A November 7 ballot proposal in Michigan drew passionate attacks from the Democratic Party, Big Business, unions, universities, the major newspapers, and religious, civic, and civil-rights groups. It drew tepid opposition even from the state’s top Republicans.

Among the attacks:

•"The proposal could have remarkably negative effects on … breast cancer screenings [and] domestic-violence shelters for women," editorialized The Detroit News.

•"It will immediately eliminate opportunities for women and minorities to have equal access to jobs, education, and contracts in Michigan," said a flier highlighted on the Web site of One United Michigan, the major establishment opposition group.

•It would "give [the state’s] universities, its local governments, its counties, and its state bodies the right to discriminate against blacks, Latinos, and women in violation of our federally guaranteed equal-rights protections," said By Any Means Necessary, the shorthand name of a more radical opposition group.

What is this horrible monstrosity? And why did Michigan’s voters adopt it by 58 percent to 42 percent after a campaign in which opponents outspent supporters by 4-to-1?

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, as supporters call it, amends the state constitution by outlawing racial discrimination against Asians and whites — as well as against blacks and Hispanics — in certain public programs. This is what Congress thought it had done in the 1964 Civil Rights Act before the courts went to work on it.

The straightforward language of MCRI’s central provision is almost identical to ballot initiatives adopted by California’s voters in 1996 and Washington’s in 1998: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."

The above-quoted claims about MCRI’s supposed effects are among many flat-out lies (in my view) that opponents told, especially to mislead women into thinking that MCRI would hurt them. The opposition campaign consisted mainly of misleading spin, mindless hysteria, and even thuggish intimidation. Examples:

•MCRI would take away the "opportunity to compete on a level playing field," asserted Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. In fact, it will make the playing field more level by curtailing unearned preferences.

•"It would make it illegal to have our program targeting girls in junior high school, and having them come to campus to learn about science and engineering," said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan. She left out the fact that such programs are banned only if they discriminatorily exclude boys — including black boys — who want and need such help.

•"I will not stand by while the very heart and soul of this great university is threatened," or let it "go down the path of mediocrity," declared Coleman after MCRI’s adoption.

Well. Ending the state’s regime of discrimination against whites, Asians — who have been hit hardest by racial preferences — and boys does have its costs. But to speak of tearing out the university’s heart and soul is idiocy. And to speak of admitting the best-qualified students as the "path of mediocrity" is Orwellian.

•"If you could have prevented 9/11 from ever happening … would you have? If you could have prevented Katrina … what would you have done? On November 7 there’s a national disaster headed for Michigan … Proposal 2," raved a One United Michigan radio ad. Obscene.

•Screaming BAMN supporters overturned a table in a near-riot that prevented a state board from certifying that MCRI qualified for the ballot. (A court had to do the job.) BAMN leaders spat on and flashed a switchblade near Jennifer Gratz, the 29-year-old leader of the pro-MCRI campaign. This admirable woman was also the target of scurrilous personal attacks from One United Michigan.

Speaking as a supporter of using modest racial preferences to promote integration of our top schools and other elite institutions, I nonetheless applaud MCRI’s adoption for a number of reasons.

•It has become clear that anything short of a flat ban opens the door to such massive, systematic preferences as to mock our anti-discrimination laws and principles.

•The modest preferences that I support are what you get when you adopt a ban such as MCRI, because you can count on diversity-obsessed officials such as Mary Sue Coleman to evade the law any which way they can.

•The notion that racial preferences help the disadvantaged is a sham. Most go to children of powerful politicians, civil-rights activists, and other relatively well-off blacks and Hispanics. This does nothing for the people most in need of help, who lack the minimal qualifications to get into the game.

•Beyond that, racial preferences actually harm disadvantaged minorities and many others. They allow black "leaders" and white liberals to ignore black America’s most dire problems — fatherless families, bad schools, a dying work ethic — while they preen as virtuous for favoring "the son of a black doctor at the expense of a poor [Asian or white] student whose parents didn’t go to college," in Gratz’s words. Many highly qualified people are wrongly perceived to be quota beneficiaries. Many others, thrust into positions in which they are doomed to perform poorly, seek solace in a deluded and self-destructive sense of victimhood.

•Heavy preferences aggravate racial tensions by fostering a sometimes exaggerated sense among whites and Asians that the system is rigged against them; a sense of entitlement among blacks and Hispanics; and a poisonous perception that minorities cannot compete on their merits.

•The grotesque dishonesty of MCRI’s opponents shows that this regime can be sustained only by lies, because it offends the values of the American people. Indeed, strong majorities of black people have opposed racial preferences when asked fairly worded poll questions.

None of this is to deny that many people have honest reasons for opposing MCRI. An honest anti-MCRI campaign would have pointed out that:

•MCRI would make it harder for the university, police and fire departments, and other agencies to hire and promote blacks and Hispanics ahead of better-qualified Asians and whites.

•It would reduce the number of black and Hispanic millionaires, unless they are efficient enough to compete on their merits for public contracts.

•It would reduce racial diversity at the university by sharply cutting the already small numbers of black and Hispanic students admitted.

This last effect is highly regrettable. The underlying cause is even more regrettable: The vast majority of black and Hispanic kids are so badly educated as to be unprepared for college-level work. So schools have used extreme racial double standards to reach their current numbers.

The Michigan preference regime, for example, has approximated subtracting a full grade point from the high school GPA of every Asian and white applicant, treating her A’s as B’s, her B’s as C’s, and so on. The median SAT for students admitted in 2005 was 1,160 for blacks, 1,260 for Hispanics, 1,350 for whites, and 1,400 for Asians. And most black students do worse in college than whites with the same SAT scores.

To evade the massive proof of discrimination, Michigan officials use a deceptive dodge. Stressing the importance of factors such as teacher recommendations and essays, officials suggest that these subjective measures of merit account for the vast racial disparities in grades and scores.

But this logic necessarily rests on an unstated assumption that blacks and Hispanics are far better than Asians and whites on these subjective measures — a naked racial stereotype for which no evidence has ever been cited.

An honest campaign might well have led to MCRI’s approval by even more than the 2-1 ratio it once enjoyed in polls. As it was, the 58-percent-to-42-percent victory — over the opposition of the entire establishment and in the face of a Democratic tide — is stunning evidence that the American people don’t buy the racial-preference snake oil. "If we can win in Michigan, I think we can win anywhere," Ward Connerly, the conservative black businessman who helped spearhead the 2006 Michigan campaign as well as the 1996 California campaign, told reporters.

So why did Republican leaders in Michigan abandon their party’s erstwhile principles and join the corporate elite in promoting racial and gender preferences? And why has President Bush done the same? This capitulation mainly represents a feeble effort to buy protection against being demonized as racist by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and their media enablers.

On no major issue has America’s electorate so resoundingly and repeatedly rejected a policy embraced with such unanimity by the establishment. The electorate is right. The establishment is wrong.