On John Ashcroft --- and Jefferson Davis

Column No. 13 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – May 20, 2004

Introduction

Although racism is ever-present in Georgite politics, policies, programs, and Court appointments, it is hardly ever overt.  It is at times actually subliminal.  At present, the “type of person” targets that the Republicans have placed prominently in their sights as part of their electoral strategy are women who don’t believe that life begins at the moment of conception and the homosexual members of our society.  But that hardly means that down the road the Republicans could not once again put racism to the fore, as it was by them in the original Goldwater/Nixon “Southern Strategy.”

John Ashcroft is the Minister of State (figuratively and literally) from the Christian Right to the Georgite Regime.  He is also the most powerful person in law enforcement in the nation.  The Christian Right can hardly expect to persuade very many people beyond their own true believers (less than 10% of the population) to voluntarily support and comply with their policies and programs.  Thus, because of their fundamental numerical and philosophical weakness in our society as a whole, they have no other choice but to seek to use the criminal law to impose their will.  They are in the process of doing this in dealing with pregnant women and homosexuals.  Their Attorney General is central to the implementation of their current offensive.

Seeking to broaden the rifts in society that they feed upon, the Right could once again turn openly on the African-American population.  Far-fetched, you might say. But if it did, their current Minister to the Georgites would be right there with them.  Just consider the (generally hidden) racist background of the man who is leading the drive to gut many central elements of our Constitutional rights and liberties, Attorney General John Ashcroft.  Examining this background of his under the light is quite revealing.

On the “Southern Patriots”

In an October 1998 interview with the magazine Southern Partisan (Riverfront Times [St. Louis, MO], Dec. 28, 2000)[a copy of the Ashcroft interview can be found here – Talking Points Memo] then Attorney General-designate Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri had this to say about the principal leaders of the Confederate States of America:

“Your magazine helps set the record straight.  You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Confederate Gen. Robert E.] Lee, [Confederate Gen. “Stonewall”] Jackson, and [Confederate States of America {CSA} President Jefferson] Davis.  Traditionalists must do more.  I’ve got to do more.  We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.”

It is interesting to examine some of the positions taken by the leader of the Confederate Rebellion, Jefferson Davis, on the principal questions of his time, including slavery and secession, to see which ones then-Sen. Ashcroft might have felt needed defending, or protecting from the thought that those positions were part of a “perverted agenda.”  It is fascinating that a man who would become the nation’s leading law enforcement officer would think that Jefferson Davis’ agenda was not in any way “perverted.”  One must wonder if this man, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and with many direct powers to do so, had ever read the Constitution, especially the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, specifically designed to discard Jefferson Davis’ agenda from the national body politic.

The quoted material used below is all taken from the absolutely fascinating book The Approaching Fury: Voice of the Storm, 1820-1861 by the Civil War Historian Stephen B. Oates of Amherst University (New York: Harper Collins: 1997, page numbers in parentheses.

Would, for example, then-Sen. Ashcroft have wanted to defend the following statement Davis made about Ashcroft’s own party (the Republicans)?

“Your platform on which you elected your presidential candidate denies us [the slave-holding states] equality in the Union.  It refuses us equal enjoyment of the territories . . . I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? . . . Without equality, we would be degraded to remain in the Union . . . . “Your votes refuse to recognize our domestic institutions which existed before the formation of the Union, our slave property which is guarded by the Constitution. . . . The leading members of your party . . . made speeches after the election announcing that the Republican triumph signaled the downfall of our domestic institutions!  And you dare to ask us, ‘What is the matter?’” (p. 368).

Or perhaps it is the following statement that some might teach as indicating that Davis was following a perverted agenda, one for which then-Sen. Ashcroft would want to set the record straight:

“The state of Mississippi gave warning and declared her purpose to take counsel with her southern sister states whenever a President should be elected on the basis of sectional hostility to them.  With all this warning, you paused not.  Such a President [the first Republican] has now been elected.  The quarrel, then, is not of our making.  Our hands are stainless.  It is you who are the aggressor. . . . “If in the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and reliance upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, then, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen before [emphasis added]” (p. 369).

Or perhaps the following is a statement of Davis’ that some critic might perversely use to further his or her own agenda:

“I would, however, say a word to those who have attacked our social institutions by evoking the Declaration of Independence and its phrase ‘all men are created equal.’  By that Jefferson clearly meant not equality of the races, but the equality of the men of the political community at that time.  The phrase had no reference to Negroes, who were not then regarded as citizens” (p. 371).

