THE SCHIAVO CASE, V: THE ATTACK ON SCIENCE

Column No. 61 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 18, 2005

This column is the last; some of you may be pleased to know, of my five part series on the Schiavo case.  As I noted previously, I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Why Dred Scott, you might ask?  That case made the nation face the reality of what was in the Constitution about slaves and the nature of slavery.  It also made the nation face the reality that the South wanted to expand slavery into the Territories without limit.  Schiavo will, I believe, eventually make the nation face the true nature of Georgitism and the RRR, a major feature of which is their goal to force the expansion of their religious belief system into the mind of every American using the force of the criminal law.

A major part of the belief system of the Republican Religious Right is that science and the scientific method are the enemies of what it calls “faith.”  (I illustrated what “faith” means to them in my column last week.)  In addition, precisely because science attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the known while religion attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the unknown, science is an enemy of what the RRR calls “faith.”

Of course, the concept of “God,” theism, and science are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  After all, there is no reason to think that it was none other than God that endowed humankind with the ability to reason and, therefore, with the potential for eventually discovering the scientific method and its many positive uses.  But that is not how the avatars of the RRR think.  To them science, which uses observation, analysis, reason, and experimentation -- rather than simply “I say so” or “the Book says so,” or “I say the Book says so” – science is anathema to them.  For they want the rules to be set entirely by them.  These rules are based entirely on what they claim that particular book called the Bible (in, by the way, for the Old Testament a particular English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Hebrew translation of an Aramaic text) says, and that part of it they reference, backed up by the use of the criminal law.

The Schiavo case provided the RRR with several different convenient avenues of attack on science.  Dr. William Frist himself, Republican Senate Majority leader and a former cardiac surgeon (and through his family holdings, a current medical businessman in, among other things, medical malpractice insurance), presumed to make a diagnosis for Terry Schiavo based solely on a two-year old video tape which had been severely edited.  The RRR also brings into the case a neurologist, who happens to be active in the My Right to Control Your Life movement, who looks at the same tape and pronounces that Ms. Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state.

Forget that neither physician saw the patient and were doing their “examining” from a video tape, an old and doctored one at that.  What is really going on here is an attack on medical science.  Both physicians chose to ignore the scientific test results that showed that Schiavo had no brain activity on repeated electroencephalograms (EEGs, measures of electrical activity of the brain that science has shown for decades occurs when one is thinking—and that thinking does not occur in the absence of such activity).  Test results also showed that she could not have had such activity, because that part of the brain that responsible for it had unfortunately disintegrated (shown by Computerized Axial Tomography, CAT, Scan).

Frist, the neurologist, and a few other right-wing physicians, chose to substitute for science what in our profession is called “clinical impression.”  Clinical impression was the best diagnostic tool available to medicine – in the 19th century, before testing and other instrumentation became available.  It is still essential in helping to decide what scientific evaluative processes to use, and then, given their results, to round out the picture of what is going on with a given patient.  However, clinical impressions alone can and do differ widely among various observers (just as interpretations of the Bible differ)

Frist’s clinical impression, even if it had not rested on the terribly shaky grounds that it did, was only that: his clinical impression, without reference to the science of laboratory testing.  Doing what he did as a physician in this case served exquisitely the political needs of the RRR: to continue their assault on science and science-based knowledge, to get away from the use of reason, which they hate with a passion, so that they may substitute the “word of God,” as of course they interpret it and tell us what it “truly” is.  In essence, this doctor (Frist) was saying “forget testing, forget science, just take my word for it; this is what this patient has or hasn’t.”  It is the medical version of how the Republican Religious Right wants from everyone in the country: obedience, on their say-so, concerning the conduct of their private lives and thought.  No reason, no science, and of course no freedom, just obedience – because the RRR says so.

