Derrick Bell Quotes
We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.
Ethical Ambition
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He was trying to get the Democratic Presidential Nomination.
The term “rugged individualism” was used at the time be very conservatives and the very wealthy to describe business leladers with words that had very good public connotations. They argued that it would be undesirable to curtail their individualism that was so important by any government regulations or laws that would limit what the business leaders could do. However, the reality was that these very successful and powerful “rugged individualists” had regimented most everyone else—employees, consumers, and small businessmen who might sell them services or products. To Tugwell, if the wealthy and powerful few had no restrictions on their individualism, there would be precious little individualism for most of society. He sought a balance of regulating the individualism and prerogatives of the few somewhat in order to allow the vast majority of people to be able to have individuality as well.
Worry about the disproportional power of the rich is not a modern concern, but was a concern from the very beginning of the nation. There was a belief that if there were a legislative body representing the entire population the rich would tend to dominate it. The solution that England had found was a bicameral Parliament—a House of Lords representing the wealthy and the powerful and the House of Commons, representing the bulk of the people. America followed suit but never did have the class distinction of England.
This was one of his great fundamental questions of mankind which his research began to answer.
This important statement would not have been a noteworthy quote as so many have said it before, except for the fact that she was writing as a spokesperson of Nationalist China and she was the wife of the Nationalist Party leader, Chiang Kai-Shek. And the great failure of Chiang’s governance was the corruption and the excessive exploitation of the Chinese people by the wealthy. Madame Chaing, educated at Vassar College, knew just what to say to Americans and she mustered incredible support for the Nationalist cause most of which would never have been forthcoming if Americans knew the truth about the Nationalist Government. It was so corrupt, that the vast majority of the people aided the Communists in defeating Chaing, expelling him from the mainland, and relegating his government to Taiwan. Madame Chaing’s hypocrisy was legend. See {615696}.
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. In 1971, he became the first tenured African-American professor of law at Harvard Law School, and he is often credited as one of the originators of critical race theory along with Richard Delgado, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams. He was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law from 1991 until his death. He was also a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
