DEMOCRATIC IDEAS, IX: "LET’S HEAR IT FOR STRICT CONSTRUCTION (V. 3), PART 1"

Column No. 117 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - August 3, 2006

The Georgite mission of Constitutional destruction is now out in the open through a variety of revelations.  Serious concern with it is no longer the sole province of the Left.  Mickey Edwards is a former member of the House Republican leadership, national chair of the American Conservative Union, and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation.  In the July 31/Augst 7, 2006 issue of The Nation (!, p. 5), he said: “[Bush has shown] deliberate disregard of a law prohibiting electronic surveillance of US citizens without a court-ordered warrant. . . . [The] issue at stake is . . .  the continued viability of the separation of powers, the central tenet in America’s system of constrained government. . . .  The concentration of power in the hands of a single chief executive, whether President or King, is an outcome neither the left nor the right should welcome.  But with a President who assumes that all important decisions are his to make, . . . that may well be where we are headed.”  Unless, that is, the Georgites are headed off, and fairly quickly too.

Since that article was published, a bipartisan task force of the American Bar Association issued a strong critique of Bush’s extra-Constitutional “signing statements” system. In my view, a key to Democratic victory in November and again in 2008 (if Republican cheating can possibly be overcome) is putting the restoration of Constitutional Democracy front and center as an election issue, in terms of how the President’s depredations of it AFFECT YOU.  The thoughts and observations presented here are offered in support of that position.

The Republican Religious Right (RRR) likes to tell us that Constitutional jurisprudence as conducted by the nation’s courts has been all wrong since the time the Supreme Court started coming around to the support of the New Deal in 1938.  This jurisprudence has, they tell us, been dominated by “activist,” “liberal” judges who just “impose their own views on the law, in violation of everything good and sound.”  What is needed in applying the Constitution to the law, policy, and policy-making, according to the RRR, is a return to what they call the “Doctrine of Strict Constructionism.”  (The term “Original Intent” is also used by them.)  This Doctrine can be defined as taking the Constitution literally, as assuming that its words have a plain meaning and that they should be followed in applying it to both the law and the structure and functions of government that it describes and defines.  A bad idea, no?  Well, in my view, no.  It is actually a very good idea as I hope to illustrate as we move through this analysis, and actually one that the RRR ignores completely.

Let us begin with an examination of the views of Justice Antonin Scalia on the matter.  The RRR in general and Pres, Bush in particular hold him up as their primary avatar of this Doctrine.  So just how does Scalia formulate it?  In the July and August issues of Inquirer, its Editor/Publisher Mr. Gerry Dantone considered Scalia’s position on the primacy of “God” and organized religion in public life and what its relationship to the law should be.  Proceeding from that foundation, it is useful to examine how Scalia himself views the Constitution, and indeed how he applies the Doctrine of Strict Constructionism to it.  As Mr. Dantone showed, Scalia holds that “God” and organized religion should be at the center of public life, of government, and of Constitutional interpretation.  Examining his many speeches, writings, and Supreme Court opinions on various aspects of this subject, it will come as a surprise to many observers that it is clear from his own words that in fact Scalia himself does not follow the Doctrine of Strict Constructionism. How can that possibly be, you might ask.  He just beats the drum on the subject, doesn’t he?  Well, in his verbiage, yes.  In his practice, no, as illustrated by the following examples.

In relation to the Constitution and its interpretation, the most important indicator of Scalia’s non-adherence to the Doctrine is his oft-state belief in something he calls “Natural Law,” standing above the Constitution.  For Scalia (as documented in the Dantone articles referred to above) “Natural Law” means “God’s Law.”  For a further example, consider the following words of the Justice, as quoted by Sean Wilentz ("From Justice Scalia: A Chilling Vision of Religion's Authority in America," New York Times, July 8, 2003).  Wilentz wrote: “Beginning with a quote from St. Paul as his thoughts are represented in the New Testament, Scalia had this to say about the subject (2002):  ‘For there is no power but of God [St. Paul is said to have said]; the powers that be are ordained of God. . . The Lord repaid -- did justice -- through his minister, the state . . . [This was the consensus] of Christian or religious thought regarding the powers of the state… That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy . . .’ ”

In his book Big Lies (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2003, p. 99), Joe Conason notes: “Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic and Bush’s favorite Supreme Court justice, declared in 2002 that ‘government derives its moral authority from God’ and acts as the ‘minister of God.’ Acknowledging that such theories of divine dispensation conflict with democratic ideals, Scalia added rather ominously: ‘The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it effectively.’  Scalia’s medieval view of government as divinely ordained, rather than as the expression of popular sovereignty, is utterly foreign to the founding concept of the United States.”  As well as to, as best as I can make it out (and perhaps I have missed something), both the Original Intent, of say James Madison, a lead author of the body of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, a lead author of the first Ten Amendments, and the plain language of the document.

