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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SCHIAVO CASE, II: WILLIAM BENNETT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS (“The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 8)

Column No. 56 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 14, 2005

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

I do not write the term “Second Civil War” lightly.  As you know, I believe that Georgitism is leading us directly to the destruction of traditional American Constitutional Democracy and instituting in its place a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.  I originally planned up to three columns on the Schiavo case.  The Schiavo “mini-series” (sorry about this) will now stretch to at least four, perhaps five essays.  I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Major elements of the Georgite campaign to tear apart the Constitution piece by piece, already well underway, are clearly illustrated by it and how the Georgites have dealt with it.  Today’s column highlights a proposal by one of the leading ideologues of the Republican Religious Right, William Bennett, to destroy the independence of the Judiciary and thus remove one of the legs of the three-legged stool that presently symbolizes the bedrock of true Americanism, the separation of powers at both the Federal and State levels in our country.

One of the central elements of fascism is replacing of the Rule of Law by the Rule of Man.  The Rule of Law governs most modern countries.  A central element of the doctrine of the Rule of Man is that there is no such thing as an independent judiciary that has legal power over the legislative and, in particular, the executive, branches of government.  Established practice in the United States since its founding has been that the executive and legislative branches are, without any form of coercion, to follow direct orders arising from decisions of the judicial branch.  The trade-off has been that the judicial branch is to follow legislated Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, legal precedent, and customary legal practices in arriving at its decisions.

This is all part of the unwritten part of the Constitution of the United States.  This particular unwritten part began as an add-on to the written part with the creation of the concept and practice of “judicial review.”  This was established by the third Chief Justice, John Marshall, and his fellows on the Court, in a series of decisions handed down during the first two decades of the 19th century.  The concept and processes of judicial review, and its implied supremacy over certain actions of the other two branches as described above, are nowhere specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  Nevertheless, both the concept and the practice were fully accepted at the time as part of US constitutional government by the leaders of the other two branches, many of whom had been major actors in the creation of the Constitution.  Their number included President Jefferson, who did not consider judicial review with the power of the final say a particularly good idea, but went along with it nevertheless.

William Bennett was the Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Bush I.  In that role, Bennett proclaimed, among other things, that the use of certain recreational mood-altering addictive drugs was illegal because, well, they were addictive (bad) and the law said so, and whatever the law said was right and it had to be followed.  (Bennett at the time happened to be addicted to a drug four times as addictive as cocaine --- nicotine in cigarette tobacco --- but it wasn't illegal, so that didn't matter.  He was also overweight and out-of-shape and it came out later that he was a compulsive gambler, but that apparently did not matter then, either.)  He also proclaimed, upon finding out that in 17th century Persia heroin dealers were beheaded, that beheading might not be a bad idea for heroin dealers in the US either.  Treatment for addiction?  Forget it.  The law is the law he said, and it has to be obeyed.

Then along comes the Terry Schiavo case, so convenient for the Georgites and the rest of the Republican Religious Right in, among other things, their continuing and strengthening assault on the courts and the rest of the foundations of the US legal system.  In an article on the National Review Online March 24, 2005, Bennett strongly recommended that Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida directly disobey the order of the Florida courts regarding Terry Schiavo.  He also recommended that this Bush (III, mark my word) should ignore the fact that the Federal court system refused to enter into the matter, therefore directly reinforcing the decisions and outcomes of the Florida judicial process.

So here is Mr. Law-and-Order incarnate advocating law-busting by an elected official, just because they both disagree with the outcome of the judicial process (over a seven-year period) in a particular case.  This is the Rule of Man, not the Rule of Law.  This is fascism, folks, plain and simple.  According to a report in the Miami Herald Jeb Bush was prepared to follow this advice and send State law enforcement officers to remove Mrs. Schiavo from the hospice where she was under care, and reinsert the famous feeding tube.  He was deterred from doing so only because the local police informed the governor’s office that they would resist any attempt to interfere with a lawful court order.  But just think.  That hospice might have been Jeb Bush’s Fort Sumter.

