THE COMING SECOND CIVIL WAR (UNLESS)

Column  No. 39 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - December 15, 2004

This column is the first of a series on this subject that will appear intermittently over time in this space.  The columns in the series will be interspersed with columns on other matters that strike me of worthy of attention.

In my view, a Second Civil War will come to plague our country regardless of whether Bush or Kerry had won the 2004 election, Unless.  While something totally unexpected still could happen, Bush has almost certainly retained his grip on the White House.  Apparently, he did this with the use of massive cheating of all kinds across the country at the polls and within the guts of many voting machines.  Given Republican control of most of the courts through which any challenges in the key states must flow, it is highly unlikely that the outcome will be changed.  Of course, if the matter does somehow get to the Supreme Court again, just as in 2000 the final decision would come down to just one vote, that of  Sandra Day O’Connor, who, being an avowed Republican, would most likely vote just as she did in 2000.

In any event, regardless of the results of this election, as I said in my view our country faces the very real threat of a Second Civil War sometime in the foreseeable future.  With the Georgites remaining in power, this war is likely to occur sooner.  If Sen. Kerry were somehow to ultimately win, unless he were to make certain critical policy and political decisions early in his Presidency (which, based on his performance both before and after November 2 he would be highly unlikely to do), this war would still come, although somewhat later.

The reason, and the only reason, that we face this cataclysm is the ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right.  At its core is Karl Rove’s “base,” the Fundamentalist Christian movement, that is becoming stronger by the day.  The primary agenda of these people, and they tell us what it is every day in their speeches, sermons, and writings, is to gain complete control over the personal behavior and religious beliefs of every single American, through the use of the criminal law.  If they are not stopped, eventually the implementation of their agenda will lead either to civil war or to open, national, fascism and complete oppression of the all elements of the population that does not find favor with them.

My position can be characterized as bold, alarmist, totally premature.  I fully intend it to be.  We have got to start focusing on what these people are really about, and it has nothing to do with “values,” whatever that vaguest of vague terms means.  In this series, I am going to deal with what I see as the issues rending the civil fabric of our nation that may well eventually lead to violent conflict, if they are not confronted forthrightly and directly and soon.  In my view, together they form the present “Firebell in the Night,” warning of future civil war, the term that Thomas Jefferson used in describing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as a warning of just such a forthcoming event.  That Compromise dealt with the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories and the new states that would over time be formed in them.  Among the issues today that are similarly threatening our national social fabric are those of: race, sexual identity and its civil expression, the status of women, freedom of religious belief, the role of government in our nation, and Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law versus the Rule of Man.

In examining the parallels between the present situation in our country and those that existed on the rocky and convoluted pathway that lead to the First Civil War, in my view it is especially important to note the following.  The Civil War of 1861-65 did not begin as a contest over slavery, per se.  Abraham Lincoln came to see it as such by the time he wrote his Second Inaugural Address in 1864.  But the principal slavery-referenced issue that he campaigned on in the election of 1860 was the matter of its further expansion into the territories.  He wanted to stop it; the South wanted to promote it.

They wanted to force the slavery concept into all of the remaining lands of the original Louisiana Purchase and those conquered from Mexico in 1846-8 that had not already been incorporated in the Union as States.  In a similar way, the Republican Religious Right wants to force its concepts of what it calls “morality,” such issues of belief as to when life begins and of personal identity and behavior as to sexual orientation, onto our society and into the minds of every member of it by the use of the criminal law.  If they get their way, there will eventually be the death penalty for anyone providing an abortion, prison for women who have them, prison or worse for homosexuals who “refuse to recant,” some contemporary version of the Inquisition for “finding the heretics” who don’t happen to believe in their particular version of Christianity and then punishing them.  Don’t believe me?  Go to “Christian Reconstructionism” (which is the fundamental theology of the majority of Christian Fundamentalists) on the web.  Falwell would start with the “secular humanists,” Coulter with the “liberal traitors.”

Forcing the concept of white supremacy and thus black slavery onto all the territory of the United States other than that protected from it up until 1850, and forcing a particular view of “morality” upon everyone in the country by the use of the criminal law, are to my mind very similar, both in their effects and in their potential for leading to civil war.  In this series, I will be dealing with this primary issue and the others listed above.  But first, in the next two weeks, I will present a brief introduction to the “Unless” in the title of the series.

