THE GEORGITE SOCIAL SECURITY SCAM: BASES FOR SUSPICION

Column no. 48 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - February 16, 2005

There is a great deal of discussion going on of the Georgite proposals for Social Security Deform, and you may well be sated on the subject by now.  There is of course no “crisis.”  So what else is new?  The Big Lie technique is the single most important component of the Georgite propaganda strategy, whether the subject is invading Iraq, or destroying Social Security.

In this column, I examine several aspects of the issues surrounding the Georgite dream of destroying Social Security that have not received too much attention yet, in my view.  So, if you are a Social Security Deform junkie, as well as a Political Junkie, you still might find this column of interest.

Does George Bush really mean what he says about Social Security and its potential shakiness and his suddenly discovered concern for its future?  Or does he not?  The suspicion is that the second answer is correct.

Basis for Suspicion, No. 1.  When it comes to Social Security, George Bush tells us that he is concerned about the future, the far-distant future as it turns out, or so he says.  Is his next major initiative, then, going to be about other concerns for the future, often for a future quite a bit closer in time than Bush’s fictional date for the Social Security “crisis,” such as for: global warming (and a very new “doomsday is much closer than you think” report), the effects of his budget deficits on the US and global economies, the huge US balance of trade deficit, the running down of the US infrastructure compared to that of other countries, the degradation of the environment due to his policies, a US health care delivery system that is hurtling towards financial disaster, and so on and so forth? Doubtful.

Basis for Suspicion, No. 2. There is in parallel a sudden major concern about one particular aspect of what the Republican Religious Right has forever dubbed "social spending" (actually national domestic spending).  They have hated all the other elements of domestic spending ever since the Republican Party converted from the party of freedom to the party of business back in the 1880s.  The RRRs are now trashing as much domestic spending as quickly as they can.  They just do not like it.  Why all of a sudden a concern with this particular element of it, Social Security?

Basis for Suspicion, No. 3.  Even if the Social Security System were in the dire financial straits that the Georgites (and no other observers) say that it is, why is "privatization" the only way to "save" it (and even Bush now admits that it won’t)?  In fact, all of the evidence is that privatization would eventually kill it (see below).  There is a host of other ways to protect the System should it need protecting in the future, ways known to work.  Among them would be, as the population gets older and older and the proportion of active workers smaller and smaller, to raise some of the necessary funds from general taxation.  But that would be anathema to the Georgites.  In fact, one of the major reasons behind the Georgite scheme is likely to be specifically to prevent recourse to general tax funds no matter how many years in the future that drastic measure might have to be taken.

Basis for Suspicion, No. 4.  Leading Republicans give as one reason for their sudden rush of concern over the System their former contention, that privatization is the only way to save it.  That reason is that the national savings rate is so low and their scheme would increase savings.  The US national savings rate is indeed very low, and does need to be increased for a variety of reasons.  But many other much more direct ways exist to increase savings, without putting the Social Security System at such dire risk.  One could start simply with making bank savings account interest not taxable up to some predetermined level.  The problem with this for the RRR is that a) detaxing a portion of savings would provide a tax-cut for workers, and that is not a priority for the RRR, b) their money-people don't use savings accounts, and c) the lost revenue would have to be made up from somewhere (guess what source I would propose) and that wouldn't do now, would it?

Basis for Suspicion, No. 5 is the likely real goal of the Georgite plan.  In my view, what is going on here is clearly an attack on the Federal government's most popular and best-run program in its totality.  It is first on Grover “Shrink the Federal Government to the Size of a Bath-tub and then Drown it in the Tub” Norquist's hit-list.  Mark Schmitt (1/13/05, circulated by my friend Derek) put it very well: “This is of a piece with the national fiscal sabotage inherent in the notion of ‘starving the beast’: degrade the fiscal capacity of the U.S. government.  Increase its indebtedness at an unsustainable rate, allow the professional standards of its civil service to atrophy, rupture its historic international relations, diminish its credibility in financial commitments.”

As we deal with the Georgites on this issue, I think it is vital that we do not simply argue on their agenda (as we so often do).  In this case, their desired agenda is whether or not there is a “crisis,” is “privatization” a good idea or not.  But the real battle here is not over how Social Security should be run and financed.  It is clearly over whether there should be a Social Security program as we have known it since its inception or not.  The Republican Right has had Social Security in its sights since the day after its passage in 1935.  It is on this agenda that the counter-attack should begin.  Before arguing about details, first make the Georgites prove that their attack is not one aimed at destroying the whole program, on the way to destroying everything other than military-industrial, prison-industrial, opposition-repression/suppression, and mind/behavior-control Federal Government functions.