Too easily overlooked, also, was that as a physician (forgetting his political motivation for doing what he did) Dr. Frist came with serious limitations in getting seriously involved with this case.  He is a former cardiac surgeon, not known for any expertise either in neurology or end-of-life care.  He made his pronouncements on Terri Schiavo’s condition based on those video tapes.  And he did make a diagnosis.  Aside from everything else, one has to wonder:  A) Does he have a license to practice medicine either in Florida or the District of Columbia?  B) The next time he needs some medical attention, will he have it done by a doc who is not a specialist in the matter afflicting him at the time and who is looking at a two-year old doctored video tape of him, not directly at him, and who totally ignores any laboratory test results?  One useful outcome of this whole episode is that we now indeed know what the term “doctored tapes” really means to make a current diagnosis, given that Dr. Frist was in on their use.

In making their rulings, in coming to their findings, in handing down their decisions, and over a very long period of time, the Florida courts relied on science.  They relied on a science-based definition of life, that in the presence of a non-functioning brain incapable of ever functioning again, simply having active cardio-respiratory, digestive, and excretory systems occupying a body did not constitute life.  They relied on science-based medical testing, EEG and CAT scan, not clinical impression, to come to the conclusion that Terri Schiavo was clearly brain-dead.  And so the virulent attack on the courts was not only an attack on the whole concept of an independent judiciary.  It was also part of the attack on science that is at the center of such RRR campaigns as their efforts to exclude the teaching of evolution in the public schools to their denial of the fact of global warming.

This is an issue to which we shall return from time to time.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR BUSH-BEHAVIOR ON AND AROUND 9/11

Column No. 60 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 12, 2005

As you undoubtedly know, two critical documents have been recently released by the 9/11 Commission.  One concerned the 52 FAA pre-9/11 warnings that lead to no specific terrorist-act-prevention actions.  The other was the Richard Clarke memo of 1/25/01 to the new National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that urgently called for a meeting on the subject of  aggressively dealing with al-Qaeda with a specific plan-for-planning to do so.

Now, it is possible that Rice ignored the memo because Clarke did not use the common English spelling for the name of the terrorist organization, but called it “Al Qida.”  Rice understandably might have thought that he was referring to a person named “Al,” and since she had many more important things to do, like planning the invasion of Iraq, she understandably put the whole thing on the back burner.  In addition, at one point Clarke used a word that is not to my knowledge found in the English language, “addressal.”  With her university background, Dr. Rice might have wondered how much could such an illiterate know about terrorism, anyway.

At any rate, with the release of these documents, presumably over the strenuous objections of the Georgite White House, the whole question of what they were thinking-not-thinking-doing-not-doing in the run-up to 9/11 gets onto the front burner again.  (Well, it is not on the front burner of our mainstream media, of course, but that does not mean that it should not be.)  In this context, in this column I am revisiting the column that I published on May 6, 2004, in an abridged version.  Much of the following text is taken from that column.

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, 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.  I present here just a few of the more prominent unanswered questions.

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. . . .  There is Rice 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 is the 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.  At the same time, Ashcroft just happened to have stopped flying on commercial flights.  There is the fact that Ashcroft turned down an internal request to massively expand the FBI’s anti-terrorism budget, on 9/10/01.

There’s Bush, according to Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian (UK, April 15, 2004) not reading anything, whether it’s his PDBs or, for example, a 17 volume State Department report entitled “The Future of Iraq”, warning of nearly all the post-Iraq war pitfalls that have been encountered. . . .

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 to, 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.  The litany could go on.

What possible explanations might have been offered last April for this series of events, non-events, actions, and inactions?  At the time, I saw 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, Cheney, Powell, and Ashcroft.

2.        “Mistakes were made”, 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 for 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 did not.  It could have, and should have, been played much better.

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

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

a.        Thought they had a deal with the Taliban to prevent him from doing it.  However, the Taliban either did not 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 (in return for who knows what), 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 Republican Religious Right always throw out when such speculation arises, in the hope that the discussion will turn to the propriety of developing conspiracy theories and away from the substance of the suppositions.