Then consider that more recently, Justice Scalia has come out with an even more original interpretation of the “Doctrine of Strict Constructionism.”  In a speech given in Switzerland in March, 2006 (“Scalia Unplugged,” The Progress Report, March 27, 2006) the Justice allowed that he had already pre-judged the Hamdan case on whether non-US citizen Guantanamo detainees have any protections under the Geneva Conventions.  Since they are the subjects of treaties to which the US is a party, the latter are part of the US Constitution.

Referring to Mr. Hamdan, Scalia told his Swiss audience that “if he was captured by my army on a battlefield that [referring to Gitmo and indefinite detention without any rights] is where he belongs.  I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I’m not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial.  I mean it’s crazy.”  These are the words of a Justice who regularly accuses his colleagues on the Bench of reading things about personal rights and liberties under the Bill of Rights into the Constitution pursuant to “personal whim.”

Obviously he feels that doing so is taking gross liberties with the document because the exact wording of a certain right or liberty is not in it. At the same time, according to him making judgments about the Constitutionality of an Executive Branch action based upon the fact that his son was being shot at in Afghanistan is being a Strict Constructionist, even though on very careful examination I for one cannot find in the Constitution any words sanctioning the use of such a criterion for making judicial decisions.

Thus in practice Scalia goes against his own words. For nowhere in the Constitution are any such thoughts or principles, grand or picayune, to be found, either in its plain language or in any conceivable interpretation of it. He has told us on numerous occasions that there are no “inalienable rights of man,” for the Framers the basis of Constitutional Law.  According to Scalia there are only rights that are granted by God.  Since God does not often speak to us directly, in practice that means any individual rights are only those granted by God’s representatives on Earth, in accordance with what they think God’s wishes are (that is unless He or She speaks to such representatives, like Antonin Scalia or George Bush perhaps, in private).  "Natural Law," the “law(s) of God,” are thus whatever Church authority, such as Scalia’s apparent favorite, the Pope, or (heaven forfend) Scalia himself, happens to tell us they are.  In reality, this, that is some “Natural Law” standing above the Constitution, is nothing more or less than the rule of man, not law.  Again, although I may have missed it, I cannot find anything like Scalia’s jurisprudence anywhere in the Constitution. Nor, by the way, can I find the word “God.”  And this, George Bush, Antonin Scalia and the rest of the Republican Religious Right, tell us is “Strict Constructionism.”

To be continued.

_________

Note to the reader: On September 8, 2005 TPJ ran an earlier version of this column.  A revised version of it was published in the November issue of the Long Island Inquirer (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/li/index.html), the monthly publication of the Long Island (NY) Secular Humanists.  With their kind permission, parts of that version are used in what has become a three-part TPJ series.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE?

Column No. 116 Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 27, 2006

The Supreme Court decision in the Hamdan case concerned the Bush Administration’s use of specially designed “military commissions,” not previously defined by U.S. law or the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, at the prison camp at Guantanamo. The rules of these “commissions” deny the accused of any element of due process under either the U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, of which the U.S. is a signatory. The Supreme Court told the Bush Administration that it must abide by the Geneva Conventions, for they are part of the Constitution (see Article VI). The Court said that the President cannot decide on the advice of his Counsel (now the Attorney General) that those Conventions are "quaint" and then choose to ignore them at whim. Nor can Congress draft rather loosely some piece of legislation appearing to give the President the power to do so. Congress must abide by the Constitution too.  A victory for progressives and the fight to preserve Constitutional Democracy in our beloved country?  Not so fast.

Paraphrasing the title of a famous 1966 British film starring the then debonair romantic lead Michael Caine (this brilliant actor still represents the height of the debonair, even when playing the butler in Batman Returns) and Shelley Winters, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”  Well, with the Georgites it is well known by now that, as Little Miss Buttercup sings to Captain Corcoran in Act II of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “H.M.S. Pinafore,” “Things are Seldom What they Seem.”  On July 11, 2006, the Deputy Defense Secretary told the Senate Judiciary Committee that from now on the DOD is going to comply with both the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan and the Geneva Conventions as written (The New York Times, "White House Says Terror Detainees Have Basic Geneva Rights," July 12, 2006, p. A20.) No more of those nasty (and they are nasty) Military Commissions. Ah yes. But then at the same hearing, one Daniel Dell'Orto, the DOD principal deputy general counsel says "We would ask this body to render its approval for the system as currently configured" (same ref.). And on July 13 the Times reported that "Administration Prods Congress To Curb the Rights of Detainees" (NYT, July 13, 2006, p. 1).