Am I being a total over-the-top alarmist here?  Consider what is going on with the Bush “Budget” (in quotes, because a number of big-ticket items like the cost of his wars have been conveniently left out).  Here is The Washington Post (Feb. 7, 2005): “ $2.5 Trillion Budget Plan Cuts Many Programs: President Bush [unveiled] a budget that eliminates dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, while it proposes significant increases for the military and international spending, according to administration documents.  (By Mike Allen and Peter Baker, the Washington Post).” And The Los Angeles Times: “Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts, By Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius, “WASHINGTON-President Bush propose[s] a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch poor people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing.”

Oh yes.  All of these cuts of national domestic programs vital to many people slated for slashing in a show “fiscal discipline,” cost about $15 billion, in a $2.5 trillion-and-counting Budget.  Perhaps I am just the suspicious type.

Note:  This column is drawn from my “Short Shots” Nos. 39 and 43, appearing on the Weblog of The Planetary Movement Ltd. UK, Michael Carmichael (our esteemed European Editor), Creator and Director, The Moving Planet Blog.  (Click on the blue hyperlinks to go directly to the indicated material).

The Georgite Version of ‘Freedom and Democracy’ The Coming 2nd Civil War (Unless), No. 6

Column No. 47 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - February 10, 2005

This column is the sixth in this series.  In my view, the projected cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR).  In different arenas, different sources ranging from the 2004 Republican Party Platform through George Bush to Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist have stated the primary goals of the RRR.  They are: to impose their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; to reduce the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-and-prison-industrial complexes and the opposition repression/suppression and private-thought/behavior-control sectors; and to replace Constitutional government as we have known it with overwhelming Executive Branch dominance operating on its own authority – that is via a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.

Except when appealing to its base in the Christian Right, however, the RRR does its best to conceal most of its true goals from the American public.  It camouflages them alternatively with foreign wars, the “terror” threat, lies about the true goals of its policies and well as the facts of the cases with which it is supposedly dealing, and appeals to the basest instincts of fear and prejudice.  When the American people become fully aware of the true aims of the RRR, I am confident that they will reject them.  The rejection may come sooner, as the result of the political process (the “Unless” of the title of the series).  Yet unfortunately, it might come later, as the result of a Second Civil War that could take place either before the RRR would be able to institute a true fascist dictatorship or much later, after it did so.

Some will characterize my position as alarmist and premature.  I fully intend it to be.  We must start focusing on what the RRR is really about.  To use Jefferson’s characterization of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as indicating an eventual bloody conflict over slavery, “the fire bell is ringing in the night.”

A good lesson on what George Bush is really about and what he says he is about is contained in his recent Inaugural Address.  What he really is about will, if unchecked, surely lead to violent conflict in our country.  As noted last week, the entire speech was a Weapon of Mass Distraction aimed at his domestic audience, primarily his core RRR supporters, and those who otherwise voted for him.  He focused almost entirely on the foreign mission that he laid out for the United States, to spread “freedom and democracy” around the world.  Nowhere did he tell us exactly what he meant by those words, although he did use terms like “oppression” and “tyranny” as bad and “rights” and “dignity” as good.  However, they were all undefined.  So perhaps the best lesson on what Bush really means is found in his approach and policies on “freedom and democracy” right here at home.  They are legion, and I have addressed some of them in past columns, several on more than one occasion.

We have the 341-page Patriot Act which, for persons labeled on Presidential authority as “terrorists” or “abettors of terrorism,” among other things eliminates: the protection against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause provided by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, the guarantee of the due process of law provided by the 5th Amendment, and the right to a speedy and public trial in criminal cases guaranteed by the 6th Amendment.  Continuing on with what George Bush’s concept of “freedom and democracy” really is, we have the “Gay Marriage” Amendment, the number one agenda item this year of Bush’s core Christian Right constituency.  By depriving a sector of the population defined solely by who they are as people, not anything they have done, such an Amendment would return to certain concepts of non-full-personhood contained in the original Constitution: Negro slaves counted as 3/5’s of a person just because they were Negroes and slaves, and Native Americans did not count as persons at all.  Furthermore, such a designation for homosexual persons would vitiate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment in relation to civil marriage, which happens to be defined in the law by all 50 states.

