Supreme Court Rules Right on Voting Rights Act: "It's About Time!"

Along with the unprecedented ruling on gay marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act, the United States Supreme Court has upended the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Striking down Article Four of the law, the Supreme Court ruled that nine states, including the libertarian paradise and native home of failed Presidential candidate Goldwater’s Arizona, would no longer need to seek federal approval before enacting major or minor changes to their election laws.

The now-viewed as micromanaging of the Voting Rights Act was conceived with the best of intentions, during the time when "affirmative action" promised affirmative actions on behalf of all Americans rather than special favors for minorities. Following the end of the Civil War and the “peculiar institution” slavery, white supremacists enacted Jim Crow laws, which flocked together in the South, and segregation, overt or covert, intimidated minorities from voting. The Civil War had ended, but "The Long Night" of civil repression resulted from the 1877 Great Compromise (in reality, Grand Sellout), and thus federal officers were forced to leave the former Confederacy, followed by the return of the Democratic "Solid South". WHhite-hooded Klansmen, voter intimidation, and suffering for black voters instead of expanded suffrage for blacks endured for a century, followed by interspersed bus boycotts and fractious yet feckless legal appeals.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s reinstated a candor for liberty for all people, and an ardor on behalf of legislators in Washington to end the poll tax, the age tax, or any other hindrance to a person voting anywhere. To ensure equitable suffrage, and to ensure that minorities’ influence would not be diminished, the Voting Rights Acts mandated federal approval for subsequent decisions affecting voters and elections in respective districts. The Civil Rights movement achieved this victory, and thus restored respect for the rights and dignity of all Americans by bringing an end to de jure Jim Crow in the South, even if segregationists and white supremacists maintained a de facto prejudice in their hearts. Sadly, the Civil Rights Movement divided into two factions, with younger militants growling like “panthers” and the older, wiser generation still staking their grace on the “easier, softer way” of peaceful protest. Of course, the liberal venality of Democratic machine politicians like President Lyndon Baines Johnson (who invidiously remarked: "We'll have those n-ggers voting for us for the next two hundred years!") would corrupt the black vote for decades to come.

The same impatience which divided the Civil Rights Movement, the same impertinence which expanded state power, never in the better interests of the voter, ended up marring the good intentions of the Voting Rights Act. The Civil Rights agenda which permitted blacks to step up instead of step back, which opened the full meaning of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", ran its course for four decades. Subsequent Congresses reaffirmed the Civil Rights Act, yet took no notice that things were getting better down South (as well as in Arizona).

 Sadly, the law continued to follow a formula from its first decade, as the legislation required that states would not redraw districts which shut out the import or the representation of minorities in respective state and federal districts based on old information. After forty years, “We the People” have changed for the better. A black man not only can vote, but now he can be President of the United States. Whether liberal statists wish to admit it or not, the culture in the South has also changed, with demographics that reflect a broader diversity, as well as maintaining a vision of limited government and stronger local control. The Voting Rights Act had not only outlived its usefulness, its continued use had become an abusive use of the past to rectify a present which had already become a better future.

 President Ronald Reagan mentioned that the closest thing to eternal life on this planet is a government program. Such an appraisal would have described the provisions of the Voting Rights Act, had the Supreme Court not struck down the old formulas.  It's about time that someone challenged the backward calculations. How much longer was the federal government going to hold Southern States, including southwestern Arizona, and multi-ethnic boroughs like Brooklyn hostage with the complex and arbitrary formulas, statistics which had not changed, which field researchers had not revisited, which no one respected any longer?

Within hours of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas leaders championed their right to redraw their Congressional Districts as seen fit by their legislature, without the federal government looking over their shoulder. Come to think of it, the federal government should stop snooping over anyone’s shoulder, state or citizen, and start learning from the Lone Star state (and other Southern governments) which have integrated a high influx of immigrants, followed by a booming business culture, low taxes, laid-back government, and an all around view of "getting better". The Voting Rights Act played its part, out-lived its usefulness, and with its rescission by the Supreme Court, now remains a testimony to states which, when left alone, do very well for their citizens, no matter what their color.