THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TONY SNOW JOB

Column No. 105 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH -  May 11, 2006

Fascism** engulfs nations by different routes.  It can come by military conquest and overthrow of a democratically elected government, as in Franco Spain.  It can come by conversion of a Constitutional Monarchy, with the acquiescence if not the open support of the monarch, as in Italy and Japan.  It can come in a Constitutional Democracy through the on-the-surface legal use of Constitutional processes by a political party that first takes control of the executive branch and then proceeds to establish its dictatorship.  The prime example of this is of course Nazi Germany (see my columns, “Bush is Not Hitler, I and the two-part Reichstag Fire/9-11 series).  Unless the Georgites are somehow stopped, the United States will become the second major historical example of this route to fascism.

History teaches us that in a Constitutional Democracy, such as the German Weimar Republic of 1919-1933, a party or a political movement intent upon establishing a fascist dictatorship must first gain control of the executive branch of the government.  To be able to establish full control over all the organs of the state over the long run they must then deal with the other two branches of the government, the legislative and the judicial.  They must also deal with the single most important organ of civil society outside of government that, functioning properly, is essential to the continuance of Constitutional Democracy: the free communications media.  A free press (in the generic sense of the term) is anathema to fascism.  In fact, the latter cannot exist in the presence of the former.  For at the center of the fascist approach to dealing with public information is the Big Lie Technique, something a free press will always eventually give the lie to.

An essential element of Georgite Republicanism has been the campaign to both devalue and take over the independent judiciary, especially at the Federal level.  The tools are first a constant propaganda campaign that the judiciary is “overstepping its bounds,” is “legislating from the bench,” is “standing in the way of the will of the people,” is “in need of being reigned in.” Second, is the political campaign to remove a variety of major political-social issues from the jurisdiction of the bench through a variety of means. Third, there is the direct route of putting an ever-increasing number of Georgite judges on the bench.  (Think the classic movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” It was about the trial not of any famous Nazis but of a group of senior judges who were adjudged to have been active collaborators and promoters of the Nazi form of “justice.”)  Prominent Georgite appointees at all three levels of the Federal bench are outstanding examples of the use of this tool.  In a variation fro the Nazi example, in the US the first step taken within institutions of the Federal government was the takeover of the legislative branch by proto-fascists.  That started with the “Gingrich Revolution” of 1994.

Interestingly enough the element essential to the eventual fascist takeover in the U.S. that has been in place the longest is the Republican assault on the independent media.  It began symbolically with the famous Nixon quote after his loss in the California governor’s race in 1962.  He said to the media at the press conference after his concession speech “Now you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.” Nixon clearly made those media elements that reported facts about him and his doings into “the enemy.”  He was an early developer of the classic Republican Rightist tool of attack on the media: don’t respond to the message; kill the messenger.  The Georgites have developed this technique to a very high level of sophistication.

Reagan used lying, intimidation, charm.  His constant message, through the media to a gullible public taken in by a combination of his charm and his underlying, but clear racism, was “don’t trust them; trust me.”  A constant message of O’RHannibaugh from the Reagan/Bush I era has been that the “mainstream media are all ‘liberals,’ and never tell you the truth.”  George Bush obviously cannot stand the media personally.  Then Rove makes sure that they are both shut out and intimidated to the greatest extent possible, while his boss goes “over their heads to connect directly with the people” (through those oh-so-carefully stage-managed “town meetings”).

Where does the appointment of Fox "News" Channel (F"N"C) propagandist Tony Snow as White House Press Secretary fit into all of this?  It has aroused much comment. For example, very early on, the Center for American Progress drew attention to the fact that for some time now Snow has been a critic of Bush, from the Right. The question was raised, how does that make sense, how could Snow do the job, which supposedly includes defending the President?

In answering that question and indeed establishing a broad understanding of the meaning of the appointment, it first comes down to defining exactly which job Snow was hired to do. First: let us consider what the job is surely not, based on how the various Georgite operatives occupying the position have handled it up to now. The job is surely not to answer questions forthrightly, honestly, and openly. It is surely not to establish a cooperative relationship between the White House and the media. It is surely not to increase the amount of information made available to the American people about the Executive Branch of their government, how it operates, and what it is doing.

If we know what it is not, just what is it? There is a series of answers to that question, not all of which will be covered in this space. But in my view it is important to understand that the choice of Snow is neither accidental nor foolish, in terms of the march towards fascism.  It does represent a significant ramping up of the attack of the independent media, with the ultimate objective of destroying it that is essential if the goal of establishing fascism is to be achieved.  It helps to understand this appointment if it is seen in that context.

1. First, Snow is to revive the old CNN political show “Crossfire," where yelling and screaming was substituted for rational discussion and disagreement over significant political issues. Reduce reporters to jelly by yelling at them, literally or figuratively, whether they yell back or not, is job one.

2. Further demean and disdain the media, treating them as untrustworthy and unimportant. Obfuscate, conceal, distract, distort, and lie, with more skill than any previous holder of the position.  Step one is the proposal to eliminate or curtail the televising of the daily media briefings.

3. Begin the merger of the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda, of which the F"N"C is the prime property, into the government.

4. Mollify the right-wing base by having a “Bush critic" in place, a highly visible one. Doing so also makes Bush appear as if he can be subject to criticism, while all the while he is being pushed towards even more far-out positions that in his gut he would actually like to take, but has not yet taken publicly (e.g., his sudden conversion to the “English-only” versi0on o the old British drinking song know since 184 as the Star Spangled Banner)

5. Snow is not a “newsman." He is a voice of Radical Right-wing Republicanism. Hiring him clearly demonstrates what the Georgites think that “news" is all about --- as made so clear every day by the F"N"C (which I do watch, folks): PROPAGANDA.

The Volkischer Beobachter (the Nazi Party’s daily “newspaper") is right around the corner.

Author’s Note: This column is based in part on “A Commentary on the Tony Snow Job, A BuzzFlash Guest Contribution, (http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/04/con06169.html) that was published on April 29, 2006.

*           Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

**          My short definition of fascism: ““Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you would like to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites,” Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”, and February 10, 2006, “The Georgite Version of ‘Freedom and Democracy’.”)

