Supreme Court justices traditionally wear black robes to hear arguments. Unless they’re hearing – and potentially agreeing with – arguments lefties don’t like. Then they’re decked out in white sheets.
That’s how conservative justices were painted in former Newsweek reporter Robert Parry’s hysterical February 28 article at unhinged liberal website Alternet. In “The Neo-Confederate Supreme Court Gearing Up to Restore White Rule Over America,” race-obsessed “journalist” sputtered that “The Court’s striking down Section Five of the Voting Rights Act will mean that jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting – mostly in the Old Confederacy – will be free to impose new obstacles to voting by African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities without first having to submit the changes to a federal court.”
Actually, all it means is that states will not have to go through the federal government first before making changes to their voting districts and laws. The Voting Rights Act, which was first enacted in the 1960’s to combat cases of voter intimidation leftover from the Jim Crowe era served its purpose but it is no longer relevant in today’s America. As columnist Shannon Goessling of Townhall wrote, “Evidence of ongoing discrimination is nearly non-existent in the so-called ‘covered’ jurisdictions … no evidence of a systematic attempt to intimidate or suppress voting was presented to Congress when it was considering reauthorizing Sections 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.” Section Five therefore imposes “expensive hoop-jumping required to comply with this kind of scrutiny” and is “a constitutional threat to state sovereign authority and ability to make necessary changes to election laws in the states.”
Simply put, Section Five is no longer needed. But being a progressive means never being able to admit that progress has been made.
Parry believes Klansmen are still lurking across the South, ready to impose poll taxes and literacy tests on black voters. “On Wednesday, the five partisan Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court showed that they wanted to do their part in devaluing the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and young urban whites,” Parry fumed. “So the key GOP justices indicated during oral arguments that they are looking for excuses to strike down the heart of the Voting Rights Act.”
The justices, it seems, are desperate to maintain “white control.”
“As the white population shrinks to below 50 percent, the only way to sustain white control is by devaluing minority votes by, in effect, counting them as only worth three-fifths of a person.” The disgraceful Three Fifths Compromise was passed in 1787 and abolished with passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1860. It’s as relevant today as buggy whip manufacturing. And they say conservatives are living in the past?
Not only was Parry wearing his tri-corn hat, but it was made of tinfoil. “If the GOP can’t rig future elections to give greater weight to white votes and less value to the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and urban white youth (who accept the nation’s new multiculturalism), then the right-wing cause will almost surely be lost.”
Perhaps. Or, just maybe, those “blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and urban white youth” will eventually reject the patronizing racialism and sectional bigotry peddled by liberals like Parry.
