Those who style themselves progressive have always had plenty of ideas for the perfection of society, ideas that entail the use of government. They have never been willing to suggest that people might voluntarily try one of their notions. No, ordinary people are too backward, too selfish. They can’t see the big picture.
In his latest “Bastiat’s Window” post, Bob Graboyes looks into an ugly aspect of the history of his home state of Virginia, namely the racial classifications implemented by Walter Ashby Plecker. Dr. Plecker was handed the power to decide who was “white” (and therefore favored) and who was not.
Graboyes writes,
Plecker’s bureaucracy made genealogical research a central mission of state government. As the population swelled from 2 to 3 million, Plecker devoted his life to constructing a taxonomy of races, determining each race’s place in society, slotting each and every Virginian in one of his categories, meting out privileges and penalties on the basis of one’s race, and harnessing the police powers of the Commonwealth to sustain the whole enterprise—as he, the Machine, and God had intended. (Plecker thought God had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because they engaged in racial mixing).
Well, that was bad stuff, but we are far past that, right?
No, we aren’t, Graboyes argues: “Plecker and his ilk aren’t merely historical curiosities; they are unsettling object lessons for public policy discussions in 2023. Today’s academic journals and legislative proceedings are filled with proposals bearing a creepy resemblance to those proffered a century ago by Plecker and friends.”
They certainly do.