Got a letter from Corona, Calif., the home of Centennial High School. My correspondent began, “I thought you might be interested in hearing this, because it will remind you of Ann Arbor” — Ann Arbor, Mich., my hometown. “Friday night,” said the correspondent, “was our homecoming game. At halftime, we usually get parade floats, made by the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes.” But not this year. “We were treated to marchers from United Latino Students, the Filipino Student Union, the Black Student Union . . . It was amazing how the students were segregating themselves at an event where everyone comes to cheer on a team with blacks, Hispanics, whites, and Asians, all of whom care about the team colors and no others.”

A sad letter, really. This was one of the things that most repulsed me when I was growing up: the constant identification by race, the constant dwelling on race, the constant dividing up by race. This was all done by “liberals,” of course — but, in a way, George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, and all them ol’ “segs” would have heartily approved. This was a big reason for my rejection of “liberalism” as I found it. I liked the old ideal, and the old motto: E pluribus unum, or Out of many, one. I thought that Balkanization was causing much unnecessary upset and pain.

But you know all this, having heard it — having lived it — over and over . . .

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I think of the old liberals, like those who set up Americans for Democratic Action. Could they have imagined that, one day, “liberalism” would come to mean speech codes on college campuses and parades-by-tribe at high-school halftimes? Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was one old liberal who did not like this new day: which is why, to me, his most gratifying book is The Disuniting of America. (Schlesinger, for the record, was not in favor of this disuniting.)

For years and years, liberal-minded Americans struggled for all Americans to be Americans, without regard to race or ethnicity. The evanescence of race and ethnicity into an Americanism, or a humanity, was the consummation devoutly to be wished. But then, everything . . . changed. And skin or blood became the be-all, end-all. What a disgusting turns of events, don’t you think?

I guess, if it were up to me, I would ban race- and ethnicity-based clubs in schools, certainly public ones. But this is an outlook that is weirdly, surprisingly un-modern.

I appreciate the candor of left-wing congressmen from Massachusetts. The other day, Barney Frank said, “We are trying on every front to increase the role of government.” Well, of course — and thank you for the frank (Frank?) acknowledgement! Frank was also the guy who said that a “public option” plan in health care was “the best way to reach single-payer.” He proceeded to say it was not only the best way but “the only way.” Again, of course — and thank you.

Then there is Rep. Ed Markey. Referring to “cap and trade” legislation, he said, “This is revolutionary” — and it is. Though not, sad to say, in a positive — in a 1776 — way.

Some days ago, there was an interesting moment on MSNBC. I wrote about it on the Corner, here. Contessa Brewer, an anchorwoman, was introducing Jesse Jackson — but she introduced him as Al Sharpton. Jackson, staring into the camera, said, “I’m Rev. Jesse Jackson.” Oh, is he — and Sharpton must have loved it.

One of my points was, Brewer is lucky she works for a network known as left-wing. What if an anchorman at Fox had made that mistake? Can you imagine the outcry? “Those right-wing racists can’t even tell two black men apart! Typical.”

And this leads me to a note I received from a reader:

When I clerked at the Supreme Court, advocates got the two female justices mixed up on three separate occasions. Must have been some dirtbaggy good ol’ boys, right? Nope. The vaunted liberal Larry Tribe, once, and another vaunted liberal — acting solicitor general Walter Dellinger — twice. There was no such thing as the blogosphere then, but the number of outraged stories that appeared at the time was exactly the number that would appear now (i.e., 1 trillion fewer than if some conservative had done the same thing).

For sure.

Have you had a chance to peruse the new issue of National Review? You can find it in digital form here. My particular contribution is a piece on an interesting, maddening case: Nurre v. Whitehead. What is this? Well, in Washington State, there is a high school named for Scoop Jackson — Henry M. Jackson High School, in Mill Creek, outside of Everett. The school had had a little tradition, whereby the wind ensemble got to play a piece of its choice at graduation. But in 2006, there was a problem: The ensemble wanted to play Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria. And the superintendent of schools said no: because playing this piece — even in a strictly instrumental version, no words — would constitute an “endorsement” of religion.

If you think this is bizarre, you are not alone.

A student in the ensemble, Kathryn Nurre, sued. And the case went to the federal district court in Seattle and then to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The student lost, and the school superintendent won, in each court. The student’s backers are hoping that the Supreme Court will hear the case and rebuke the lower courts, providing clear and sane guidelines. The Ninth Circuit has a happy tradition of being overturned. And they are a little funny when it comes to religion — these are the people, remember, who banned the Pledge of Allegiance, for a time (because of “under God”).

I will not rehash the Nurre case in Impromptus — you can read about it in NR — but I’d like to say a few additional words. Biebl’s Ave Maria is less known than Schubert’s, or the one Gounod made from the Bach prelude. But it is an extraordinary, beautiful, transcendent piece. In 1964, Biebl wrote it for a choir of firemen in Munich. (Fire departments were different, long ago and far away.) It eventually made its way to our shores, picked up and spread by Chanticleer, the a cappella group from San Francisco. It is their signature encore. Audiences wait for it and do not want to leave without it. Robert Shaw also recorded it, with his Chamber Singers.

If you don’t know this piece, you’ll want to treat yourself to it.