THE REAL MEANING OF THE ‘FAITH-BASED PRESIDENCY’

Column  No. 38 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - December 9, 2004

In The New York Times Magazine of October 17, 2004, Ron Suskind gave the most comprehensive picture yet of George W. Bush’s concept of the “faith-based Presidency” and how it operates.  George Bush apparently really believes that he is on a mission from God, that his decision-making is based on God’s wishes, and that he is carrying out God’s vision.  A major and well-known feature of this approach to governing is that Bush acts with absolute certainty.  He makes decisions that he just knows are right, because God is in his mind and Bush knows that God is right.

Once made, therefore, Bush’s decisions are right, because, expressing the will of God, Bush made them. (In the minds of religious people of the Georgite persuasion, circular reasoning has a very important place.)  Ergo his inability to see that he has ever made a mistake, at least since being ‘born again’.  So naturally, we witnessed the famous news conference and Presidential debate episodes in which he could not think of a single mistake that he had made.  If you never made one, there is nothing to admit, is there?  Another well-known feature of Bush’s approach to governance is that facts do not matter unless they happen to conform to or confirm his preconceived notion of what God’s vision is that he is carrying out.  A third major aspect of his approach, confirmed by Suskind, is that Bush wants a staff that has been trained not to question and not to offer data, evidence, or analysis, apparently either before or after he has made a decision.  This aspect explains thoroughly the character of the changes he is in the process of making in his Cabinet.

For example, Colin Powell was willing to lie at the UN for him, and thus throw his own reputation into the dustbin of history.  But apparently, on occasion, Powell would privately offer a contrary view on policy or pass along some information/analysis from the State Department staff that did not jibe with Bush’s already firmly-held conclusions.  And so, Powell had to go.  As did George Tenet at the CIA.  While he apparently tried hard to play good soldier, Tenet seems to have had the temerity on occasion to suggest that intelligence might influence policy, even if that intelligence went against Georgite preconceived notions.  Bush’s man Porter Goss has already issued an order that everything coming up from the CIA must be in accord with already set White House policy.  So absolutely gone are the days when knowledge and data might actually help formulate policy.  Policy will, rather, formulate intelligence.

Mr. Suskind explained and illustrated the major characteristics of Bush-think in great depth.  His writing and conclusions are based on interviews with many different sources who confirm the overall picture.  A number of those sources were willing to let their names be used.  It is fascinating that, to my knowledge, the White House never issued a single denial of any of the content of Mr. Suskind’s report.  Nor did they, as they usually do when negatives appear, furiously, viciously, and repeatedly attack the messenger through their privatized Ministry of Propaganda, Fox “News” Channel, Washington Times, HanniBaugh, and etc.  Of course, even if what Suskind wrote were false, the Bush people would be hard pressed to deny it -- because what he reported is exactly how Bush’s base wants him to think and be as President: “God’s emissary.”  It reflects exactly how the Christian Right has portrayed the source of his “victory”: God.  Given what we know from this article, and indeed from many other reports, the picture is indeed an accurate one.

Despite what is generally recognized as Bush’s approach to governance that leads to his decisions and his unchanging commitment to them once made, in fact, he does change his mind on what are to him relatively unimportant matters.  For example, whether global warming is real or not, whether there should be a 9/11 Commission or not, and whether the nation’s intelligence system should be reformed or not.  He can do this because he knows that nothing coming out of such position changes is going to alter his policies or his representations of reality anyway.

However, on his big issues, such as: waging war on Iraq; cutting taxes for the rich and the large corporations; ending Social Security as we know it; opening up as much of the US environment to corporate plunder as possible; making the Courts as right-wing as he can so that the Christian Right can get its way on gay marriage and abortion rights; eventually destroying the whole of the Federal government as we know it, in accord with the policies of Grover Norquist; changing the Constitution without bothering to go through the amendment process, in accord with the policies of Karl Rove (Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian UK, 11/25/04); he is indeed unchanging.

The critical issue now facing our country in the wake of Bush’s garnering of a second term (whether by a true electoral win or by cheating) is: what are the implications of the Bush “faith-based” theory of governance for American constitutional government and its future?  I shall offer some answers to this question next week, in Part II of this essay, and it is a subject to which I shall return in more depth from time to time.

Two recent ‘Dr. J.’s Short Shots’ from the Weblog of The Planetary Movement

Column No. 37 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – December 2, 2004

I am very pleased to be back on the Web with The Political Junkies.net.  I hope that you are happy to have us here.  There is much to talk about, to be sure, and you can be sure that we, with your help and participation, will be doing just that in this space for the foreseeable future.