But looking more closely, why not think “conspiracy?”  We have 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: Watergate and Chile.  Think Reagan: Iran-Contra.  Think Bush I and the Kuwait War, which happened in part because just before Bush invaded, the-then US Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.”  No conspiracies, full or partial, around 9/11?  Absolutely impossible?  Well let us see.

During that summer, remember, at home the Georgites were not 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, mighty close to the White House.  Cheney would not tell (and still will not) what he had talked about with his oil cronies.  There was a rapidly expanding deficit accompanied by a rapidly expanding unemployment rate.  Then there were the so-called Neocons, led by Perle and Wolfowitz, taking over most of the major foreign-policy responsibility for the new Administration.  They were 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.  Marjory about oil and bases and something called ‘establishing American hegemony.’  The public has never been let in on these little secrets.  Is that not the stuff of conspiracy?

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.)  On the other hand, just maybe there was no Georgite conspiracy.  Maybe it was just the Georgites moving really quickly after it happened to take advantage of public fear and panic, to regain the popularity they had lost, 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, and to set up “grounds” the invasion of Iraq.  Can anyone say “Reichstag Fire?”  (See my TPJ columns of 6/3 and 6/24/04).

PAT BUCHANAN’S ‘WHAT IF?’, Part I

Column No. 62 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 26, 2005, Modified, 7-19-08

A note to my readers.  I am sure that many of you will be pleased to know that for the time-being, at least, I am going off the “Coming 2nd Civil War Series.”  This is not because I have become any less convinced that a 2nd Civil War is possible.  Indeed, I think that the way things are going it is highly likely, unless a serious, capable, well-organized, and well-funded political opposition develops very soon.  However, I think that regular readers at least have had enough repetition of similar text on the same theme.  And so, while from now on most of my columns will relate in one way or another to that possibility, I am planning not to ram that thought, with that same intro., down your throats every week.  I can hear the hurrahs from here!  And now, onto today’s subject.

Paul Vitello, a columnist for Newsday, began his commentary of May 12, 2005 with the following paragraph:

“In a column he wrote yesterday, headlined ‘Was World War Two Worth It?’ commentator Patrick Buchanan swiped at the legacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill – and millions of American and allied servicemen living and dead – by proposing that World War II was not worth fighting.”

First, one could note the irony that most of Buchanan’s most loyal admirers severely attack any American critics of either the Vietnam War or the War on Iraq as “unpatriotic,” as “not supporting our boys,” as, in Ann Coulter’s terms, “traitors.”  But an in depth examination of that fundamental contradiction of the Republican Religious Right shall be saved for another time.

The subject of this column, first in what will be a (planned for now) three-part series setting forth a “What If?” for Patrick Buchanan.  Just suppose World War II as it did occur historically had not been fought (although given the imperialist designs of both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan at the time, another war surely would have been).  What might the world, and especially our country, look like today?

In developing the scenario below, I use a series of historical events that just might have gone in another direction than they actually did.  This direction is not simply guess-work, but could well have occurred in one form or another, given the facts as we know them.  It is a direction that easily could have led to the non-involvement of the powers that became the Western Allies of World War II in any war prosecuted by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.  The Eastern Front attacks, beginning with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, would have occurred, however.  The scenario will be interspersed with parenthetical comments concerning certain real events, real people, and what really happened.  The story here is presented in the form of highlights.  At some future time, the scenario that will be presented briefly in this current series might be developed in more depth.

The alternate scenario that in fact could very well have meant no World War II, as we know it to have happened, begins in 1937.  Edward, Prince of Wales, is crowned Edward VIII, King of England, that spring.  Although there had been much talk of his possible abdication both because he had married an American divorcee and was an open admirer of the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, Edward persisted in mounting the throne as the first-born son of George V.  (In this column, this coronation is the only event that is fictional.  But it is essential to the story.)

Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that had established William of Orange as the first constitutional monarch of Great Britain, British monarchs have not been supposed to take a direct hand in governmental policy.  However, certainly George III, Queen Victoria, and George V, Edward VIII’s father, himself did.  He played a significant role in getting Great Britain into World War I against his own cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.  Edward VIII (remember, fictional here) would play a similar role in September 1939, being a major influence in the non-response of Great Britain to the German invasion of Poland.  In fact, had a different person been on the throne, let us say Edward VIII’s younger brother, the shy stammerer, the Duke of York, things might have gone rather differently.  (In real life, it was the former Duke of York who, as George VI, was king at the time.)  But Edward VIII liked Hitler, liked the idea of his “going East,” and made of views and those of the people he represented, the ultra-rich of the “Cliveden Set (real),” known forcefully to the Chamberlain government.  For Chamberlain, who in real life continued to try to negotiate with Hitler for a truce and “turn to the East” after the real start of World War II, Edward VIII would prove to be a very powerful ally for a policy of not responding militarily to the Polish Crisis.  Against this power, Churchill and the people he represented could not carry the day.

Turning to events that did take place and that form an essential part of the story, in 1936-39 the British government under the Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain refuses to come to the aid of the elected Republican Government of Spain, fighting for its life against the fascist general Francisco Franco, strongly supported by both Nazi German and fascist Italy.  Franco wins.  Without support from Great Britain, the government of France, even under socialist leadership, stays out as well.  In 1936, Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland, in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  At the time, France has the strongest army in Europe, Germany the weakest.  Neither France nor Great Britain responds.  In March 1938, Hitler, with the aid of the powerful Nazi Party in Austria, absorbs his former homeland into the German Reich.  For France and Great Britain, it is an “internal matter” for German-speaking people.

In September 1938, Great Britain and France violate their treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia and in the Munich Agreement allow Hitler first to dismember and then shortly thereafter take over the whole country.  The offer made by Stalin to provide the Soviet Army for the defense of Czechoslovakia is turned down.  The Western version of these real events has always been termed “appeasement” on the part of Chamberlain.  However, the facts, as revealed by many government documents from the period that only came into the public record in the 1990s, show that Chamberlain’s policy was clearly to deal with Hitler to get him to follow through on his grand plans as laid out in Mein Kampf to undertake the “Drang Nach Osten,” the Drive to the East, to gain “Lebensraum,” Living Space, for the German people.  (It happens that at the time Germany had the lowest population density of any major European power, but what do facts matter when there are aggressive policies to be pursued and some, any, justification for them must be found.)  Chamberlain strove hard to give Hitler a “free hand” in Eastern Europe for what he hoped in return would be a hands-off policy from Germany when it came to the British Empire.  Although somewhat embarrassed publicly, Chamberlain is encouraged privately by the German moves in Czechoslovakia.

Hitler’s next target is Poland.  There is a part of Germany called East Prussia that is separated from the main body of the country by the “Polish Corridor” which is, in fact, Poland’s outlet to the sea (the Baltic in this case).  Hitler wants the Poles to turn that piece of real estate over to him.  This would, among other things, put a significant number of Poles under German rule, at a time when Slavs were only slightly above Jews on the German list of “untermenschen” (underpeople).  The move would also cut off the Poland from the world’s oceans.  Again, the Soviet Union offers to provide the Red Army for the defense of Poland.  The offer is turned down both by the right-wing Polish Government and by the supposed guarantors of the existing borders of Poland, Great Britain, and France.  On August 25, 1939, the Hitler-Stalin Pact is signed and on September 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland from the west while the Soviet Union invades it from the east.  (To be continued next week, as they used to say in adventure radio when I was a boy.)

BILL FRIST’S DECLARATION OF WAR - “The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 11

Column No. 59 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 5, 2005

This column is the eleventh in my “Coming 2nd Civil War” series.  The first Civil War, at its core the defense of black slavery built on the theory of white supremacy and an economy dependent on the institution, began with the firing by South Carolinian shore batteries on the Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.  History may well mark the beginning of the second one, at the core of which would be the defense of US Constitutional Democracy against the goal of the Republican Religious Right to impose a theocratic-fascist dictatorship in the United States, with the firing of a verbal and political assault led by the Republican Majority Leader of the US Senate, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, in Louisville, KY.