BUSH IS NOT HITLER, II

Column No. 104 By Steven Jonas, M.D., M.P.H. - May 3, 2006

Last week I noted that as the Georgite machine rumbles towards the installation of frank theocratic fascism in the United States (e.g., see “The Rise of Fascism in America,” Gary Alan Scott, CommonDreams.org, 4/12/06), a controversy rages with increasing intensity: are comparisons claiming that George Bush and Adolf Hitler have much in common valid?  As you know, I have previously published several columns in this space taking the position that they are (e.g., “Fascism and the Georgites,” May 27, 2004; “Comparing Bush and Hitler,” Jan. 27, 2005,” and the recent re-run of my 9/11-Reichstag Fire comparo series).  However, as I noted, recently I have done a good bit of thinking on this subject and I have now come to the conclusion, which may surprise some of you, that such comparisons are unfair.  Indeed Bush is not Hitler.

Last week I published seven examples of differences between the two to prove that case.  In column I present eleven more.

8. Hitler, upon taking power, established a Ministry of Propaganda (MoP) right in the government. True to their ideology, the Georgite MoP is privatized, through the thousands of right-wing religious radio and TV stations, the hundreds of right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts, the Fox”News”Channel, and their “semi-official” (as they say of Al-Ahram in Egypt and the New China News Agency) newspaper, the Washington Times.  There are a couple of exceptions. The Georgites do use government funds to “buy news” at home and abroad, but that’s a small-scale (if growing) operation.  And as of this writing they were about to bring into the government one of their principal privatized MoP mouthpieces, Tony Snow, to be the official White House mouthpiece, an example of cross-over.  But the Georgites (as of yet, anyway) have nothing to rival Goebbels’ official MoP.

9. Hitler’s first foreign military adventure, the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, was a success; as were his second, his intervention in the Spanish Civil War beginning in 1937; his third, the annexation of Austria (the “Anschluss”) in March 1938; his fourth, the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland in Sept. 1938; his fifth, the conquest of the balance of Czechoslovakia with the establishment of a separate fascist Slovakia in March, 1939; his sixth, the conquest of Poland in Sept., 1939; and his seventh, the conquest of France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway, in the late Spring of 1940. His unbeaten success streak ended with these “Lucky Seven” His eighth and ninth foreign military adventures, the Battle of Britain, late 1940, and the invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941, eventually lead to his defeat.

Bush’s first foreign military adventure, the invasion of Afghanistan, did not achieve its principal originally advertised objective, the capture of Osama bin Laden, nor its second, the total destruction of the Taliban, which now, under the still-alive Mullah Omar, appears to be making a significant comeback.  His second, the War on Iraq, is a disaster-in-the-making on a variety of dimensions, and may become a major factor in the downfall of Georgitism, if that eventually happens.

10. Hitler had a muddled approach to religion. He was born a Catholic. Early on in his reign he made an arrangement with the Catholic Church to leave them alone if they left him alone. His own religious beliefs, however, are quite uncertain. He did use the slogan “Gott Mit Uns” (God is with us) for his military. He had strong support among the old Protestant clergy in Germany. He appealed to Christians across the board for his attacks, rhetorical and real, on “Godless Communism.” But there was also the Nazi “Religion of the Blood,” which harked back to the paganism of the German/Nordic founding myths.

Bush is totally politically loyal to and personally believes in U.S. Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism. He believes “God”, as defined by this movement, is personally guiding him. He may be a Millenialist of some sort also, but that is unclear.

11. Hitler created a concentration camp system to imprison German citizen opponents almost immediately upon taking power. Bush may be only just now starting one for the potential imprisonment of US citizen opponents.

12. Hitler faced the worst Depression the world had ever known. Principally by massive re-arming, he got German industry to spend their capital and achieved a decent economic turnaround.

Bush took a flourishing economy with a Federal budget surplus and a declining national debt and put them all into reverse.

13. Hitler left the League of Nations. Bush can say only that the man he sent to the United Nations to represent the United States has only advocated the withdrawal of the US from that body.

14. Hitler’s foreign policy was complex: driven by anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, the drive for more farmland, the destruction of Soviet Communism. To encourage him in achieving the latter goal, until 9/1/39 he had the covert support of the UK and to a lesser extent France. He also focused on the acquisition of adequate oil supplies, primarily to support the German military.

Bush’s foreign policy is in part driven by oil. But unlike Hitler, the motivation is to produce ever-increasing oil company profits. Georgite foreign policy is also driven by the ever-intensifying practice of the major U.S. corporations to export capital, the needs of the Israeli Right, and some vague campaign to establish U.S. “hegemony” around the world. The UK is an ally; France is not.

15. Hitler used both psychological and physical terror to cement his dictatorial powers. Bush so far has used only psychological terror at home (although it appears as if he is training a cadre of physical terror practitioners abroad for possible future use at home).

16. Hitler dealt with his principal rivals/enemies within his own Party by killing them (most notably on the “Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934). So far Bush has dealt with his enemies within his own party only by doing things like threatening to cut off their campaign funds.

17. Hitler acquired support from major German industrialists after his Party had announced their platform/ideology and had begun to implement it. Hitler came first; his industrialist support came second. Bush is the creation of major U.S. industrial interests.

18.  Finally, there is the matter of the Holocaust, and the estimated additional 44,000,000 deaths that resulted from World War II.  Critics of the Bush-is-like-Hitler comparo are quite correct.  Bush has done nothing along these lines.  He hasn’t even come close.  However, to be fair to Bush, one must give him time.  Hitler did not start what became World War II until he had been in power for 6 ½ years, the Holocaust itself in fits and starts another year or so after that.  (The Holocaust was not formally organized until the Wansee Conference of January, 1942.)  Bush has been in power only a little over five years.  And after all, with his threatened use of nuclear weapons and actual planning for their use against Iran, Bush has the potential to destroy civilization around the world as we know it.  However, that’s all in the future.

In conclusion, we have to recognize that there are obviously significant differences between Bush and Hitler. Indeed, based on the examples in this list, Bush is not only not Hitler, but something of a piker by comparison.  However, in deference to those who hold that yes, the two do have much in common, we must give Bush time, just give him time and he may well get there, a few details aside.