Then-Sen. Ashcroft referred to “traditionalists,” saying that they “must do more.”  One wonders if that would include doing more “to stand up and speak,” for example, about Davis’ view of the institution of slavery:

“The abolitionists, howling at us from afar, could not see how well treated our slaves were.  They called slavery a sin.  By what standard did they measure it?  Not by the Constitution, which recognized property in slaves.  Not by the Bible; that justifies it.  Not by Christianity; for servitude was the only agency through which Christianity reached the Negro race.  Not by a comparison of the slave’s lot to that of the free black in the North; the one well provided for in all his physical wants and steadily improving in his moral condition; the other miserable, impoverished, loathsome from deformity and disease which follow after penury and vice.  Negroes were not fit for freedom because they were unable to care for themselves.  As the descendants of Ham, the graceless son of Noah, they carried God’s curse on Ham and so were slaves by divine decree.  How then could slavery be a sin?  It is, in fact, a moral, social, and a political blessing” (p. 219).

Finally, there was the famous explication of the theory of white supremacy uttered by the CSA Vice-President, Alexander Stephens.  About it Jefferson Davis said: “what Stephens said was true, perfectly true” (p. 382).  To defend that theory, and the institution of slavery too of course, Davis and Lee and Jackson gave their lives (literally in Jackson’s case) and subscribed “their sacred fortunes and their honor.”

Here is what Stephens had to say about the theory of white supremacy, which theory would presumably be, to then-Sen. Ashcroft’s way of thinking, not a perverted one:

“Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were, and are in violation of the laws of nature.  Our system commits no such violation of nature’s law.  With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law.  Not so with the Negro.  Subordination is his place.  He, by nature, or by the curse against Cain, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.  Our new government is founded on the opposite idea of the equality of the races.  Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the White man; that slavery --- subordination to the superior race --- is his natural condition.” (pp. 381-2)

Notice the Biblical references used by Stephens, above, and Davis in the previous (but hey, guys, I’m confused: is it the curse of Ham or the curse of Cain that is primary here?)  Sounds just like the Christian Right justifying their policies and programs by the use of selected references to the “inerrant" Bible, doesn’t it?  So if they can use what one particular English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Hebrew translation of an original Aramaic text to inform national social policy (backed up by the force of the criminal law) in dealing with pregnancy and homosexuality, who says they could not return to it to inform policy on what they call “race?”

And so, we now have as Attorney General of the United States a strong Christian Rightist who has characterized as “patriots” men like Lee, Jackson, and Davis who had subscribed “their sacred fortunes and honor” to defend a political philosophy and economic system based on the theory of white supremacy and the institution of slavery.  Since they all, as former officers in the U.S. Army (and Davis was Secretary of War, 1853-57, under Franklin Pierce) had sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, by taking up arms against it, actually they were all traitors.

Here is Ashcroft defending them and saying that he had “to do more” in carrying out that task.   Yes, this is the same man who has characterized anyone who dares simply to disagree with Georgite foreign and military policy as a traitor.

So, no return to open racism under a re-elected Georgite regime?  I wouldn’t be too sure.

Possible Explanations for Bush Behavior and 9/11

Column No. 11 Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 6, 2004

Despite the swirl of revelations over the past months, the public remains facing a large set of unanswered 9/11 questions, glaring inconsistencies, and seeming lies-at-the-time and very possibly lies now, combined with a drive by the Georgites to withhold as much information as possible (cover-up, anyone?).  Only extreme political pressure can force further key disclosures.

The subject of this writing is not a comprehensive review of that data.  As a follow-through to the “Condi Rice ‘Testimony’” column published on 4/22/04, I will present here just a few prime cases that have raised unanswered questions.  The subject of this column is to take a look at possible explanations for the Georgite response concerning events and non-events before, during, and after 9/11, in the hope that someday, sooner rather than later of course (and hopefully before the next election), the true story will be revealed.  Please note that I wrote this piece on April 19, 2004, so that any information revealed after that date does not play into it.

First, let’s see a few examples of what we do know about specific information the Georgites had and what they did with it -- and some of the resulting actions they did and did not take. They are presented here not necessarily in either chronological order or order of importance.  Most readers of The Political Junkies will be very familiar with this material, which Steve Gheen and others have reviewed in detail. But for the record, let’s go through it anyway.

There’s the famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) that seems to contain some very strong warnings of what eventually happened, well beyond what Rice described as “historical” information (and speaking as a sometime historian, what’s wrong with that anyway, if it prompts understanding the present?) There’s Rice’s dancing to one tune in one place, on CNN not under oath, and quite another, when under oath, about just what was in the PDB, as well as about a lot of other material.

There’s the apparent fact that Ashcroft told Mr. Pickard, Acting Director of the FBI in the summer of 2001, not to bother him with talk about terrorism and counter-terrorism, while at the same time Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial flights.  There’s the famous quote from Richard Clarke about Bush, immediately post-9/11 asking him/telling him to find a connection between bin Laden and Saddam.  That now doesn’t look quite so possibly “made up,” as Rice and the rest of the White House media operation claimed, when placed in the context of what Bob Woodward, once a Georgite fair-haired boy, is telling us in his new book about how early, and secretly, Bush started planning the Iraq pre-emptive war.