Whether or not either this war or that dictatorship comes, my friends, the occasion of the Frist speech was an historic one.  The central issue is not whether the filibuster rule in the US Senate should be overturned (for confirmations only, not legislation, let it be noted).  The central issue is why the Republican Religious Right, led by the likes of Frist, wants to do this.  What are their goals for putting as many fellow radical religious rightists on the Federal courts as they possibly can?

In February of this year, a meeting took place in Fort Lauderdale at the “Coral Ridge Presbyterian” bringing together the central elements of the Christian Right to whom Frist, the two Bushes, and all the other Georgites speak when they talk about “faith” and “religious life.”  The conference was called “Reclaiming America for Christ.”  The Conference opened with the recitation of an oath that their leaders propose for daily recitation in every classroom, public or private, in the country.  It is: "I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands.  One Savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."

A principal Christian Right leader, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, leader of Coral Ridge, has clearly stated their goals: "As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society.  We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government ... our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors - in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."  This is a clear goals statement for the Republican Religious Right, although most of the time, so far, it does not want the nation as a whole to hear it.  However, sooner rather than later Frist and the rest of the Georgites must be forced to own up publicly as to what their real goals are, or it will all be over before we know it.

Sen. William Frist is, politically, the third most important Republican leader in the US.  He has attacked the entire Democratic Party for opposing what he calls the "people of faith."  On Sunday, April 24, 2005, he kicked off a nationwide campaign linked arm-in-arm with major leaders of the Christian Right such as Tony Perkins (no, not that Tony Perkins; he of the Bates Motel is dead and, anyway, he was gay) and Pat Dobson.  In pursuit of their goals, the campaign is aimed at making sure that, from now on, the Federal judiciary increasingly will be filled with judges who are on the side of what Frist calls "people of faith."  Accordingly, it would seem useful to examine just what the term as they use it means.

Perkins and Dobson and all of the other Christian Right leaders have actually told us for years what they want (see my book, The 15% Solution, published in 1996, referenced below).  They often do not use terms quite so bold as those of Rev. Kennedy, but their aim is the same: to establish what they call a “Christian Nation” to replace our traditional Constitutional Democracy, although it is a nation that the majority of Christians would not recognize as Christian.  If the more public Christian Rightist leaders, like Dobson and Perkins and Falwell and Robertson, do not have such an objective, let them be confronted with Kennedy’s words and see if they deny them.  Of course, if they do not share those goals, should the Christian Right as represented by Kennedy and his ilk get the power it seeks, they will go to the stake along with many of the rest of us.

And so, just who are these “people of faith” for whom Frist is carrying the water?  As they will readily tell you, they are the people who, for example: believe that life begins at the moment of conception and would criminalize the beliefs of all others who disagree with them; believe that homosexuality is both a matter of choice and a sin and would, for openers, deny homosexuals equal protection of the law; believe that only "abstinence" is the correct teaching about sex outside of marriage and would prevent any other approaches, such as those based on science and medical knowledge, from being taught in the public schools; believe that the scientific Theory of Evolution explaining the development of life on Earth is erroneous and would prevent teaching it as well, substituting the Creation Story from the Christian version of the Jewish Old Testament.

Now, in this context, what does "enemy of people of faith" mean in concrete action?  Does it mean that people who believe as “people of faith” do about when life begins would be forced to have abortions or to provide them, against their will?  Why no.  That they would be forced to allow the marriage of homosexuals in their churches, if not something worse?  Why no.  That they would be prevented from teaching their children, in their churches and in their own homes, that abstinence is the only right approach to sex outside of marriage?  Why no.  That their children would be forced to believe in Evolution on the pain of criminal penalties and that they would be prevented from teaching the Creation Story in their own churches and homes?  Why no.  Has anyone ever heard a Democrat, or even a Secular Humanist like me, ever take that position?