The abortion-ban amendment that is part of the Republican National platform would criminalize anyone’s belief that life begins at any time other than the moment of conception, to say nothing of depriving pregnant women of freedom of choice in the outcome of their own pregnancies before the time of fetal viability outside of the womb.  In the torture controversy, the incoming Attorney General has stated that, in his role as Commander-in-Chief the President can declare war and then, using that declaration as his reason, can violate provisions of the Constitution, as well as unilaterally amend treaties without consulting our treaty partners.  There is nothing in the “plain language” of the Constitution, so beloved by Right-wingers when they are looking to suppress individual rights (by ignoring the 9th Amendment, to them, as Robert Bork loves to say, just an “inkblot on the Constitution”), that gives the President anything like these powers.

To the Georgites, “freedom and democracy” means rigging elections.  It means buying the news.  It means being as secretive about government operations as possible.  It means having the Secretary of Defense able at will to violate the law on intelligence functions and services.  It means lying to the Congress, the people, and the United Nations about the true reasons for invading a foreign country.  It means attacking any political opponent as “partisan,” as if partisanship were not a central element of the political process in a free and democratic nation.  Finally, it means describing an election as “fair and free,” despite the fact that it was held by necessity under the tightest security that the US Army and Marine Corps could possibly provide.  Perhaps the solution to the problem of no longer having free and fair elections right here at home would be to mobilize our armed forces on Election Day to make sure that they are.

The contradictions are so obviously rife.  The contrast between Bush rhetoric and Georgite reality are so stark.  One wonders why, given this reality, any other country would want to try to respond to the Georgite call for “freedom and democracy” around the world, when this model for oppression is so obviously what the Georgites are on their way to implementing here at home.  The Georgites really seem to think that the way to spread “freedom and democracy” abroad (that is when they are not trying to squelch it as they are doing in Qatar by pressuring the government to shut down the inconvenient Al-Jazeera TV network) is to suppress it as much as they can at home.

To conclude, as I have said more than once in this space, let us hope and (for those readers who do) pray that the Democratic Party wakes up to this reality and joins the political battle that must be engaged if the Georgites are to be stopped in their tracks before it is too late and the Second Civil War is upon us.

WMD DISCOVERED --- IN WASHINGTON

Column No. 46 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - FEBRUARY 3, 2005

Yes indeed, WMD have been discovered in Washington and actually put on very prominent display, by the Bush 2nd Inaugural.  No, these WMD are not the Weapons of Mass Destruction that the official US/Duelfer Report (AOL News, 1/12/05) says do not now and never have for quite some time now existed in Iraq.  They are the Weapons of Mass Distraction that President Bush revealed to the world in his address.

The United States faces a series of very serious problems both at home and abroad, many of them the result of Georgite policies.  Take foreign affairs: the Iraq catastrophe (first and foremost for the Iraqi people, but also for the US military); Afghanistan (where not much has changed beyond a few centimeters beyond the boundaries of the capital, Kabul, except that opium production is now at an all-time high); that the US has become the prime mover/motivator in producing, not controlling and eliminating, terrorists from Osama bin Laden up or down (depending upon your point of view) around the world; that Bush has become the world’s most hated leader since Adolf Hitler was in his prime; and that the reputation of the US as a whole has never been lower since there has been a US.

On the domestic side, there are the ever-expanding Federal deficit, the ever-expanding overseas trade deficit and the resultant foreign loan obligations, the tanking US dollar which is leading some central banks to move out of dollars into euros (Mark Tran, The Guardian UK, 1/24/05), a move that could lead to an earthquake-like foreign debt crisis for the US; the collapsing US health care financing system; the collapsing Federal program for defending pension funds; the record-high levels of personal debt, and so on and so forth.

So what does the President talk about in his speech?  How the US is going to spread “freedom” around the world. Others have spoken very well to this expression of the height of American arrogance, self-delusion, irrationality, and indeed hubris.  Let me mention briefly one other aspect of the speech that deserves some consideration.  I will consider a second that has not drawn too much attention yet either next week.

