A Sorry Excuse for an Apology

It seems the U. S. Senate has passed an official apology for failing to approve a federal anti-lynching law during the Jim Crow era. Some observations:

-During the Jim Crow era (just like today) there were federal criminal statutes against state officials violating the constitutional rights of the people, including the right not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and the right to equal protection of the law. Thus, for instance, a sheriff who stood ready to protect whites against black criminals but failed to protect blacks against white lynch mobs would have violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and hence incurred penalties under federal criminal law. It's fair to say that the federal criminal statutes weren't widely enforced, and passing yet another statute wouldn't necessarily have solved the enforcement problem. It would have just created a new law to be under-enforced.

-The Senate, during the Jim Crow era, should have approved an anti-lynching bill that increased the penalties for state officials who violated the constitutional rights of lynching victims. However, the anti-lynching bills actually offered in Congress tended to go further than this. The Dyer bill of the 1920s provided penalties for private individuals, not just state officials. The Wagner-Costigan bill of the 1930s lacked this problematic provision, but would have imposed collective fines on counties where lynchings took place, a collective-guilt clause whose constitutionality could be (and was) open to good-faith debate.

-Republicans and Democrats approved the apology unanimously. Apparently, Senators decided that voting against lynching would be a politically-wise thing to do. This unanimity didn't stop numerous Senators from inserting lengthy speeches into the Congressional Record.

During his remarks in support of the apology resolution, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) made some offensive comments. Dick Durbin making offensive comments -- why, he's the last person I'd expect to have done such a thing! The comments are in the Congressional Record on page S6379:

"I commend Senators MARY LANDRIEU and GEORGE ALLEN for authoring this resolution and working so hard to have the Senate take it up and right this historical wrong. It is my hope the Senate will match the words of this resolution with action. It is not enough to apologize for the failure of our predecessors to protect their fellow citizens from violent prejudice. We have a responsibility to protect those who are targets of today's hate crimes as well. Senator TED KENNEDY, a Democrat, and Senator GORDON SMITH, a Republican, have been trying for years to persuade Congress to pass a new, stronger Federal hate crimes bill. Year after year, they have met with resistance.

"Listen to the arguments of those who oppose a stronger hate crimes bill today, and you hear the same arguments that were made against a Federal antilynching bill decades ago. The names have changed, the arguments and the excuses are the same.

"They say we in Congress cannot pass a strong hate crimes bill because it will infringe on States rights or because the Constitution does not give Congress explicit authority to pass such a law.

"Listen to what a Member of the House of Representatives, James Woods of Virginia, said in 1922:

"'This bill, commonly known as the ``anti-lynching bill'' would be described more accurately if designated--from the standpoint of its effects rather than from its purpose--as a ``bill to override the Constitution of the United States, to foment race hatred, and to revive sectional animosity.'' If it were possible to put an end to lynching by a lawful act of Congress, none would support such legislation more earnestly than we of the South.'

"The Constitution does not say anything explicitly about the Civil Rights Act, which the Senate passed 41 years ago, or the Voting Rights Act, which turns 40 today. There always will be political voices that will find excuses to delay acting on the moral challenges of our time.

"Finding the moral courage to deal with those challenges in our own time is the real test of leadership. What is it we are doing or failing to do today that would lead the Senate 50 years from now to apologize? That is the question.

"I hope Congress will pass the Kennedy-Smith hate crimes bill as tangible proof to the victims of lynching that we will never again withhold our protection when Americans are persecuted and killed simply for being who they are."

Gosh, Dick, I wonder what Congress is doing today that it might feel bound to apologize for fifty years later? Dick thinks Congress might feel compelled to apologize for not passing an unnecessary and gimmicky "hate crimes" bill imposing federal penalties for acts which already violate state law, and which the states seem to show no hesitancy in prosecuting.

Maybe Congress will apologize in fifty years for failing to enact some dinky little "hate crimes" bill. Or maybe the Congress of the future will have something more serious to apologize for.

Think, Dick. What is Congress complicit in today that is so evil that it may want to apologize for such complicity in fifty years' time? What could it possibly be? Let's see, it would have to be something at least as heinous as lynching, something involving the destruction of large numbers of human lives -- including black lives -- while the government stands by and does nothing, or even helps the killers do their dirty work.

Let's see, let's see . . . help me out here, Dick, can you think of anything like that? Something Congress is complicit in today, in Anno Domini 2005? Something it might want to apologize for in 2055?

