The Washington Times Editorial page Sept. 9:
Imagine what would happen if Congress proposed setting up a special sovereign government for any descendant, anywhere in the country of the mix of Cajuns and Native Americans who lived in America before the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and is now the state of Louisiana. . . .
Imagine if the law created a new office of Cajun Affairs that would own 1/5th of the land in Louisiana and would have the power independent of the state to write laws, tax its members, and seize private land for the new sovereign entity without the full protections of the bill of rights.. . .
People nationwide would laugh at the absurd proposition. Non-Cajun Louisianans would be up in arms at the seizure of state lands. Black Louisianans whose families arrived after 1803 would yell from the rooftop against the obvious racial discrimination. The bill, rightly, would never receive a hearing.
So we’ve set the predicate here. The Times goes on:
Substitute Native Hawaiian for Native Cajun, however, and this is exactly what the House and Senate leadership plans to ram through a slumbering Congress this month. This unwise legislation shreds both common sense and the Constitution, known as the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, or HR 2314. The bill is racist in intent and operation. It must be defeated.
I couldn’t agree more with this. In fact, almost four years ago to the day I published a piece in the Washington Times about the then-pending version of this so-called Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. I worried at the time, as I do today, that this legislation, which has been advanced transparently in the spirit of pandering, resembles all too much of our national political life. It is an exercise in pandering on behalf of an ethnic community that is largely a figment of some politician’s imagination. They call it a once-sovereign, an identifiably blooded race of Native Hawaiians, and they are going to be given this right to govern themselves.
I think it is predictable that if this legislation is enacted, these guys could wind up recreating a Hawaiian monarchy and perhaps seceding from the Union itself. Now, what’s so troubling about this is that in order to qualify as a Native Hawaiian you need not demonstrate that you either have residency in Hawaii (either currently or at any time in the past), that you have any ties to a tradition, culture, or language, or have any documented knowledge or interest in Hawaii.
This is not an accident because the law could not possibly establish such a community of Native Hawaiians if these conditions had to apply. Those sorts of conditions are what typically have governed when the U.S. has decided to give tribes in this country considerable latitude, for example the ability to open gambling casinos. This is not the case in Hawaii. It’s not a tribe, and what could happen if we construct this artificial ethnic community on the basis of these people demonstrating a single drop of Hawaiian blood in their bloodstream?
Think about the possibilities if such a group decides that it not only want to govern itself but also secede. Perhaps vital national security institutions like the Naval facilities at Pearl Harbor could be compromised. Or perhaps this group decides that they want to invite the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians to set up shop on Hawaiian soil.
Now, I believe that if members of Congress act to approve this legislation (HR 2314) they will be violating their oath of office, which requires them to support and defend the Constitution. But worse, they will be inviting a far greater problem for Americans. There will almost certainly be other self-designating communities that can be expected to gain recognition of their rights and sovereign laws.
This might include Chicanos, Cajuns, Amish, who knows who else. The point is that conferring sovereignty upon a Native Hawaiian community is a formula for taking to an absurd and dangerous extreme these ideas of diversity and multiculturalism. This would undermine our country’s motto “E pluribus Unnum” (out of many, one). We can’t have that.
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