In the face of the above problem-list that would have drawn at least some attention in a Second Inaugural from every other President, what does Karl Rove have Bush do?  Distract, distract, distract. The Georgite propaganda machine is doing just what it did in the Presidential Campaign: control the agenda and make it fit Bush’s needs.  In the speech, Iraq, Afghanistan, the deficit, the trade problem, etc. were never mentioned.  Just some impossible-to-achieve-goal that the world wants to hear none of, from this particular American President anyway.

While the world is not fooled or distracted, however, many of the American people are, and that is the main objective of the whole exercise.  This speech, setting totally unachievable goals, was not for foreign, but rather for domestic consumption.  In the campaign, Bush did exactly the same thing.  He made sure that the agenda was not about him, but rather about certain aspects of Kerry’s.  If Kerry had managed to make the agenda the Bush record, even with the massive Republican electoral cheating that apparently occurred, he would have won.  But Kerry was simply unable to do that.  He let Rove, et al set the agenda: gay marriage, abortion, “security,” “patriotism,” “toughness.”

The Democrats must learn this lesson about agenda control.  If they do not, they will never win the White House again.  It is time, then, for them to go to school.  The first lesson concerns the Georgite WMDs --- Weapons of Mass Distraction.  The subject of the Bush Second Inaugural is just one of them in current use.

NB:  This column is based in part on my “Short Shot No. 40 that appeared on the weblog http://planetmove.blogspot.com/ on January 21, 2005.

COMPARING GEORGE W. BUSH AND ADOLF HITLER

Column No. 45 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 27, 2005

In a dispatch from Berlin on December 12, 2004, John B. Judis of The New Republic wrote:

At a small gathering of officials and intellectuals in Berlin, the guests mull -- and finally reject -- a comparison between Bush's United States and Germany's darker past, but they still worry that the United States could be on a ‘slippery slope’ toward religious fanaticism.”

Indeed.  As Maureen Dowd noted in the (likely little-noted) last two sentences of another one of her superb columns on Georgite policy in Iraq: “[The Iraqis] may choose to live in a theocracy.  Americans did.”  And so there you have it, in The New York Times, not just places like the pages of The 15% Solution.

But what about “comparisons between Bush’s America and Germany’s darker past?”  Is that an automatic “forget it?”  The issue is serious, controversial, and, I believe, does bear careful consideration.  Take the following comparisons just between GW and AH.  They do make one shiver a bit, don’t they?  Yes, there are certainly differences, but examine the similarities.  Not necessarily in order of importance they are:

Bush is not quite as open as Hitler was about what his real aims are.  After all, Hitler had laid them out in a book – widely unread until it was too late, of course.  Bush states his true goals only at closed meetings of his top contributors, or the War Council of the Republican Religious Right, the Council on National Policy, or in public places that nobody (especially Democratic electoral candidates or the Democratic National Committee) ever looks, such as the 2004 Republican National Platform.

In persecuting identity groups, Hitler went after the gays first, most directly, starting in 1934 with the pink triangles gays were forced to wear on their sleeves, moving quickly on to imprisonment and then, shall we say, “elimination.”  It might not be fair to say that Bush’s “anti-gay marriage” amendment amounts to starting down the same road.  However, the newly elected Republican Senator from North Carolina has called for the banning of all homosexual teachers from all school classrooms, which to some might sound like the beginning of a Nuremberg (could that be Charleston?)  Law.  I have not heard that Bush has disavowed that Senator’s sentiment.

Hitler's Ministry of Propaganda (MoP) was part of the government.  Could it be that Bush’s privatized one, Fox”News”Channel, the Washington Times, Hannibaugh, the bought Armstrong Williams, etc., etc., amounts to the same thing?

Hitler's racism was quite out in the open.  Bush's is carried on by winks, nods, and policies that, while they look like one thing, like Civil Rights Act enforcement, are in practice quite another: planning to use the anti-voter fraud provisions of the Civil Rights Act to statutorily limit non-white voting.  So there’s a real difference.

Hitler destroyed the Weimar Constitution in one fell swoop, directly amending it with the post-Reichstag Fire “Enabling Act” of March 1933.  Bush is going after the US Constitution piecemeal, via such steps as the Patriot Act (see TPJ No. 36), and the arrogation of powers not provided to him by the Constitution, via Executive Order (see TPJ Nos. 19 and 43).  So that one might be considered a similarity or a difference.

