Here's Rich Lowry, editor of the longtime white-supremacist journal, National Review, being deliberately stupid about voter-suppression in the newly insane state of North Carolina. You see, the Republican majority in the state legislature passed this bill as a good-government initiative. The fact that it will impact minority voters, and that it will tend to inconvenience Democratic voting blocs at a time when North Carolina seemed to be purpling itself is entirely accidental.

You can't argue it's a de facto return to Jim Crow and the era of the poll tax. Democrats mock Republicans as perennially stuck in the 1980s. But they are stuck in the 1950s and the 1960s, and in their demagoguery, disgrace the memory of genuine martyrs at a time when state and local officials in the South really did prevent blacks from voting through the most hideous means.

OK, I can't argue it, but John Lewis, who came damn close to being one of those "genuine martyrs" whose memory Lowry seeks to protect from the depredations of Hillary Clinton, can.

In Georgia, Florida, Ohio and other states, legislatures have significantly reduced opportunities to cast ballots before Election Day - an option that was disproportionately used by African-American voters in 2008. In this case the justification is often fiscal: Republicans in North Carolina attempted to eliminate early voting, claiming it would save money. Fortunately, the effort failed after the State Election Board demonstrated that cuts to early voting would actually be more expensive because new election precincts and additional voting machines would be required to handle the surge of voters on Election Day.

Oh, and back when those genuine martyrs were being, you know, martyred, here's what Lowry's magazine had to say about it.

The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes', and intends to assert its own. National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened.

And, back when John Lewis was nearly being martyred by hitting billy clubs with his head, here's how NR founder "Bill" Buckleylooked at things.

Just months before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed, Buckley warned in his syndicated column (2/18/65) that "chaos" and "mobocratic rule" might follow if "the entire Negro population in the South were suddenly given the vote." In his 1969 column "On Negro Inferiority" (4/8/69), Buckley heralded as "massive" and "apparently authoritative" academic racist Arthur Jensen's findings that blacks are less intelligent than whites and Asians.

(And, not for nothing, but the pages of NR were still making nicey-nice to Arthur Jensen as recently as a year ago.)

So Rich Lowry and his little racist fk of a magazine can pretty much bite it. It's been on the wrong side of history since the first issue rolled off the press. But, anyway, here's a District Attorney in Colorado, demonstrating how deliberately stupid Rich Lowry is being.

Garnett said he believes that Gessler referred the names for prosecution because he made a big deal last summer about possible illegal voting in advance of the November election and had to produce results. In response, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office said Gessler is trying to address the matter in a methodical way while Garnett is trying to score partisan points. In each case referred for investigation, the voter used non-citizen proof of identification, such as a green card or work visa, when applying for a driver's license and was registered to vote anyway, and did not respond to a request for citizenship verification sent last year.

Right now, Texas is arguing that its gerrymandering should be exempted from the Voting Rights Act because it was intended to suppress the votes of Democrats in general, and not simply black and Latino voters. In the age of James Crow, Esq., that makes them the most honest vote-suppressors in America.

Bartender, a double Prestone, and see what the proud young heirs to institutional racism in the back room will have.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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