Criticism
The decisions in the Insular Cases have not been without the dissenting voices of critics, among them distinguished scholars.
Former Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court José Trías Monge has stated that "The Insular Cases were based on premises that in today's world seem bizarre. "They," Trias Monge continues, "and the policies on which they rest, answer to the following notions:
- "democracy and colonialism are fully compatible;
- "there is nothing wrong when a democracy such as the United States engages in the business of governing other ;
- "people are not created equal, some races being superior to others;
- "it is the burden of the superior peoples, the white man's burden, to bring up others in their image, except to the extent that the nation which possesses them should in due time determine."
In Harris v. Rosario, 446 U.S. 651 (1980), the Court in a succinct per curiam order, applied Califano v. Torres, 435 U. S. 1 (1978), to hold that a lower level of aid to families with dependent children to residents of Puerto Rico did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, because in U.S. territories Congress can discriminate against its citizens applying a rational basis standard. Justice Marshall issued a staunch dissent, again noting that Puerto Ricans are United States citizens and that the Insular Cases are indeed questionable.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)