Wes Vernon
Sneak attack of the racial/ethnic dividers
By Wes Vernon
The Political Correct police have tried every which way to divide this country by gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, religion, and background.
They forbid us to use such designations as "chairman," and insist the presiding officer at a given meeting is a "chair," even as that "neutral" word more commonly describes an inanimate object. In personal relationships, "wife," "husband," "fiancι," (or even "boyfriend" or girlfriend") have given way to the less specific "significant other." They have mainstreamed the term "African-Americans" to describe millions of our citizens who have never visited Africa, and have no desire to do so. "Native Americans" and "European Americans" are divided solely by their ancestry regardless of whether they themselves were born here or ever lived in Europe (A variation on the old snob boast "My ancestors came over here on the Mayflower").
These unofficial but emphatic speech edicts may seem frivolous or a matter of semantics. But they helped create a climate that has emboldened legislators to move a big step beyond all that.
Not out in the open, of course at least at first. But the push behind a pernicious piece of legislation on Capitol Hill, known as "The Native Hawaiian Bill" is making its way through the congressional mill. It seeks to establish a race-based government on our soil a separate nation that can disregard the provisions of our Constitution, Bill or Rights, as well as U.S. and state law.
Visitors to Hawaii in previous years have marveled at how in this arguably most integrated of all the 50 states, people of so many races lived in a harmony that allowed for something approaching the ideal color-blind society. In more recent years, however, that has been changing. The politics of "multiculturalism" and politicized ethnic identity have reached the shores of the beautiful island. And in the shadows of a Capitol Hill pre-occupied with Katrina's rescue efforts, Supreme Court vacancies and nomination fights, and the ongoing War on Terror, there lurks this mischief that would carry the balkanization of America toward possible ultimate secession. It would create a separate nation of "Native Hawaiians." We already fought one war over secession. Do we need another one?
S-147, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005 is patently unconstitutional, and some folks at the White House believe it is so absurdly out of sync with the framework of our society that surely if it becomes law, the courts will rule it unconstitutional on its face. Oh, sure. Opponents of the bill note these are the same wise prognosticators who were confident that the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill would be struck down by the Supreme Court. The court upheld it, much to the shock of its authors themselves.
Senator John Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, is leading the fight against the measure. His analysis prepared for the Senate Republican Policy Committee makes the following points (which we list here, along with some of our own comments):
S-147 creates the race-based government by shoehorning in the Native Hawaiian population, wherever located, into the federal Indian law system and calling the resulting government a "tribe." To qualify as a "Native Hawaiian" under this bill, one has to have just a drop of Native Hawaiian blood. With so many intermarriages among the many races in Hawaii, this is a surefire recipe for what Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund calls "permanent racial conflict," to say nothing of legal chaos. Thus, the famed remarkable harmony that has existed on the island would sink like a lead balloon.
S-147 advocates argue that the bill merely grants Native Hawaiians the same status as American Indians and Alaska Natives, but this claim represents a serious distortion of the constitutional and historical standards of recognizing Indian tribes.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress cannot simply create an Indian tribe. Only those groups of people who have long operated as an Indian tribe, live as a separate and distinct community (geographically and culturally), and have a pre-existing political structure can be recognized as a tribe. Native Hawaiians do not satisfy any of these criteria.
When Hawaii became a state in 1959, there was a broad consensus in the Congress and in the nation that Native Hawaiians would not be treated as a separate racial group, and that they would not be transformed into an "Indian tribe."
To create a race-based government would be offensive to our nation's commitment to equal justice and the elimination of racial distinctions in the law. The inevitable constitutional challenge to this bill almost certainly would reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
S-147 would lead the nation down the path to a racial balkanization, with different legal codes being applied to persons of different races who live in the same communities. (Excuse me, but didn't we have a "civil rights" movement four decades ago that led marches and demonstrations against just that sort of thing? Do we call this "The Return of Jim Crow?")
The bill also encourages increased litigation (Hmmmm. Might have known the trial lawyers had a hand in this somewhere). This would include claims against private landowners and state and federal entities which would heavily impact private and public resources (And guess whose pockets would benefit thereby).
The bill represents a step backwards in American history and would create far more problems cultural, practical, and constitutional than it purports to solve.
But there is a reason S-147 has been called "the worst bill you never heard of." Backers have hoped you never learn of it, let alone examine the fine print until it's a done deal.
