Forever Distortions?

It’s Supreme Court season, and one of the biggies on their docket is Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could alter the Voting Rights Act enacted sixty years ago.

The case itself centers on whether Louisiana’s six Congressional districts must be structured to match the race proportions in the state, and is a clash between the Voting Rights Act’s requirement of “majority-minority” districts that would keep legislatures from diluting minority votes and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, which, it is argued, prohibits racial discrimination of the sort that the Voting Rights Act requires.

The case, which is already being hyped as landmark and is already generating hyperventilation from the left-leaning legacy media outlets, raises an important question that goes beyond its particulars.

That question is: How long should a corrective distortion remain in effect?

Justice Kavanaugh posited, “The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

Is he right? Should something that undercuts our basic liberties but corrects a problem of the time be permanent?

In this case, I’m inclined to ask, “why do we continue to assume that blacks “vote black” and whites “vote white?”“ When do we say “Jim Crow is a defunct relic of the past,” which it is? When do we allow for the possibility that people don’t vote their skin color? When do we give people a chance to live in a colorblind fashion?

The permanent remedy question extends well beyond voting.

Another relic of the 1960s, the public accommodation principle, is also a dinosaur. It says that any private business open to the public must not engage in discrimination. While that sounds nice, it’s no longer a useful correction of widespread and institutionalized bigotry so much as a lawfare plaything for activists and agitators that’s used to smash small business owners and deprive them of their own rights and liberties.

Then there’s the heart of the current government shutdown: the extension of “temporary” ObamaCare subsidies. Subsidies that, contrary to what is being hyped by the Left, accrue to the wealthier members of society. Those subsidies, intended to float ObamaCare through the pandemic, are what’s keeping that house of cards from toppling.

These three examples and many more are, as I noted, distortions of our individual and economic rights. That they were created for noble purpose doesn’t mean that they should be forever, and when the underlying reasons for their creation are no longer, they should follow the fading of the problems into the history books.

I’m sure the counterargument will be that whites (read: the Right) is still desperate to disenfranchise blacks (read: voters the Left claims as its own and scolds when they dare stray off the plantation), and weakening of the districting mandates will usher in a new era of Jim Crow and white supremacy. To this, I apply the Sagan Standard: that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I say, “prove it.”

And not in the “disparate outcome” manner of today’s race agitators. In results, and at the individual level.

I also say that today’s Left is far more racist in behavior than any other major voting faction. It talks a great game, but its policies have been disastrous for minorities, its behavior belies its rhetoric, and it treats the minorities it supposedly champions as pets or trophies rather than as co-equal citizens.

But I digress.

How long does a government action that infringes on our rights get to remain on the books?

How long should the government meddle in our freedom of action?

When can we close the books on a remedy?

I think it’s clear how I feel. Please share your thoughts in the comments.