Tea at Trianon: Louisiana v. Callais: The Case That Could Finally Desegregate American Politics

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Louisiana v. Callais: The Case That Could Finally Desegregate American Politics

From Amuse on X:

For sixty years, America has lived under a well-intentioned but fundamentally racist assumption: that black voters can only be represented by black politicians and that Hispanic voters can only be represented by Hispanic politicians. This premise, enshrined in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has forced states to draw congressional districts according to race, not citizenship, community, or competence. What began as an attempt to expand opportunity devolved into a mandate for racial segregation in politics. It also gave rise to a generation of racial opportunists who used the Act to build personal power by stoking division. Just a few years after the VRA’s passage, figures like Al Sharpton emerged, exploiting the new racial order to inflame grievances and profit from perpetual outrage, proving that the VRA had not healed America’s racial wounds but institutionalized them. On October 15th, when the Supreme Court re-hears Louisiana v. Callais, the justices have a chance to correct this moral and constitutional error.
The idea that race determines representation contradicts the very foundation of American equality. The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause promises that government will treat all citizens alike, without regard to race. Yet the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted for decades, required states to do the opposite: to treat voters differently depending on the color of their skin. Section 2 forced legislatures to draw so-called “majority-minority” districts, where racial identity, not shared geography, economy, or culture, defined political belonging. The logic was clear but poisonous. If white voters prefer white candidates and black voters prefer black candidates, then the only fair system is one that guarantees each group its own representative. This thinking is racial determinism masquerading as democracy.
Democrats, who championed these arrangements, found in them a source of immense political power. By dividing voters along racial lines, they created the illusion of moral virtue while cementing partisan control. The system encouraged racial pandering and grievance politics. Candidates learned that appealing to racial solidarity could win them office; parties learned that protecting racially gerrymandered districts could preserve their dominance. The result was not racial harmony but political apartheid, a system in which the color of one’s district dictated the color of one’s representative. In practice, this meant that white, black, Hispanic, and Asian voters were encouraged to see themselves not as citizens bound by shared interests but as members of competing tribes vying for state-sanctioned power. (Read more.)