Shortly before the election, Michael Carmichael, European Editor for The Political Junkies, was kind enough to invite me to be a Contributing Editor to the Weblog of his new international organization, The Planetary Movement.  I invite you to visit its website at http://www.planetarymovement.org/.  TPM’s Weblog can be found at http://planetmove.blogspot.com/.  For this returning column, I am pleased to offer you two of what I call “Dr. J’s Short Shots” from the Weblog.

Dr. J.’s Short Shot No. 25: The True Agenda of the Republican Religious Right (Nov. 25, 2004)

In The Guardian (UK) of November 25, 2004 the US political analyst Sidney Blumenthal had a column about the opening ceremonies for the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, AK.  The article is entitled "One gulp and Bush was gone.”  In the article, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of fascinating observations.  I just want to note the most chilling of them.

In reference to Karl Rove, Blumenthal noted that "offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours.  According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W. Bush library and legacy.  'You're not such a scary guy,' joked his guide.  'Yes, I am,' Rove replied.  Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: 'I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ...' "

This, folks, is the true, bedrock, agenda of the Republican Religious Right in general and the Georgites in particular.  They are already well on their way to achieving it, as I have noted both in this space and in my weekly columns for The Political Junkies.net.  In fact, the President has already unilaterally amended the Constitution, without so much as a peep from either the Congress or the mainstream media.  First, he gave himself the power to declare war.  It just so happens that declaration of war is a power that the Constitution grants to the Congress, not to the President.  And then he further unilaterally abrogated international treaties, those of the Geneva Conventions that under Article VI of the Constitution are part of it as the highest law of the land, because, in a masterpiece of Constitution-destroying circular reasoning, "we are at war."

This puts into the boldest of type the fundamental conflict we Americans now face.  Hopefully, the Democratic Party will soon wake up to that fact, make it the No. 1 political agenda item for the foreseeable future, and will eventually be able to win the battle in the political arena.  If it does not, or if it is not succeeded by an opposition party that has both the proper focus and the broad-based support, the struggle is sure to become long, violent, and very bloody.

I will be treating the subject of "The Coming Second Civil War (Unless)" at length in an upcoming series at The Political Junkies.net.

Dr. J.’s Short Shot No. 27:  Iranian Nukes

Not a day seems to pass without the Iranians changing their position on nuclear weapons development.  One day, they are accepting European proposals for an agreement to suspend it; the next day they seem to be repudiating any agreement.

I happen to think that the scariest nation having nuclear weaponry at present is the United States under the Georgites.  It is well known that leading members of and top advisors to the Georgite regime have for some time openly talked about invading Iran.  The U.S. is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and since the time of Eisenhower American administration, (only under successor Republican ones to my knowledge) has actually considered using them again in one situation or another.  Currently, in the Iraq situation Georgite sympathizers talked about “nuking” Fallujah and it is only recently that cost-cutting Republicans in the Congress have eliminated, for the time-being at least, the Georgite program to develop “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons, designed to get at underground facilities of various kinds.

If I were in the Iranian leadership, given these facts and given that close-by Israel, presently under the Partition-rejectionist/Palestinians-ejectionist Sharonists, is estimated to have about 400 nuclear weapons, I would want to have them too.  Unless a deal is made, given that the Iranian nuclear industry is widely decentralized, only a complete takeover of the whole country by the US could prevent that from otherwise happening eventually.  The trade that the Iranians may be on their way to making with the Europeans and the Russians may be indeed to not acquire nuclear weapons, in return for a solid guarantee of protection against U.S. aggression.  (Remember, like Iraq, Iran is strategically located and has lots of oil.)  Perhaps this is what the on-again/off-again nature of the public Iranian position is all about, as the various forces maneuver behind closed doors to provide those guarantees to the Iranians.  Stranger alliances have occurred in history.

WHY THE PATRIOT ACT?

Column No. 36 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - October 28, 2004

In my column of Sept. 30, 2004, “The 800lb. Gorillas in the Room,” I referred to the Patriot Act as Gorilla No. 2.  Fortunately and importantly, Senator Kerry is beginning to talk about the Act a bit.  However, he still only dances around the issue, if for no other reason than that the Republicans have set up a “Patriot Act Trap” for the Democrats with legislation now before Congress, conveniently just before Election Day.