BUSH IS NOT HITLER, I

Column No. 103 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 27, 2006

The Georgite political/propaganda machine is rumbling towards the installation of frank theocratic fascism in the United States (e.g., see “The Rise of Fascism in America,” Gary Alan Scott, CommonDreams.org, 4/12/06).  A controversy rages with increasing intensity: are comparisons claiming that George Bush and Adolf Hitler have much in common valid?  Is it appropriate for the subject even to be considered in polite society?  For example, back in March, a Colorado teacher, Jay Bennish, raised the issue in his classroom.  At the time he did so he also asked students if they thought that other countries had the right to poison US tobacco fields in response to the export of tobacco products by the US, called the US invasion of Iraq illegal, and stated that from the Palestinian point of view, it is the Israelis who are the real terrorists.

Part of his presentation was recorded by the son of an ardent devotee of Right-Wing talk radio.  Dad peddled the tape to a number of such sources and finally got one in Colorado to pick it up.  The controversy eventually made its way onto the O’RHannibaugh Privatized Ministry of Propaganda network with, of course, demands for firing the Mr. Bennish for making such statements, in a classroom no less.  Mr. Bennish was suspended by his school district with pay and an investigation undertaken.  During the investigation, a significant number of his students went to the school Administration to defend him.

In the course of the investigation it came out that the tape-recording student must have run out of tape or something, because there was a second part of Mr. Ennis’s presentation that, for reasons that are unclear, just happened not to be recorded.  And so neither was it distributed on that “fair and balanced” Privatized Ministry of Propaganda network.  In that part the teacher told his students that they had an optional assignment: to write about what he had said, analyzing and if they chose to do so, criticizing his remarks.  Any paper, pro or con, that did a decent job of analysis according to standards previously set forth by Mr. Bennish, regardless of the position taken, would get extra credit for the writer.

Subsequently Mr. Bennish was re-instated with the simple instruction that he needed to be sure to follow the district’s guidelines on the presentation of controversial subjects, with no public indication of whether or not the district had concluded that he had ever violated them.  But the point here is, just by raising the Bush-Hitler comparison issue in an obscure Colorado classroom a national firestorm was raised.  It included raging demands for sacking the teacher for having the temerity to even pose such a question to high school students.

While one could consider the process at great length, focusing in the first instance on just what the Georgites mean by “democracy,” in this space we will visit the substance of the matter further.  As you know, I have previously published several TPJ columns taking the position that the comparisons are valid (e.g., “Fascism and the Georgites,” May 27, 2004; “Comparing Bush and Hitler,” Jan. 27, 2005,” and the recent re-run of my 9/11-Reichstag Fire series).  However, I do have to tell you that most recently I have done a good bit of thinking on the matter and I have now come to the conclusion, which may surprise some of you, that such comparisons are unfair.  Indeed Bush is not Hitler.  In the balance of this column and next week’s as well I will present a series of examples to support my new position.

1. Bush had two Time covers, Hitler only one.

2. Hitler obtained an explicit Constitutional Amendment in the German Reichstag, the Enabling Act, to establish his dictatorial powers.  The language was clear and unequivocal, e.g., Article I said in part: “In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government [that is the office of the Reichs Chancellor, Hitler] of the Reich; Article II said in part: “Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat [a body representing the German regions];” Article III said in part: “Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Law Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government. [Articles 68 to 77 stipulated the procedures for enacting legislation in the Reichstag].”

Bush is not developing his dictatorial powers by obtaining a Constitutional Amendment, rather more difficult to secure under the US Constitution than under the Weimar Constitution of Hitler’s time. Rather Bush is using a creative reading of the US Constitution as to what “Commander-in-Chief” means, to start with. Then, he is broadly interpreting a particular (“Use of Force”) resolution of Congress -- one that has no language establishing a dictatorship -- an act of Congress, the USA “Patriot Act” that, itself, violates the Constitution by vitiating the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and is explicitly ignoring the provisions of another act of Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that  among other things requires warrants, secret though they may be, for all searches carried out under its authority.  Bush, unlike Hitler, is not using Constitutional law to establish his dictatorship.  He is just doing it.

3. To obtain the 2/3s majority needed in the Reichstag to obtain passage of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933, Hitler had his private Army, the Sturmabteiliung (“Storm Division,” S.A.) arrest all the Communist deputies who had not left the country when he became Chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 and immediately began hunting down the Communist leadership, arrested or forced the emigration of certain Socialist deputies, had all the Nazi Reichstag deputies dress in S.A. uniforms at the time of the vote, and ringed the hall with other S.A. men.

Bush already has a majority of both Houses of Congress (some possibly elected fraudulently, as he was), his majority in the House of Representatives solidified by an un-Constitutional redistricting in Texas. But Bush has a legislative body that combines docility and impotence.  He doesn’t have to terrorize anyone.  Further, with two possible exceptions, no opposition legislators were killed along the road to the establishment of the right-wing domination of Congress, nor were any forced to emigrate.

4. Hitler used the Reichstag Fire (see my columns of Feb. 16 and 22, 2006) to create a “national emergency” enabling him to obtain dictatorial powers from the Reichstag. He produced documents purporting to show that the German Communist Party set the fire. These were later proven to be forgeries. The fire was clearly set by a deranged person acting alone, just as the Berlin police had told Hitler at the time. Hitler simply took advantage of an event he clearly had nothing to do with.

The book is far from closed on Bush and 9/11. Bush may have just used it, but there is suspicion in many quarters that he either knew something was coming and let it happen, or even played an active part in creating the tragedy (e.g., see the International Conference sponsored by www.911truth.org and the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth www.mujca.com, Chicago, Illinois June 2-4, 2006).

5. The primary racial targets of the both Bush and Hitler are of Semitic origin. But there the similarity ends. For Hitler it was the Jews. For Bush the target is being developed, but does include the Arab members of the Muslim religion, the object of burgeoning Islamophobia.  While Arabs are indeed Semites, Bush is obviously painting with a much broader racialist brush than did Hitler.