Am I over-emphasizing these aspects of the Schiavo case?  I do not think so.  Not enough people, particularly in the media and the so-called opposition party, are paying enough attention to them.

Such issues were also ignored in pre-Nazi Germany.

THE SCHIAVO CASE, II: WILLIAM BENNETT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS (“The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 8)

Column No. 56 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 14, 2005

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

I do not write the term “Second Civil War” lightly.  As you know, I believe that Georgitism is leading us directly to the destruction of traditional American Constitutional Democracy and instituting in its place a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.  I originally planned up to three columns on the Schiavo case.  The Schiavo “mini-series” (sorry about this) will now stretch to at least four, perhaps five essays.  I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Major elements of the Georgite campaign to tear apart the Constitution piece by piece, already well underway, are clearly illustrated by it and how the Georgites have dealt with it.  Today’s column highlights a proposal by one of the leading ideologues of the Republican Religious Right, William Bennett, to destroy the independence of the Judiciary and thus remove one of the legs of the three-legged stool that presently symbolizes the bedrock of true Americanism, the separation of powers at both the Federal and State levels in our country.

One of the central elements of fascism is replacing of the Rule of Law by the Rule of Man.  The Rule of Law governs most modern countries.  A central element of the doctrine of the Rule of Man is that there is no such thing as an independent judiciary that has legal power over the legislative and, in particular, the executive, branches of government.  Established practice in the United States since its founding has been that the executive and legislative branches are, without any form of coercion, to follow direct orders arising from decisions of the judicial branch.  The trade-off has been that the judicial branch is to follow legislated Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, legal precedent, and customary legal practices in arriving at its decisions.

This is all part of the unwritten part of the Constitution of the United States.  This particular unwritten part began as an add-on to the written part with the creation of the concept and practice of “judicial review.”  This was established by the third Chief Justice, John Marshall, and his fellows on the Court, in a series of decisions handed down during the first two decades of the 19th century.  The concept and processes of judicial review, and its implied supremacy over certain actions of the other two branches as described above, are nowhere specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  Nevertheless, both the concept and the practice were fully accepted at the time as part of US constitutional government by the leaders of the other two branches, many of whom had been major actors in the creation of the Constitution.  Their number included President Jefferson, who did not consider judicial review with the power of the final say a particularly good idea, but went along with it nevertheless.

William Bennett was the Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Bush I.  In that role, Bennett proclaimed, among other things, that the use of certain recreational mood-altering addictive drugs was illegal because, well, they were addictive (bad) and the law said so, and whatever the law said was right and it had to be followed.  (Bennett at the time happened to be addicted to a drug four times as addictive as cocaine --- nicotine in cigarette tobacco --- but it wasn't illegal, so that didn't matter.  He was also overweight and out-of-shape and it came out later that he was a compulsive gambler, but that apparently did not matter then, either.)  He also proclaimed, upon finding out that in 17th century Persia heroin dealers were beheaded, that beheading might not be a bad idea for heroin dealers in the US either.  Treatment for addiction?  Forget it.  The law is the law he said, and it has to be obeyed.

Then along comes the Terry Schiavo case, so convenient for the Georgites and the rest of the Republican Religious Right in, among other things, their continuing and strengthening assault on the courts and the rest of the foundations of the US legal system.  In an article on the National Review Online March 24, 2005, Bennett strongly recommended that Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida directly disobey the order of the Florida courts regarding Terry Schiavo.  He also recommended that this Bush (III, mark my word) should ignore the fact that the Federal court system refused to enter into the matter, therefore directly reinforcing the decisions and outcomes of the Florida judicial process.

So here is Mr. Law-and-Order incarnate advocating law-busting by an elected official, just because they both disagree with the outcome of the judicial process (over a seven-year period) in a particular case.  This is the Rule of Man, not the Rule of Law.  This is fascism, folks, plain and simple.  According to a report in the Miami Herald Jeb Bush was prepared to follow this advice and send State law enforcement officers to remove Mrs. Schiavo from the hospice where she was under care, and reinsert the famous feeding tube.  He was deterred from doing so only because the local police informed the governor’s office that they would resist any attempt to interfere with a lawful court order.  But just think.  That hospice might have been Jeb Bush’s Fort Sumter.