Guess what?  If you are against the Patriot Act I, if you are against making permanent all of the provisions of P.A. I, if you are very concerned about limitations on freedom and liberty already imposed under the original -- which limitations will become even more oppressive under the new legislation should it pass – then, according to DeLay et al you are at the very least a wimp on domestic security and probably even an outright ally of the terrorists.

We know what the Patriot Act I has already done to seriously undermine the protections of both liberty and freedom traditionally provided to Americans by the Constitution.  Of course in the history of our country there have been lapses at different times in those protections.  However, for the most part those lapses have occurred because the constitutional protections were violated in particular instances for particular persons.  For example, during World War II American citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned simply because they were of Japanese descent; during the McCarthy Period free speech protections for many left-wingers were abrogated.  By stark contrast, though, with the Patriot Act, the very nature of the Constitution is being changed, for everyone.  The Constitution is in fact being amended, and it happens that it is being amended by statute, not by the amendment process itself.

As noted in my Sept. 30 column, I have visited the issue of the evisceration of major elements of the Bill of Rights by Patriot I in many other columns, so will revisit it only briefly here.  Under the present Patriot Act among other things, the President can designate any person as a label any person, citizen or non-citizen, a “terrorist” or “terrorist threat.”  Then the President or his designee can: order, under the President’s authority alone, the search of such a person’s home without obtaining a judicial search warrant or even notifying the person that such a search was made; then proceed to have that person arrested and imprisoned without making the fact of the arrest public, without informing the person about the offense with which they are being charged; and may hold the person indefinitely without access to a lawyer and without being brought to trial, not even before a grand jury proceeding.  Thus, at a stroke, the Patriot Act has repealed the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrant-less searches without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of the due process of law, and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of “speedy” jury trials and the right to cross examine witnesses in criminal cases, with full knowledge of the charges and the opportunity to call upon witnesses for the defendant.

Certain of these provisions have been held unconstitutional by a closely split Supreme Court, but the current regime has not backed down in its drive to have them on the books in some form.  If the Georgites win the election, and get the opportunity to replace even just Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, rest assured that the current anti-Administration decisions would be reversed.  It is likely that the reason that they have not gone further than they already have is that they are waiting until they have a compliant Supreme Court in place, in a second term.

But why do the Georgites want these powers?  Certainly not because they have to have them in order to “fight terrorism.”  If they really wanted to do that, they already can under pre-Patriot Act statutes.  For example, there is plenty of evidence, as gathered by the 9/11 Commission itself, that the plans for the World Trade Center horror could have been detected and the attack aborted.  If only this Administration, instead of focusing from its beginning on finding a reason to attack Iraq (viz. Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke) had concentrated on counter-terrorism, perhaps they might have been able to do as well as the Clinton Administration did when it foiled the 1998 “12 airliners” and the 2000 “Millennium Bomb” plots.  Further, European nations are constantly finding and arresting potential terrorists without enacting basic changes in their criminal justice systems.  (The latter, it happens, would be very difficult for any EU nation to do, given the human rights mandates built into the EU agreements.)  No, the police forces of the numerous countries that have caught a whole bunch of bad guys are just doing what police forces are supposed to do, and doing it well.

The purpose of the Patriot Act would not be, it would seem, further to strengthen “Homeland Security,” beyond improving police work.  As Ari Berman pointed out in “The Nation: The Daily Outrage,” of 10/18/04, 5:20PM: “President Bush frequently invokes homeland security to bolster the commander-in- chief credentials essential to his re-election campaign.  ‘One thing is for certain,’ Bush told reporters in a rare press conference last August.  ‘We will do our duty to best secure our country.’  However, report after report, from a multitude of bipartisan sources over the last three years, directly contradicts Bush's promise, citing dangerous under-funding, misplaced priorities, over-reliance on private industry and dire neglect at local, state, and federal levels.”

Berman goes on to say that “a new report released Monday by the nonpartisan watchdog group Public Citizen examines the security of our nation's nuclear and chemical plants, seaports, water supply systems, and transportation of hazardous materials.  ‘The overall security picture reveals that the United States has made very little progress in the sectors that may put Americans most at risk,’ the study found.  ‘In many cases, the administration and its Republican allies in Congress have either opposed security reforms or obstinately refused to act even though ready solutions are obvious.’”