6. Hitler came to power with a small, under-armed national military, the Reichswehr. It had only 100,000 men and a paucity of aircraft and heavy weapons.  He built it into what became the world’s most powerful military for a time, the Wehrmacht.  Bush started with the world’s most powerful military and is in the process of running it into the ground.

I hope that it is becoming clear that all these claims of unfairness in making Bush-Hitler comparisons are well taken.  There are just too many non-parallels.  We will continue presenting the evidence to support this position next week, in Part II of this series.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ‘IMMIGRATION PROBLEM’

Column No. 102 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 20, 2006

Now let’s see.  There are about 800,000 legal immigrants into the Untied States every year, and about 500,000 illegal immigrants.  That means that the illegals account for around 40% of the total, legal immigrants accounting for the majority.  The proportion of illegal immigrants to the US population, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Center tells us, has not changed since the mid-1980s (the last time Congress was consumed with the matter, also during a mid-term election year with a lame-duck Republican President in trouble over a foreign policy issue, coincidentally involving Iran, among other countries).   Yet all of a sudden there is a hue and a cry emanating from the Republicans (well, most of them other than the President) about the issue.  Why now, one might ask.

Well, duh, it’s an election year (again) in which this time the Republican prospects are not very good despite the almost total lack of Democratic Party leadership against them and against Georgitism.  So not trusting that even with the lackluster performance of the Democratic Leadership they can still retain their hold on the Congress, what better issue for Republicans to raise in order to mobilize their base than the hot button one of immigration.  (Unless of course it’s “let’s go after the gays,” which I treated in my previous two columns).  As I noted last week, that this was to be a principal election-year strategy for them has been signaled by Cheney’s favorite TV channel (Fox”News”Channel) for some months now.  They have, for example, been featuring such items as the vigilante “Minutemen” (though unarmed) volunteer border patrollers.

But why would the Republicans want to use this particular issue?  After all, the principal supporters in power of illegal immigration are those corporatists who make wide use of (very) cheap illegal immigrant labor who happen to be major financial supporters of Bush.  They are among the very last people who want any change in the present situation.  For in addition to working cheap, they can’t vote, and so can be exploited without fear of political repercussions; for the most part they work hard (so we are told) and will be the last to report unsafe or exploitative working conditions to any authority; and contrary to right-wing propaganda they do pay taxes in the form of sales taxes on the goods they buy and (indirectly) real estate taxes on the property they rent.  So the Bush corporate base likes them.  And Karl Rove knows this.  He also knows something else.

Karl Rove knows that facts matter little to the Georgite base which is trained daily by the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda to ignore them.  Thus reciting the above list to them would mean little.  He also knows how red the immigrant issue red button is.  So he can have it both ways.  He can fan the flames of xenophobia, racism, and class-ism without any worries that the situation will actually change.  Bush gets to appear “reasonable” at the same time his most loyal far-rightist legislative troops get to exploit the issue for all it’s worth.  What a combo!

The rhetoric used by the anti-immigrant crowd is fascinating.  Patrick Buchanan is one of their “intellectual” leaders.  He loves to talk about how immigrants (and he doesn’t seem to distinguish between the legals and the illegals) are “destroying the American tradition,” “undermining American values,” “totally lacking in any knowledge of American history and its meaning” (this latter from a man who routinely refers to the Civil War as the “War Between the States” showing that he hasn’t the foggiest notion of what it was really about --- slavery). “They aren’t Americans,” Pat tells us, and cannot ever “become like us.”  Continuing to admit immigrants is a guarantee that the “nation as we know it” will eventually be destroyed.

This is precisely the language that the jingoistic “Know-Nothings,” White Anglo-Saxon Protestant to their core, used to denounce the Irish immigration of the 1830s (when most of the Irish immigrants happened to be Protestants, but what the hey, it was as unfair to confuse Right-Wingers with facts back then as it is now), 1840s and 1850s (when they were primarily Catholics fleeing from the mis-named “Potato Famine”).  Then from the 1890s to the outbreak of World War I, when the Italian and Jewish immigrations were at their heights, descendants of the earlier Irish immigrants used the same kinds of language against them.  Now two of the most prominent leaders of the anti-immigrant movement are a Congressman Tancredo and a Congressman Sensenbrenner (literal translation from the German: “scythe burner”).  Surely neither WASP nor Irish names.  It is ironic indeed that Buchanan and Hannity and O’Reilly, among the strongest “anti-immigrant” voices, are themselves descended from the immigrant group that was among the most reviled ever to have landed on US shores.

When in 1940 Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a gathering of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a strongly anti-immigration organization at the time (especially in re Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism), he began his address with words “Fellow Immigrants.”  And his Dutch ancestors had arrived in the Hudson Valley in the 17th century, well before those of many of the ladies gathered for his address.  One wonders how many of his audience got the point.  Actually, the only North American inhabitants entitled by history to truthfully use the words “immigrants will destroy the nation as we know it” were the Native Americans, not themselves immigrants but rather first arrivers.  Collectively the European immigrants surely destroyed their nation as they knew it and they were the only ones who encountered no other humans when they first arrived.  As for all of the rest of the ancestors of those of us who live in the US, all together they built the nation as we know it, its wonderful attributes (and there are so many of those) and its worst, as are being brought out in a gradual but unending stream by the Georgites.

The Republicans leading the charge against the Mexicans in particular blame all the domestic ills of our country on them: the failing health care system, the deficient educational system, increased traffic, crime, environmental issues, and etc.  Of course, it is the only time they get near the laundry list of problems that are actually caused by the policies of their own party.  How conveniently blaming the illegal immigrants for their outcomes: privatization, export of capital and with them American jobs, the purposeful shrinkage of the tax base, the ever-widening gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us, the rapidly widening Federal deficits, and the resultant limits being placed on the already minimal levels of national domestic spending.

Let’s look at some possible solutions.  One quick way of dealing with the illegal immigration problem would be to enforce the law against employing undocumented workers.  If the jobs dried up, the illegals would stop coming.  They may be desperate for work, but they are not dumb.  If the word were to get back to Mexico that there are no jobs, the inflow would stop straightaway.  Another way is the Sensenbrenner fence.  Very expensive.  It would take a long time to build.  It would definitely change routes of entry and might even cut down on the numbers somewhat.  A major question to ask about it, however, is: would the illegal immigrants hired by Halliburton to build the fence at the lowest possible cost and highest possible profit then be provided with some form of “amnesty?”