As The Times noted in its lead editorial of July 16, 2006 entitled “The Real Agenda”: “This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since [Hamdan]. . . . For one brief, shining moment, it appeared that the administration realized it had met a [Constitutional] check that it could not simply ignore. . . . But by week’s end it was clear that the president’s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush’s illegal actions . . . . As for the Geneva Conventions, [the] administration . . . . want[s] to scrap the international consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity. . . . The most embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a century, was too vague. Which part of ‘civilized peoples,’ ‘judicial guarantees’ or ‘humiliating and degrading treatment’ do they find confusing?”

Then on July 17, 2006, in his Times column entitled “The Definition of Tyranny,” Bob Herbert had this to say: “Congress is dithering. . . .as the administration of George W. Bush systematically trashes such fundamental American values as justice, due process, respect for human rights and submission to the rule of law. . . . In the kangaroo courts that the administration concocted to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a defendant could be prevented from seeing the evidence against him, would not have the right to attend his own trial and would not have the right to appeal the sentence to a civilian court. . . . The court’s decision brought into sharp relief the importance of one of the most fundamental aspects of American government, the separation of powers. Checks and balances. Mr. Bush has tried to scrap the very idea of checks and balances. . . . Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion in the Hamdan case, referred to a seminal quote from James Madison. The entire quote is as follows: ‘The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.’ ”

But then one must go on to ask, why are the Georgites so intent on getting around the Geneva Conventions? Is it because doing so will help "fight terror" most effectively? There is no evidence of that coming from the Georgites. Is it that they have a bunch of highly dangerous folks, most of whom could be easily proven guilty of high crimes as well as misdemeanors down at Gitmo? Well, no. It has been leaked on more than one occasion from a variety of sources that the vast majority of the unfortunates being held at Gitmo are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it thus that the Georgites know that if these folks were granted a fair trial most of them would have to be released and the DOD would have egg all over its face? Well, yes. But that is still not the reason, in my view. Their spin machine, lead by the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda, could handle that one, one, two, and three.

What the Georgites are now in the process of doing is confirming their position that as long as the President says that he is "fighting terrorism" he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants to whenever he wants to do it. The legislation on how to handle Gitmo-type prisoners as so far drafted supposedly meets the Supreme Court's Hamdan requirements. But it doesn’t (Center for American Progress: The Progress Report, July 18, 2006, “NATIONAL SECURITY: The Specter of Compromise”). In classic Georgite fashion it says that it is abiding by the Geneva Conventions, while it is violating them. It says that the President will abide by the limits on his power prescribed by Article II of the Constitution, when it does anything but.

Thus it confirms the President's claim that he can violate the Constitution whenever he pleases to do so under some totally imaginary "Commander-in-Chief" powers. (In Article II, the Founders were very explicit about what the President's powers were and were not to be. If they had wanted to say that in his role as Commander-in-Chief he could violate any provision of the Constitution he wanted to as long as he deemed it necessary, they would have just given him that power. They didn't. Hey, who is an "Original Constructionist" now?) By the time the matter gets back to the Supreme Court, first of all Roberts will be voting, and second of all it is highly likely that at least one of the liberals will have been replaced, for one reason or another. And then the Georgites will have their equivalent of the Hitlerite Enabling Act of 1933 which gave that person the power to over-ride the German Constitution whenever he pleased to do so.

And so, well beyond Gitmo and violating the Geneva Conventions provisions of the Constitution explicitly, why are the Georgites trying so hard to get around the Constitutional system of checks and balances?  And why do the Georgites want to do away with the most central element in the Constitution concerning how governing is to be conducted and how government should operate?  Why are they, in Bob Herbert’s words, absolutely intent on establishing tyranny right here at home?  To deal with "terrorism?" Well, as pointed out above, hardly. To have the President’s “hands untied” so that he can deal directly and most effectively and efficiently with such major national problems as the uncontrolled export of US capital and with it US jobs, the Hurricane Katrinas, the rapid degradation of our domestic environment, global warming, massive government corruption?  Well, hardly.

In fact, there is an increasing amount of opposition among Americans of whatever political stripe, except Right-wing Christian Fundamentalism, to all the major Georgite policies, on the War, on the economy, on the environment, on global warming, on corruption, on the very nature of government and its functions.  Especially if the Georgites continue to steal elections, that opposition could become seriously organized, it could become seriously militant, it could become seriously dangerous to the continued existence of Georgite authoritarianism.  As Winston Churchill once said: “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist" (courtesy of International Clearinghouse, emailtom@coxnet, 7-12-06). And you thought that you weren't labelable as a "terrorist," didn't you? See you in the camps, folks. And that's what it's all about, Alfie.

______

Author’s note:  This column is based in part on a Comment of mine that appeared on BuzzFlash, on July 14, 2006, under the same title (http://www.buzzflash.com/jonas/06/07/jon06012.htm).

