“Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, in a scathing dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down significant parts of the Voting Rights Act. Perhaps she’s right; but it could also be said that the majority ruling was built more on resentment of a particularly petulant kind: grudging about the need to remember an unpleasant past and to be mindful of the marginalized; offended by the idea that anyone would consider certain parts of the country more racist than others, or, really, that anyone is particularly racist at all these days. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, should...
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