The U.S. Supreme Court once again served notice, with the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, that it remains the sole, implacable enemy of equal rights for African-Americans in the U.S. Government. That history of entrenched bias, in the federal judiciary against African-Americans, commenced in the 18th-19th Centuries when the U.S. Supreme Court placed its stamp of approval on the slavery which was gaining traction in the states. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that African slaves, and their descendants, could not ever become American citizens, a decision which resulted in the Civil War. After the Civil War, the Congress enacted constitutional amendments which gave African slaves and their descendants (a) the right to be free of slavery except for a glaring loophole called criminal convictions, (b) the right to due process, equal protection, and citizenship, and (c) the right to vote. The U.S. Supreme Court then narrowed the scope of those amendments, and declared unconstitutional the first of the laws which sought to provide African slaves and their descendants with equality. In 1896, despite the Civil War changes to the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court held that racial segregation was legitimate. It took an additional 74 years before the Supreme Court ordered the immediate end to racial segregation in public schools. In a 1982 case called Mobile v. Bolden, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that proof of a 15th Amendment violation in voting rights required proof of discriminatory intent. And today, the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act which only required discriminatory effect for proof of a voting rights violation. Despite the wish of African-Americans to believe that all governmental entities pursue the goal of equality for all, the fact remains that the last plantation of slavery is that monstrosity which is the unelected federal judiciary. We live, not in a free republic where every vote is accorded equal treatment, but in a hybrid governmental system where two-thirds of the government is elected while the judicial branch is appointed and beholden only to those who have considerable resources and power. Abraham Lincoln, in his initial inaugural address, pointed out that when the federal judiciary rules on national questions instead of deciding issues between parties, the American People have permitted an appointed tyranny to control American national issues. It is therefore time for the American People to indicate their displeasure with this hybrid form of government in which the appointed federal judiciary can take away the voting rights of certain members of the electorate on a whim. That displeasure should not take the form of marches or futile demonstrations of pique, but should result in a nation-wide boycott, for one day at the outset, to impress on the hybrid government that the American People deserve a government which is elected by the people instead of a government which is controlled by 9 unelected people.
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