There is one real solution that could work.  I discussed it briefly in my column on Mexico published on TPJ on Jan. 12, 2206.  As I said then: “In an article written by a senior Mexican economist with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, Dr. Ricardo Pasco (The [Miami] Herald Mexico, 12/28/05) I was surprised to learn that only a minority of illegal immigrants from Mexico are unemployed farmers.  The majority are people who have jobs and at least some education but, as Dr. Pascoe told us, simply cannot make enough to support their families as the NAFTA-driven ever-widening income gap in Mexico continues on its un-merry way.  As Dr. Pascoe said: ‘The problem is that wages are very low in Mexico.’  Building a wall is one way, theoretically, to solve the problem for the U.S.  But criminalizing illegal immigration would likely not act as a deterrent (since the vast majority of illegal immigrants don’t get caught and likely wouldn’t even with a wall) and accomplish nothing more than expanding the United States’ already vast prison system, at taxpayer expense.  The best long-term solution for both countries?  Repeal NAFTA so that manufacturing jobs would stay here and profits that the Mexican ruling class does make in Mexico could not so easily be exported and they might have to re-invest in income- and job-producing enterprises at home.”  But of course it was none other than Bill Clinton, whose first big money-men in politics were the Waltons of Wal-Mart, who was the engine behind the passage of NAFTA.  And his DLC still controls the Democratic Party.  So I don’t have a solution that could really be adopted, unless any regime change here were really drastic.

Thus at this point all progressives can do about the illegal immigration problem is tell the truth, expose the lies, propose some reasonable, cost-effective, humane long-term solutions, and most importantly, in my view, use the fact that the issue is being put out there by the Republicans to achieve the “Three D’s:” Distract, Defer, and Diminish the focus of the public’s attention from the truly most critical issues of the day.

A FIREBELL IN THE NIGHT: THE SO-CALLED ‘GAY MARRIAGE’ AMENDMENT

Columns Nos. 99, 100 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 2, 9, 2006

Welcome back everyone.  We at The Political Junkies are delighted to be back and we hope that you, our readers, are happy to have us back.  Much has happened politically during our computer-tech enforced absence, but much has remained the same.  Among the latter is the fact that the Republicans, even when they disagree among themselves on a policy issue (a rare event, to be sure), do their very best to raise policy issues that are far from the most important on the national agenda in real terms.  However, those chosen by the Republicans do serve a very important function for them: Distract, Defer, and Diminish the focus of the public’s attention on the most critical issues of the day: the Georgite War on Iraq, the Georgite War on the Constitution, the Georgite-driven ever-expanding national debt and deficit, the ever expanding loss of living wage jobs in the United States, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the impending Global Warming catastrophe, and so on and so forth.

This month’s 3-D’s issue is immigration.  Sen. Frist has already informed us that the 3-D’s issue for June will be the so-called “Gay Marriage Amendment.”  I have dealt briefly with the immigration problem, its real causes, and only real solution to it in my TPJ column of January 12, 2006 that contained reflections on my then recent trip to Mexico.  (That solution, which centers on the repeal of NAFTA is, of course, totally unobtainable politically, since its original passage was championed by Pres. Clinton and his DLC-Democrats, to say nothing of most Republicans.)  In this present column and the next, I look at the next Republican 3-D’s issue.  It must be understood that these issues are very important for Republicans.  For only if they can manage to keep the political agenda off the major problems facing the country and their responsibility for creating them, maintaining them, and making them worse, can they continue to stay in office (without fixing elections all over the place, of course, but that’s another story).  And so to the subject at hand.

As I said back in December, 2005 when I wrote the primary text for this column, my second column for The Political Junkies appeared on March 4, 2004.  The topic was the so-called “Gay Marriage Amendment” (in reality the Homosexual Discrimination Amendment).  I believe is going to be leading with this one in the next session of Congress.  It will be one of their two domestic wedge issues (the other being immigration of course --- Fox”News” Channel has already given that strategy away) leading into the 2006 Congressional campaign.

Thomas Jefferson used the term “Firebell in the Night,” warning of future bloody conflict over the institution of slavery, in referring to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Among other things, it allowed for expansion of the Peculiar Institution beyond the borders of the original slave states.  I believe that with the “Gay Marriage Amendment” we are now seeing another “Firebell in the Night.”  I believe that the issue is so important that it is worth revisiting.  (Further, the number of people who see my writings each week is significantly larger now than it was back in March, 2004.) By the way, if you think that my columns are long now, you should have seen them back then!  So I have divided the original into two sections, appearing this week and next.

The 2004 Republican Platform calls for the adoption of the so-called "Gay Marriage" Amendment.  It is supported in full voice by the President as well as the RRR Congressional leadership.  There are many, within and outside of the Congress, and certainly not just in the homosexual community, who are opposed of course.  At present, most observers considering it from a critical perspective are using one or more of the following arguments against it: that it violates "States Rights;" that it represents the Politics of Distraction; that it's not "fair," "just," "moral," etc.

I have serious problems with the "States' Rights" argument as one on which progressive forces should rely.  Its origins lie in the pre-Civil War political conflict over the institution of slavery and the post-Civil War conflict over the legal segregation by state law in violation of the 15th Amendment (the original Civil Rights Act) of African-Americans in the South.  Thus, for most of our history it has been used as a basis for fostering white supremacy, racial discrimination, a weak Federal government in the economic realm, and other reactionary policies.  Furthermore, as used politically, the doctrine has often been criticized for being faulty in its reasoning in terms of what the Constitution actually says about the matter. Thus, I feel that it is a weak reed to lean on.  As the reader will see below, certainly I am in full agreement with the second and the third arguments presented above.  However, I will not consider any of these arguments further here.

My primary focus is on the Constitutional aspects of the matter, which are vital in their own right but also can be useful politically. My arguments have to do with the Constitution itself and what the adoption of this amendment would mean for it and our future as a nation.  Indeed even were the amendment never to pass in its present form, its introduction, and its support by a President who took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution, are chilling, one might say terrifying, events for persons who revere the Constitution and the values that it, in its present form, represents.