Hitler mobilized fear, hate, religious bigotry, and intolerance for difference and the "other" as central to his political plan.  So does Bush.

Hitler used religion politically and so does Bush.  Hitler appealed to both Protestants and reactionary Catholics (Hitler being one of them himself).  So does Bush.  Another disquieting similarity is that Hitler too thought he was divinely guided.

Hitler had the support of a major portion of the German industrial class.  The US industrial class is diminishing in importance, but Bush has the support of major industrial sectors: the extractive and chemical industries, some portions of the remaining manufacturing sector, major portions of the financial, information processing, and retail sales groups.  Significant portions of the German ruling elite probably did not agree with Hitler’s racial theories, especially as to his plans for their implementation, and did not think that he ever would get around to implementing them.  The same could well be the case in the U.S. for the ruling elite’s view of Bush’s Christian Rightist ideology.

Both had Time Man-of-the-Year covers, although Hitler was awarded only one.

A big difference, so far, is that Bush has no private army, except ad hoc as in the attack on the Miami/Dade election board in 2000 that stopped the recount there that would have likely given Gore the Presidency.  Hitler had three private armies of significant size, with spiffy uniforms and real weapons: the Sturm Abteiluing (SA), the street-fighting "Brownshirts;" the Schutzstaffel (SS) which began its existence as his personally loyal private guard; and the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmets) the right-wing WW I veterans' street gang.

Finally, a definite difference: Hitler’s trademark photo showed a bad moustache, a bad hairdo, and a scowl.  Bush, in contrast, has good hair and his trademark smirk.

Different?  Similar?  We present.  You decide.

The Bush Second Inaugural: A Preview The Coming 2nd Civil War (Unless), No. 5

Column No. 44 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 18, 2005

This column is the fifth in this series.  In my view, the projected cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR).  As stated at different times and in different arenas by sources ranging the 2004 Republican Party Platform through George Bush to Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist, their primary goals are to: impose their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reduce the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-industrial, prison-industrial, and private-thought/behavior-control sectors; and replace Constitutional government as we have known it with Executive Branch dominance operating entirely on its own authority.

Except in appealing to their base in the Christian Right, the RRR does its best to conceal most of its true goals from the American public, however.  In this “Inaugural Address,” a newly elected President, using only the words of real leaders of the movement, is very open about them.  If the philosophy reflected by these words does fully take hold of our government, then that Second Civil War is truly in the offing.

As many readers of The Political Junkies know, in 1996, under the pseudonym “Jonathan Westminster,” I published a book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022.  In it, I postulated that the Presidential election of 2000 would be won by a not-too-bright Republican totally beholden to the Christian Right, and that the election of 2004 would be won by a younger brighter candidate of a new political entity called the Republic Christian Alliance.

The new (future-fictional) President was named Jefferson Da­vis (J.D.) Hague.  He was a great-grand nephew of the pre‑World War II Mayor of Jersey City, NJ, Frank Hague, a man who once said: "You hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press.  Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!'  You never hear a real American talk like that.”  J.D.'s father, "Big Daddy Hague," was a truck driver who sported the old Confederate States of America flag on the radiator of his 22-wheeler's tractor, and carried a loaded sawed‑off double‑barreled shot­gun underneath the passen­ger seat.  It was there, Big Daddy would confide in friends, "to protect myself from the niggers."  His choice of name for his second‑born son came as no surprise to his friends, espe­cially since his first‑born son "Nat" had been named after the Confederate Gen­er­al Nathan B. Forrest.  This man's principal claim to fame was that a year after the end of the First Civil War he had founded the viru­lently anti‑black terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan.

As one of Hague’s principal staffers, Constance “Connie” Conroy noted at the time, the speech-writers had had a hard time coming up with anything original for Hague to say.  They needed, she wrote, “a new way to say the same old thing he had been saying over and over in the campaign.  And so what did we do?  We went back to some tried and true stuff from our ‘Pa­tron Saints:’ Pat Buchanan, Pat Robert­son, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, the Newt Man.  Just took some of their best stuff, threw it together, nobody was the wiser, especially the Prez, and presto!  The best speech mon­ey could­n't begin to buy.”

