Native Madness
By Senator Lamar Alexander Posted in Congress — Comments (49) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Wednesday the House of Representatives passed H.R. 505, the Native Hawaiian Reorganization Act, a bill that would create a new, race-based government within the borders of the United States.
This legislation may seem insignificant, but embedded in this bill is an assault on the original national motto of this country which is inscribed on the wall above the desk of the President of the Senate and on every quarter, dime, nickel and penny: E Pluribus Unum, one from many.
H.R. 505 would, for the first time in American history, create a new, separate sovereign government within our country based on race, putting us on the path to becoming the United Nations instead of the United States. This bill will set a precedent for the breakup of our country along racial lines, and it ought to be soundly defeated.
I’m sorry to report that this legislation is also advancing in the Senate, where it is known as S. 310. It was passed by the Indian Affairs Committee in May. While it was considered and rejected by the Senate last year, it was a close call and the outcome this time around is far from certain. 56 Senators – just four short of the requisite 60 – voted in favor of considering this bill in June of 2006.
This bill would undermine our history of being a nation based not on race, but upon common values of liberty, equal opportunity, and democracy.
Read on . . .
And you don’t have to take my word for it. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has publicly opposed this legislation. Here’s what they said about the same bill when it was offered before: “The Commission recommends against passage of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, (S. 147) as reported out of committee on May 16, 2005, or any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.”
The question the bill poses is thus one that is fundamental to the very existence of our nation. It creates a new government based upon race. Our constitution guarantees just the opposite: equal opportunity without regard to race.
Hawaiians are Americans. They became United States citizens in 1900. They have saluted the American flag, paid American taxes, fought in American wars. In 1959, ninety-four percent of Hawaiians reaffirmed that commitment to become Americans by voting to become a state. Like citizens of every other state, Hawaiians vote in national elections.
Becoming an American has always meant giving up allegiance to your previous country and pledging allegiance to your new country, the United States of America.
This goes back to Valley Forge when George Washington himself signed and then administered this oath to his officers: “I . . . renounce, refuse, and abjure any allegiance or obedience to [King George III]; and I do swear that I will to the utmost of my power, support, maintain and defend the said United States. . . .”
America is different because, under our constitution, becoming an American can have nothing to do with ancestry. That is because America is an idea, not a race. Ours is a nation based not upon race, not upon ethnicity, not upon national origin, but upon our shared values, enshrined in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, upon our history as a nation, and upon our shared language, English. An American can technically become a citizen of Japan, but would never be considered “Japanese.” But if a Japanese person wants to become a citizen of the United States, he or she must become an American.
That’s who we are as Americans, and when we forget that, we run the risk of undermining our greatest strength. Some say that diversity is our greatest strength. And it is a great strength, but hardly our greatest. Jerusalem is diverse. The Balkans are diverse. Iraq is diverse. Our greatest strength is that we have taken all that magnificent diversity and forged it into one nation.
Instead of supporting a bill to create this new Native Hawaiian government (which, by the way, will be eligible for the transfer of billions of dollars in assets and land), we should consider legislation that unites us all as Americans. Our nation must remain “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – not many nations, divided by race, with special privileges for some.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
in NRO's The Corner) who had previously bemoaned the liklihood that Bush was going to sign it, that had learned thru sources that Bush had decided not to sign it.
I may have saved it. I'll try and find it good smelling baseball commish
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
Hawaiians want to start some casinos too eh?
Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what my country can do for me. Washington Elected Elite
I'm quite tired of people wanting to separate themselves within the United States. If you don't like America go somewhere else. If you are an American who wants to be associated still with your former country or territory in the way loyalty to their governments then you should go back.
As an American ....We should be loyal to each other! Can't handle loyalty...go somewhere else. I 'm tired of us segregating ourselves... Africans, Asians, Europeans, Hispanics, Indians, ect. Like it or not ...we are Americans in less you move back or you chose to be another citizen of another country.
So I ask are an American or are you not? Although American has a past filled with wars, hate, and buying of land to form America this is still the best place on Earth …just ask the illegal immigrants.
Thanks for this article Senator. I'm an American who lives overseas and you nailed the difference between being an American and being anything else.
I've had friends from here emigrate to the United States and obtain American Citizenship. When they come back to visit, they are AMERICANS!!! and proud of it - and which of us, as Americans, would dispute their claim?
On the other hand, I would be eligible for citizenship here where I live. But though my legal status would change, I would always be seen as "Someone Who Was Not Born Here." I've had that statement tossed at me as the ultimate and irrefutable argument in disputes about everything from parking spaces to ownership of the fruit on the trees I planted on my own property. So have my kids (who actually WERE born here.)
