Oddly enough I am actually in agreement with the main point of this George Will Op Ed piece: The proposed legislation making Native Hawaiians a “new” Native American tribe is probably a bad idea. Esp. since the selection criteria seem to be likely to include the “one drop” theory of ancestry.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m willling to swallow the whole piece, hook, line and sinker.
What really gets to me was this line:
"Unlike Indians, however, Native Hawaiians’ land was not taken by force. "
But how the Hell can anyone with a working knowledge of history claim that the disbanding of the Hawaiian Monarchy was anything but a precedent of the Anschluss? The only real difference was that there was no National Socialist Party to organize the thing.
Certainly the acquisition of Hawaii was relatively bloodless, but that’s not because I believe that the Americans of the time were willing to accept any result that peaceful processes might bring, but rather that our forebears felt, correctly as it turned out, that peaceful means could do the trick. And the Native Hawaiian population, for whatever reason, was smart enough to recognize the iron fist within the glove.
AIUI most criminal codes accept that the threat of force is often enough to make an act of coercion have more serious consequences, whether or not the threatened force is actually used. With that background, I really can’t imagine how anyone can look back at the Hawaiian Monarchy and claim that force wasn’t a factor there, as well.
I realize that I may well be being incredibly naive about George Will’s reasoning abilities - I don’t often read his column, nor any other syndicated Op Ed columnists’ work with any regularity. But I had thought he was more than a few steps up from an Ann Coulter.
You do him a disservice by even considering him to be in the same hemisphere as Coulter. I hold few political positions with him, but I have always found him to be intelligent, well-reasoned, quietly persuasive, perceptive, and above all, polite and mannerly; Coulter, not so much. Or at all.
I agree that Will’s fortunately no Coulter. And he really is polite and mannerly. But IMHO, that’s as far as it goes.
Like most of the punditocracy, his intellect has gone flaccid from having gone decades without having to defend his arguments against strong rebuttal. And also like most of the punditocracy, he’s in a stratospheric income bracket which has long removed him from any perception of what life is like for most Americans. He’s part of an influential group of people who get their information and attitudes mostly from each other.
Like most of that class, if he had a blog rather than an op-ed column and a spot on the Sunday morning gasbag shows, he’d drop off the face of the earth.
I can only assume that Will sees a distinction between “taken forecefully” and “taken by force.” As you point out, it **was ** bloodless and therefore not taken by force, so it’s not the same as being painted into a corner.
Seems like everytime I read one of his essays, it’s basically “Hey, I just read this other guy’s essay, and here’s what I think.” Somebody else’s meat with a few dashes from Will’s spice rack.
I get the impression it’s like The Sweet Smell of Success up there, with agents hustling to get their clients’ scribblings noticed by major pundits, who no longer do their own writing, or even their own thinking; just sling their balls in and out of limousines.
So, if i come up to you on the street, tell you i’ve got a gun and that you need to give me your wallet, does that constitute “not taking by force”? After all, if you simply hand your wallet over, i won’t shoot you and you can just walk away. Completely bloodless.
No, i never said there’s no distinction. Like you, i’d prefer not to be shot. But the point you made is quite a different one.
You said that because it was bloodless, it was not taken by force. I’m simply arguing that, if someone takes my wallet at gunpoint without shooting me, the wallet has still been taken by force.
Wow. After glancing at that article, I must say that George Will certainly brings a nuanced, reasoned perspective to a potentially fractious topic. I had no idea that Hermann Goering was so admired by the House of Representatives. Thanks to Mr. Will’s informative essay, I now fully believe that the “one-drop rule” will be the criterion for determining Hawaiian tribal ancestry, just as it is officially used to determine Native American tribal affiliation today.
Yeah, although I don’t want to get into a debate over Hawaiian sovereignty, that’s tremendously misleading. The line that got me was:
This implies that the opposition’s reasons align with Will’s. IIRC (I moved away from the islands in 2001), a large chunk of the opposition is because the act doesn’t go far enough. There’s a large group that would only support an independent nation, and many more at various points along the spectrum.
Now, perhaps the politics has changed in the 6 years I’ve been on the mainland, but I think that’s a good example of “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
I will accept that I was tarring Will unfairly to compare him to Coulter. But, I’m still disgusted by seeing how he was willing to pick and choose his argument there to support his conclusion. Without apparent regard to the deeper facts of the matter.
And I’d like to thank all the posters in this thread for refraining from getting into the issue of Hawaiian sovreignty - It’s a complex matter, and really beyond the point of the Pitting I’d intended. (Though I am grateful for Digital Stimulus’s comments about the spectrum of opinions in Hawaii on the issue. I don’t have to be consistent! I’ve read Emerson!)
How complex could it be, though? Only one side is endorsed by the Nazis. Do you honestly believe that there are arguments in favor of Hermann Goering’s “one-drop rule” of racial purity, which the irrational Hawaiians could officially embrace at any time? How can you claim the sovereignty issue is “complex,” when the weed of independence can surely lead only to the establishment of a racially divided, “progressive,” anti-Semitic, “multicultural” National Socialist Hawaii? Just as the racist Democrats who fought Hawaii’s statehood in 1959 would have wanted!
George Will’s white, white blood corpuscles weep for the future of Hawaii.
Because the act doesn’t seem to address the rights of six-limbed GM critters from beyond the natural world, it’s going to be a very complex issue to consider. If ohana is to mean anything at all, shouldn’t that poor refugee be granted some consideration, too?
I’m glad you started this thread. I always hate it when I agree with George Will, and while I agree with him and the OP that the legislation at issue is a bad idea, as usual Will’s column here is a polite and well mannered piece of cow manure.
I like George Will, but he’s dead wrong on this one. Plenty of blood was shed in the 19th century by Kamehameha the Great to create the kingdom of Hawaii. Though he got help from foreigners, he did not allow them to possess land once he became the king
But if we want to specify the actual concept of native Hawaiian land taken by American force, that is just not true. It was not until 1848 that Kamehameha III enacted the Great Mahele of 1848 and gave land titles to the chiefs , the government and the crown. Well these people sold and leased much of their title to foreigners, it wasn’t taken from them.
As for the common native Hawaiians it wasn’t until the Kuleana Act of 1850 that a few of the common people were able to seek title on homesteaded land.