The Democratic Party has long gained political capital and much of its identity by holding itself out as a champion of civil liberties. From supporting free speech to protecting individuals' privacy, Democrats have presented themselves as defenders of the basic principle that government should protect fundamental rights, and certainly not...

Ten years ago this month, we were definitively told that race is scientifically invalid, supposedly ending centuries of debate over the social versus biological character of racial categories. At the high profile announcement that a draft sequence of the human genome had been completed, President Clinton said "one of the...