“Left-wi…

The whole issue brings up the knee-jerk faith too many Negroes place in government authorities, but history shows numerous ways in which government is anything but “beneficial” where blacks and other minorities are concerned.
It was government after all that fostered, promoted and protected slavery in the early days. It was government that forbid interracial marriages way back when in colonial days and later, when before such unions were legal. It was government that brough us the Dred Scott decision and the racist Plessy vs Ferguson. It was government that “promised” black folk “forty acres and a mule” after the Civil War and never delivered. It was government that signed numerous Indian “treaties” promising peace “as long as the waters run”, treaties not worth the paper they were written on.
It was government that inaugurated and enforced Jim Crow laws that consigned blacks to second class citizenship for almost a century. It was government that forced the removal of thousands of citizens of Japanese descent into camps during WWII, while exempting certain others. It was government that has enforced and endorsed numerous measures damaging to blacks, from enforcement of biased “restrictive covenant” contracts, to “previaling wage” clauses or cleverly written union contracts that froze out black labor, to holding millions of acres of land off the market, containing billions of dolars worth of jobs and housing to the benefit of better off “environmentalists.”
Our friends in government are also repsonsible for the subsidizing of illegitimacy and dependency through a welfare system that has wreaked havoc on the black community. Yet again, it is our “friends” in government that have weakened crime controls and imposed “assembly line justice” that sees black criminals “rotated” time and time again out of the justice system to go back and yet again rob, rape and murder in the black community. It is government that has imposed the cynical, deceptive and discriminatory regime of affirmative action quotas, benefiting few of the black poor but cashed in on by the better off, including white women, an “oppressed minority” making up almost half the population or recent immigrants whose parents no themselves have lived in the US.

It is government that in a short while will impose the “benefit” of gay marriage on society, at a time when it is crucial that the black community build stable and effective two-parent families. The list could go on, but despite this history, many Negroes still call for yet even MORE government to “solve” the problems of black people.

LaShawn I agree with Jack and would hold that Dred Scott was not a case of narrow judicial constructionism, but the opposite- that Dred Scott was an early example of JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, precisely what conservatives warn about time and time again. Jack mentions Bork, and I could mention Thomas Sowell in his “Knowledge and Decisions”, where he maintained that Dred was the first judicial activist interpretation of “due process” in that it called for the Supreme Court to “approve” the SUBSTANCE of duly enacted legislation. In other words it was the first historic attempt to move beyond due process in a procedural sense and into judicial POLICY MAKING, although the full implications were not clear for a number of years.

If black liberals are using Dred Scott as a club to beat you with, or express alarm about “constructionist” judges, they are on questionable ground.

The Random Observation blog has a good note against the idea of “evolving morality”, with some quick disagreement. Nice quote though:
He argued that slavery was incompatible with Christianity, a proposition advanced by numerous others before him, among them Gregory of Nyssa, in the 4th century, Pope Leo x, in the sixteenth century and by the extraordinary Anglican Bishop Warburton in the eighteenth, but not necessarily proof against sophisticated and self-interested qualification. Clarkson excused earlier Christians from advocating the abolition of slavery on the grounds that it would have destroyed society, so all-pervasive it was.

And my point is that the Civil War did “destroy society.” Even though I fully agree that slavery was immoral.
And Jim Crow laws were also terrible.

And what Saddam was doing in Iraq, with US help when fighting Iran in the 80s, and against the US after we liberated Kuwait from their aggression in the 90s, was also wrong and terrible; as is Sudan and North Korea.

What are the morally wrong things in the world? What are we doing about them — what should we be doing about them? Can we learn from the past? [I think these are usually a "super topic" of most posts here; which I like, thanks La Shawn]

The Dred Scott decision was the law but it was immoral! Does this not apply to decisions made since then. If the Supreme Court takes out “under God” in pledge of alliance, it will be the law, but will it be moral? I grew up in DC and its surrounding areas. I have a degree from the Un of MD in College Park with Phi Beta Kappa. My parents and after my mother died, my father stayed to get in-state tuition for MD. The Beltway did not exist when I started school. My address after that was Alexandria even though it was in Fairfax County. My job was for the Army at what was on the Bureau of Standards on Connecticut Avenue. It is now a Community College in DC. Glenn Martin left his money to Un. of MD that built the original engineering, physics, chemisty, and math buildings. Un. of Md had the largest ROTC in the nation until the Pentagon took away the money.

JMB

I realize this is a long ways away in time but the Dred Scott decision is still depressing to read.

But this wouldnt of happened. Sectional tensions were already huge, and the South had no plan to abolish slavery. They wanted it to continue indefinatly. Besides, slavery wasnt the only factor in causing the civil war.

‘Even granting the dubious point that people can be considered property (which is not specified in the Constitution) the Constitutional protections of property rights place limits on the Federal government, not the states.’

The Constitution explicitly protects property rights. The supreme court ruled that slaves WERE property. Therefore, slave owners saw that the Constitution protected their ‘peculiar institution.’

‘It is true that slavery could not have been abolished in the country without an ammendment, but the states had the power to do so within their territory by virtue of Ammendment X.’

After Dredd Scott, who had lived in both a free state and free territory, it was deemed that the states/territories technically couldnt reject slavery as slaves (as property) could be taken anywhere.

An excellent discussion of the history of judicial activism is Robert Bork’s Temptin of America. I can’t link to it here, but it is available on Amazon.

Tom was talking about a movement to evolve out of slavery in order to “avoid” the Civil War. Also, Jim Crow was not what “we” were getting in 1868 when the 13th and 14th Amendments were adopted. Those laws weren’t enacted until decades later in response to Reconstruction. Regardless, we’re getting far off topic.

Its relevancy is that though Jim Crow’s intent may have been permanent, it had basically the effect that the temporary servitude provision envisioned. And I think that most people were aware of that, of the fact that that is what we were getting with emancipation.