I traveled to the States last week and as the immigration officer handed my Passport back he said "Welcome Home!" And he said it like he meant it.
Indeed.
Your comment reminds me of some family history. Following are excerpts from the comments of my mother's cousin, as recorded by the Spielberg Project:
Liberation
We were liberated May 1, 1945.
It was the American Seventh Army that liberated us. One of their officers stood up on a table and started talking. There were some Jewish GI's that spoke Jewish, and one of them said we were liberated. I was lying on the floor then. People had to help me up to hear. The Americans gave us food. It was too much for the stomach for some people. Some didn't survive all the grease.
From Dachau we went to Ferenwald. It was a camp with Jews, Lithuanians, Poles and other Gentiles. You were back to being a human being again. My family would have been happy to know I survived to go on with life. Later, they separated us to a totally Jewish camp.
General Eisenhower came to visit us once in the Jewish camp. He said, "Don't go back. You'll be coming to the United States with us." I think he had seen all the skeletons, all the death, and wanted to do something about it.
I knew I had uncles in the United States. My father had five brothers there. One of my uncles, he should rest in peace, he traced me in a magazine. They were listing our names in magazines. He started writing, and found me.
I would have gone to Israel. Many of my friends went to Israel. Roza Rachmel and her sister, Luba, had been studying in Kovno when the war broke out. They somehow survived the Kovno ghetto and emigrated to Israel. Berel Levit's family operated a mill not very far from Chweidan. He moved to Chicago after the War. He died a few years ago.
I came to Chicago in 1949. My family told me, you're not going to work for three months. I went to day school, and night school, learning as much English as I could. I met my wife at a Jewish center in Chicago, and worked at Capital Hardware Mfg. Co. for 41 years. I never looked for another job and was still with that company when I retired.
I'll tell you what: you drop this independent nation goofiness and instead reaffirm your allegiance to the United States, and I in return will:
1. Eat Spam and Eggs for breakfast
2. While in Hawaii, not refer to the mainland as "the states"
3. Watch Lilo and Stitch reruns until I go lolo
"I can say - not as a patriotic bromide...that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and...the only moral country in the history of the world. - Ayn Rand
Portuguese sausage and rice here please....
Spam is just wrong.
Tankertodd is willing to eat spam and eggs for breakfast but MrSyHastings claims that spam is just wrong.
Spam is an acquired taste, like escargot. For the unprepared palate, eating spam as a concession to the people of Hawaii, is a dread duty.
However, for those of us, who remember the smuggled can of spam on maneuvers, spam is a gastromic experience. Eaten outdoors, preferable in wind, rain or snow, straight out of the can, spam becomes one of life's great pleasures. In my old age, when I want to recapture my youth, I buy a can of spam and eat it right out of the can.
You are a gourmand and gentleman connoisseur! You actually made me pine for spam with this language. Thank you.
ONly an anti-American bigot would have voted for it.
Looks like some greedy 'native' Hawaiians want to trade in the family-oriented tourist clientele they have for becoming the biggest gambling Casino in the Pacific Ocean.
If this claptrap passes Congress, I will never visit Hawaii, and I'd suggest the rest of us continental Americans do likewise. And I'll follow that up by suggesting a Constitutional amendment allowing a vote of a supermajority of states to throw another state out of the Union. This is one where I think the Red/Blue divide would be set aside to get rid of Hawaii.
This is ridiculous. The fact that this bill passed shows a lack of knowledge of the constitution by the members of our House. A sovereign government within a sovereign nation? Haha. This must be a joke. There is no way a true American would allow this to happen. The House must have passed this to say to the Ha wain people: "See, we tried."
Unfortunately, I think that this is far from the first case of this. There are lots of cases of indian tribal sovereignty - hence the reference to casinos. These are often possible because the tribe has some independent sovereignty within their territory.
This usually dates back to the times of when Indians went by treaty to designated reservations. The treaty by which they agreed to relinquish their land to settlers often granted them limited sovereignty within their borders. It's weird to think about now, but I do think that America should stand by its treaties. I don't think this makes people on such reservations less American, though. After all, states have limited sovereignty, but being loyal to your semi-sovereign state is not incompatible with being a loyal American.
On the other hand, I think it is damned backwards to suggest *new* race-based systems. That just seems totally broken to me.
Who is sponsoring this bill? This is probably the single most repulsive thing I've ever heard. I don't care if it's even financially beneficial to let it pass, the whole notion is just dumb. It goes against everything America stands for.
Courage becomes a living and an attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully, but also as a determination to live decently.