There’s Bush, according to Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian (UK, April 15, 2004), “Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel,” not reading anything; whether it’s his PDBs or a 17 volume State Department report entitled “The Future of Iraq”, warning of nearly all the post-Iraq war pitfalls that have been encountered.  Bush just listened to what his advisors told him or worse yet, what the real decision-makers, if they are not he, had already decided to do but were kind enough to let him in on.

Just in case any reader doesn’t agree with my position that Bush really believes the religious doctrines he says he stands by and for, as quoted by Blumenthal, Bush says, “I also have this belief, strong belief that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world.  Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in the world.  And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.”  I should note that I am writing this column at a time when Bush is going around the country plumping to make the Patriot Act permanent.  Apparently he believes that he can sell “freedom” abroad, by force, of course, while taking it away right here at home.  One must wonder what the Iraqis think about the example of what the “freedom” is that the Georgites are trying to sell to them/force down t heir throats at the barrel of a gun.

Then there’s all the background about the Georgites trying to prevent the formation of the 9/11 Commission in the first place, then under-funding it, then not cooperating with it at all until forced, then cooperating with it as little as possible, and so on.  That is combined with the peculiar non-reaction of our Air Defenses (NORAD) on 9/11 once it was known, and it was known very early on, that at least one plane had been high jacked that awful morning.  Plus, there’s the Great Commander continuing to read to school children after being informed of the first collision of plane with building, and then spending the rest of the day flying around the country on Air Force One. Then there is the mystery of assisting, on 9/12, all those Saudis, including members of bin Laden’s family, to fly out of the country during a time when nothing else was flying in U.S. airspace. The litany could go on.

And so, what possible explanations might be offered for this series of events, non-events, actions, and inactions?  I see at least six.  They fall neatly into two groups of three.  The first set assumes, at the worst, incompetence.  The second set assumes rather more than that.

1.  We, the White House and the agencies, did everything we could have, and anyway it was all Clinton’s fault.  One variation of this or another seems to be popular with Bush, Rice, and Ashcroft.

2.  Mistakes were made, but not by the White House of course (remember the famous Bush non-answer to that question at his April, 2004 news conference --- since they are so rare, one doesn’t have to give an exact date to date it), but rather by the agencies.  They should have been more on the ball.  But heck, everyone makes mistakes.  Nobody’s perfect (except us).

3.  Beyond agency mistakes, the Georgites were, and are, incompetent.  They should have been paying attention, but because of other priorities and bureaucratic bungling just didn’t.  It could have, and should have, been played much better.  The dots were big enough and close enough together so that if appropriate attention had been paid at the appropriate levels of government, the attack might well have been prevented. This is a good argument for Kerry.

4.  The Georgites knew something might happen, but didn't know what.  They surely thought that if something did happen, it wouldn't be on the scale of WTC.

5.  The Georgites knew pretty well what bin Laden wanted to do but:

a.  Thought they had a deal with the Taliban to prevent him from doing it, but the Taliban either didn’t have the power to do so, or double-crossed the Georgites.

b.  Thought they had a deal with bin Laden either not to do anything or to do something small, and he double-crossed them.

6.  The Georgites were either directly or indirectly party to the bin Laden plan, and thus knew something would happen, possibly even as to day and time.

“Conspiracy theories,” you are thinking. That’s the disdainful epithet the Rightists always throw out when such speculation arises, in the hope that the discussion will turn to the propriety of developing conspiracy theories rather than the substance of the suppositions.  That’s what right-wingers always do: try to get away from dealing with substance.

But looking more closely, why not think “conspiracy?”  We’ve got a post World War II Republican President. Such folks have been at conspiracies for a long time. Think Eisenhower, through the Dulles boys; Iran, Guatemala, and the sabotaging of the 1954 Geneva Agreement that ended the French-Indochinese War.  Think Nixon and Watergate and Chile.  Think Reagan and Iran-Contra.  Think Bush I and the Kuwait War, which happened in part because just before he invaded, Saddam was told by the-US Ambassador April Glaspie “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.”  Think of the kind of private, “off the shelf” intelligence agency, as Bill Casey described the one he created for Reagan, some version of which operated in all of the above instances. No conspiracies?

In the summer of 2001, the Georgites were apparently in negotiations with the Taliban to permit the laying of a gas pipeline across Afghanistan, from the huge natural gas fields of Central Asia, through Pakistan and on into India.  The purpose was, in part, to provide cheap energy to run a huge energy plant being built by, guess who?  Enron!  Bob Scheer wrote about this before 9/11 in the LA Times, May 22, 2001: “Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban.” See also “RA in LA, “The Coward in the White House,” on Buzzflash, 4/2/04.