It is not as if there has been a popular outcry fin favor of the measure. A survey of the Hawaiian people released in July and conducted by ccAdvertising, showed they are opposed to the legislation by 55-45%. 82% oppose racial preferences. What is most interesting is that nearly 80% of Native Hawaiians themselves oppose the bill. That suggests the "guilt trip" Political Correctness police, not the people, are the driving force here. There is no true grassroots effort involved.
A brief history of the legislation is in order. And for that, I am indebted to the research of Kenneth R. Conklin, a retired schoolteacher who has lived in Hawaii for thirteen years:
In February of 2000, the Rice vs. Cayetano court decision wiped from the books a Hawaii state law that said only Native Hawaiians could vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The court held that the term "Native Hawaiian" names a racial category and not a political group.
Well, of course, the ethnic identity powers-that-be were not going to give up. After all, as Conklin puts it, "Billions of dollars and enormous political power were at stake." So defenders of racial preferences met in secret to plan other ways to get around the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution.
The relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment reads, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the United States; nor shall the State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The relevant portion of the Fifteenth Amendment reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude."
You would think the unambiguous language etched in our guiding document would allow for no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. But plain English does not deter the trial bar, especially when lots of money and power hang in the balance. The end result was the Akaka Bill, named for its chief sponsor, Hawaii's junior Senator Daniel Akaka. He has the backing of the state's senior senator Daniel Inouye, who literally runs the Democratic Party in Hawaii. The measure is also backed by Hawaii's Republican Governor Linda Lingle. The Akaka Bill, through its various incarnations in successive congresses, would give political recognition to Native Hawaiians as an Indian tribe.
This is odd indeed, given that U.S. law stipulates that only those groups that have long operated as Indian tribes and live in communities (reservations) and had been recognized as quasi-sovereign national entities that were in existence before Congress or the Constitution could be considered Indian tribes. Native Hawaiians are dispersed all throughout all 50 states of the nation not just Hawaii.
Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum warns the Senate is "trying to pull a fast one," by slipping in a vote as quietly as possible on S-147, which creates Native Hawaiian "tribe" that can "accept or reject any part of the Constitution as it sees fit."
Indeed the legislation has been slipping through dark corners of the legislative process unbeknownst to most Americans for some time. In 2000 and 2001, it was trucked away inside a huge Defense Appropriations bill; it had actually passed the House in 2000 in what Conklin describes as "a stealth maneuver," but died in the Senate when "an Inouye stealth maneuver failed on the last day of the 106th Congress."
"If passed, there is no turning back," Eagle Forum says. "This bill will create a sovereign entity which could negotiate treaties with other nations, establish its own theocracy, and ignore the Bill of rights. The Senate must reject this racist bill."
Eagle Forum suggests the following senators need to hear from you, and that your calls to Capitol Hill should not be delayed, as there is little time to lose:
Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), George Allen (R-Va.) Bob Bennett (R-Ut.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), Richard Burr-R-N.C.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Larry Craig (R-Ida.), Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.), Tom Harkin (D-Ia.), Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Jim Talent (R-Mo.), Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), John Warner (R-Va.).
When Congress was debating making Hawaii our 50th state, there were those who predicted it would not work and that Hawaii's multi-ethnic population would make it difficult for the island to unite for true statehood that it would soon be at war with itself.
Well, they were wrong...until jackboot Political Correctness intruded. For over 40 years, Hawaii's diverse ethnic population got along just fine. Every year, Hawaiians would mark the anniversary of statehood with parades, fireworks, speeches and U.S. flags flying high. But in 2000, then-Democrat Governor Ben Cayetano ended all that. Now, as columnist John Fund reported after a visit to the island, "(T)he streets were taken over instead by demonstrators crusading for 'Native Hawaiian rights' and the Akaka bill now before the U.S. Senate."
Senator Akaka does not deny that this bill could lead to secession. If we end up with a particular racial group in our midst in all 49 states as a separate nation, it takes no active imagination to envision what will follow. What's next? An African-American "nation?" Hispanic-American "nation?" Japanese American? Chinese American? German-American? Where does it stop? We would end up with something worse than an ethnic tower of Babel. We would have nations within a nation, which in turn could very well lead to the breakup and downfall of the United States of America.
If the bill were harmless, as its supporters claim, why all the extraordinary measures to sneak it through in the dead of night?
It is time to shout this from the rooftops, and let the timid politicians here in Washington understand that Americans will not stand by and allow their country to be destroyed and become the Dis-United States of America.
