorities were excluded from access to jobs, schools, etc on the basis of their identity. When a labor union's membership was all white in an urban city with a large black population and only white people worked at unionized wages, it was accurate to accuse the union of a lack of diversity, preparatory to bringing action against ity for violating civil rights laws.