And so you have here the “Hague First Inaugural,” made up entirely from excerpts of pre-1996 writings of the gang listed above.  The name of each writer follows the section each “contributed” (references available upon request).  It is offered here as a preview of the Bush Second Inaugural to be delivered on Jan. 20, 2005.  It will be interesting to note the similarities and differences between the Bush Second and the Hague First, especially given the fact, as Karl Rove has told us more than once, that Bush was the candidate of a true-in-everything-but-name Republican-Christian Alliance.

The First Inaugural Address of Presi­dent Jefferson Davis Hague, delivered in the National Cathedral on the newly designated Inauguration Day, December 25, 2004[1]

[1] Note: There is no indication or evidence that any of the historical figures quoted in the Hague First Inaugural Address or elsewhere in this chapter, among whom are Patrick Buchanan, M.G. Robertson, Paul Weyrich, Keith Fournier, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, and Newton Gingrich, would have supported or associ­ated themselves in any way with any of the actual positions or actions that Jeffer­son Davis Hague or any members of his government or political parties took, at that time or in the future.

Mr. President, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Speaker, my fellow Amer­i­cans under God.  I stand here before you today, on the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all humility awaiting my time to do His bid­ding.  And I can tell you that his bidding now is to fight the good fight, for the Lord, and for you the Ameri­can people under God.

For there is a religious war going on in this country.  And we, the Ameri­cans of God, must win it.  We must take back our cit­ies, and take back our culture, and take back our country [Bu­chanan].  To do this, we must return to our Christian roots.  If we do not, we will continue to le­galize sodomy, slaughter inno­cent babies, destroy the minds of our chil­dren, squander our re­sources, and yes, sink into oblivion [Robertson].

We are in an eternal battle.  The battle is between right and wrong, be­tween truth and lies, between life and death.  And if we ever forget what it is about, if we think we are in a battle for elect­ing peo­ple to hold office, simply controlling political parties, then we will not ac­complish what we are to achieve.  We need to hold to our principles, and stick to them re­gardless.

The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset, which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society.  The fight that we are fighting, the battle we have joined, is one that encom­passes our entire life span.  Re­member, you have God.  You have your families; you have your commu­nity, your church community, your neighborhood, and all the things you are con­cerned about.  They have only power.  That's all that matters to them.  They will fight with everything that's in them to keep that power [Weyrich].

Today we face what I believe is an even greater threat to our lives.  The enemy is more insidious, more chameleon‑like than a Hitler.  And this enemy is even more deadly.  The enemy is lethal and must be stopped [Fournier].  So far from having ended, the cold war has increased in in­ten­si­ty, as sec­tor after sector of American life has been ruth­less­ly cor­rupt­ed by the liber­al ethos.  Now that the other 'Cold War' is over, the real cold war has begun [Kristol, quoted in Starr].

Yes, we are engaged in a social, political, and cultural civil war.  There is a lot of talk in America about pluralism.  But you can't have a society whose highest value is merely live and let live.  The bottom line is somebody's values will prevail.  Some­body is going to win this civil war.  And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe about things like life and death, love and sex, and freedom and slavery.

As I have traveled the length and breadth of this great God‑given land of ours, I have often run into skep­tics.  They say, "Well, J.D., if there is a civil war going on, where are the two sides?"  And my ex­planation is that on one side there are men and women like Americans under God.  People who be­lieve that God is.  And believing that God is, they are re­quired, they are obli­gated to take the posi­tions they take on a whole host of issues.  And on the other side of this great conflict there are people at very signifi­cant positions in our culture who begin their thinking with the belief that God isn't.  They are our ene­my [Bauer].

Yes, it is time to take America back, from the liberal politi­cians who are attempting to erase every evidence of God from public life, from gov­ern­ment officials who hide their radical, anti‑Christian bigot­ry behind a twist­ed view of "the separation of church and state," from gay and lesbian radicals who not only claim the right to lead their Godless lifestyle, but demand that we support this abominable behav­ior, from the radical fem­i­nists whose "right to choose" has caused the murder of mil­lions of inno­cent unborn little babies, from the militant left which is the fount of all evil—take her back from every group or individ­ual that refuses to recog­nize our beloved nation for what it truly is—a nation under God! [Falwell]

We are the only society in history that says that power comes from God to you . . . and if you don't tell the truth about the role of God and the cen­trality of God in America, you can't explain the rest of our civiliza­tion.  I look forward to the day when a be­lief in God is once more at the center of the defini­tion of being an American [Gingrich, 1].