During that summer, remember, the Georgites weren’t doing so well politically.  The economy was sagging and all George was doing it about was offering tax cuts to the rich.  The Enron bubble burst.  Cheney wouldn’t tell (and still won’t) what he had talked about with his oil cronies (energy prices? Enron? invading Iraq to gain a secure supply for many years to come, perhaps?)  Then there were the so-called neocons, led by Perle and Wolfowitz, taking over most of the major foreign-policy positions in the new Administration, and looking for some pretext upon which to justify an invasion of Iraq, a policy they had been advocating quite openly, at least in neocon publications, since the mid-1990s.  Majorly about oil and something called “establishing American hegemony.”

Further, interestingly enough, the document that became the Patriot Act was already secretly being written.  Why do I say secretly?  For two reasons.  First of all, the Patriot Act is about 340 pages of dense legal language.  Among other things, it overturns, conveniently enough by statute, not by Amendment, major portions of the Constitution, such as the Fourth Amendment which guarantees protection against unreasonable, non-judicial, search and seizure, the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process of law, and the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees jury trials in criminal cases.  The bill was introduced into Congress only some two weeks after 9/11.  Try writing a 340-page bill in two weeks.  Moreover, if you are already writing such a bill (that would be DOA in normal times) and you really wanted to get it passed, wouldn’t you hope for, or worse yet try to create, times so abnormal that you could rush the legislation through a panicked Congress?

Maybe I have read too many spy novels.  (Just think of what a left-wing Tom Clancy could do with some combination of 4, 5, and 6 above.)  There is a lot more to say about these suppositions and I hope to return to them in a future column.  Maybe more information will come out, either to support some combination of 1, 2, and 3, or 4, 5, and 6.  Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 Commission has been saying on our own left-wing radio network Air America (and if you haven’t discovered it yet, rush to http://www.airamerica.com and find out how you can get to hear it; it’s on AM 1190 in NYC) that he wants the Commission’s final report to be so definitive that there will be no cottage industry in conspiracy theories as there has been on the Kennedy Assassination.  A nice wish.

Perhaps and just maybe there was no conspiracy.  Maybe it was just the Georgites moving really quickly to take advantage of public fear and panic, among other things, to rush through the Patriot Act, with a long-range view of being able to smash dissent at home without bothering with the judicial system.  Can anyone say “Reichstag Fire?”  (That is a subject to which I plan to return.)  But then there are the loose ends, like Ashcroft’s not flying commercial, and Ashcroft turning down a request to massively expand the FBI’s anti-terrorism budget, on 9/10/01, like the inaction of the air defense system, like flying the Saudis out of the country immediately. The pieces of the puzzle fit ever more clearly.

I am going to stop here.  This is one we will likely come back to, but I did want to get my speculations on the table.

On George Bush and Religion, Part 2

Column No. 10 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH- April 29, 2004

Introduction

As I said in my column on this topic that was published on April 8, 2004, TPJ, “On George Bush and Religion”, organized religion and its exploitation is an obvious major feature of the Bush II Presidency, one that I like to refer to as the Georgite regime.  There is a view held in some quarters that this is simply cynical politics: that many Right-Wing Republican policies fit into and/or reflect the agenda of the Christian Right, which then forms the electoral center of the Bush Base.  Certainly, many of the top Georgites appear to be anything but True Believers: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle. They all seem eminently secular. As for Karl Rove, who knows if he has any true beliefs one way or another.

But does that view apply to the top-dog Georgite, G.W. Bush himself?  Is he simply a cynical politician, mouthing phrases to take advantage of a group of Right-Wing voters who just happen to hold, very strongly, to a particular brand of hellfire and brimstone old-fashioned Protestant theology?  I don’t think so.  I think that this George is a true believer, himself. As our European Editor, Michael Carmichael, has said, there is no person more firmly attached to preconceived notions that “Born Again,” reformed alcoholics/drug addicts, especially those who happen to be not-too-bright. And that background makes G.W. Bush even more dangerous.

In this column, you will find some further evidence to support my position (and one or two other observations on political religion as well).  We will also briefly examine why the Georgites have met with such success in a country in which their professed religious views are those of a rather small minority.

On the True Meaning of the "Gay Marriage" Amendment

George Bush has come out foursquare in support of this proposed amendment. I think that his position reflects his true religious beliefs because he has never said anything to the contrary. That the putting forth of this proposal happens to open up the Georgites to the charge of "political distraction" is in my view planned by them, which however they don’t want to become the subject of public discussion.  By getting the controversy onto whether or not the proposed amendment is planned as a political distraction pulls the consideration of it away from the real issue, and where the position is coming from.

The real issue is that by destroying the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment (which surely applies to civil marriage under state laws) the amendment would fundamentally change the nature of the Constitution.  Once that is done, in the future any group of people could be put into the "no-equal-protection-for-you" category, based simply on who they are, not anything that they have done.