DEMOCRATIC IDEAS, VIII: LET’S PLAY CAPTURE THE FLAG

Column No. 115 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 19, 2006

I published the original version of this column on the Weblog of my dear friend and colleague, Michael Carmichael, the European Editor of The Political Junkies.net, The Moving Planet Blog, on July 4, 2006 (http://www.planetarymovement.org/blog/2006/07/dr-js-short-short-shot-no-30-citizens.html).   I thought to expand the text and share the ideas with you here.

On July 2, 2006, the important, honored progressive American historian Howard Zinn published an essay entitled “Put away the flags” ("The Progressive" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13823.htm). He began his essay by saying:

“On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.”

What he says about nationalism in its militant variety, is certainly true, sadly true. Until the advent of Nazi nationalism, the power, militarism, and brutality of certain organized religions over the course of history for the past two millennia or so caused more death, destruction, and human suffering than any other force our species could muster.  Nazi nationalism of course outdid militant religion.  And while militant religion is now making a comeback in its bid to once again become the number one destroyer, militant nationalism is still a grave danger to the future of our species. Nevertheless, I think that a great mistake that progressives have made is to let our own militant nationalists, in our time led by the Republican Religious Right and the Georgites, take over so many symbols of our nation and nationhood.

For symbols are just that, symbols. Symbols have meaning only when it is given to them by people. A single symbol can be given a wide variety of different meanings, over time. For example, the original swastika (svastika in Sanskrit) was an ancient Indian good luck symbol, used by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Tibetans going back thousands of years.  Further, the counterclockwise version used by the Nazis is also the letter “G” in the medieval Northern European Runic Script. It appears as well in ancient Norse culture, associated with the God of Thunder.  It was used thus used by air forces of both Latvia and Finland when they gained independence after the First World War. The most prominent armed force to use it was of course the Nazi Wehrmacht, the Nazis using it as both a military and a civilian symbol, conveniently mixing the two just as other proto-fascist administrations are attempting to do.  The Nazis themselves called it the Hakenkreutz (“hooked cross”), not the swastika.

But what of the symbols of our great nation? Why does our flag have to mean militant, militaristic Christian-Rightist Republicanism?  Only because we progressives have let them make it so.  Yes, the processes that lead the thirteen original States to become fifty have in part been one of often bloody conquest.  But it has also been one of the spread of the ideas that were at the center of the formation of our nation across our part of the North American Continent.  On the Fourth of July as we battle against the onslaught of Georgite theocratic fascism I felt that it was important to recall the most important words of our Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of an earlier King George: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,”

Yes, folks, according to the founding document of our great nation, governments are instituted among men to secure those rights with which they endowed by their Creator.  (And that “creator” can be whatever one thinks it is.  If the Congress had wanted to use the word “God,” they would have.  But they chose a word that theists of whatever stripe and non-theists alike can be comfortable with.)  Governments are not there to submerge freedom of thought and expression, or to line their own pockets, or to destroy the commons, or pursue foreign wars on their own authority.  The Declaration is about what we, not our opponents, stand for.  One of its most important symbols is our flag.  We have let them take it.  It is time to get it back.

Further, we have let them take over the Pledge of Allegiance, because in the 1950s an earlier right-wing Republican Congress, presaging the present Republican-Christian Alliance, artificially added the words “under God” to the original.  But the last line of the Pledge is “with liberty and justice for all.”  Isn’t that what the United States at its best is all about?  Does not, in fact, “liberty and justice for all” trump “under God?”  Yet we have let the Pledge become the property of those who would precisely deny “liberty and justice” to any and all Americans who do not share their political and religious beliefs nor their ethnic heritages.

Our national anthem concludes with the vision of our flag waving “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”  One can rightfully complain that the tune of the old English drinking song that Francis Scott Key used at his moment of inspiration, ranging over two octaves, is virtually unsingable.  But even though it is hard to sing we should not have let it too become a symbol of militant, militaristic Republicanism. Why not? Because again at its best our nation is and has been the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Indeed, so many of those who are on the front lines battling to rid us of the Georgite pestilence want it once again to be totally free, and are so brave in carrying on the battle.  Our national anthem is indeed about them.

We who are devoted to what distinguished our nation at its founding and still does at its best moments and in its best incarnation, have let our symbols go, have let them become the property of those forces in our country who are doing their very best to destroy everything that those symbols truly stand for.  On the Fourth of July I honored our flag and the thought that underlay it at our nation’s beginning by rereading the Declaration in its entirety, thinking about its meaning and what more I can do to try to stop the Georgite theocratic fascist juggernaut intent upon trampling into the dust everything that it stands for. We have let the reactionaries capture the flag, capture patriotism (which is truly love of country and devotion to its best interests), totally obliterate what our nation stood for in the eyes of its Founders, and stands for today in the eyes those of us who believe that Constitutional Democracy is the only way to govern, and is the essence of true Americanism.