So if it the Patriot Act is not about catching about particular terrorists and not about improving homeland security in general, what is it about?  By the process of elimination it would seem that, it cannot be about anything else but giving the Georgites broad-ranging powers of oppression and repression against any kind of dissent, verbal or physical, legal or illegal, to virtually any of its policies and programs.  The Attorney General is already on record as equating any disagreement with this regime’s approach to dealing with terrorism as treasonous.  Ann Coulter, one of the darlings of the Republican Religious Right, equates what she defines as “liberalism” on any issue with treason.  With the powers granted to the President by the act as it now stands, even before Patriot II strengthens those powers, he can label anyone he wants as a “terrorist” or an abettor of same, and lock them up indefinitely, without charges, without access to any part of the judicial system, and without any public notification.

If, in the realm of civil rights and liberties, the powers granted to the President seem to bear a strong resemblance to those granted to Adolf Hitler by the German Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 (see my TPJ columns of June 3 and June 24, 2004 on the comparison between how the Hitlerites used the Reichstag Fire politically and how the Georgites are using 9/11), in my view that is no coincidence.  Now one might say: “But Hitler and his financial backers were looking for ways to suppress major political and economic dissent from the Communist and Socialist Parties and the powerful German trade unions.  No equivalent of any of those powerful forces exists here, now.”  That is true.  However, consider the following.

Perhaps Bush and his financial backers may not have done very well in advance planning for dealing with the situation in Iraq following the invasion.  But dollars to donuts they know very well what is going to happen in this country as the chickens come home to roost as a result of  their policies on taxation, the economy, Social Security, higher education, the military, and foreign policy.  For example, when the credit crash, described by David Broder in his article, “Fiscal Ruin on the Horizon” (The Washington Post on Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page B 07), that will surely come should the Georgites get in again by hook or by crook, does happen there might well be millions of people protesting on the streets.  And that is not the only issue that would bring people out in numbers never seen before in this country.  Think: the financial collapse of the health care delivery system under the assault of the profit-makers; the end of Social Security as we have known it under the assault of the privatizers; the next Great Depression resulting from the credit crash and the increasing export of capital; to say nothing of the results of the Draconian laws governing private thought and behavior that could be enacted in a second Bush term as part of implementing the agenda of the Christian Right.

In my view, it is to be able to very forcibly control the massive dissent foreseen to the oppression and repression of the vast majority of the people of our country on behalf of the super-rich and the major corporations that form the foundation of the Georgites and Georgitism that is what the Patriot Act is all about.  Pure and simple, and frightening.

SPECIAL UPDATE - THE CHENEYS’ DAUGHTER FLAP

Column no. 35A

By DR. Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 25, 2004

The flap created by the Republicans over the reference by Senator Kerry to the well-known (to most) matter of the sexuality of the Cheney’s daughter is indicative of a serious problem in the current Presidential election campaign: just how desperate the Republicans are becoming about their chances of winning.

Bush needed a win in the last debate, preferably a big one, but any kind of win would have done.  Instead, the President did fair to poorly, and the Republicans, despite the brave face they put on, knew it instantly.  So what do they do in such a situation?  They create as big a distraction from the real issues as they possibly can.  Their most common technique is to attack the messenger, not the message.  That they seem to be able to do it instinctively, without thinking about what they are doing, I have always found quite remarkable.  And so.

Bush really had had a tough time in the third debate.  He not only had ducked a series of questions, on job-exportation (read exportation of capital), unemployment, the minimum wage, but he did each time with the same irrelevant answer: “do something abut education.”

And then he also ducked the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, not, thankfully, with his education shtick but with “I don’t know.”  That is an answer that satisfies no one on his side, neither his socially-liberal but economically suicidal/Fuhrer Prinzip-type supporters nor his Far-Right, Alan “Cheney’s daughter is a selfish hedonist” Keyes/Gary Bauer-type supporters.

So when Sen. Kerry gives a straightforward answer that happens to use the Cheney’s daughter, a well-know Lesbian living openly with a partner with whom she campaigns (for selected audiences to be sure), as an example, the Republicans sense their opportunity.  They take it, apparently unmindful of what hypocrites it shows them up to be, how insensitive to the daughter it reveals them as, what an idiotic contradiction it reveals their campaign position on homosexuality to be.

Bush actually said in that debate that every American must be treated equally and with respect at the same time, he strongly supports an amendment to the Constitution that would make second-class citizens out of gay people.  Their position also shows up the Cheneys as being truly ashamed of their daughter, at least politically finding her a major inconvenience, and reveals that they had been engaged in something of a cover-up, hoping that at least some of their “gays will burn in hell forever” folk didn’t know.

