American liberals and leftists everywhere never are content living people free. They must always finding some new project in their perverse, anti-liberty effort to create a Utopia. Left-wing politicians are always trying to use the power of the state to restrict freedom in order to achieve some declared objective.

One of the cause celebres of the Left is “diversity.” Diversity is all well-and-good. But it is beyond the remit of the state to seek to mandate diversity quotes on private institutions. Not only is such action an undue negation of the freedoms of the institution, but is patronizing to minorities for it tells them that they can only rise in relationship to state assistance rather than on their own merit.

The United States already has a rampant federal institution - the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - that sues firms if they do not have x amount of Black workers or y amount of Latinos. Proud American small businesses have often been forced through years of litigation because the “Diversity Police” think that their ends of creating equality trump the constitution [Read the chapter “The Opportunity Police” in James Bovard’s Lost Rights]. As John Philip Reid wrote in The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution, “Eighteenth-century constitutional theory could not contemplate the use of government to work for equality in the form of social or economic justice, because it could not trust government.”

American businesses and universities have already fallen victim to heavy-handed government action seeking to ride the world of freedom of opportunity and meritocracy for a world based on arbitrary state-enforced quotes. And now liberals want to bring charities - yes, charities! - under the fold of racial quotes.

The Greenlining Institute out of Berkeley - naturally it would be in Berkeley - has published a paper calling for “political pressure to increase the “diversity” of their employees, with hints of racial and sexual quotas on employment and even on recipients.”

So instead of hiring on who is most qualified, charities will not have to start partially hiring on race. And they may even have to donate part of the endowment to certain minority causes. There is nothing wrong with a charity doing either. But what is wrong is the state forcing them to do so. It is not enough that liberals have instituted forced redistribution of wealth. Taking our money and handing it out to special interest, now they actually seek to control how our donated money is spent as well. They tax and redistribute and now they seek to dictate private distribution as well. The Chutzpah!!!

California - a far-left state - has already passed a bill that will require all state-based charities with endowments over $250 million to report the sex and race of their staff. Welcome to “Diversity Big Brother.” Is this progressive? I thought liberals were supposed to be race and sex-blind. Now liberal legislators will be inspecting whether a charity has x amount of whatever [!] in order to then pass judgments on whether it is a good or bad charity.

Further, charities in American are tax-exempt. But liberals can’t tax enough. Thus “Xavier Becerra, a Democrat from California, has threatened to remove tax exemptions for foundations.”

What is scary and sad about his is that American has a great charitable past and present. American’s are by far the most generous people in the world. Not only do Americans give a lot to one another, but Americans are give more to the foreign world than the rest of the world combined.

[Secondary Source: The Economist.]

Look at the disparity between #1 USA and #2 Britain. Americans give above and beyond. Our national ethos is based on helping our fellow man. But now the future of charities are in doubt, threatened by the vicarious generosity of politicians.

“This sort of partisan interest could allow lawmakers to “insert themselves into foundation governance and grant-making”, worries Sue Santa of the Philanthropy Roundtable. Philanthropists fear America may go down the British route, where charities must show clear public benefit to qualify for tax deductions; and that will open the door to politics.” If other states and Congress follow California’s path it would be a tragedy for American values.

I will end by quoting one of my heroes: Milton Friedman.

A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

But the chances that liberals will recognize the immorality of what they are doing because government has no purpose in regulating charities, are nil.