Have our nation and its forebears done bad things? Oh yes they have, many too many of them. Howard Zinn's list hits some of the "high spots." But those horrible events occurred because those who led the nation to do what it did abandoned the very principles on which it was founded. What we progressives have to do is recapture the flag, show our own people and the world what it really stands for, and then beat back the dark reactionary forces of Christian Rightist Georgite Republicanism so that our nation can once again become the beacon to the world of Constitutional Democracy and the Rule of Law that on its best days has been, certainly has been.

ANN COULTER: THE NEW FACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Column No. 114 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 13, 2006

In this column we take a bit of a breather from giving advice to the Democratic Party.  (I think that we shall return to that theme next week.)  We turn instead to talking about the Republican Party, its public face, and what it truly stands for.  (Actually, there are some lessons for the Democrats to learn here, but they are indirect ones.)  For the relationship between the two is about to change.   Among people like most of the readers of TPJ, what it does truly stand for has been well known for quite some time: corporatism; the expansion of authoritarian government vs. Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights; an aggressive, militaristic foreign policy; the rapid expansion of globalization and the export of US capital seeking ever-higher profits; the shrinking to the maximum extent possible of those functions of government that support the broad national interest; and most recently using the national government to further the interests of the Christian Right by subsidy and the use of the criminal law.  However, until very recently to the extent possible the Republican Party has kept as much of their true agenda as possible in the shadows.

Now comes the latest book from the Far Right icon, Ann Coulter: Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  In typical Coulter style, it is filled with rage.  In fact a discussion of Ann Coulter's rage became all the rage on the Left when the book came out a couple of months ago. Even Hillary Clinton (hardly on the Left of anything) went after her for the remarks she made about those 9/11 widows who have become strong critics of the Georgites on a variety of fronts. Prominent is a group colloquially called the "Jersey girls." Its original objective was to push the Bush White House to create a commission to investigate the government's failures before the 9/11 attacks. This was a commission the Georgites absolutely did not want (wonder why not?) They fought hard to prevent its creation. Since the issuance of the Commission’s Report that left so many questions unanswered, the Jersey Girls have continued on as Bush critics. In her latest effort, Coulter accuses the women of being "self-obsessed" and acting "as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them." "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," she wrote (as if she had done some massive study of bereaved wives, looking at their relative levels of enjoyment on becoming widows)

Much of the focus on Coulter's latest outburst has been on her rage and unadulterated nastiness in regard of the 9/11 widows who have been and continue to be outspoken opponents of Georgite policies. Whether she really thinks these things or just says them so as to sell more books is beside the point. She prominently puts them out there and many people focus on them. However, to my mind both the remarks and the predictable outrage against them serve a purpose for Coulter well beyond selling books. They distract from the book's central message, which is of central importance to Coulter and her ilk within the Republican Party, people like Mary Matalin (you know, the wife of "Democratic" pundit and sometime political consultant James Carville) who defended Coulter without qualification on NBC's "Imus in the Morning" on June 10, 2006. It is that central message which is of the most import to her followers at the core of the Republican Party’s electoral base and to which we should be paying the most attention.

Let us recall, as the media critic Eric Alterman noted in talking with Sam Seder sitting on for Al Franken on July 3, 2006, Karl Rove has openly said that what mobilizes his base is anger.  (Mobilizing fear he uses broadly, but it is anger that resonates with his base’s base issues.)  Nevertheless, until now the Republican Party has done a good job of keeping its anger mobilization off to the side, to the degree possible. Ann Coulter represents the coming public, open face of the Republican Party, folks. Make no mistake about it. The public Republican face will be contorted into anger, into rage, into fear, for all to plainly see.  No more Mr. Nice Guy or Ms. Nice Gal.  Mark my words.

What a sea-change there has been in the Republican Party over the past 50 years.  On Nov. 8, 1954, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Unfortunately that small number of (not-so) stupid people not only took over the Republican Party but they drove the whole political landscape in the United States well to the Right. Teddy Roosevelt was the greatest Republican President other than Lincoln (who was not a Republican even in the TR mold).  The Trust Buster railed against "the malefactors of great wealth;" made environmental conservation a major focus of his Presidency; was the first President to invite an African-American leader, Booker T. Washington, to meet with him in the White House;  put national health insurance onto his Bull Moose Party platform when he ran for President as an independent in 1912.  He would actually have a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination for President today; that is if the DLC had anything to say about it.