I.        Marriage in this country is a bimodal institution.

In promoting their position, not always openly the Republican Religious Right is using as justification for the amendment the religious dictums of a particular English translation of the Bible (from Latin from Greek and for the Old Testament from Latin from Greek from Aramaic from Classical Hebrew), known as The King James Version.  (The text they use is, among other things notoriously homophobic.) In so doing, they want to define all marriage as a solely religious matter, with their particular religious view of “marriage” as a social institution that involves two members of the opposite sex only being controlling.

However, even if one believes that what the RRR says the Bible says about any subject should or should not become part of the law in our nation, it happens that in the US marriage is also a civil institution.  It is covered in considerable detail by the civil law in each of the 50 states.  Many people now get married without any religious aspects to their wedding.  And for any marriage to be legal, wherever and by whoever performed, a civil license is required to make it legal. The provisions of that license are defined in the civil law of the jurisdiction in which the marriage takes place.  Furthermore, when two people get married in the civil realm, they take on certain responsibilities and obligations concerning both the marriage and its potential dissolution that are defined by law.  Thus there clearly is a civil institution of marriage that has nothing to do with religion.

Presently there is nothing in the Constitution or the law that prevents any church from taking the position that it will not perform same-sex marriages.  And that is how it should be, under the 1st amendment.  However, because it defines marriage in the religious context, this amendment would have the effect of eliminating civil marriage in the United States, making it a purely religious matter.  Finally, here, since marriage presently does exist in the civil as well as the religious realm, under the Constitution the “Equal Protection” clause of the 14th amendment indeed does entitle any two people to get married in the civil realm in the state in which they reside.  (Sect. 1 “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”)   The RRR knows this very well.  When they attack “a few judges” for holding that gay marriage is required under the Constitution, what they are really attacking is the Constitution itself.  For they know that, unless they get this amendment passed, or unless Bush is able to finish packing the Supreme Court with Republican Religious Rightists, even this Supreme Court will eventually rule all of the existing state anti-gay marriage laws unconstitutional.

II.                   The issue is not one of "States' Rights," that is "Rights" that the states can independently wield against Federal authority outside of the confines of  what is granted to them by the Constitution.

The issue is very much one of the historical "Police Power," which arose centuries ago in English law.  The Police Power covers such local government functions as policing, sanitation, pure water supply, zoning, education, and yes, civil marriage.  While it is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, it is generally considered to be among the body of powers delegated to the States by the Tenth Amendment and in historical practice has been treated that way since the earliest days of the Republic.  This amendment would remove authority over civil marriage from the states.  What local authorities might be next, one might ask?

III.                  The Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Judge Bork (you remember him, Scalito before there was either one of them) likes to refer to the Ninth, very inconvenient for reactionaries and Right-Wing “strict constructionists,” as a "blot upon the Constitution."  The 9th is very much in play when it comes to the matter of same-sex civil marriage.  Actually, as regular readers of this column know, I am a “strict constructionist” myself. (See my column TPJ 75, Nov. 8, 2005, “Let’s Hear It for Original Intent.”) I take such Constitutional elements as the (largely ignored) Preamble (which provides a very broad statement of purpose for the Federal government) and the Bill of Rights very seriously and literally.  I also consider that the ambiguity so widespread in the Constitution was put there purposely by the Founders.

On reading the plain language of the Constitution it becomes clear that it was their Original Intent that within the limits set by its specific parts and its specified requirements for actions and non-actions, the Constitution could grow and change with the Republic and its people. One must note that judicial review itself, which the Right used to select the current President, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.  It was an invention, an invention based on legal logic to be sure, but an invention nevertheless of Chief Justice John Marshall and his like-minded colleagues on the Court at the beginning of the 19th century.  And so, in addition to the specifics of the 14th, we have the 9th, which disposes of the argument that just because a given right is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, it does not, to be defined to be sure, reside with the people.

IV.                The Georgites have been attacking the whole concept of an independent judiciary since they took office.  They have done this both directly and by appointing to the bench judges who do not believe in it, but rather believe that the judiciary should be subservient to the Executive Branch (as long as that branch is in the hands of the Right Wing of course.)  (See my Schiavo Case columns, especially those of April 14 and 21,2004.).

When a reactionary Supreme Court gutted large parts of the New Deal back in the 1930s, using a specific interpretation of the vaguely written Interstate Commerce Clause, in opposition to the “will of the people,” the Right was all for that (and still very much is).  Bush has made a point of linking his support of this amendment to the role of "a few activist judges."  "Activist judge" in the Georgite vocabulary means "any judge who renders an opinion on the meaning of the Constitution that does not agree with ours."

V.                  The introduction of this proposed amendment also recognizes, as I said above, that unless they were to get full control of the Supreme Court, that that body reading the 14th, would eventually have to rule that gays are entitled to marriage, not just   “civil union,” under the (civil) marriage laws of each and every state.

The original Constitution discriminated against one group of people, the African-American slaves (and did not recognize the existence of another, the Native Americans).  Otherwise, it promoted rights, not denied them.  It took a Civil War to eliminate that original written discrimination and then another century of struggle before the meaning of the 15th Amendment, the Original Voting and Civil Rights Act, was actually put into enforceable law.  This new amendment would reintroduce into the Constitution formal discrimination against one group of people, based on who they are, what their nature is, as people, not anything they might have done that violates laws other than those on the books that already discriminate against homosexuals.

VI.        While many Republicans are racists, many are not.

The Party does have its Southern Strategy that is based in racism.  However, that force is gradually losing its political utility, especially as the nation becomes darker skinned and more multi-cultural. Since the time of the Great Depression and the New Deal, and now especially that the Cold War is nothing but a memory, the Right has relied on racism as its base for gaining and maintaining political power. With the political utility of racism possibly diminishing for the short term, it is clear that certain Right-wing forward planners have recognized the need to target a new group against which discrimination could be rallied for political purposes.  Who better for their purposes than the homosexuals?