The icing on the cake is this.  Supposing that the Cheneys’ daughter were a world-class triathlete, and the question was, “Can anybody achieve that status, or is there a major genetic, inborn component behind it, that most people could not simply make the choice to become one and then get there simply by training hard?”  As a 22-year triathlete who trains regularly but is really slow, I can tell you that it is not simply a matter of choice: for speed, genes do count.

If the question had been about genetics in the world-class triathlete context, and Sen. Kerry had used the Cheneys’ daughter as an example, everyone would have applauded.  The only reason for the controversy in the real case is that most unfortunately our society does not treat homosexuality as simply another example of genetic determinism.

One very loud minority, the Christian Right, treats it as a chosen sin, a sin of the highest magnitude.  This is a position that is scientifically wrong and socially highly destructive.  Moreover, the Republican Party chooses to use it as one of their major political issues.  Coming out of the last debate, on this issue that is what is wrong.  Sen. Kerry forthrightly chose to applaud the Cheneys’ daughter for being who she is, just as biology determined her to be, should indeed be applauded.

GEORGE BUSH’S AMERICA

Column No. 34 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 21, 2004

A lot is made of George Bush’s “misstatements,” internally contradictory pronouncements, distortions, and outright lies.  Based on what he says, it is very difficult sometimes to tell just what George Bush stands for.  For when he talks about the famous “compassionate conservatism,” “spreading freedom and democracy,” “securing the homeland,” “creating a fair tax system,” “fighting a war on terrorism,” “protecting traditional values,” one is often reduced to the “huh?” response: what exactly does he mean, how does he intend to get there, and where are the resources?

When one looks at what he actually does, however, then Bush policies and their meanings become much clearer.  As my good friend, personal editor, and The Political Junkies contributor Tony Pell says about the Bushes (and he coined the following phrase in reference to George I; it applies with a vengeance to George II): “Read their lips; but watch their hips.”

And so this column is not about Bush lies.  The Georgites always say, “no they’re not,” regardless of the facts on the ground.  The spin around the Duelfer Report on Iraqi WMD, as “reposted” as “news” by Fox “News” Channel for example, made it sound like the contents of the Report supported the reasons the Georgites gave for going to war.  They just hope to get into an endless and distracting “are, are not, are, are not” argument.

This column is not about Bush mis-use of the language, which the Georgites always pass off as “well, that’s just the country boy in him” (the Andover, Yale, Harvard country boy!).  It is not about any of the outrageous Bush statements like the “war on terror is unwinnable,” which he and/or the Georgites always manage to “correct” by the next day or so and then deny that he ever made, or at least ever meant, the original.

This column is about policies and programs that George Bush has either implemented or clearly proposed for implementation.  Some are prominent; some are obscure.  All of them present a very clear picture of what George Bush wants our great nation to be, to become.  If you possibly have any undecided voter friends, you could present this list to them with the question: “Is this is what you want our country to look like?”  And then follow up with, “If you do, make sure to vote for Bush.”

George Bush will propose to the next Congress, if he is re-elected, “the further reduction, if not the elimination, of taxes on savings and investments, including taxes on dividends and on capital gains on stocks, bonds, and real estate” (New York Times, Taxes for an Ownership Society, Editorial page, Sept. 15, 2004).  If Bush is re-elected, he will have clear majorities in both Houses of Congress, and legislation to implement this proposal will pass, meaning that all that will remain of the income tax will be a wage tax.

The Patriot Act, that piece of civil liberties-busting legislation that the Georgites must have written before 9/11 because its 340-plus densely written pages were introduced to the Congress within about two weeks of the tragedy, will be made permanent.  Presently, it is due to expire in 2005.  George Bush wants it in place forever.  (In a future column, I am going to deal with the question no one seems to ask: why?)  Yes, George Bush does permanently want the power, on his own authority, to bypass the Constitutional guarantees for protection against non-judicially-warranted search and seizure (the Fourth Amendment), the right to due process of law (the Fifth Amendment), and the right to a speedy trial by jury in criminal cases (the Sixth Amendment, for any person, US citizen or not, whom he deems to be a “terrorist threat” of one sort or another.