Beginning with Goldwater, Eisenhower's "oil millionaires" moved in to the center of the party, and married right-wing politics to their cause, with great electoral success: Nixon and the racist "Southern Strategy" in 1968, Reagan and the bows to both racism and the Christian Right in 1980, this Bush's total embrace of the Christian Right in 2000. But still, outwardly the Republican Party has managed to look somehow "normal," in the American tradition, and certainly gentlemanly and ladylike for the most part, although George W. and Dick C. have been starting to wear the veneer off that one. But now comes Coulter.

In a previous book, Coulter labeled all "liberals" and other non-supporters of Georgite policy as "traitors." The penalty for treason is death. Now liberals are "godless." For the "goddish" of the Coulter variety, as I previously said in this space, one deals with the “godless” by force. If Coulter has her way, the "traitorous" and "godless" "liberals" (as she defines them) would be going perhaps to the camps, going perhaps before the firing squads, perhaps becoming the targets of Death Squads (as advocated by the video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” developed from Tim LaHaye’s best-selling “Left Behind” series, coming to a store near you this October just in time for Christmas), perhaps burning to death at the stake, which is what militant Christian Churches of a variety of stripes did to such persons who didn’t express their “goddishness” in quite the right way over a period of hundreds of years into the 17th century.

In this context it is interesting to note that what drives her is a version of what she thinks "Christianity" is. (In the book’s cover photo, presumably indicating her connection with Christianity, Coulter wears a black halter top with a gold cross on her chest, the staff pointing directly at her cleavage.)  As she has said, "Although my Christianity is somewhat more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write." Whatever else it is or is not, Coulter's version of Christianity is surely militant. As for foreign policy, remember when about the Muslim world she said: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" (although given her version of Christianity one wonders why anyone would want to convert)?  As for domestic policy and how her version of "Christianity" informs it, just consider the following quote: "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view."

The face of Ann Coulter: In no more than a few years, perhaps by 2008, all of the Republican veneer will be gone, with Coulterian rage, total intolerance of difference, rampant corporatism at center stage, and demonization of any opposition at the center of the message. The message will clearly be backed up by policy. And force, it is clear, is to be used against any and all opposition. At least the target will be clear and clearly out in the open.  It remains to be seen whether the leadership of the Democratic Party will be able to bring themselves to fire at it.

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, VII: BIPARTISANSHIP ON IRAQ

Column No. 113 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 6, 2006

This is a column that may be outdated by the time you read it.  Events are moving quickly in Iraq.  On June 25 the Iraqi government announced a reconciliation initiative of its own intended to end most of the violence, put Iraqis back in full charge of their own country, and start the country down the road to true and full reconstruction.  As of June 26 the proposal was reported in only piecemeal fashion in the US.  One element that certain sources said was part of it was a call for the full withdrawal of US troops by a date certain. (What traitors those Iraqis are.  Imagine, like certain Congressional Democrats calling for the departure of foreign troops from their own country!)  The early response from certain Sunni groups was negative, although others had subscribed to the plan (The Sunday Times [London], “Key insurgents vow to reject Iraq peace plan,” Ali Rifat and Hala Jaber, Baghdad).  At any rate, with a plan on the table that looks much like what the Democrats (called traitors in the Senate) were offering in one form or another in the “debate” of the week of June 19, 2006, things, to say the least, may be considered to be in a state of flux.

Now, regardless of what position those Iraqi government traitors to US Iraq policy may say (and those folks, placed in power by the Georgite occupation may be considered traitors of the “US’s own” type) I agree with a variety of Senators that the time has come for the country to pull together and put forward a bipartisan policy towards Iraq, the war, and the American occupation.  As Sen. John Warner, Republican of Virginia, said during the that Senate “debate” on the President’s Iraq policy (Zernike, K., The New York Times, “Senators Begin Debate on Iraq,” June 22, 2006): “[T]he nation, the world, the men and women of the armed forces would like to see the Senate and the Congress stand behind them with strong bipartisanship.” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Republican, oops I mean Democrat, of Connecticut, added: “The war to remove Saddam Hussein may have been a war of choice, but now it is a war of necessity. We must win it.”  Sen. Hillary Clinton (sort of) Democrat of New York weighed in with: “This is not a time for partisanship” (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/speech/view/?id=953.).

I have given this matter a good deal of consideration and I think that it is indeed time for us Democrats to get bipartisan and get behind the President to achieve the goals that he now states for the American occupation of Iraq. (One must recall that the presently stated goals are rather different from those he put forth in order to persuade the Congress and the American people to support the invasion, but how can we quibble at this point?) At any rate, the presently stated Georgite goals are to: “stay the course,” “fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” and “defeat Islamofascism around the world.”

In the spirit of bipartisanship and showing that we Democrats know what really will be needed from our country in order to achieve these goals, I think that our party should offer the following multi-part Congressional resolution. All of its elements are designed to insure that the President’s goals will be fully achieved, over time.

