Herbert Lee, George W. Lee, Vernon Dahmer, Medgar Evers, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniels, and James Reeb − the names of just a few people, Black and White, who gave their lives to secure the right for Black Americans to vote.
When constitutional America was formed, Benjamin Franklin, when asked what had been created, is said to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The keyword is “republic,” because many of the nation’s founders knew that creating a pure democracy would perpetually allow the majority to oppress racial, religious, and political minorities.
Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which creates the federal judiciary, and the later addition of the Bill of Rights were designed to protect such minorities from “the tyranny of the majority,” because it acknowledged a key reality that American history has repeatedly demonstrated: The majority is not always right.
When the courts fail the Constitution
The protection of the speech, religious, and political rights of those in the minority was meant to create a more vibrant democracy by injecting alternative viewpoints and solutions into public debate and discourse. Realizing that those who had to solicit votes to win elections would not have much interest in protecting the rights of America’s minorities, the founders believed the federal courts, where unelected judges and Supreme Court justices serve for life, would protect the rights that the majority would not.
This has historically proven to be more illusory than real. From the Supreme Court saying in its Dred Scott decision that Black Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” to Plessy v. Ferguson legalizing the doctrine of “separate but equal,” to Korematsu v. United States and numerous other egregious decisions, the federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, has repeatedly diminished the rights of racial, religious, and political minorities.
Now the nation is witnessing the Voting Rights Act, which the people listed above and many others fought and sacrificed for, being methodically erased. Despite the deceptive facade of erudite sagacity the Supreme Court tries to promote, there is something reprehensible in the fact that five privileged White people, and one disgruntled Black American (who has made it his mission to destroy all the gains of the Civil Rights Movement), all sitting on a reactionary and politicized court cobbled together by corrupt political machinations, can flippantly destroy the rights and lives of millions.
The excuse often given for redacting racial progress is the contention that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment makes it anathema to have any governmental policy or law that is perceived as being “favorable” to racial, religious, or political minorities.
But, as Lyndon Johnson said about this specious reasoning, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
A republic slipping from our grasp
In the opening scene of the classic 1971 movie “Billy Jack,” local law enforcement officials are seen participating in an illegal hunt organized by the town’s political bigwigs. When the protagonist intervenes, one of these bigwigs says, “We got the law here, Billy Jack,” to which Jack replies, “When policemen break the law, then there isn’t any law, only a fight for survival.”
This statement is also true for prosecutors, attorneys general, judges, and Supreme Court justices. Make no mistake about it: The dilution of the Voting Rights Act is a stake in the heart of democracy for all Americans, regardless of their race, because it proves how easily the laws, the free press, the right to vote and have it meaningfully counted, and the liberties once taken for granted, can be eradicated in an instant by an increasingly corrupt, vengeance driven, racist, and politically weaponized legal system on a thinly veiled quest to create an authoritarian, one-party dictatorship − all while disingenuously hiding behind the term “equality” to accomplish this.
“A republic if you can keep it.” It’s time to stop losing it, before it’s too late.
David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional law attorney who lives in South Bend, Indiana.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Democracy is on the line as voting rights are rolled back | Opinion
Reporting by David Hoffman, Opinion contributor / Cincinnati Enquirer
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