SwiftVets.com

[BuffaloJack]

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007117

THE OPPOSITE OF PROGRESS

E Pluribus Unum?
Not in Hawaii.

BY SLATE GORTON AND HANK BROWN
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.

The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter.
The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated.

The Akaka Bill's justification rests substantially on a 1993 Apology Resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton when we were members of the Senate representing the states of Washington and Colorado. (We voted against it.) The resolution is cited by the Akaka Bill in three places to establish the proposition that the U.S. perpetrated legal or moral wrongs against Native Hawaiians that justify the race-based government the legislation would erect. These citations are a betrayal of the word given to us--and to the Senate--in the debate over the Apology Resolution.

We specifically inquired of its proponents whether the apology would be employed to seek "special status under which persons of Native Hawaiian descent will be given rights or privileges or reparations or land or money communally that are unavailable to other citizens of Hawaii." We were promised on the floor of the Senate by Daniel Inouye, the senior senator from Hawaii and a personage of impeccable integrity, that "as to the matter of the status of Native Hawaiians . . . this resolution has nothing to do with that. . . . I can assure my colleague of that." The Akaka Bill repudiates that promise of Sen. Inouye. It invokes the Apology Resolution to justify granting persons of Native Hawaiian descent--even in minuscule proportion--political and economic rights and land denied to other citizens of Hawaii. We were unambiguously told that would not be done.





The Apology Resolution distorted historical truths. It falsely claimed that the U.S. participated in the wrongful overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. The U.S. remained strictly neutral. It provided neither arms, nor economic assistance, nor diplomatic support to a band of Hawaiian insurgents, who prevailed without firing a single shot, largely because neither the Native Hawaiian numerical majority nor the queen's own government resisted the end of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The queen authored her own ouster by planning a coup against the Hawaii Constitution to recapture monarchical powers that had been lost in a strong democratic current. She later confided to Sen. George Hoar that annexation to the U.S. was the best thing that could have happened to Native Hawaiians.
The resolution falsely asserted that the Kingdom of Hawaii featured a Native Hawaiian government exclusively for Native Hawaiians prior to the 1893 events. In fact, the kingdom was a splendid fusion of both native and nonnative elements in both government and society. The definitive historian of the kingdom, R.S. Kuykendall, elaborated: "The policy being followed looked to the creation of an Hawaiian state by the fusion of native and foreign ideas and the union of native and foreign personnel, bringing into being an Hawaiian body politic in which all elements, both Polynesian and haole, should work together for the common good under the mild and enlightened rule of an Hawaiian king."

The apology falsely declared that Native Hawaiians enjoyed inherent sovereignty over Hawaii to the exclusion of non-Native Hawaiians. To the extent sovereignty existed outside the monarch, it reposed equally with all Hawaiians irrespective of ancestry. The apology falsely maintained that Native Hawaiians never by plebiscite relinquished sovereignty to the U.S. In 1959, Native Hawaiians voted by at least a 2-to-1 margin for statehood in a plebiscite. Finally, the Apology Resolution and its misbegotten offspring, the Akaka Bill, betray this nation's sacred motto: E pluribus unum. They would begin a process of splintering sovereignties in the U.S. for every racial, ethnic or religious group traumatized by an identity crisis. Movement is already afoot among a few Hispanic Americans to carve out race-based sovereignty from eight western states because the U.S. "wrongfully" defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American war.





The U.S. Constitution scrupulously protects the liberties and freedom of Native Hawaiians. It always will. Native Hawaiians have never been treated as less than equal by the U.S. Their economic success matches that of non-Native Hawaiians. Intermarriage is the norm. Sen. Inouye himself boasted in 1994 that Hawaii was "one of the greatest examples of a multiethnic society living in relative peace." In other words, e pluribus unum is a formula that works. We should not destroy it.
Messrs. Gorton and Brown are former senators for Washington and Colorado, respectively.


Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007117
_________________
Swift Boats - Qui Nhon (12/69-4/70), Cat Lo (4/70-5/70), Vung Tau (5/70-12/71)

[MrJapan]

"Akaka"

Name speaks for itself

and why does that name look familliar?! (Inouye) ... wasn't he one of the backers of sKerry? And it's interesting that he has a Japanese name
Of course, from the article you posted, it mentions that anyone with ANY blood of the 'kingdom' would be elligible, unless I read that wrong..

Is there anything wrong with letting them separate? They would lose all federal funding (except maybe from some political party under the table).. One thing we would lose is a good strategic location for our forces, but we still have forces in Japan and Guam.

I am too young and inexperienced to know what to think of it.. As far as I know, I've read somewhere that Texas is one of the few states that can still legally separate if it so chooses, can't think of the pact, or whatever it's called off the top of my head... Not sure it would want to though.. I'm sure it would have if sKerry was elected though..

[shawa]

Back in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the State of Hawaii could not sanction a State-wide election in which only 'Native' Hawaiians could vote.
The lower court (the Ninth Circus Court of Schlemiels) had ruled that the 'Native only' election was valid. The US Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit under the US Constitution's Fifteenth Amendment.

[MrJapan]

[JN173]

[shawa]

MJ wrote:

[BuffaloJack]

About 8 or 9 years back. My Vietnamese wife (who's been a US citizen for 32 years) and I went on a day trip to Toronto, Canada. We brought along my wife's Hawaiian friend. When we returned to the US border and presented ID, the immigration guy had no problem with my ID or my wife's ID, but insisted that my wife's friend needed to show a Hawaiian passport to enter the USA. It took about 10 minutes to convince the moron that Hawaii was a state. It is this kind of thinking (and lack of education) that leads to these situations.
-- TRUE STORY...
Jack
_________________
Swift Boats - Qui Nhon (12/69-4/70), Cat Lo (4/70-5/70), Vung Tau (5/70-12/71)

[MrJapan]

Interesting links:

http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/secesson.htm

This one is really interesting, it's talking about the 'BLUE STATES' seceding before the election..

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20041124.html

Another interesting read (on Texas... I didn't know this until now :O)

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Texas_Annexation

Parody?!?!?!?!

http://www.illuminati-news.com/born-in-captivity.htm

Hmm... Can't argue about Texas seceeding... still learning as I go.. I KNOW I saw that they could, but I can't find it

[MrJapan]

[PhantomSgt]

Lived for over four years on Oahu and had no doubt in my mind I was a Mainland Howlie who was less than human to most of the Locals.

Prejudice runs very deep in the Hawaiian Islands.


_________________
Retired AF E-8

Independent that leans right of center.

[BuffaloJack]

http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?3c4d4c7e-0d8f-4004-bd6e-c464165a139e

Senator admits that his bill may eventually lead to independence for state...

Mr. KANAHELE: They never thought that Hawaiians would take the road to restoring their independence. Well, what do you expect? You just admitted to a crime -- Right? -- the crime of the overthrow ... (more)

http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?3c4d4c7e-0d8f-4004-bd6e-c464165a139e
_________________
Swift Boats - Qui Nhon (12/69-4/70), Cat Lo (4/70-5/70), Vung Tau (5/70-12/71)

[AMOS]

Oh goodie, we could all divide up the Hawaiians' Social Security trust fund money the goony loony lefties say is there.