Gosh, I can't think of anything . . .

unless it could be . . .

(this is just a wild guess)

how about ABORTION?

Congress has passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law to provide federal protection to abortion clinics. It provides taxpayer subsidies and/or government facilities to certain abortions. It has failed to strip the federal courts of their jurisdiction in abortion cases. Complicity? I think so, Dick, what about you?

Now, about that kiss-of-death quote from James Woods, the (presumably) racist Congressman from 1922, whose embrace of states' rights presumably discredits anyone today who actually thinks there is such a thing as powers the federal government may not exercise because such powers are reserved to the states. That quote should sure put anyone in his place who thinks that the states, being vital parts of our federal Union, are possessed of a residuary sovereignty which they never surrendered to the federal government. Your quote clearly shows that anyone who wants to keep the federal government within its constitutional bounds is guilty by association with the presumed white racist, James Woods. Because James Woods, apparently an evil man, said good things about states' rights, I guess states' rights must be an evil thing, too, eh, Dick? I take it that this is the point you are subtly trying to make?

Well, Dick, let's see if I can't top that James Woods quote of yours. You found a remark in favor of states' rights uttered by a morally-questionable person. Have any morally-questionable people ever suggested that the central government of a federal republic should assume more and more power, displacing the powers of the constituent states at the expense of the federal government, until the federal government has taken away all significant powers from the states? If I find a morally-questionable person like that, Dick, will you then acknowledge that "guilt-by-association" rhetoric is maybe not the best debating tactic?

Well, let's see if I can find some pro-central-government quotes from an evildoer who matches -- or perhaps even exceeds -- James Woods in wickedness. If I can find such an evildoer, then maybe, Dick, you will want to reconsider this whole guilt-by-association thing.

The following quotation is right up your alley, Dick. The quotation attacks states' rights by proclaiming that the American states were created by the Union, not the other way around, and by denying that this country is a confederacy of sovereign states:

"By a Confederacy we mean a union of sovereign states which of their own free will and in virtue of their sovereignty come together and create a collective unit, ceding to that unit as much of their own sovereign rights as will render the existence of the union possible and will guarantee it.

"But the theoretical formula is not wholly put into practice by any confederacy that exists to-day. And least of all by the American Union, where it is impossible to speak of original sovereignty in regard to the majority of the states. Many of them were not included in the federal complex until long after it had been established. The states that make up the American Union are mostly in the nature of territories, more or less, formed for technical administrative purposes, their boundaries having in many cases been fixed in the mapping office. Originally these states did not and could not possess sovereign rights of their own. Because it was the Union that created most of the so-called states. Therefore the sovereign rights, often very comprehensive, which were left, or rather granted, to the various territories correspond not only to the whole character of the Confederation but also to its vast space, which is equivalent to the size of a Continent. Consequently, in speaking of the United States of America one must not consider them as sovereign states but as enjoying rights or, better perhaps, autarchic powers, granted to them and guaranteed by the Constitution."

Another quote, from the same source, that supports consolidating power in the central government at the expense of the states:

"Nowadays it is absurd to speak of ‘statal sovereignty’ . . . because that has already become impossible on account of the ridiculously small size of so many of these states. In the sphere of commerce as well as that of administration the importance of the individual states has been steadily decreasing. Modern means of communication and mechanical progress have been increasingly restricting distance and space. What was once a State is to-day only a province and the territory covered by a modern State had once the importance of a continent. . . . To close one’s eyes to the consequences of these facts means to live in the past. There always were, there are and always will be, men who do this. They may retard but they cannot stop the revolutions of history. . . .

"The importance of the individual states in the future will no longer lie in their political or statal power. I look to them rather as important ethnical and cultural centres. But even in this respect time will do its levelling work. Modern travelling facilities shuffle people among one another in such a way that tribal boundaries will fade out and even the cultural picture will gradually become more of a uniform pattern."

Can you guess the source of these quotes, Dick? He's a guy you may have heard of .

Please note that I'm not trying to emulate Durbin's guilt-by-association tactic, but to illustrate the wrongness of that tactic. In other words, I'm pointing out that if Durbin can compare constitutional traditionalists to Jim Crow Congressmen, then it would logically follow that I can compare Durbin to Hitler. This illustrates the fallaciousness of guilt by association. It doesn't mean that Durbin is like Hitler; it means that his own logic would make him like Hitler, therefore his logic is defective. I'm not comparing people to Nazis the way Durbin himself has done.