In 1995 none other than Newt Gingrich said, when addressing the issue of AIDS (The Freedom Writer, “Inside Glen Eyrie Castle,” August, 1994, p. 1): “AIDS is a real crisis.  It is something you ought to be paying attention to, to study.  AIDS will do more to direct America (sic) back to the cost of violating traditional values, and to make America (sic) aware of the danger of certain behavior than anything we’ve ever seen.  For us, it’s a great rallying cry (emphasis added).”

VII.  The demolition of the Wall of Separation between Church and State

One could see a reactionary, Georgite Supreme Court using this amendment and its "original intent" as they would interpret it, to justify such laws under the Constitution.  They could do this simply because the Constitution would now (literally) discriminate against a particular group of people, based on who they are, using a certain set of religious criteria.  (Just see the Dred Scott decision, the only one that the strict constructionist Chief Justice Roger Taney felt he could make under the Constitution as then written.)  Since the basis of the definition of marriage the amendment uses is religious, not civil, by putting it into the Constitution, Jefferson’s "Wall of Separation" would essentially be demolished.  Again, by its mere introduction of the amendment the Republican Religious Right has signaled the beginning of its formal assault on that Wall.

VIII.             Bush said that the definition of "marriage" is based on its ''cultural religious and natural'' roots.

Not that we could fairly expect this dumb and ignorant man to know any better, but it is of course simply not true that the definition of marriage is historically immutable.  In the 19th century, it meant that the woman became the property of the man and that her property did too.  In the Middle Ages there was "droit de seigneur," the right of the feudal lord to have the first night with any woman any of his male serfs married.  Perhaps they are thinking about re-establishing that, the qualification for "seigneur" status to be something like a minimum of $100,000.00 per year to the Georgite campaign fund.

IX.                I don't want to go too far out here, but this could be the first step on the road to outlawing homosexuality.

The Republican Religious Right holds that being a homosexual is a matter of choice.  Focus on the Family’s Jim Dobson rails away on that one incessantly.  As Trent Lott once told us when he was Republican Majority Leader and the third leading Republican politician the country, it is after all a sin (and that because the Bible, at least the particular translation that Lott reads, says so.  In that regard, one must ask if God spoke English, a language not around when he supposedly laid down the “inerrant” text of his thought.  Much more importantly, one must ask why should those of us who do not believe that the Bible is “the word of God” and even if it were, why should it govern the behavior of those of us who do not think that its dictates and dictums should be given the force of legal authority over any person other than those individuals who want to follow them.)

In Nazi Germany, before the Yellow Star came into wide usage following the passage in 1935 of the Nuremberg Laws that put discrimination against Jews into the German legal code, known homosexuals (other than those in the upper reaches of the Nazi Party such as Ernst Roehm, Commander of the SA until his murder by Hitler for political, not sexual discrimination, reasons, on The Night of the Long Knives, June 30, 1934) were required to wear a Pink Triangle.  Only then did the Nuremberg Laws come.

Conclusion.

I believe that this battle must be fought on these grounds, not only on fairness or state rights.  This amendment has meaning for everyone, because if the homosexuals are first, who could then be next to have the rights that they presently have under the explicit elements of the Bill of Rights, under the 9th, and under the 14th eliminated?  Why, for example, could the next step not be an amendment defining marriage solely as a religious institution and perhaps specifying which religion(s)?  Further, if it were first the gays in Germany, then the Jews, if the gays were to be the first to be Constitutionally discriminated against, I just wonder who would be next.

Let us not limit the argument simply to the rights of homosexual American citizens, as American citizens (which argument should of course be used as well).  Let us remember the words of Pastor Niemoller in Germany which went something like: “In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me --- and by that time no one was left to speak up for me.”

In 1820, an Act of Congress called the Missouri Compromise permitted the expansion of the institution of slavery beyond its original boundaries.  Thomas Jefferson referred to that Act as a “Firebell in the Night,” warning of future bloody conflict over the institution of slavery.  For our time, the mere introduction of this amendment, a rallying cry for the Republican Religious Right with enormous implications for the nature of our society, with all of its grave potential consequences for the future of Constitutional democracy in the United States, supported as it is by the present President of the United States, present as it is in the 2004 National Platform of his Party, should be regarded as well as a “Firebell in the Night.”

Author’s Note: Well after I prepared this revisit to the March, 2004 column, back in Dec., 2005, the following item appeared on CNN news: “From Ed Henry, Feb. 13, 2006. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday he plans a vote in early June on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, a move likely to fail but sure to spark a fiery election-year debate. Frist, a Tennessee Republican, told CNN he's planning the vote for the week of June 5 because he wants to deal with the issue "as early as possible" before the Senate calendar fills up in a busy election year. Frist said he doesn't know how many votes the ban will receive, but Republican and Democratic aides privately acknowledged the vote will probably fall far short of the 67-vote supermajority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.”

A FIREBELL IN THE NIGHT: THE SO-CALLED ‘GAY MARRIAGE’ AMENDMENT, II

Column No. 100 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH APRIL 6, 2006

As I noted last week, my second column for The Political Junkies appeared on March 4, 2004. The topic was the so-called “Gay Marriage Amendment” (in reality the Homosexual Discrimination Amendment).  It has become quite obvious that the Republican Religious Right (RRR) will be making much of this one in the current session of Congress.  It is one of their two domestic wedge issues (the other being immigration of course --- Fox"News"Channel gave that strategy away very early in the year) leading into the 2006 Congressional campaign.  This is the second of a two-part edited re-run of the original column.

IV.                The Georgites have been attacking the whole concept of an independent judiciary since they took office.  They have done this both directly and by appointing to the bench judges who do not believe in it, but rather believe that the judiciary should be subservient to the Executive Branch (as long as that branch is in the hands of the Right Wing of course.)  (See my Schiavo Case columns, especially those of April 14 and 21,2004.).

When a reactionary Supreme Court gutted large parts of the New Deal back in the 1930s, using a specific interpretation of the vaguely written Interstate Commerce Clause, in opposition to the “will of the people,” the Right was all for that (and still very much is).  Bush has made a point of linking his support of this amendment to the role of "a few activist judges."  "Activist judge" in the Georgite vocabulary means "any judge who renders an opinion on the meaning of the Constitution that does not agree with ours."