1. The “Course” in “Stay the course” is to be defined: no anti-American or internecine Iraqi violence of any kind for a period of six months.

2. “Islamofascism” is defined, among other things, as a state in which there is an official state-sanctioned religion, the leaders of which will ultimately be in control of national policy; any personal behaviors and beliefs, religious or otherwise, contrary to those of the state religion will be criminalized; any opponents of the state religion are to be labeled as “godless” and “traitors,” subject to appropriate penalties. (Any similarities to those openly stated goals for US national policy, legislation, and Constitutional Amendments of the President’s core supporters on the Religious Right is purely coincidental.)

3. The achievement of the President’s stated goals obviously requires a long-term (many years) US presence in Iraq.  The financial support for the occupation needs to be stabilized and absolutely secure.  Thus to support it properly, the US needs to stop borrowing from major lenders like China (who could call in their chits on this one at any time). The nation must be unified in support of the war effort.  Sacrifices have to be made, especially among those who are the President’s principal supporters. Therefore, in the spirit of rallying behind the President there will be a “War Tax.” Fortunately, there will be no necessity to raise taxes on everyone.  The needed revenues will become available simply and primarily by the rescission of all the tax cuts for the wealthy that have been instituted since 2001, for the duration of the war.

4. Some people believe that the primary reasons the US invaded Iraq were, and are, oil and bases.  Of course, even though a few thoughtful Senators and Congressmen like Sen. Kerry and Rep. Murtha believe that there may be something to that speculation, the Bush Administration has assured us that nothing could be further from the truth.  To make it entirely clear to one and all that the US objectives in Iraq are not oil and bases, the US will renounce any interest in Iraqi oil by any US-owned or affiliated oil companies and will immediately turn any and all bases over to the Iraqi military as part of the ongoing US commitment to strengthen it.

5. Again in the spirit of unity and demonstrating the support for the war by all sectors of the American economy and society, henceforth all work in support of the occupation, either in Iraq or elsewhere, done by US corporations will be carried out on a not-for-profit basis.

6.  To demonstrate full Congressional support for the war effort and for paying for its ongoing costs on a cash basis, there will be no Congressional ”earmarks” (otherwise known as “pork”) added to any legislation for the duration of the US occupation.

7.  Further so as to show the full support of the war effort by those who made the decision top invade and drew up the specific plans for the invasion (like, for example, The Decider), shall publicly appeal to any and all of their off-spring and close family of military serving age to join the armed forces and ask for Iraq duty at the earliest possible convenience.  The President’s daughters, nieces, and nephews for some reason spring to mind as examples.  As a BuzzFlash petition of August 30, 2005 stated: “Sign the Petition of Redress. Either the Bush Kids Put Their Lives on the Line for George's ‘Noble War’ or the Troops Come Home: I demand that George W. Bush's daughters, and his eligible nieces and nephews, serve in Iraq to prove their support of Bush's 'noble war for a noble cause.' If the Bush family does not believe in 'sacrificing' for the war and is not willing to put their lives on the line, then Bush must bring the troops of middle class and poor Americans home now (http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/08/edi05061.html)."

8.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the present all-volunteer armed forces will not be able to support the achievement of the President’s goal of “staying the course” on their own.  Third and even fourth tours are becoming common.  A majority of US troops in Iraq believe that US forces should be withdrawn (I suppose that they are traitors too).  Thus in true spirit of bi-partisanship, it is proposed that a Presidential Commission be formed with the charge of developing a plan for the re-institution of the military draft.

And now, let’s hear it for bipartisanship!

_____

Note: This column is based in part on my column of June 23, 2006 entitled “Democratic Ideas, V: Bipartisanship on Iraq” that appeared on BuzzFlash (http://www.buzzflash.com/jonas/06/06/jon06010.htm).

* Please note that I most recently presented a detailed proposal for dealing with the war issue itself on The Political Junkies.net of 15 December, 2005, my Column No. 89 "AN IRAQ EXIT PROPOSAL."

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, VI: ATTACK ON DEFENSE, II

Column No. 112 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 29, 2006

Last week I presented a series of defense/national security issues/positions intended to show how the Democrats can go over onto the offensive in this political and realm. In the interim it has become clear that doing so will be essential if the Democrats are going to have any chance at all to retake either House of Congress much less both.  Karl Rove has made it clear what he will have the Republicans running on so-called “national security” and “national strength” planks.  (Believe me, indicted or not, cooperating witness [and we won’t find out about that until the Libby trial next year] or not, Rove will running the national Republican campaign at least for this year.).  The Republican posture and posturing will not be on the war per se. Given the disaster that the war is for both Iraq and the US, to do so would be a disaster for them.  No, he will have the Republicans running on the “Democrats are wimps or worse,” the “Democrats are terrorist-sympathizers,” the “Democrats simply cannot be trusted with national security” themes.

