As we enter the second decade since the demise of the Soviet Union as a political entity, Soviet propaganda is as influential as ever. Indeed, Soviet propaganda will influence the success or failure of the new Bush administration and could even ultimately decide the fate of the two-century-old "American experiment."

In the struggle for world influence, Soviet propagandists realized that non-Soviet whites were a small minority of the world's population occupying a small part of the earth's landmass (Europe and North America). In their propaganda, the Soviets undertook to isolate the Western alliance from what today we call "people of color."

Europe was attacked for imperialism toward its African and Asian colonies. The United States was attacked for denying civil rights to blacks.

Soviet propaganda was amazingly successful. The charge that the West was racist became enshrined in European and British universities and foreign ministries. Many a professor made a career declaiming his country's mistreatment of darker skinned peoples.

In the United States, this propaganda is the loudest voice in our universities. There are more academics teaching the evils of white racist hegemony than there are teaching physics, chemistry or mathematics. Our Founding Fathers, along with white men in general, have been reinvented as racist pigs.

This propaganda has succeeded among blacks and whites alike. The majority of black leaders believe that black interests and white interests are opposed and irreconcilable, requiring preferences for racial minorities "to level the playing field."

In response to the charge of racism, white policymakers have put in place a system of unconstitutional racial preferences that have expanded to include other "victim" groups. These preferences have destroyed equality by granting status-based legal privileges to "victims of white male hegemony."

To be accused of racism has become a serious offense, and people are punished for "hate speech" and "hate thought." Paradoxically, Republicans have been branded the "racist party" — despite the facts that Republicans, led by Sen. Everett Dirksen, broke the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the Nixon administration imposed the first racial quotas.

In the recent presidential election, 90 percent of blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics voted against the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, despite his sincere outreach. Sensitive to the charge of racism, Republicans have concluded that they must do more to win black and Hispanic votes. Writing in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 2, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said: "The first and most important task for Republicans must be to foster better relations with Americans of color. This is a moral and practical imperative."

Republicans should reach out to blacks and immigrants, and try to convince them that political liberty and individual freedom rest on the Constitution's guarantee of "the equal protection of the laws" — the antithesis of differential group rights.

Republicans should not compete with Democrats who proposition black and brown voters with special preferences based on their skin color. Preferences destroy equality before the law and lead us back to the status-based law of the feudal era. If we ignore the Constitution's requirement of equality in law, there is little to constrain us from ignoring the rest of our governing document. It is a mistake to compete for the black vote in a way that leads to tyranny.

If Republicans pander to minorities with preferences, Republicans will lose the white vote that is disadvantaged by preferences. In a convincing article, Steve Sailer argues that Bush's narrow win was not due to his loss of 77 percent of the minority vote but to his winning "a measly 54 percent of the white vote."

The president-elect's father won 59 percent of the white vote in 1988. If George W. had won 57 percent, instead of 54 percent, he would have crushed Al Gore in the Electoral College 367 to 171.

George W. barely eked out a win, because he lost ground with white voters. Sailer argues that Republicans stand to gain far more votes from white households than from racial minorities whose leaders are wedded to racial preferences. The real threat to the Republican Party, says Sailer, is the vast unrestricted immigration from Third World countries that is lessening the value of the white vote. If nothing is done about immigration, whites will become a minority, a minority without preferences.

Dr. Roberts' latest book, "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," has just been released by Prima Publishers. To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

January 10, 2001