Never-Ending Racial Wrongs The choice is simple: Does Virginia want to treat all citizens equally or does it want to treat Virginia Indians as a special classes of citizens to assuage white guilt?   Representatives of Virginia’s Indian tribes are in England drumming and dancing up interest in America’s 400th Birthday – Jamestown 1607. I haven’t yet heard how the apology went.   Surely, part of the ceremony was a heartfelt apology for the Indian massacre of 347 English settlers in 1622. Or, maybe they’re going to say "sorry" for the 1644 massacre of another hundred or so English men, women and children. It goes without saying that racial reconciliation requires all sides to approach one another with contrition.   Or, does the sharp edge of racial politics cut in only one direction – leftward?   Silly me.   From 1860 to 1968, Democrats exploited the division of white against blacks. Now, for the putative benefit of blacks and all others, they exploit White Guilt. Liberals can’t apologize, weep, grovel, and fawn enough for any racially tinged issue. They wear their White Guilt like scarlet letters in the public square.   It’s worse than pathetic when Republicans do the same cheap tricks for votes. Republicans can never pander enough to silence the race pimps and professional "colored" people. Moreover, playing vainly to the MSM for a few votes that never materialize, is almost criminal because it betrays principles Republicans are supposed to defend.   The Virginia Indian tribes have never apologized for their massacres. The 17th Century treaty honored every Thanksgiving with the ceremonial dead deer gift to Virginia’s Governor states the Indians will return the "horses and children" they stole. Yet, the Indians don’t appear in sack cloth and ashes. They could, though, because Virginia’s eastern Indians started assimilating by 1700. They became Christian, learned English, adopted English surnames and assumed the culture and heritage of Western Civilization as they made their contributions to our branch of American Civilization.   During the Jim Crow era  in the 1920s, a segregationist state official forced Indians to chose "white" or "black," instead of "Indian." This slight helped keep Virginia’s Indians from the federal registry of Indian tribes in the make-work 1930s. Indians had been Virginians like their neighbors for over 200 years. Missing the registry meant missing the federal hand outs, welfare and privileges which appease White Guilt.   The insult to Virginia’s Indians was real. I’m not tone deaf about that. But the remedy is worse than the ailment. The federal recognition that Republican officials support would be anathema if you substitute the word "white" or "black" for Indian. Do we really want: a racial blood census to determine who is 1/8th Indian from the right tribes? (My wife is 1/16th from the wrong tribe – oops.) to start unique Indian schools with federal money 300 years after assimilation? to create a new level of government designated as "reservations" where suffrage is open to one race only? to open a tax-free (from all taxes) store in these counties? to open someday, despite today’s leaders disclaimers and protests, the gambling casinos that Virginia’s voters have rejected? If Virginia’s Indians aren’t assimilated and equal to other Virginians after 300 years, then they’ll never be good enough to stand on their two feet. That means all the federal hand outs for "disadvantaged" people are perpetual - based on race. Republicans, or conservatives, should never support group identity, group rights, racial privileges, federal hand outs, federal intervention in state governments, race-based governments, race-based schools – which never, ever end.   Likewise, Republicans voted to extend the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. I’ll probably be dead before Virginia has another chance to end Reconstruction. But if I lived to 120 years, it’s unlikely I’d outlive the Democrats politicizing and capitalizing on living down their "whites only" shame.   De jure segregation in the South ran 89 years from the end of Occupation in 1876 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. De facto federal judicial tyranny will age 67 years old from 1965 to 2032. Will the righting take longer than the wronging?   The good intent of the 1965 Voting Rights Act had the terrible effect of giving the moral high ground, plenipotentiary powers and exclusive authority to a generation of judges to act as the legal, moral, ethical arbitrators of legislatures. The power corrupted legal persons in one political branch of government to become black-robed priest-kings. The Voting Rights Act should’ve been revised and extended to stop illegal aliens from voting. To end Democrat voter fraud. But, it didn’t.   The good news is Fairfax City, Frederick County, and Shenandoah County did something right in ’65 to get exempted from more Reconstruction. They’re exempted from the foolishness of federal judges for another 25 years.   Too bad our legislators didn’t free us all.   -- July 24, 2006