Where the position comes from was clearly framed by two leading Republican Senators.  In a statement Sen. Trent Lott made when he was still Majority Leader (revealing that he is an equal opportunity bigot).  He stated that homosexuality is a sin and it is a sin because the Bible says so.  G.W. Bush has never said anything different.  Rick Santorum, the third highest ranking Republican in the Senate and well known for his open adherence to the doctrines of the Republican Religious Right, last April compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. Bush’s response was to praise Santorum as "an inclusive man.''

Bush’s True Views on Homosexuality

Do you believe that Bush is just “playing politics” with this one?  Well, about six weeks ago there was this little news item (which many of you may have already seen):

“Tennessee county wants to ban gays” Thursday, March 18, 2004 Posted: 7:29 AM EST (1229 GMT) Copyright 2004 Associated Press.

DAYTON, Tennessee (AP) -- The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday. Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.  ‘We need to keep them out of here,’ Fugate said. …..Rhea County is one of the most conservative counties in Tennessee. It holds an annual festival commemorating the 1925 trial at which John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution. The verdict was thrown out on a technicality. The trial became the subject of the play and movie “Inherit the Wind.”

I didn’t hear or see anything from the President saying something like, “Well, folks, preserving the American institution of marriage is one thing, but any move to illegalize homosexuality is definitely beyond the pale.” (Of course, since this highly unread, uneducated man can hardly be expected to know to what that last phrase refers, he wouldn’t use those precise words. But if he thought the thought, he could express it in his own simplistic language.)  Such silence reveals volumes about how this man thinks. Even more frightening to contemplate is the direction in which our beloved country would be headed were he to be re-elected.

On Firing Gays for Being Gay

Need more convincing on what Bush really believes?  Get this one (which I received over the Net; don’t know the original reference):

BUSH ALLOWS GAYS TO BE FIRED FOR BEING GAY

Despite President Bush's pledge that homosexuals ‘ought to have the same rights’ (1) as all other people, his Administration this week ruled that homosexuals can now be fired from the federal workforce because of their sexual orientation.

According to the Federal Times, the president's appointee at the Office of Special Counsel ruled that federal employees will now ‘have no recourse if they are fired or demoted simply for being gay.’ (2) While the Bush Administration says it is legally prohibited from firing a person for their conduct, they have the legal right to fire or demote someone based on their sexual orientation. To carry out the directive, the White House has begun removing information from government websites about sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. (3)

Sources:

1. Debates, 10/11/2000. 2. "OSC to study whether bias law covers gays", Federal Times, 03/15/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1154566&l=23802. 3. "Gay Rights Information Taken Off Site", Washington Post, 02/18/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1154566&l=23803.

No comment is necessary.

Opening Up the Country to More Dangers

It should be noted here that not only does this religious-based view of homosexuality lead to proposals to fundamentally change the nature of our Constitutional Democracy, but it also further opens up the country to threats of terrorism.  Consider the subject of a cartoon by Mike Lukovich (Newsday, Feb. 28, 2004): A bin Laden caricature is addressing several other Islamist caricatures, saying: "Here's my plan for destroying America: we sneak in and marry each other."  Needless to say a couple of those being addressed do look doubtful, although we don't know for what reason.

Bush, Religion, and the Money

At this point one might say, how does Bush hold get all the political money he does, given that his position of religion and how it should govern the country, how it should either stand above the Constitution or be the justification for changing its very nature, it so at odds with our history, and surely with the personal views of many of his donors.  This is an issue that we shall come back to from time to time and shall deal with only briefly here.

Of course it is his economic, environmental, and social policies.  For example, there is “globalization,” otherwise known as the “Federally-sponsored capital and job export to secure lower labor costs and higher profits” program (strongly championed by the DLC and Pres. Clinton, one must note).  Here is a list of companies in the “globalization” business that are major (up to hundreds of thousands of dollars) Bush contributors: American Express, Bechtel, Convergys, Dell Computer, Delphi Automotive, Fidelity, Ford, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, HSBC, McKinsey & Co, Sallie Mae.

How many of the executives of these companies do you think believe in the religious doctrines that Bush obviously believes in?  How many of these executives don’t think about those religious doctrines and their implications for the future of Constitutional Democracy in the United States when they are thinking about what Bush economic, social, and environmental policies, to say nothing of his anti-labor, anti-national domestic spending policies, do for their corporate profits and personal incomes?  Now then (and we will end the discussion of this one for now), how many executives of the German corporations, large and small, that funded the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party starting in the mid-1920s thought about the social doctrines that Hitler had spelled out in Mein Kampf when they were thinking about what Hitler would do to the Communist and Socialist Parties and the labor movement in general?

Ah the lessons one can learn from history, if one only looks.

On George Bush and Religion

Column No. 7 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – April 8, 2004

Introduction

Organized religion and its exploitation is an obvious major feature of the Bush II Presidency, the one that I like to refer to as the “Georgite” regime.  There is a view held in some quarters that this is simply cynical politics: that many Right-Wing Republican policies fit into and/or reflect the agenda of the Christian Right, which then forms the electoral center of the Bush Base.  Certainly, many of the top Georgites appear to be anything but True Believers: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Perle. They all seem eminently secular. As for Karl Rove, who knows if he has any true beliefs, one way or another?