It's that little piece in the Constitution that reserves relationship with the Indians to the federal government. The buzz words for treaty tribes are "dependent sovereigns" and "unextinguished sovereignty." That's why states have limited powers on Indian lands and you have tax free cigarettes and gambling. The same concepts apply to Hawaii and arguably to PR.
The US just took Indian lands in the Lower 48, sometimes with the benefit of a treaty with somebody they could get to sign one, sometimes not. The game changed with Alaska and, especially, the Territories acquired through the Spanish American War and with Hawaii. Especially with PR and The Phillipines, the US had acquired territories that already had over 50K people and had functioning governments; they were ripe for the formal Territory status and ultimate statehood. Alaska had been kept as a Military District since the purchase in 1867. I'm working from memory, but I think it was in 1904 that the Congress passed legislation to deal with the lands full of brown-skinned people who shared little culturally with the rest of the US, the thrust of which was to confer territorial status but to block the path to statehood. Particularly Alaska and Hawaii spent the next fifty years being a playground for whatever monopoly businesses could buy the requisite federal favor. Only under pressure from Cold War politics, depriving these citizens of the right to representation etc. made for good Soviet and American Left propagand, did the US move to confer statehood on Alaska and Hawaii and divest itself of the Phillipines; PR remains a Territory.
The "unextinguished sovereignty" issue largely languished in Hawaii and Alaska. It raised its head in Alaska with the discovery of oil on the North Slope and resulted in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1972. We thought we had done it differently and had extinguished sovereignty with the tranfer of Native lands to ANCSA corporations that had no governmental role, but the BIA and Lefties did not go gently, culminating with Democrat Governor Knowles and President Clinton trying to confer the same treaty tribe status on Alaska Native Villages as that held by the treaty tribes of the Lower 48. The State of Alaska ultimately sued and the USSC essentially held that ANCSA extinguished claims of sovereignty, yet there is still a BIA and IHS presence here, especially IHS, since if they're not federal Indians, that makes them Alaska Indians, and we, frankly, can't afford them; among the largest, most expensive, and most impressive facilities in the State is the Native Hospital in Anchorage.
The same general playbook is now being run with Hawaii, and the Democrats are essentially trying to reverse the US acquistion of Hawaii. If there is established a native sovereignty, the next move will be land claims; what do you think Pearl Harbor might be worth? Visualize trying to negotiate a treaty with the Sovereign Nation of Hawaii to maintain our presence there. This is just another example of the Democrats trying to apologize for everything the US is; reverse the Mexican War and turn the West over to Mexico, return Hawaii to the Native Hawaiians. How 'bout a few billion in reparations for our opression of The Phillipines? I'm sure the Cherokee would like Georgia back as well.
I don't know what the modern equity argument is on some of this: we conquered these people and we treated some of them very shabbily. That said, I'm pretty much unapologetic and I'm not willing to disunite the United States to assuage liberal guilt.
In Vino Veritas
Did we really 'oppress' them? I've been over there many times, and let me tell you, they loooove Americans over there, and most of their pop culture are just replicates of US pop culture. For example, they translate most of our TV shows into Tagalog, they have Philippino Idol, singing American songs, and they have "Pinoy Big Brother." Just to name a few. So, what are you refering to?
Courage becomes a living and an attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully, but also as a determination to live decently.
Which should have ended in Statehood; forcing the US Army to assign its officer corps .45s because a .38 just isn't enough gun to kill you is just the sort of rule-of-thumb test I would look for in assessing the potential American-ness of a given cultural or ethnic group.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
or at least some of them did, no doubt encouraged in that thinking by our Soviet friends in the post-WWII era. Leftist demonstrations there were a pretty common fixture through that era, and you might recall that they refused to renew our "lease" of Subic Bay.
In Vino Veritas
nothing simple and nothing especially glorious for us, either. You could argue that the Muslim insurgents brought harsh consequences for everyone, but there was always the nationalist element, too. Still, I've heard half of the money in the Filipino economy is sent directly from people and entities in the US and we do enjoy their friendly regards these days.
Wasn't Subic Bay the one damaged by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption? I know there was one other major base there at the time. If I recall correctly, it suited the Bush 41 administration just fine to let go of it rather than to both rebuild it and wrangle over a new lease.
was damaged. Subic was converted to a commercial shipyard though I don't know how well it is doing. Olongapo's economy was devastated.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
I'm reminded of the talk in Germany about the economic vacuum the base communities will experience when we finally move out of them.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
Sounds like a sneaky way to secede from the Union while maintaining all the rights and privileges conferred with statehood.
As the old Watergate cliche stated: "Follow the money".
Don't forget, we're building little enclaves of non-assimilated immigrants in cities like Detroit where being an "American" doesn't have the same meaning it did to our forefathers.