The time to act is now.
© Wes Vernon
The Political Correct police have tried every which way to divide this country by gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, religion, and background.
They forbid us to use such designations as "chairman," and insist the presiding officer at a given meeting is a "chair," even as that "neutral" word more commonly describes an inanimate object. In personal relationships, "wife," "husband," "fiancι," (or even "boyfriend" or girlfriend") have given way to the less specific "significant other." They have mainstreamed the term "African-Americans" to describe millions of our citizens who have never visited Africa, and have no desire to do so. "Native Americans" and "European Americans" are divided solely by their ancestry regardless of whether they themselves were born here or ever lived in Europe (A variation on the old snob boast "My ancestors came over here on the Mayflower").
These unofficial but emphatic speech edicts may seem frivolous or a matter of semantics. But they helped create a climate that has emboldened legislators to move a big step beyond all that.
Not out in the open, of course at least at first. But the push behind a pernicious piece of legislation on Capitol Hill, known as "The Native Hawaiian Bill" is making its way through the congressional mill. It seeks to establish a race-based government on our soil a separate nation that can disregard the provisions of our Constitution, Bill or Rights, as well as U.S. and state law.
Visitors to Hawaii in previous years have marveled at how in this arguably most integrated of all the 50 states, people of so many races lived in a harmony that allowed for something approaching the ideal color-blind society. In more recent years, however, that has been changing. The politics of "multiculturalism" and politicized ethnic identity have reached the shores of the beautiful island. And in the shadows of a Capitol Hill pre-occupied with Katrina's rescue efforts, Supreme Court vacancies and nomination fights, and the ongoing War on Terror, there lurks this mischief that would carry the balkanization of America toward possible ultimate secession. It would create a separate nation of "Native Hawaiians." We already fought one war over secession. Do we need another one?
S-147, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005 is patently unconstitutional, and some folks at the White House believe it is so absurdly out of sync with the framework of our society that surely if it becomes law, the courts will rule it unconstitutional on its face. Oh, sure. Opponents of the bill note these are the same wise prognosticators who were confident that the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill would be struck down by the Supreme Court. The court upheld it, much to the shock of its authors themselves.
Senator John Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, is leading the fight against the measure. His analysis prepared for the Senate Republican Policy Committee makes the following points (which we list here, along with some of our own comments):
S-147 creates the race-based government by shoehorning in the Native Hawaiian population, wherever located, into the federal Indian law system and calling the resulting government a "tribe." To qualify as a "Native Hawaiian" under this bill, one has to have just a drop of Native Hawaiian blood. With so many intermarriages among the many races in Hawaii, this is a surefire recipe for what Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund calls "permanent racial conflict," to say nothing of legal chaos. Thus, the famed remarkable harmony that has existed on the island would sink like a lead balloon.
S-147 advocates argue that the bill merely grants Native Hawaiians the same status as American Indians and Alaska Natives, but this claim represents a serious distortion of the constitutional and historical standards of recognizing Indian tribes.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress cannot simply create an Indian tribe. Only those groups of people who have long operated as an Indian tribe, live as a separate and distinct community (geographically and culturally), and have a pre-existing political structure can be recognized as a tribe. Native Hawaiians do not satisfy any of these criteria.
When Hawaii became a state in 1959, there was a broad consensus in the Congress and in the nation that Native Hawaiians would not be treated as a separate racial group, and that they would not be transformed into an "Indian tribe."
To create a race-based government would be offensive to our nation's commitment to equal justice and the elimination of racial distinctions in the law. The inevitable constitutional challenge to this bill almost certainly would reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
S-147 would lead the nation down the path to a racial balkanization, with different legal codes being applied to persons of different races who live in the same communities. (Excuse me, but didn't we have a "civil rights" movement four decades ago that led marches and demonstrations against just that sort of thing? Do we call this "The Return of Jim Crow?")
The bill also encourages increased litigation (Hmmmm. Might have known the trial lawyers had a hand in this somewhere). This would include claims against private landowners and state and federal entities which would heavily impact private and public resources (And guess whose pockets would benefit thereby).
The bill represents a step backwards in American history and would create far more problems cultural, practical, and constitutional than it purports to solve.
But there is a reason S-147 has been called "the worst bill you never heard of." Backers have hoped you never learn of it, let alone examine the fine print until it's a done deal.