As to the future, if you think about the notion that the great chal­lenge of our lifetime is first to imagine a future that is worth spending our lives getting to, and then, because of the technolo­gies and the capabilities we have today, to get it up to sort of a virtual state, al­though that's done in terms of actual levels of so­phistication, all that's done in your mind.

And that takes leadership.  Most studies of leadership argue that lead­ers actually are acting out past decisions.  The problem when you get certainty with great leaders is that they have al­ready thor­oughly envisioned the achievement, and now it is just a matter of implementa­tion.  And so it is very different.  And so in a sense, virtuality at the mental level is some­thing I think you find in lead­ership over historical periods.  But in addi­tion, we are not in a new place; it is just becom­ing harder and hard­er to avoid the place where we are [Gingrich, 2].

In fighting this fight to avoid this place, we face an increas­ing­ly mili­tant, radical, socialist left.  And this is how we are going to win the war against this left.  We will use the same strategy Gen­eral Douglas MacArthur em­ployed against the Jap­a­nese in the Pacific in World War II: by‑pass their strong‑holds, then sur­round them, isolate them, bombard them, then blast the individu­als out of their power bunkers with hand‑to‑hand com­bat.  The battle for Iwo Jima [Author's Note: the penul­timate major battle of the Pacific War in 1945] was not pleasant, but our troops won it.  The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant either, but we will win it [Robertson].

Yes, with your help and God's blessing we will win it.  Thank you and good night.

The Georgite Concept of Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law

Column No. 43 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 13, 2005

On July 1, 2004, my column ran under the title “Counsel to the President.”  It was about the Chief White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and some rather quaint views that he holds about Constitutional government.  “Quaint” was of course the term he used to describe the Geneva Conventions, which just happen, through their ratification by the U.S. Senate over time, to have become part of “the highest law of the land” under provisions of the U.S. Constitution itself.  He thought the Conventions had become outdated.

I use the term quaint to describe Gonzales’ views of the Constitution and the Rule of Law because they pre-date the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and indeed the proclamations of the English Glorious Revolution of 1688.  That Revolution, from which so many of our nation’s Founding Fathers drew inspiration a century later, happened to have put an end, once and for all, to the doctrine held by certain of the Stuart Kings (including Charles I, who --- literally --- lost his head over it), that is they ruled by Divine Right.  Well, our own George II, not of the House of Hanover, but of the House of Bush, believes that he is divinely inspired.  And his Counsel believes that he can change provisions of the U.S. Constitution, whether they pertain to his own powers or those of the other two supposedly co-equal branches of our government, at his whim and wish --- nothing other than the restoration of the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.

And so, with this introduction, let me return to some of what I had to say about Judge Gonzales about six months ago.  Unfortunately, it still most apt.  Indeed as he has now been nominated as Attorney General, a nomination many see as a prelude to nomination for a seat on the Supreme Court, consideration of these issues is if anything more apt.

On Jan. 25, 2002, the Counsel to the President, Alberto Gonzales, sent President George Bush a memo in which he warned the President about a United States law, the War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441).  That law prohibits the commission of “war crimes” by any U.S. officials or other personnel.  Included in the definition are any violations of the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war.  Gonzales told the President that the Justice Department had concluded that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to any apprehended members of al Qaeda.  He also advised the President that the State Dept. did not agree with Justice.  He proposed to the President that he make a determination that the Conventions did not apply to the Taliban or members of al Qaeda.

In Gonzales’ view, the “war on terror” had rendered certain sections of the Conventions obsolete; “quaint” was a descriptor he used.  One John Yoo, a University of California law professor on leave with the Justice Department, had begun working on ways and means for the US to avoid being charged with war crimes in reference to how certain prisoners taken in Afghanistan were treated in the fall of 2001, as the invasion of Afghanistan was getting under way.  Why might he need to have done this?  Because, according to The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh’s sources at least, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had authorized an approach to prisoner treatment that included physical coercion and sexual humiliation.  The Pentagon denied these charges, of course.  But if such a plan did not exist, why on earth would they have had a legal defense for its implementation prepared?