But does that view apply to the top-dog Georgite, G.W. Bush himself?  Is he simply a cynical politician, mouthing phrases to take advantage of a group of Right-Wing voters who just happen to hold, very strongly, to a particular brand of hellfire and brimstone old-fashioned Protestant theology?  I don’t think so.  I think that this George is a true believer, himself.  And that makes him even more dangerous.

In this column, you will find some evidence to support my position (and one or two other observations on political religion as well).

On Bush and God

If you think that Bush is just “playing his base” for votes, and doesn’t really believe the “God put him there stuff” that Gary Bauer shares with us (see the next item below), take a look at this (if you have not already seen it):

According to [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.' http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

If this is not some sort of joke, this is beyond what even Johnathan Westminster predicted in his book The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2002-2022.  Westminster’s fictional Republican/Religious Rightist President was simply using the religious fanatics to further his own political aims.  He didn't really BELIEVE the stuff.  Bush apparently does (see next item).  Oh my!

George Bush and his Personal Religious Beliefs

On Independence Day, 2002, President Bush attended services at the West Ripley Baptist Church in Ripley, West Virginia.  As is well known, the Southern Baptists are at the center of the Christian Right.  Clearly demonstrating the level of his commitment to ecumenism, tolerance, understanding, and personal sensitivity, the church's Pastor, one Rev. Jack Miller, had the following to say in his invocation that day (Newsday, July 5, 2002):

We have ridiculed the absolute truth of your word in the name of multiculturalism.  We have been forced to honor sexual  deviance in the name of freedom of expression. We have exploited the system of education in the name of the lottery. We have toyed with the idea of helping end human life in the name of medical research.  We have killed our unborn children in the name of choice.

Now Pres. Bush is nominally a Methodist.  That he chose to attend that particular Baptist congregation on that highly symbolic day is highly symbolic.  Among other things, he was clearly demonstrating what his own commitment to ecumenism, tolerance, understanding, and personal sensitivity, and so on and so forth, really is.  Further, in remarks subsequent to those of the Pastor, in which he took no exception to anything the latter had said, President Bush clearly set forth his own position on the matter of the appropriate relationship between church and state.  Changing that relationship, as it is spelled out in the Constitution that is (again as is well known) the prime focus of the Christian Right.

Commenting on the then recent Federal appeals court ruling that including the words "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance as recited in a public school violates the Constitutional separation of church and state, Bush said:

"No authority of government can ever prevent an American from pledging allegiance to this one nation under God."  (See also below.)

Bush, whether by mis-direction or misunderstanding, did not deal with the question that that court addressed and the Supreme Court is now addressing: whether government, in the form of a public school authority, can force someone to recite the Pledge with the words "under God" in it.  As documented at length in Westminster’s book, the Christian Right has as its ultimate goal the declaration of the United States to be what it would define as a "Christian Nation" (see esp. chap. 10 of that book; see also Katherine Yurica’s “The Despoiling of America,” www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism).  To it, the words that Bush did utter were more music to the ears than even the most sacred of hymns could be.

Forgetting about theology for the moment, and forgetting that there are many Christians in the United States who have an entirely different views on “morality” and what public policy concerning it should be, the Invocation by Pastor Ripley and the support given to its thoughts by Pres. Bush, present a clear picture of what the United States of America as a "Christian Nation" as the Christian Right would define the term would look like.

George Bush obviously believes this stuff.  He is not just “going along with it” to “appeal to his base.”  He IS his base. Gary Bauer, one of the leading ideologues of the Christian Right has told us that “God was working to put into the White House a man whose life had been transformed by accepting Christ. . . . God put George Bush there for a time like this [post-9/11].'" And George Bush, doesn’t just say “thanks Gary,” when statements like this are made.  He believes them himself (see also below). This is really scary stuff, and somehow, it has to become a major issue in the upcoming Presidential campaign, if Constitutional Democracy as we know it is to be preserved.

On Certain Bush Appointments

About a year ago, Pres. Bush appointed one Dr. W. David Hager to head the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration.  This Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.  And so, who is Dr. Hager?

He is a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. He is the author of As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now. The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager's practice. In a book that Dr. Hager wrote with his wife, entitled Stress and the Woman's Body, he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying.

Ah yes, one might say, but he is entitled to his views.  But one might also say that in a position such as the one to which he has been appointed, science is important. As an editor and contributing author of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies and the Family," Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient. He has an ardent interest in revoking approval for mifepristone (formerly known as RU-486) as a safe and early form of medical abortion.