It is not as if there has been a popular outcry fin favor of the measure. A survey of the Hawaiian people released in July and conducted by ccAdvertising, showed they are opposed to the legislation by 55-45%. 82% oppose racial preferences. What is most interesting is that nearly 80% of Native Hawaiians themselves oppose the bill. That suggests the "guilt trip" Political Correctness police, not the people, are the driving force here. There is no true grassroots effort involved.
A brief history of the legislation is in order. And for that, I am indebted to the research of Kenneth R. Conklin, a retired schoolteacher who has lived in Hawaii for thirteen years:
In February of 2000, the Rice vs. Cayetano court decision wiped from the books a Hawaii state law that said only Native Hawaiians could vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The court held that the term "Native Hawaiian" names a racial category and not a political group.
Well, of course, the ethnic identity powers-that-be were not going to give up. After all, as Conklin puts it, "Billions of dollars and enormous political power were at stake." So defenders of racial preferences met in secret to plan other ways to get around the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution.
The relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment reads, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the United States; nor shall the State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The relevant portion of the Fifteenth Amendment reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude."
You would think the unambiguous language etched in our guiding document would allow for no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. But plain English does not deter the trial bar, especially when lots of money and power hang in the balance. The end result was the Akaka Bill, named for its chief sponsor, Hawaii's junior Senator Daniel Akaka. He has the backing of the state's senior senator Daniel Inouye, who literally runs the Democratic Party in Hawaii. The measure is also backed by Hawaii's Republican Governor Linda Lingle. The Akaka Bill, through its various incarnations in successive congresses, would give political recognition to Native Hawaiians as an Indian tribe.
This is odd indeed, given that U.S. law stipulates that only those groups that have long operated as Indian tribes and live in communities (reservations) and had been recognized as quasi-sovereign national entities that were in existence before Congress or the Constitution could be considered Indian tribes. Native Hawaiians are dispersed all throughout all 50 states of the nation not just Hawaii.
Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum warns the Senate is "trying to pull a fast one," by slipping in a vote as quietly as possible on S-147, which creates Native Hawaiian "tribe" that can "accept or reject any part of the Constitution as it sees fit."
Indeed the legislation has been slipping through dark corners of the legislative process unbeknownst to most Americans for some time. In 2000 and 2001, it was trucked away inside a huge Defense Appropriations bill; it had actually passed the House in 2000 in what Conklin describes as "a stealth maneuver," but died in the Senate when "an Inouye stealth maneuver failed on the last day of the 106th Congress."
"If passed, there is no turning back," Eagle Forum says. "This bill will create a sovereign entity which could negotiate treaties with other nations, establish its own theocracy, and ignore the Bill of rights. The Senate must reject this racist bill."
Eagle Forum suggests the following senators need to hear from you, and that your calls to Capitol Hill should not be delayed, as there is little time to lose:
Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), George Allen (R-Va.) Bob Bennett (R-Ut.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), Richard Burr-R-N.C.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Larry Craig (R-Ida.), Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.), Tom Harkin (D-Ia.), Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Jim Talent (R-Mo.), Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), John Warner (R-Va.).
When Congress was debating making Hawaii our 50th state, there were those who predicted it would not work and that Hawaii's multi-ethnic population would make it difficult for the island to unite for true statehood that it would soon be at war with itself.
Well, they were wrong...until jackboot Political Correctness intruded. For over 40 years, Hawaii's diverse ethnic population got along just fine. Every year, Hawaiians would mark the anniversary of statehood with parades, fireworks, speeches and U.S. flags flying high. But in 2000, then-Democrat Governor Ben Cayetano ended all that. Now, as columnist John Fund reported after a visit to the island, "(T)he streets were taken over instead by demonstrators crusading for 'Native Hawaiian rights' and the Akaka bill now before the U.S. Senate."
Senator Akaka does not deny that this bill could lead to secession. If we end up with a particular racial group in our midst in all 49 states as a separate nation, it takes no active imagination to envision what will follow. What's next? An African-American "nation?" Hispanic-American "nation?" Japanese American? Chinese American? German-American? Where does it stop? We would end up with something worse than an ethnic tower of Babel. We would have nations within a nation, which in turn could very well lead to the breakup and downfall of the United States of America.
If the bill were harmless, as its supporters claim, why all the extraordinary measures to sneak it through in the dead of night?
It is time to shout this from the rooftops, and let the timid politicians here in Washington understand that Americans will not stand by and allow their country to be destroyed and become the Dis-United States of America.
The time to act is now.
© Wes Vernon
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
