Social Engineers In Paradise
By George F. Will
Thursday, November 29, 2007; A25
"I decide who is a Jew around here."
-- Hermann Goering in 1934, when told that a favorite Munich art dealer was Jewish.
Under legislation that the House of Representatives has voted 261 to 153 to foist on Hawaii, Goering's role would be played by a panel empowered to decide who is a "Native Hawaiian" and entitled to special privileges and immunities. Because there are perhaps only 7,000 "pure" Native Hawaiians, "Hawaiian blood" will inevitably be the criterion, and the "one-drop rule" probably will prevail. Goering would have approved of this racialist sorting-out.
Those designated Native Hawaiians would be members of a new "tribe" conjured into existence by Congress. But Congress cannot legitimately do that.
In 1959, 94 percent of Hawaiians, including a large majority of Native Hawaiians, voted for statehood. Opposition was strongest among Southern Democrats in Congress, who, with the civil rights revolution simmering, were wary of Hawaii's example of multiracial harmony.
Today, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, when accurately described, is opposed by a large majority of Hawaiians and supported by only a bare majority of the approximately 240,000 Native Hawaiians in the state. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, is a genuflection by "progressives," mostly Democrats, to "diversity" and "multiculturalism."
It would foment racial disharmony by creating a permanent caste entitled to its own government -- the Native Hawaiian Governing Entity -- within the United States. The NHGE presumably would be exempt, as Indian tribes are, from the Constitution's First, Fifth and 14th amendments. It would, Akaka says, negotiate with the state of Hawaii and the United States concerning "lands, natural resources, assets, criminal and civil jurisdiction, and historical grievances."
Reparations? We shall see. Independence -- secession? "That could be," Akaka, 83, has said, depending on "my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
The seeds of this weed were sown in 1993, when Congress passed a tendentious apology for supposed U.S. complicity -- which was neither clear nor essential -- in the peaceful 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani's monarchy by Hawaiian residents. The novelty of America apologizing for a monarch's fall was followed in 2000 by a Supreme Court ruling overturning a Hawaiian law that excluded everyone except Native Hawaiians from voting in a statewide election for trustees of a state agency. This, the court said, violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and proscription of racial discrimination in voting.
This ruling raised doubts about the constitutionality of the racial spoils system administered by that agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Which is perhaps why Akaka decided the reorganization act was necessary despite what he has called, with weird defensiveness, his state's "perceived harmony."
There are 400,000 Native Hawaiians nationwide who will be eligible to participate in creating the NHGE. Native Hawaiians are 20 percent of Hawaii's population. They are defined as direct lineal descendants of indigenous peoples who lived on the islands before 1893 and who exercised sovereignty then -- an unintelligible provision because the queen monopolized sovereignty. She, however, was more enlightened than Akaka. She did not distinguish between Native Hawaiians and immigrants, who served in her government.
Under President George Washington, the U.S. government's Indian policy was a facet of foreign policy because tribes were considered foreign nations. The Constitution speaks not of native "peoples" but only of "Indian tribes." Akaka's legislation would create a Native Hawaiian "tribe" as a nation within the nation.
Unlike Indians, however, Native Hawaiians' land was not taken by force. They are not a compact community -- they are woven into the fabric of one of America's most polyglot states. They chose to bring themselves under the Constitution by embracing statehood.
Congress does not create tribes; it recognizes them according to settled criteria: Tribes were nations when the Constitution was written and are geographically separate and culturally distinct communities whose governments have long continuous histories. As the state of Hawaii has said, "The tribal concept simply has no place in the context of Hawaiian history."
Virtually all Democrats and a few inexplicable Republicans support this legislation, which will further inflame the ethnic grievance industry. Imagine the lesson that some descendants of Hispanics who lived in the Southwest before 1848 would learn from it. A Republican president would veto it. A Democratic president would sign it -- Sens. Biden, Clinton, Dodd and Obama support it -- but the Supreme Court would shred this plan for different laws for different races. Still, the legislation is an important symptom of Democrats' constitutional flippancy and itch for social engineering.
"One nation, indivisible"? Not for the House majority or the Senate committee that has approved Akaka's mockery of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Social Engineers In Paradise
By George F. Will
Thursday, November 29, 2007; A25
"I decide who is a Jew around here."
-- Hermann Goering in 1934, when told that a favorite Munich art dealer was Jewish.