V.                  The introduction of this proposed amendment also recognizes, as I said above, that unless they were to get full control of the Supreme Court, that that body reading the 14th, would eventually have to rule that gays are entitled to marriage, not just   “civil union,” under the (civil) marriage laws of each and every state.

The original Constitution discriminated against one group of people, the African-American slaves (and did not recognize the existence of another, the Native Americans).  Otherwise, it promoted rights, not denied them.  It took a Civil War to eliminate that original written discrimination and then another century of struggle before the meaning of the 15th Amendment, the Original Voting and Civil Rights Act, was actually put into enforceable law.  This new amendment would reintroduce into the Constitution formal discrimination against one group of people, based on who they are, what their nature is, as people, not anything they might have done that violates laws other than those on the books that already discriminate against homosexuals.

VI.        While many Republicans are racists, many are not.

The Party does have its Southern Strategy that is based in racism.  However, that force is gradually losing its political utility, especially as the nation becomes darker skinned and more multi-cultural. Since the time of the Great Depression and the New Deal, and now especially that the Cold War is nothing but a memory, the Right has relied on racism as its base for gaining and maintaining political power. With the political utility of racism possibly diminishing for the short term, it is clear that certain Right-wing forward planners have recognized the need to target a new group against which discrimination could be rallied for political purposes.  Who better for their purposes than the homosexuals?

In 1995 none other than Newt Gingrich said, when addressing the issue of AIDS (The Freedom Writer, “Inside Glen Eyrie Castle,” August, 1994, p. 1): “AIDS is a real crisis.  It is something you ought to be paying attention to, to study.  AIDS will do more to direct America (sic) back to the cost of violating traditional values, and to make America (sic) aware of the danger of certain behavior than anything we’ve ever seen.  For us, it’s a great rallying cry (emphasis added).”

VII.  The demolition of the Wall of Separation between Church and State

One could see a reactionary, Georgite Supreme Court using this amendment and its "original intent" as they would interpret it, to justify such laws under the Constitution.  They could do this simply because the Constitution would now (literally) discriminate against a particular group of people, based on who they are, using a certain set of religious criteria.  (Just see the Dred Scott decision, the only one that the strict constructionist Chief Justice Roger Taney felt he could make under the Constitution as then written.)  Since the basis of the definition of marriage the amendment uses is religious, not civil, by putting it into the Constitution, Jefferson’s "Wall of Separation" would essentially be demolished.  Again, by its mere introduction of the amendment the Republican Religious Right has signaled the beginning of its formal assault on that Wall.

VIII.             Bush said that the definition of "marriage" is based on its ''cultural religious and natural'' roots.

Not that we could fairly expect this dumb and ignorant man to know any better, but it is of course simply not true that the definition of marriage is historically immutable.  In the 19th century, it meant that the woman became the property of the man and that her property did too.  In the Middle Ages there was "droit de seigneur," the right of the feudal lord to have the first night with any woman any of his male serfs married.  Perhaps they are thinking about re-establishing that, the qualification for "seigneur" status to be something like a minimum of $100,000.00 per year to the Georgite campaign fund.

IX.                I don't want to go too far out here, but this could be the first step on the road to outlawing homosexuality.

The Republican Religious Right holds that being a homosexual is a matter of choice.  Focus on the Family’s Jim Dobson rails away on that one incessantly.  As Trent Lott once told us when he was Republican Majority Leader and the third leading Republican politician the country, it is after all a sin (and that because the Bible, at least the particular translation that Lott reads, says so.  In that regard, one must ask if God spoke English, a language not around when he supposedly laid down the “inerrant” text of his thought.  Much more importantly, one must ask why should those of us who do not believe that the Bible is “the word of God” and even if it were, why should it govern the behavior of those of us who do not think that its dictates and dictums should be given the force of legal authority over any person other than those individuals who want to follow them.)

In Nazi Germany, before the Yellow Star came into wide usage following the passage in 1935 of the Nuremberg Laws that put discrimination against Jews into the German legal code, known homosexuals (other than those in the upper reaches of the Nazi Party such as Ernst Roehm, Commander of the SA until his murder by Hitler for political, not sexual discrimination, reasons, on The Night of the Long Knives, June 30, 1934) were required to wear a Pink Triangle.  Only then did the Nuremberg Laws come.

Conclusion.

I believe that this battle must be fought on these grounds, not only on fairness or state rights.  This amendment has meaning for everyone, because if the homosexuals are first, who could then be next to have the rights that they presently have under the explicit elements of the Bill of Rights, under the 9th, and under the 14th eliminated?  Why, for example, could the next step not be an amendment defining marriage solely as a religious institution and perhaps specifying which religion(s)?  Further, if it were first the gays in Germany, then the Jews, if the gays were to be the first to be Constitutionally discriminated against, I just wonder who would be next.

Let us not limit the argument simply to the rights of homosexual American citizens, as American citizens (which argument should of course be used as well).  Let us remember the words of Pastor Niemoller in Germany which went something like: “In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me --- and by that time no one was left to speak up for me.”

In 1820, an Act of Congress called the Missouri Compromise permitted the expansion of the institution of slavery beyond its original boundaries.  Thomas Jefferson referred to that Act as a “Firebell in the Night,” warning of future bloody conflict over the institution of slavery.  For our time, the mere introduction of this amendment, a rallying cry for the Republican Religious Right with enormous implications for the nature of our society, with all of its grave potential consequences for the future of Constitutional democracy in the United States, supported as it is by the present President of the United States, present as it is in the 2004 National Platform of his Party, should be regarded as well as a “Firebell in the Night.”

Author’s Note: Well after I prepared this revisit to the March, 2004 column, back in Dec., 2005, the following item appeared on CNN news: “From Ed Henry, Feb. 13, 2006. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday he plans a vote in early June on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, a move likely to fail but sure to spark a fiery election-year debate. Frist, a Tennessee Republican, told CNN he's planning the vote for the week of June 5 because he wants to deal with the issue "as early as possible" before the Senate calendar fills up in a busy election year. Frist said he doesn't know how many votes the ban will receive, but Republican and Democratic aides privately acknowledged the vote will probably fall far short of the 67-vote supermajority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.”