In fact, the opposition to Frist and the rest of the Georgites in the Republican Religious Right and in the Christian Right movement on whom the former are leaning politically evermore heavily, has nothing to do with what they believe and want to believe for themselves.  The real opposition to them has to do with: preventing them from forcing the rest of us to incorporate into our own belief systems, upon the pain of criminal penalty, the belief that life begins at the moment of conception; preventing them from denying the right to homosexuals of the equal protection under the law that is guaranteed to all Americans under the 14th Amendment; preventing them from excluding from public education teaching about the well-known public health measures that work for dealing with pre-marital sex; preventing them from excluding the teaching of biological science from the public education system and substituting for it the teaching of Bible stories as fact.

What the "people of faith" are really about is clear: forcing their particular brand of religion and religious thought down the throats of all Americans, not by persuasion and good example, but by massive intimidation, by taking over the Justice system to use it for oppressive and repressive purposes, and ultimately, by the use of the criminal law.  Indeed, these people are correctly called the "My Right to Control Your Lifers."

Here, once again, is my short definition of fascism: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of the government; no independent judiciary; a single national ideology, to which adherence is compulsory, that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”  Given the ideology of the Kennedy-Dobson-Perkins variety, you can decide if what these people state they want very clearly, in more or less open and strident terms given the circumstances, meet the terms of that definition.

Does Frist have a right to do what he is doing, politically?  He does.  Our job is make the people of our nation aware of what are the goals of Frist, his Christian Rightist allies, and the Georgite leadership of this party, the Republican Religious Right that is now in power.  Our job is to make it clear to all Americans that the Republican Party has truly become the Republican/Right-Wing-Christian Alliance.  And then our job is to fight back, and restore Constitutional government, as more and more of us, including some of the Democratic Party leadership, are doing, before it is too late.

__________

NB:  This column is based in part on my “Short Shot No. 58: Frist’s “People of Faith,” that appeared on The Moving Planet Blog.

THE SCHIAVO CASE, III: FURTHER LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS AND THEIR POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS (“The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 9)

Column No. 57 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April, 24, 2005

This column is the ninth in this series.  As I have noted previously, the cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR) and their policy arm, the Georgites.  The RRR agenda is clearly stated in writing by its ideologues from Norquist to Wolfowitz to Falwell.  For obvious political reasons it is hardly ever articulated by its front men from Bush to Frist to DeLay, for if they spelled it out, it would be a sure loser.  The major components are: imposing their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reducing the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-and-prison-industrial, opposition-repression/suppression, and private-thought/behavior-control complexes; and replacing Constitutional government as we have known it with overwhelming Executive Branch dominance operating on its own authority – that is via a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.

I do not write the term “Second Civil War” lightly.  As you know, I believe that Georgitism is leading us directly to the destruction of traditional American Constitutional Democracy and instituting in its place a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.

This is the third of what will now be four columns on the Schiavo case.  As I noted last week, I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Why Dred Scott, you might ask?  That case made the nation face the reality of what was in the Constitution about slaves and the nature of slavery.  It also made the nation face the reality that the South wanted to expand slavery into the Territories without limit.  Schiavo will, I believe, eventually make the nation face the true nature of Georgitism and the RRR.

Although it does not do it often, the RRR is now in the process of revealing its true nature to the American people.  That nature is, as I have said many times in this space, antithetical to traditional US Constitutional Democracy.  The values that govern the RRR are epitomized by the My Right to Control Your Life movement.  They want to expand their particular beliefs on religious matters into the depths of everyone’s’ minds, and require conformity on them, through the use of the criminal law.

Their approach to governing is epitomized by Senators and Congressmen who appear to endorse the murder, or at the very least the “mass impeachment,” of judges whose decisions they happen to disagree with.  This approach to governing is no more to be found in the Constitution than was the unlimited expansion of slavery beyond its original boundaries.  These values and this theory of government will, if not checked politically very soon, eventually lead us to civil war for they are totally unacceptable to the majority of the American people.  Let us review further some of the legal considerations in the case and their political implications.