Under legislation that the House of Representatives has voted 261 to 153 to foist on Hawaii, Goering's role would be played by a panel empowered to decide who is a "Native Hawaiian" and entitled to special privileges and immunities. Because there are perhaps only 7,000 "pure" Native Hawaiians, "Hawaiian blood" will inevitably be the criterion, and the "one-drop rule" probably will prevail. Goering would have approved of this racialist sorting-out.
Those designated Native Hawaiians would be members of a new "tribe" conjured into existence by Congress. But Congress cannot legitimately do that.
In 1959, 94 percent of Hawaiians, including a large majority of Native Hawaiians, voted for statehood. Opposition was strongest among Southern Democrats in Congress, who, with the civil rights revolution simmering, were wary of Hawaii's example of multiracial harmony.
Today, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, when accurately described, is opposed by a large majority of Hawaiians and supported by only a bare majority of the approximately 240,000 Native Hawaiians in the state. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, is a genuflection by "progressives," mostly Democrats, to "diversity" and "multiculturalism."
It would foment racial disharmony by creating a permanent caste entitled to its own government -- the Native Hawaiian Governing Entity -- within the United States. The NHGE presumably would be exempt, as Indian tribes are, from the Constitution's First, Fifth and 14th amendments. It would, Akaka says, negotiate with the state of Hawaii and the United States concerning "lands, natural resources, assets, criminal and civil jurisdiction, and historical grievances."
Reparations? We shall see. Independence -- secession? "That could be," Akaka, 83, has said, depending on "my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
The seeds of this weed were sown in 1993, when Congress passed a tendentious apology for supposed U.S. complicity -- which was neither clear nor essential -- in the peaceful 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani's monarchy by Hawaiian residents. The novelty of America apologizing for a monarch's fall was followed in 2000 by a Supreme Court ruling overturning a Hawaiian law that excluded everyone except Native Hawaiians from voting in a statewide election for trustees of a state agency. This, the court said, violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and proscription of racial discrimination in voting.
This ruling raised doubts about the constitutionality of the racial spoils system administered by that agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Which is perhaps why Akaka decided the reorganization act was necessary despite what he has called, with weird defensiveness, his state's "perceived harmony."
There are 400,000 Native Hawaiians nationwide who will be eligible to participate in creating the NHGE. Native Hawaiians are 20 percent of Hawaii's population. They are defined as direct lineal descendants of indigenous peoples who lived on the islands before 1893 and who exercised sovereignty then -- an unintelligible provision because the queen monopolized sovereignty. She, however, was more enlightened than Akaka. She did not distinguish between Native Hawaiians and immigrants, who served in her government.
Under President George Washington, the U.S. government's Indian policy was a facet of foreign policy because tribes were considered foreign nations. The Constitution speaks not of native "peoples" but only of "Indian tribes." Akaka's legislation would create a Native Hawaiian "tribe" as a nation within the nation.
Unlike Indians, however, Native Hawaiians' land was not taken by force. They are not a compact community -- they are woven into the fabric of one of America's most polyglot states. They chose to bring themselves under the Constitution by embracing statehood.
Congress does not create tribes; it recognizes them according to settled criteria: Tribes were nations when the Constitution was written and are geographically separate and culturally distinct communities whose governments have long continuous histories. As the state of Hawaii has said, "The tribal concept simply has no place in the context of Hawaiian history."
Virtually all Democrats and a few inexplicable Republicans support this legislation, which will further inflame the ethnic grievance industry. Imagine the lesson that some descendants of Hispanics who lived in the Southwest before 1848 would learn from it. A Republican president would veto it. A Democratic president would sign it -- Sens. Biden, Clinton, Dodd and Obama support it -- but the Supreme Court would shred this plan for different laws for different races. Still, the legislation is an important symptom of Democrats' constitutional flippancy and itch for social engineering.
"One nation, indivisible"? Not for the House majority or the Senate committee that has approved Akaka's mockery of the Pledge of Allegiance.
One Drop-ism or self determination? And I vaguely recall that the Queen was not overthown Hawaiians but by foreigners backed by the American Government.
Posted: Mon 03 Dec 2007 20:06 Post subject: Re: "One Drop" Hawaiian Style
anonymouse wrote:
One Drop-ism or self determination? And I vaguely recall that the Queen was not overthown Hawaiians but by foreigners backed by the American Government.
In 1959 most Hawaiian residents, including a majority of native Hawaiians, voted to become a state. They came to a decision that some of their descendants today are unhappy with, so some of them wish to establish special rights for themselves.
