The undoing of America?

(Washington, D.C.): The U.S. Senate is scheduled on September 6th to decide whether to clear the way for the most odious, anti-American piece of legislation in memory: S.147, the “Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act.” Incredibly, as things stand now, more than 61 Senators are expected to vote to begin a process that would ineluctably unravel the United States as a nation.

This legislation has been advanced in the spirit of pandering that has come to characterize all-too-much of our national political life. In this case, the pandering is on behalf of an ethnic community that is largely a figment of some politicians’ imaginations – a once-sovereign, identifiably blooded race of “Native Hawaiians” that are, if S. 147 were to become law, to be given the right to govern themselves as they see fit. This could involve creating a new Hawaiian monarchy and perhaps lead to the islands’ secession from the Union.

Hawaii ‘s long-time Democratic Senators, Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye, are leading the charge for S. 147. The latter has considerable influence within his party and across the aisle as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. They are joined by the State’s Republican Governor, Linda Lingle. Her political ambitions and appeals for support from the Bush White House have borne fruit in GOP circles. In particular, the administration has demonstrated once again its willingness to subordinate national interests to expediency-driven plays for ethnic votes. Similar calculations previously prompted it to pander to Hispanics by closing the U.S. military’s vital live-fire combined-arms training facility at Vieques, Puerto Rico and with a de facto amnesty for guest workers.

What ‘Tribe’?

The result is a clearly unconstitutional effort to manufacture through legislation a new “tribe” out of one of the most heterogenous and fully assimilated populations in America: people who can claim through one of two qualifications to have had something to do with Hawaii. S.147 would designate as a “Native Hawaiian” anyone who is: 1) one of the “indigenous, native people of Hawaii” and who is a “direct lineal descendant of the aboriginal, indigenous, native people who” resided in the Hawaiian Islands on or before January 1, 1893 and “exercised sovereignty” in the same region; or (2) eligible in 1921 for the programs authorized by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act-that is, “any descendant of not less than one-half of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.”

Absent from this definition are any of the characteristics previously required for a Native American tribe to be recognized as such. For example, a “Native Hawaiian” need not be able to demonstrate: residency in Hawaii (either currently or at any time in the past), ties to a particular traditional culture or language, or any documented involvement or interest in Hawaiian, much less Native Hawaiian, community or political affairs. This is not an accident. The law could not establish such conditions because it would be difficult to constitute a tribe if they applied.

By contrast, the Department of the Interior uses the following criteria to recognize a tribe: 1) existence as an Indian tribe on a continuous basis since 1900; 2) existence predominately as a community determined by, among other things, geographical residence of 50% of the group, language patterns, cultural patterns; 3) political influence or authority over members as an autonomous entity from historical times until the present; and 4) membership descends from an historical tribe or tribe that combined and functioned together as a political entity.

Instead, S. 147 uses as its test for membership in the so-called “sovereign” Native Hawaiian “race” what amounts to the ability to claim a one-drop-of-blood connection to a “aboriginal, indigenous, and native person” who lived in Hawaii at the designated times. This test is complicated by two inconvenient facts: The “Native Hawaiian’s” governing regime was a monarchy – under which sovereignty resided in a single individual, not in a people – and it was not racially based. And since the 19th century, the Hawaiian “people” included many native-born and naturalized subjects who were Americans, Chinese, Samoans, etc., not “ethnic” Hawaiians.

The Supreme Court Has Already Spoken

As it happens, in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an earlier effort by Hawaii to create a state-sanctioned, race-based entity composed solely of Native Hawaiians (defined in a manner similar to S. 147). The Court – citing the Constitution’s Fifteenth Amendment, which forbids discrimination in voting based on race – ruled that such a race-based government in Hawaii was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court stated:

“One of the reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities. An inquiry into ancestral lines is not consistent with respect based on the unique personality each of us possesses, a respect the Constitution itself secures in its concern for persons and citizens….[To do so would be] odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.”

A Portentous Precedent

Should Senators violate their oath of office – which obliges them to “support and defend the Constitution” – by enacting S. 147, they will be inviting an even greater problem down the road. Other self-designating communities can be expected to demand recognition of their rights to have their own government and sovereign laws. These might include Chicanos, Cajuns, Amish and Puerto Ricans.

Given the contortions involved in identifying, let alone conferring sovereignty upon, a “Native Hawaiian” community, who is to say that other groups won’t demand the right to govern themselves by their own rules, as well? Already, Islamists in Canada and elsewhere are demanding to have their affairs adjudicated by Shari’a – a religious code that, taken to its extreme, produces Taliban-like repression of women and other living things.

Lest we think it couldn’t happen a society like ours, international protests against the establishment of Shari’a-ruled communities will take place on Thursday across Canada and in France, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands. And like their counterparts elsewhere, Islamists in this country – including some associated with the Islamic Society of North America (whose annual conference was addressed over Labor Day weekend by Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes) – have made no secret of their ambition to convert this country into an Islamic nation. That agenda that can only be advanced by the establishment of precedents that could allow Shari’a to become an alternative to America’s rule of law.

The Bottom Line

No good can come of a “yes” vote on S. 147. It will be a black day for the Senate and the United States of America if a cloture-breaking majority of Senators cast it.