As many observers have noted, the response of the Republican Religious Right on this case is clearly an attack on the judicial system, both State and Federal.  Fascism cannot function with an independent judiciary.  Indeed, one of the major parts of the definition of fascism is there is no independent judiciary.  The RRR has been developing their case in this matter since the Georgites took office.  Occurring as it did in Jeb Bush’s territory, they knew that this particular case was coming and given its seven-year history in the courts and what the judicial decisions have been consistently, they had a very good idea of what the final decision would be.  Since the case has proved so useful to the RRR in mobilizing its so-called “Religious” base and, I believe will prove even more useful in the future, I would not be surprised if the whole campaign were not choreographed and funded well before the judge handed down his decision.

One major propaganda stratagem the RRR used was the talk about “due process” and the denial of it to her, as if seven years of court procedures did not constitute “due process” (to the extent that a person with no conscious brain can be provided with it.  But more on that next week.)  This tack, this talk about “denial” as if it were a fact, was taken over and over again by RRR representatives on the airwaves.  It showed: just how blatantly and routinely they lie about reality; that they know well just how ahistorical so many Americans are; and how few members of the media are able and capable of challenging them on such matters of fact.

Using both Florida and case law, the judicial process in Florida ruled that a) in such matters the conscious spouse is the best representative of the permanently unconscious spouse’s best interests, and that b) in this particular case the husband’s claim that his wife had expressed the wish not to be kept going in a persistent vegetative state was valid.  The case of the RRR in this case, then, comes down to the fact that a minority of the country amounting to about 20% of the electorate (see Frank Rich, New York Times, 3/26/05) did not agree with the decision.  Therefore, they tell us, it is time to throw out the present judicial system and its judges and replace both with a system and judges who will do what the RRR wants, regardless of what the law presently says.  Historical precedents?  Take a look at the “Peoples’ Courts” in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Finally, in my view this case will be Jeb Bush’s 9/11, as he prepares himself to continue the Bush Dynasty in 2008.

THE SCHIAVO CASE, IV: THE DEFINITIONS OF LIFE AND DEATH

(“The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 10) Column No. 58

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 28, 2005

This column is the tenth in my “Coming 2nd Civil War” series.  As I have noted previously, the projected cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR) and their policy arm, the Georgites.  The agenda’s major components are: imposing their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reducing the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-and-prison-industrial complex, of opposition-repression/suppression and private-thought/behavior-control complexes; and by replacing government under the Constitution as we have known it with overwhelming Executive Branch dominance operating on its own authority, establishing a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.

Since “fascism” is a term coming increasingly into use by opponents and critics of the Georgite regime, a short definition of the term is useful.  (For a long one, see my TPJ column of May 24, 2004, “On Fascism ---- and the Georgites” (just click on the blue hyperlink to go directly to the article)  Here is the short one: “Fascism is total executive branch control of the government, no independent judiciary, a single national ideology that demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition, with corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”

This column is the fourth in my five part series on the Schiavo case.  As I noted previously, I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Why Dred Scott, you might ask?  That case made the nation face the reality of what was in the Constitution about slaves and the nature of slavery.  It also made the nation face the reality that the South wanted to expand slavery into the Territories without limit.

Schiavo will, I believe, eventually make the nation face the true nature of Georgitism and the RRR, a major feature of which is their goal to force the expansion their religious belief system into the mind of every American, through the use of the criminal law.

The "Culture of Life" is the Republican Religious Right's new buzz phrase, the latest invention of Karl "I Change Constitutions" Rove (yes, he really said that, see Dr. J.’s Short Shot No. 25: The True Agenda of the Republican Religious Right (just click on the blue hyperlink to go directly to the artice) at Planetary Movement, or at least a member of his staff.  What does “The Culture of Life” really mean?  To begin plumbing that depth, I looked at two headlines that appeared on opposite pages in the March 26, 2005 edition of Newsday, Long Island, NY's, daily newspaper.