Rove knows better than any other modern political consultant that, as I have said before here and elsewhere, there are two principal elements to the strategy for winning elections.  First is to control the agenda.  Second is “Always attack; never defend.”  In 2000, 2002, and 2004 Rove demonstrated his genius for arranging things his way and the Democrats demonstrated their genius for falling onto his trap every time.  Last week we discussed the DLC’s current strategy, essentially a re-run of theirs in the three previous national elections: “by golly, we’ll argue on your agenda.”  As we saw, they are doing it again.  If they control what the national Democratic Party does, losses in both 2006 and 2008 are all but assured (unless there is Deus Machina, like absolute proof that the Georgites arranged 9/11 or the next Great Depression arrives).  They want to be “muscular,” but being “muscular” in the Roveite way, “‘Staying the course’ equals ‘muscular’ and everything else doesn’t,” plays right into his hands.  They cannot win with that one.

The truly “muscular” Democratic position would be not “we can do these people one better.”  It would be to set our agenda, which means a) ignoring Rove’s and b) always attacking, never defending (a major part of which is indeed setting the agenda).  Here is summary of the attack points that I made last week, followed by a positive proposal for each.  By the way, some of these will be considered “tough.”  Yes, being tough would be unusual for Democrats, but when Republicans in the Congress make speeches saying the Democrats who do not support Bush’s open-ended Iraq policy are supporters of terrorist, well . . . .

1.                  9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, despite ample warnings.  Why should the nation trust him on security any longer?

2.                  They may have caught and killed al-Zarqawi but according to our own military, al-Qaeda is a very small factor in the Iraqi insurgency.

3.                  If the Georgites did not mis-lead about the reasons for going into Iraq, they were totally incompetent in handling the intelligence information about what the true situation was.

4.                  They have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting a war for which it is ill-equipped and not properly trained.

5.                  They have turned the world against us (see the recent Pew Research international poll).

6.                  They have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.

7.                  They have done virtually nothing to strengthen homeland security in the homeland.

8.                  They are totally incompetent in handling natural disasters.  They could be even worse in handling man-made ones.

9.                  They have depleted the national treasury by going to war on borrowed money while making the nation’s rich even richer with their ever-expanding tax cuts.

10.              They love military solutions to problems that cannot be solved using the military.

And so, here is a set of positive programs to deal with the listed massive deficiencies*:

1.                   Create a truly effective national counter-intelligence/counter-terrorism program, like the one proposed by Richard Clarke on the day Bush took office and rejected by Ashcroft the day before 9/11.  It would begin with the reorganization and depoliticization of both the FBI and the CIA.

2.                   Develop a world-wide program to find al Qaeda where it exists, which is not principally in Iraq, and eliminate it.  This would mean in part going back into Afghanistan, with a truly multi-national force, to truly put the Taliban out of business.  We must begin to reduce the number of terrorists in the world, not increase it as our current Iraq policy is doing.

3.                   To establish as policy to share as much information about military and intelligence operations with Congress and the American people as possible, not as little as they think they can get away with.

4.                   I have dealt with the subject of Iraq withdrawal previously in this space and will surely do so again.  Once it is completed, the US military must be completely rebuilt and redesigned, so as to focus on the kinds of missions it is likely to face in the future, not simply on arms packages principally designed to produce huge profits for the military industry.

5.                   We must re-establish a multi-lateral foreign policy, to develop the allies that we will increasingly be in need of in the future, and we must turn towards the UN, not turn our back on it at our peril as we are doing now.

6.                   We must develop a homeland security system that focuses first and foremost on the tasks at hand like strengthening port security, not at developing evermore sophisticated systems for spying on Americans and violating the basics premises and provisions of Constitutional Democracy.

7.                   We must develop an entirely Federal-state-local coordinated and properly funded system for predicting and reacting to natural disasters.

8.                   For as long as we remain in Iraq, our forces must be properly funded.  To do this, we will institute a special “war tax.”  It will be raised by rescinding the Bush tax cuts from 2001 forward, rescinding the tax rebates for the energy industry, and eliminating all Congressional “earmarks” from legislation for the duration of the War.

If our arguments are to be winning ones, they must be formulated on our agenda, not Rove’s. For starters, one simply does not respond to “cut and run,” unless one wants to say: “The only cutters and runners in this situation are the Republicans.  They cut the intelligence to fit their pre-ordained agenda and ran into a war they just had to have.”  But the primary argument must be that “all the way down the line, the Bush Administration has made our country not safer, but less safe, much less safe.  We Democrats can do better, much better.”

* Please note that I most recently presented a detailed proposal for dealing with the war issue itself on The Political Junkies.net of 15 December, 2005, my Column No. 89 "AN IRAQ EXIT PROPOSAL."