This is precisely why the Founders wrote the Wall of Separation into the Constitution.  They knew, from their experience with England and the experience of their English forebears that stretched back to the time of the first Pilgrim immigration fleeing religious persecution there that "religion in government" doesn't mean that "religion," lower-case "r," as a concept say of the existence of a supernatural being, is in government.  They knew that it meant precisely this: a particular Religion and Religious ideology, with an uppercase “R,” is in control of the government, and the force of the criminal law backs up its writ.

Bush on “Under God” and the Pledge of Allegiance

From the New York Times: “One Crucial Issue in Pledge Case: What Does Under God Mean?,” March 22, 2004, by LINDA GREENHOUSE:

According to a form letter signed by President Bush and sent to those who wrote the White House about the federal appeals court decision in June 2002 that declared the pledge unconstitutional, reciting the pledge is a way of proclaiming ‘our reliance on God’ and of ‘humbly seeking the wisdom and blessing of divine providence.’

This letter . . .  concluded by expressing the wish that “the almighty continue to watch over the United States of America.” . . .

[In presenting the government’s case before the Supreme Court, the Georgites of course opposing the appellate court decision ruling that “under God” could not stand in a pledge that is required for recitation in a public school] Solicitor General Olson told the justices that the appeals court misunderstood the pledge. The phrase ‘under God’ did not place the pledge in the category of religious expressions that the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional, he said, for example “state-sponsored prayers, religious rituals or ceremonies, or the requirement of teaching or not teaching a religious doctrine.”

Rather, Mr. Olson said, ‘under God’ was one of various “civic and ceremonial acknowledgments of the indisputable historical fact that caused the framers of our Constitution and the signers of the Declaration of Independence to say that they had the right to revolt and start a new country.” He said the framers believed “that God gave them the right to declare their independence when the king has not been living up to the unalienable principles given to them by God.”

(It should be noted here that if Jefferson had meant “God,” he would have said “God.”  The word in the declaration is, rather, “Creator,” one that as a practicing atheist I am perfectly happy with.  For to me “Creator” means simply the laws of chemistry and physics that have operated the Universe since its formation and lead eventually to the processes of life and evolution.)

Funny, but the next time the Solicitor General of the United States testifies before the Supreme Court on such an issue, I should think that he had better check with his boss on what the government’s position really is.

And finally, here is the text of a Doonesbury strip that well expresses the  Georgite theology (Newsday, March 14, 2004).  Gary Trudeau's G.H.W. Bush figure (a Roman helmet) is talking with his G.W. Bush figure (an asterisk).

HW: Son, do you know why I decided not to invade Iraq?

W: Haven't a clue, Dad.

HW: Really? I put it in my book.

W: Books are Laura's thing.

HW: Let me read you some excerpts... "An occupation of Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... There was no viable exit strategy... Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

W: I don't recall any of that, Dad.

HW: But it was reported ion all the papers.

W: I don't read the papers.

HW (to himself): Another child left behind (to W): Nice to talk to you, son.

W: Listen, Dad, you're either with or against me.

Which sums up George Bush’s theology: the 5th century Manichean Heresy of the dualism between Good and Evil -- in modern dress!

Brief Essays

Column No. 5 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – March 25, 2004

On occasion, in my column I am going to post a set of brief essays that are somewhat related, primarily reflecting thoughts on current issues.  To some of the subjects, I may return in some detail at some time in the future.

Controlling the Agenda

This election, as with virtually every one (see my book, The New Americanism, chap. 16, esp. pp. 287-289), will be won by he who controls the agenda.  If the agenda is Kerry and what he did and did not do in Vietnam and whether he threw his medals or someone else's or ribbons over the White House fence, and how he voted one way on a bill and then another after it was amended, Bush wins.  If the agenda is George W.M.D. (War/ More Deficits) Bush and what he has done with the presidency and the nation, Kerry wins.  As Lee Atwater preached, always attack; never defend, just as the Georgites are doing now.  If anybody needs defending, it's Bush, but you will hardly ever hear any of that from the Georgite camp, unless and until they are really cornered.

The Georgites realize this very well. Notice that there are very few elements of defense of the Bush record (indefensible of course) in their current campaign-initiating broadsides.  That says a whole lot.  They know very well that if they can continue to make Kerry the agenda, they win. There is only one man who can beat George Bush in this election, and it's not John Kerry; it's George Bush. The Georgites know this very well, and their whole campaign strategy is designed around that knowledge.

On the other hand, if Kerry simply concentrates on attracting as many ABB (anybody but Bush), as well as the regular Democratic, votes as he can, and forgets about the rapidly-dwindling marginal “middle, if Kerry can just put Bush and all his many defects out there and keep them out there, he wins. It's as simple as that: the Gospel according to Lee Atwater. In the campaign against the last Bush, the motto was "It's the economy, stupid."  This time around it must be, "It's Bush, stupid!" for if it isn't, that's really stupid.