In the United States, marriage is both a religious and civil procedure.  It is defined in and regulated by the law in each of the 50 states, as well as by the numerous codes of the numerous religious entities that exist in our country.  George Bush supports the passage of the “prohibition of gay marriage” amendment, which would deny the benefits and obligations of civil marriage to same-sex couples.  That would vitiate the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that prevents any state from denying “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  It would restore the status quo ante bellum (the Civil War, that is) that one or more classes of persons, defined by who they are, not anything they have done, can be placed outside of one or more provisions of the law, this time at the Federal as well as at the state level.  If the homosexual community is hit first (as it was in Nazi Germany), which one would be next?  (Just guess.)

As detailed in the September 18, 2004 Report from the office of Congressman Henry Waxman of California, the Bush Administration would continue its process of creating the most highly secretive Administration in United States history.  For example, Bush has already issued an Executive Order severely restricting access to the papers of former Presidents, denied access to any records of the famous Cheney task force on energy, adopted a policy to refuse initially any requests for Executive Branch information under the Freedom of Information Act, and doubled the number of government documents put under the seal of “classification,” including ones issuing from such Departments as Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

The Bush Administration is in the process of giving border patrol agents “sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge” (R.L. Swarns, US to Give Border Patrol Agents, New York Times, August 11, 2004).  Who will be the next group of persons for whom a police agency will be able make a determination of law violation and go right on to determine and then impose punishment?  This, by the way, is the exact same power that the Nazi German Schutz Staffel (known colloquially as the “SS”) had.  Who, here, might be the first victims? Protestors against such policies, perhaps?

If Bush has his way in a Second Administration, his choice for CIA Director, politico Porter Goss, would have the power to engage in domestic intelligence gathering and surveillance, whether or not any criminal activity is suspected.  Presently, the FBI does need some semblance of suspicion of criminal activity in order to do the same thing.

It is already clear that Bush follows the dictum of Hermann Goering, pronounced by him shortly before his death at this own hand at Nuremberg: to enhance the power of government over the individual.  Goering said: “whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship . . .  all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in any country.”

George Bush appoints people like Prof. Diana Schaub to the Federal Bioethics Commission.  Speaking on stem cell research, she said: “Every embryo for research is someone’s blood relative. . . .  I would not be prepared to restore the intellectual functioning of a 93-year-old man by sacrificing embryonic life” (Stem Cells and Slavery, Science, June 18, 2004, p. 1742).  Talk about the imposition on all of us of one particular personal belief on the matter of when life begins! The Georgite approach is to apply the “life-begins-at-the-moment-of-conception” doctrine to both the beliefs and actions of every member of our society, regardless of whether or not they agree with it.

“The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate is the highest in the industrialized world -- 10 times more than in the Netherlands or Switzerland.  Of the 900,000 U.S. teenagers who become pregnant every year, 8 in 10 say their pregnancy was un-intended” (Playing Politics with Women’s Lives, Science, July 2, 2004, p. 17).  The Bush policy for dealing with this situation is a combination of abstinence preaching, sorry “teaching,” and the criminalization of abortion.

On a wide variety of environmental, health, labor, and personal safety matters, the Bush Administration has re-written existing regulations to suit the wishes of industry, often with former industry employees and/or lobbyists writing the self-same regulations (J. Brinkley, “Out of the Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations,” New York Times, August 14, 2004).  The article’s headline says it all about the public relations approach of the Administration on this policy.

This ends this litany of what Georgitism really means.  Among Bush’s many failings, however, is not a “failure of leadership,” as Bob Herbert described the Administration’s conduct in relation to Iraq policy in his New York Times Op-Ed column of August 6, 2004.  While I agree with much of what Bob Herbert has said over time, I totally disagree with this position.  It is not a failure of leadership, on Iraq or on any of the issues presented briefly above.

The Bush Administration’s ideology is clear: it is an approach to government and governing that puts as much power as possible, with as little legislative, judicial, or public accountability as possible, in the hands of the Executive Branch.  It takes the country back to the Coolidgean view that “the business of government is business.”  Moreover, since George Bush is capable of distracting huge numbers of people who are in fact negatively affected by his governmental philosophy and actions, and actually get them to support him, from the Georgite perspective he is the perfect leader for their movement.  After all, look at just how much the twin forces of the Radical Reactionary Right (mis-named the “neoconservatives”) and the Republican Religious Right have achieved in such a short time under George Bush’s leadership, and at how much more of their agendas they will be able to achieve, should their chosen leader be re-selected.  For the implementation of his chosen policies and for his voters, George Bush is a fine, almost a perfect, leader.