The Pentagon, and the CIA, asked for legal rulings justifying the use of what most observers, as well as the usual interpretations of the Geneva Conventions, would term torture.  Article VI of the Constitution says, among other things, that: “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the Untied States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”  Sect. 2, Article II, empowers the President “. . . by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur. . . .” The clause from Article VI quoted above has always been interpreted to mean that treaties are part of the Constitution.

The oath of office for the President is found in the Constitution, at the end of Article II, Sect 1.  It says: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  The impeachment provision is found in Section 4 of the same article: “The President, Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”  One would think that violation of one’s oath, as found in the Constitution itself, would constitute a high crime or at least a misdemeanor.

Jay Bybee, now a Federal Appeals Court judge, of the Office of Legal Council of the Justice Department, the federal government’s ultimate legal advisor, wrote the principal memo that Gonzales used in advising the President, describing certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “outdated” and “quaint.”  Further, he told the President that with a simple re-labeling of persons captured in Afghanistan from “prisoners of war” to something else and a redefinition of “torture,” provisions of US law (passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President, by the way) concerning the commission of war crimes could be by-passed.  In addition, a group of Pentagon lawyers told Rumsfeld that “inherent” in the President’s power as Commander-in-Chief, in war-time, was the authority to authorize essentially anything he wanted to, regardless of US law or treaties.  In this case too, even if such power could be found anywhere in the Constitution (and I looked hard in Article I, Sect. 2 that defines those powers -- and could not find it) it happens that the only US government entity empowered to declare war is the Congress.  Although the President and Fox News say repeatedly that “we’re at war,” we are not, at least in Constitutional terms.

In the eyes of most of the rest of the world, what Gonzales, Woo, Bybee, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld’s lawyers did was unilaterally to amend a series of treaties.  And they did this without bothering even to inform, much less negotiate with, our treaty partners (most of the countries in the world).  Since treaties are part of the Constitution, they were thus also unilaterally amending the Constitution without bothering to go through the amendment process.  To this was added the interesting “inherent powers” doctrine that does the same thing.  But the Bush folks are not strangers to amending the Constitution at the stroke of a pen.  According to Ashcroft’s Justice Department, all of these actions, from the endorsement of the use of torture in the face of our treaty obligations, to the suspension of Constitutional rights under the USA Patriot Act, allegedly are and can be done on Presidential authority alone.

There are two major issues here.  One is that if Bush, on Gonzales’ advice, authorized the breaking of the Geneva Conventions, since they are part of the Constitution, he has committed an impeachable offense.  The other, even more important in my view, is that what is going on here is the substitution of the Rule of Man for the Rule of Law.  This is a very serious threat to every US citizen, and other persons for that matter residing in the United States, as well as to US captives abroad, to say nothing of our 200-year history of Constitutional government.  Under this doctrine, the President, on his own authority, labels you, or re-labels you something in some new category his lawyers dream up, and then all of a sudden you live outside of the protections of the US Constitution, whether those protections are to be found in its body or in treaties that become part of it.  All of this is as determined by the President under something called “inherent powers.”  Since the President would have leave to define those powers in any manner he would see fit, to come up with such a concept is to endorse explicitly the substitution of the Rule of Man for the Rule of Law (in Bush’s case a Rule of Man that is divinely inspired, so I guess that makes it OK.  But it does sound an awful lot like the Divine Right of Kings, doesn’t it?)  In so doing, the process also explicitly endorses the eventual end to American Constitutional Democracy, which rests on the bedrock of the Rule of Law, as we have known it.

This, in my view, is the most important single issue facing the nation as the Gonzales nomination is considered in Congress.  That he found ways to authorize torture, when doing so is prohibited by both treaty obligations and U.S. law is bad enough.  In my view, even worse, much worse in fact, is that under Gonzales’ leadership, the Georgites have rewritten the Constitution on their own authority.  “We’ll tell you what rights you have and what rights you don’t have, and once we tell you that you don’t have any, we can do whatever we want to with you, whether it’s torture by another name or indefinite imprisonment without charges and without recourse.”  It seems to me that an Executive undertaking to act in just this manner was a major factor in a Revolution that began around 1776.

The English Civil War was fought over this one.  The conflict that ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was fought over this one.  And so (without in the case of George III his claiming any Divine Right) was the American Revolution.  If the Republican Religious Right is not stopped in its tracks by the political process in our country, and stopped very soon, the chances of that 2nd Civil War become only greater.