"There is no 'Middle Ground“

One of the liberals' main faults is that they think continually that there is some "middle ground" that can be gotten to if only reasonable people will get together. That position was well expressed by the DLCers Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden who actually came to Bush’s defense over the charges by former Bush advisor Richard Clarke that the Georgites totally ignored the very clear warnings on the dangers that a-Qaeda presented.

Well, there is no "middle ground" on whether the rich should pay less and less their deserved share of taxes, or whether we should have gone to war on Iraq unilaterally with lies as the rationale, or whether the health care delivery system should first and foremost be a profit center for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or whether Social Security as we have known since the New Deal should survive or become a profit center for the securities industry, or whether energy policy should be designed first and foremost for the present profit of the oil companies, or whether global warming is real, and so on and so forth.  These are all questions that have two distinct sides, and all the talk from people like the DLCers who "deplore the present situation" and ask people to reason together and find that "middle ground" will not change that reality.

Bush's International 'Achievement’

One of the amazing aspects of Bush policy is that it has achieved something that even Hitler never did (that is up until, for Europe, Sept. 1, 1939, and for the US, Dec. 8, 1941): receive almost universal condemnation from both governments (to a greater or lesser extent depending upon their state of dependency on the US) and people from all around the world.  Very few remember that the pre-war Hitler had many admirers, or at least "tolerators," in the major pre-war "Western democracies," that is the UK, France, and the US, many more in the UK and France surely than Bush has now.

Kofi Annan on "Terrorism"

From UN Sec Gen. Kofi Annan's address of January 21, 2004 to the UN Security Council.

"Internationally, we are seeing an increasing use of what I call the "T' word -- "terrorism" -- to demonize political opponents, to throttle freedom of speech and the press and to delegitimize political grievances. Any sacrifice of freedom or the rule of law within states -- or any generation of new disputes between states in the name of anti-terrorism -- is to hand the terrorists a victory that no act of theirs could possibly bring....

"Important and urgent questions are being asked about the collateral damage from the 'war on terrorism' -- damage to the presumption of innocence, to precious human rights, to the rule of law and to the very fabric of democratic governance.... There is a danger that, in pursuit of security, we end up sacrificing crucial liberties, thereby weakening our common security, not strengthening it, and thereby corroding the vessel of democratic government from within....

"Just as terrorism must never be excused, so must genuine grievances never be ignored.... We must act with determination to address, indeed solve, the political disputes and long-standing conflicts which underlie, fuel and generate support for terrorism."

Wouldn't it be nice if from time to time John Kerry used the same speechwriter as the Secretary General does?

On "throwing money at a problem"

Republicans love to accuse Democrats of always attempting to solve problems "simply by throw money at them"  The truth is that both parties (the Dems. up to the right-wing DLCer Clinton, of course) like to throw money at things when they can get their hands on some, although they haven't really had that option since the time of LBJ.  Republican targets for large direct payments and/or the removal of obligations? Wealthy taxpayers, the military-industrial complex, the space exploration industry, the petroleum industry, the wealthy farmers, the logging industry, religiously correct charities, the "Drug War," to name a few.

On the Nixon years:

I am a registered Nixon-hater from way back.  Coming from the home I did, at the age of eleven, I was aware of him when he ran his first red-baiting campaign for the House against the main-stream Democrat Jerry Vorhees in California in 1948, two years before he ran his more famous “Pink Lady” Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950.  But compared with the Georgites, on certain major aspects of domestic policy, Nixon actually looks good, and his nefariousness looks quite petty.

The best environmental legislation we have ever had passed under Nixon (and the Republican Right has spent the time since then chopping away at it).  In the spring of 1973, Nixon introduced into Congress a National Health Insurance Plan that had the same central financing feature that the Clinton Plan did: employer participation and payment mandated.  Interestingly enough the strong speech made introducing it into the Senate was made by none other than Bob Dole, who (now how did that happen?) was of course the principal Republican attacker of the similar-in-many-ways Clinton Plan of 1993.  Nixon’s proposal was a victim of Watergate.  It is a measure of just how bad the Georgites are that even I can look back at the old red-baiter with some fondness!

On George McGovern and George Bush:

Kerry is being compared with Sen. McGovern because of his anti-Vietnam War stance.  Of course there are many differences between Kerry and McGovern.  But if I were Kerry, in responding to such a question, I wouldn't get into them.  I would put the question into the context of military policy and say something like the following.

"You know, I am happy to be compared with George McGovern.  During World War II, a war that we fought with the broadest coalition of allies ever assembled in any war, George McGovern was a pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber.  Unlike the fabled B-17, which could fly on one engine and with its tail shot off, the B-24 was known by the men who flew it as 'The Flying Coffin.'  Yet the Senator flew 35 combat missions, 10 more than the required number for strategic bomber pilots.  Just compare that record with the Air National Guard record of the current White House incumbent during the Viet Nam War.  George McGovern, like the tens of thousands of surviving World War II airmen like him whose VA benefits are being cut by the current incumbent, was a true hero, unlike others one could mention."