IN 1965, THE CIVIL WAR had been over for a hundred years, blacks had supposedly been "free" for over a hundred years, and yet their situation overall in america was absolutely horrendous, charachterized by lives of poverty, low wage jobs, exclusion, struggle.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, like most politiciains, wanted to be popular, like many politicians, wanted to be all things to all people. He gave the military industrial complex its coveted asian war, the liberals got their social walfare programs, and their civil rights crusade. LBJ gave everybody something.
The voter rights act tried to enforce equal voting rights by mandating federal electiont for several states with racist voting records. The Supreme Court, by overturning this law, described it as uneccessarry and inappropiate now, in a far different world than 1965.
Granted this is true, but since when did the supreme court ever make a decision based on what we believe today, what our society is like now? Aren't they always trying to figure out the founder's intent?
True, federal oversight is no longer needed anythere in america to prevent racism, and the law should be rewritten. That's a far better, and more logical way of interpreting our constitution; according to our needs today, and not the throughts of the people who wrote the original law. The people who wrote the law in 1965 did not know what kind of country we would have today.
But the same is true of much of the rest of the american constitution. Should we maybe change the part where it says that black people are three fifths of a person? Isn't that part a little outdated? Should we maybe get rid of the prohibition amendment, and the repeal of prohibition amendment?
A good, general updating of the constitution, and the entire legal systemight be in order. It hasn't been done in hundreds of years, and is probably very outdated in many areas.
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