Isn't anybody here to discuss politics?
The Orange County Register weighs in on Hawaiian apartheid..
Extremism in pursuit of moderation
Steven Greenhut
Sr. editorial writer and columnist
The Orange County Register
sgreenhut@ocregister.com
Almost two years ago, while speaking to the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a libertarian think tank based in Honolulu, I heard that local activists were optimistic about Linda Lingle, the relatively new Republican governor who promised to shake things up a bit in a state even more dominated by Democrats than California.
Lingle was never perceived as a solid libertarian or conservative, but her moderation made her electable, and provided beleaguered believers in limited government hope for turning the tide, or at least stopping the leftist tsunamis typical in the Aloha State.
Grassroot President Dick Rowland and I met with the head of the state's social-service agency and we were impressed by the emphasis on market-based reforms. Maybe this was the start of a revolution of sorts in one of the few places more liberal than Boston or San Francisco.
Last week, I talked with Rowland again, and he said Lingle is now viewed as the enemy, as someone inexorably hostile to the group's goals. Among other big-government policies, Lingle has been leading the charge for the Akaka bill, a noxious piece of race-baiting pushed ahead by U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat. Lingle has traveled to Washington to lobby for its passage and has been lecturing Hawaiians about the need for its passage.
"She's completely off the reservation," Rowland told me. The bill is indeed one of the most horrific ideas imaginable - horrific, at least, if one believes in the American precepts of individualism and equality before the law. It's a grand idea if one thinks that race and ethnicity should be the prime determinants in life, and that one's membership in a group is more important than one's role as a citizen.
Although still held up in the Senate, the legislation would create a commission that determines who is a Native Hawaiian (how many drops of blood?), and then establishes the criteria for creating a separate, parallel legal system for them.
Supporters claim such a thing is necessary to combat endemic racism, but the measure would create two legal systems, and supporters of the Hawaiian commission have refused to include language upholding the U.S. Bill of Rights or outlawing secession, according to Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer writing in the Washington Times.
The result could be a sort of apartheid - one set of laws for Joe Smith, another for his neighbor, Lelani Smith. "[N]extdoor neighbors would suddently coexist under different legal regimes," wrote a Wall Street Journal editorial. Remember, Native Hawaiians do not live on reservations separated from the general population, so supporters' analogy to the American Indian experience is not valid...
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