USS Boston's landing force on duty at the Arlington Hotel, Honolulu, at the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, January 1893. The officer at the right is presumably Lieutenant Lucien Young, USN, who commanded the detachment.[7]In 1893, local businessmen and politicians, primarily of American and European ancestry but including native-born Hawaiian subjects of foreign descent, organized in response to an attempt by Liliʻuokalani to abrogate the 1887 constitution, overthrew the queen, her cabinet and her marshal, and took over the government of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.
There was likely no single motivation behind the coup d'etat. Russ states that the overthrow was motivated by the fact that "the Royal Government under Kalakaua and Liliuokalani was inefficient, corrupt, and undependable."[8] Other historians suggest that businessmen were in favor of overthrow and annexation to the U.S. in order to benefit from more favorable trade conditions with its main export market.[9][10][11][12] The proximate cause, however, was in response to Liliʻuokalani's attempt to promulgate a new constitution.
The McKinley Tariff of 1891 eliminated the previously highly favorable trade terms for Hawaii's sugar exports, a main component of the economy. The significance of this economic downturn as a motivation for the overthrow has been questioned by Richard D. Weigle who wrote in the February 1947 Pacific Historical Review:
In actual fact the planters comprised a vigorous bloc of opinion opposing annexation to the United States, and the key to their attitude lies in their dependence upon contract labor. Annexation to the United States would mean conformity to American immigration legislation and the cessation of the influx of laborers from Asiatic countries so necessary to the life of the plantations.[13]
The major events of the overthrow took place between January 15 to January 17, 1893, when 1,500 armed local people, mostly Euro-Americans under the leadership of the thirteen-member Committee of Safety, organized the Honolulu Rifles to depose Queen Liliʻuokalani. They quickly took over government buildings, disarmed the Royal Guard, and declared a Provisional Government.
As these events were unfolding, U.S. Minister John L. Stevens requested that troops be landed. Captain Wiltse of the USS Boston ordered 162 sailors and Marines to come ashore with rifles and Gatling guns, "for the purpose of protecting our legation, consulate, and the lives and property of American citizens, and to assist in preserving public order."[14] Stevens was accused of ordering the landing himself on his own authority, and inappropriately using his discretion. Russ states: "One fact, and one only, lessens Steven's guilt...the landing of the American force was the work entirely of Wiltse, rather than of Stevens...Wiltse gave Young orders to get his men ready to land."[15]
Historian William Russ concluded that "the injunction to prevent fighting of any kind made it impossible for the monarchy to protect itself".[16] Russ also states that Lieutenant Commander W.T. Swinburne, executive officer of the Boston and the senior officer on shore, "maintained stoutly that Wiltse had landed the forces to protect American property; and that if the Queen had asked for assistance, she would have received it."[17]
On July 17, 1893, Sanford B. Dole and his committee declared itself the Provisional Government "to rule until annexation by the United States."[18] On July 4, 1894 the Republic of Hawaiʻi was proclaimed. Dole was president of both governments. Later, after a weapons cache was found on the palace grounds after an attempted counter-rebellion in 1895, Queen Liliʻuokalani was placed under arrest, tried by a military tribunal of the Republic of Hawaiʻi, convicted of misprision of treason and then imprisoned in her own home.
The Republic of Hawaii succeeded in its goal when in 1898, Congress approved a joint resolution of annexation creating the U.S. Territory of Hawaiʻi. This followed the precedent of Texas which was also annexed by a joint resolution of Congress. Dole was appointed to be the first governor of the Territory of Hawaii.
The overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the subsequent annexation of Hawaiʻi has recently been cited as the first major instance of American imperialism in a book by Stephen Kinzer, a New York Times foreign correspondent.[19] Historian William Russ describes Hawaii's annexation as incidental to the imperial struggle with Spain, stating, "Such an adventitious circumstance as a Spanish-American War - which finally brought about the act of annexation - was something the aspirants to the union could never have foreseen during most of their long struggle...The five-year fight against tremendous odds to win annexation when the annexer apparently did not want the annexee is rather unique."[20]
From the article:
Quote:
In 1959, 94 percent of Hawaiians, including a large majority of Native Hawaiians, voted for statehood. Opposition was strongest among Southern Democrats in Congress, who, with the civil rights revolution simmering, were wary of Hawaii's example of multiracial harmony.
Maybe we should accommodate neo-Confederates who still dream of a Confederate States in the South.
So basically outside forces did in fact overthrow the monarchy. Then 60 odd years later residents voted to join the union.
I would hardly equate indigenous people's attempt to reclaim their ancestral lands and obtain government recognition as a sovereign nation with Confederate secessionists. What they are attempting to no different than what mainland indigenous people have done.
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