Am I over-emphasizing these aspects of the Schiavo case?  I do not think so.  Not enough people, particularly in the media and the so-called opposition party, are paying enough attention to them.

Such issues were also ignored in pre-Nazi Germany.

THE SCHIAVO CASE AND THE LOCUS OF THE ‘POLICE POWER’ (“The Coming 2nd Civil War,” No. 7)

Column No. 55 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - April 7, 2005

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

A minority of Americans, in the 20% range, adheres to this ideology.  However, the Georgite regime, abetted by its lap-dog mainstream media otherwise known as the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda, act as if it has a majority behind it.  There is as yet no effective national political opposition to the Georgites and their true agenda of dismantling US Constitutional Democracy – an opposition that is, after all, supported by the majority of Americans.  Every day passing without such an entity that could possibly win the struggle politically, brings us one day closer to civil war.  Civil War – not written lightly.  The reason for such a stark prospect is that there are too many Constitution-loving Americans who will not give up freedom and liberty without a fight.  Each essay in this occasional series is, thus, about an issue that, if not resolved politically in favor of traditional US Constitutionalism, will eventually need to be resolved for it by force.

Some will characterize this position as alarmist and premature.  That is the intent.  We must start focusing on what the Georgites are really about and quickly develop a strong, national political opposition that focuses on what their agenda really is, not what they say it is.  To use Jefferson’s characterization of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as indicating an eventual bloody conflict over slavery, “the firebell is ringing in the night.”  Now to the specifics of today’s column as to how the Constitution is being torn apart piece by piece by the Georgites.

The Georgite Executive Branch has clearly demonstrated its penchant for amending the Constitution without bothering to go through the constitutionally mandated amendment process.  As detailed previously in this space, under the “USAPatriot” Act, the regime has abrogated major portions of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, it has arrogated to itself the power to declare war when it pleases to do so, and it has revoked without negotiation major portions of international treaties that, under the Constitution, are part of the “highest law of the land.”

Not to be outdone, the Georgite Congress has now gotten into the act, with yet another attack on the Constitution.

The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  This is known as “the reserve clause” of the Constitution.  Among these powers “not delegated to the United States” (that is, they are reserved to the States) is something called the “police power” of sovereign governments.  It was well-known, well-understood, and well-defined in English Common Law and statute at the time of the adoption of the US Constitution.  This is the power (FP Grad, Public Health Law Manual, 1975, p. 5): “to enact and enforce laws to protect and promote the health, safety, morals, order, peace, comfort, and general welfare of the people.”  That the Police Power belongs to the States has been accepted law in our land since the Founding.  Among the many matters covered by it is, for example, the determination by the Courts of who, in the absence of a Living Will, has the say over the matter of the maintenance of cardio-respiratory functioning in a person when there is no evidence of brain function --- spouse, or parents.  In this instance, the settled State law around this country says the spouse had the power of decision.

With the horribly mis-named “Terri’s Law” and abetted by some Democrats who apparently had not, or did not care to, read the Constitution either, the Georgite Congress brought a matter governed by the police power up from the Florida state court to the Federal courts.  In so doing, and mimicking the Bush Administration in other actions, Congress repealed a major element of the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment. It did so just as the Georgites have done: without bothering to go through the amendment process.

It is immaterial that the Federal court system, all the way to the Supreme Court, refused to hear the case.  The hard fact is that, if the Georgites are able to stock the courts with judges who think the way they do, such judicial self-restraint will be a thing of the past.  The train carrying those who would destroy Constitutional Democracy as we have known it in the United States for 200+ years has left the station.  Since that train is totally out of control, a massive train-wreck is coming.  I wonder when some elements of the mainstream media will wake up to that fact and when a political party opposed to that outcome will come powerfully onto the scene?

NB:  This column is derived from my “Short Shot No. 54” that appeared on The Moving Planet.