George Will defends the dissenters in this week’s 7-2 Supreme court decision which supports Indian tribes’ rights to determine where their children may go when in need of a new home.
Here’s what I have to say to him:
Mr. Will appears to believe that the original inhabitants of this continent should be forced to follow the foundational principles of those who arrived after (“Rights inhere in individuals, not groups.”) Thankfully, after four centuries of subjugation, our government is beginning to acknowledge that those original nations should be granted an equivalent right to to live by their own “foundational privileges”, even if we find them foreign or contradictory to ours.
He should return to his comfortable retirement den and examine this proposition. While doing so, he should ask why he felt it necessary to include inflammatory language in his argument (“sacrificial playthings of race-mongers”, comparing tribes to Nazis).
It seems that 7 of the 9 Justices are able to deal with this conundrum, and allow the tribes to build and nurture an ethos which is unique to them, and not beholden to one we might wish to impose on them. Possibly gritting their teeth while doing so, but doing so nonetheless.