On p. A6 appeared "Vital Programs to be shut: Huntington Hospital [NY] is closing lung and cardiac rehabs, citing shortfalls caused by [declining insurance] reimbursement rates."  Without the services presently provided, a number of people, with full mental capacity, will die prematurely and very uncomfortably of gradual heart and lung failure.  With this being so, are the Republican Governor of the State, the national Republican Congress, and the Republican President rushing finally to solve such problems once and for all by creating a National Health Insurance system with the proper financing?  No.  In the face of these impending patient deaths, the silence is deafening.  But after all, these interests are trying, in Grover Norquist's timeless phrase, to "drown government in the bathtub,” not let it grow ("government", in his terms, meaning programs that help people to have better lives).  These lives at stake obviously do not count as "Life" (even though most Americans would say they do).

Facing this article, on p. A7 of the same issue of Newsday, appeared an article headlined "Schiavo's ‘last hours:’ Courts continue to deny parents' desperate appeals to restore daughter's feeding tube."  Where the Republican Religious Right stood on this issue is well-known.  They tried with increasing desperation to amend the Constitution on the run so that the result of years of a long and painstaking legal process, a result they did not like, could in the space of days be overturned.  The patient in whom they claimed to have an interest here had no discernible brain function and no discernible healthy tissue in the part of the brain that produces consciousness and the ability to reason.  Thus, we now know what "Life" in the "Culture of Life" means: a human body with fully functioning cardio-respiratory, digestive, and excretory systems, but with no conscious, reasoning brain function whatsoever.

Fits right in with "life begins at the moment of conception," doesn't it?  It also fits right in to another major element of the philosophy of the Republican Religious Right and the Republican Right: obedience to authority is the Number One characteristic to be fostered.  Thinking gets in the way of that.  This woman cannot think.  Mrs. Schiavo’s condition, therefore, became the perfect description of “life” for these people.  Most unfortunately, thinking with who knows what part of their body, but surely not the educated part of their collective brain, the media bought right into this definition of “life.”

Yet then the RRR went right on to mix definitions, when it suited their media/public relations purposes.  For they compared Mrs. Schiavo, whose powers of human thought were dead and gone, with concentration camp victims, whose bodies were in much worse shape than Mrs. Schiavo’s, but whose mental faculties were clearly in much better shape.  For example, the National Jewish Democratic Council told us, “The Traditional Values Coalition is an interest group that closely coordinates with top GOP leaders and staff in the House, Senate, and White House; it is run by a former Reagan Administration official and supported by countless top GOP elected and appointed officials.  The TVC has invoked Holocaust and Nazi references at length in its rhetoric surrounding Terri Schiavo.  For example, TVC notes, ‘The philosophy of the Nazi doctors lives on today in the minds of federal judges ... as well as Michael Schiavo and his New Age attorney George Felos.’

“Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has compared Terri Schiavo's ‘capital punishment’ to ‘the method used at Auschwitz to murder Father Maximilian Kolbe, the priest who volunteered to take the place of a Polish father of a large family, who was one of 10 the camp commandant had selected for execution in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner.’  Buchanan argues that supporters of Michael Schiavo ‘approximate, in belief and argument, the elites of Weimar and Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.’” What a comment on Buchanan – that he not only equates the non-thinking Schiavo with the thinking victims of the Nazi Auschwitz horror, but also equates mass extra-judicial murder with a feeding tube withdrawal in a woman with no conscious brain function, after seven years of judicial proceedings.

But then again, this is what the “Culture of Life” is all about.  It is concerned with human organ systems, such as the cardio-vascular, respiratory, digestive, and excretory systems, that operate on automatic (functions controlled by what the physiologists call the “autonomic” nervous system) before birth, when there is no consciousness, and can operate on automatic at the end of what most of us define as “life” for a very long period of time after consciousness has disappeared, for one reason or another.  It has little concern with what goes on in between, except that it is absolutely determined to make sure that all human conscious thought adheres to its doctrines, its dogmas of what thoughts are “right” and what thoughts are “wrong,” and do it by force if necessary.