Doesn't it sound like we've put the frog in the pan and have slowly turned the heat on?
As soon as the populations of actual Americans who think of themselves as Americans decrease to less than the 50% point. In 5-10 years we will have 8-10 separate but equal sovereign cities :)
Erik
You know, another Hartford convention could solve our country's problem with New England leftists. :)
...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...
---Thomas Paine---
Yes, and to think some people thought I was being an alarmist when I said we need to act decisively to banish all thought of secession from people's minds.
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
Any law, policy or ruling which favors any citizen or any group of citizens over another is wrong. We must recognize that constitutional citizenship grants equal rights to all citizens and special rights to none.
Both Republicans and Democrats have members who seem to think some group - be it ethnic, religious, racial or sexual - should be given preferential rights for some past wrong. Creating a new wrong does not correct a past wrong. Treating everyone equally and aspiring to give every child born in America a level playing field as far as possible should be our goal. The government should play no role in providing preferential treatment for any group or individual for any reason.
This country has been torn apart because people who meant well created divisions in the fabric of our nation that now threaten to tear us apart. The trend continues with this insane legislation.
Granting Amnesty to illegal aliens is another bizarre proposal. It gives special rights to those who break the law over those who obey it. Washington DC needs a shot of common sense and some Courageous Senators and Congressman who will stand up for our constitution.
Grant Devereaux
This particular Hawaiian blogger claims this isn't sovereignty. Are they right? If they are, then what is it and what is the purpose?
That said, I did my part
Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.
or to impute good faith, a totally ignorant one. All the right buzz words from the sovereignty movement are in there; they're just counting on stupidity and liberal guilt to not examine them. We've heard it all here since we thought that aboriginal claims were settled with ANCSA and the Native People, Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, would be content with mere citzenry. Most were, but there remained an activist element egged on by Lefties and financed by the BIA in large measure who have bedeviled and defied the State for years and have found a ready ally in the US government, e.g., "subsistence" hunting and fishing, and in the Greenies. Subsistence hunting and fishing impacts make a good hook to thwart development.
So, the Native Hawaiians establish a "special relationship" with the federal government, start their land claims, and go to war with the State government, aided and abetted by the US government anytime there's a Democrat in charge, surrendered to by the State government whenever a Democrat is in charge. Before long, huge tracts of Hawaii will be offlimits to State police authority, Howlis will be prohibited from remaining overnight or owning property, it goes on from there. This legislation is just the first step of a familiar journey.
In Vino Veritas
I don't want anyone to get the idea that I was defending the article. I found it through a google search and it is important to look at both sides. If I understand you correctly, the article is flat out wrong. To insinuate that is not leading straight to eventual sovereignty is in your estimation to completely disregard what the law says. Is that how I understand you. This issue is new to me and it is important that I understand it fully and that is why I brought the article here so that others could examine it.
Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.
What is going to happen is that illegal aliens will set up their own government within the U.S., then homosexuals, then feminists...and go on from theire. How convenient.
We should give the lefties a city or state to do whatever they want and see how they do. Oh yeah, that was New Orleans, Louisiana.
Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what my country can do for me. Washington Elected Elite
there is fertile ground for an inventive attorney and the right judge in old Russian and Spanish/Mexican land grants and conferrals of governmental powers. The US was far less than fastidious, and in some cases scrupulous, in the manner by which those were satisfied or extinguished.
In Vino Veritas
I just happen to be sitting next to a Native Hawaian on a plane this minute. Now he thinks those who want this are really a minority addicted to the nanny-welfare state (his words, not mine-but I will happily repeat them).He also believes this will be problematic for all native peoples, putting them well beyond any identity as Americans, the one they truly long for.
Flame this legislation-now.Besides being unconstitutional it is the product of feeble, selfish minds.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report
The bill isn't going anywhere. Even if it gets enough votes, which I doubt, and even if it isn't vetoed by Bush, which it will be, it'll be struck down by the Supreme Court, and I honestly don't think it'll be close. the 4 Conservatives + Kennedy are sure votes against it, and I wouldn't be surprised actually if even Ginsburg or Bryer voted against it as well.
Jindal/Palin '16
HTML Help Central for Red Staters
Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
on this issue. The key to Alaska's Venetie case that held there was no residual sovereignty, WAS ANCSA, and there isn't an analog in Hawaii to my knowledge. Your theory on the SC striking it down?
In Vino Veritas
and do you have the votes to sustain it? I think Glenn Beck said it best when he noted that it feels like we the American public are at war with our government. I only wished that conservatives had not become so greedy and ruined their chances at keeping a majority.
It becomes more obvious every day with each new bill put on the floor of the congress that Americans are losing their identity to a progressive assault from the left.
Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion