Apartheid Returns to America: SB 1070, the "Papers Please" Law

There’s only one way an American can repay the debt for our Constitution and Bill of Rights—among the world’s greatest guarantees of dignity, liberty, and equality—and that’s to pay it forward. When we fail to do that, when we deliberately jettison somebody else’s rights and dignity, we spit in the face of God.

SB 1070, the harsh new “Papers Please” law that Arizona’s GOP government just enacted, requires Arizona police to demand the papers of anyone they “reasonably suspect” is in the country illegally. It also says that any person can sue the authorities if they don’t do just that.

Ironically, SB 1070 does nothing to stop illegal border crossing. Nor is it actually aimed at “illegal immigration” generically. It isn’t aimed at Canadians or Europeans or Icelanders or Polynesians. In Arizona, illegal immigration is a south of the border thing, meaning that this law’s effective impact is exclusively directed at Latinos, Mestizos, and Hispanics.

Unlike a border control station, SB 1070 just doesn’t treat all people equally. Blue eyed, fair skinned “illegals” have no worries. The chances they’ll be carded are zero. That makes this law unconstitutional.

Effective impact means how this law will operate in real life, so let’s get honest. There’s no way to tell by looking who’s here illegally. Given this new mandate and our proximity to Mexico, that’s going to pose a big problem for our police, because here in Arizona, 10% of the population is Native American, and 30% of the population is Latino, Mestizo, or Hispanic.

Of that combined 40%, hundreds of thousands of Arizona residents belong to families who have inhabited this land long before any Anglo ever did, which should make the prospect of carding any one of them cause repeated reflexive vomiting. And then there’s our indigenous American population. Thousands and thousands of them are in fact physically indistinguishable from a Mestizo or an indigenous Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan, or Ecuadorian, and all of them are in fact citizens of the 21 other sovereign nations in Arizona that we call tribes.

Because this law requires our police to detain anyone they merely suspect might be here illegally; and because it targets Latinos, Mestizos, Hispanics, and Native Americans exclusively, it combines everyone in these groups—US citizens, tribe members, legal residents, illegal residents alike—into one giant suspect class based on nothing but racial characteristics such as skin and eye color, facial structure, and body type.

In other words, unless our governor in her vast wisdom produces other criteria for identifying a suspected illegal immigrant, it seems inescapable that SB 1070 will force Arizona's jurisdictions to engage in illegal racial profiling—there being no alternative—or be sued. That’s called legitimized race discrimination.

So, thanks to SB 1070, now all Arizona residents whose skin or eye color, facial structure, or body type may provide “reasonable suspicion” of illegal residency must now carry papers in case they are stopped--on mere suspicion and without warrant. My citizen friend Antonio, who looks like a Mayan prince, could be detained when he walks his dog. My citizen friend Roberto, a former Senate chief of staff, could also be detained, as could any Hispanic, Latino, Mestizo, or indigenous US soldier. As could their families. As could physicians, and educators, and hard-working roofers, construction guys, gardeners, nannies, chefs, inventors, investors, citrus pickers, miners, architects, waiters, and artists, all because the police can’t tell by looking and our GOP government doesn’t really give a good goddamn about the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

This makes me almost indescribably angry. But it gets worse.

Added to the powers to arrest, detain, and deport without warrant, giving police the power to demand proof of citizenship on the basis of mere suspicion and without warrant is as fundamental to the police state as a network of secret prisons. In fact, it is the ground-level, on-the-street hypodermic syringe that every single one of them must have in order to inject into their people the pervasive terror that keeps them in power. Get it?

What you get when you add race discrimination to police state powers is called Apartheid. It is no less Apartheid in Phoenix than it was in Johannesburg. It is no less ugly, no less an affront to human decency, and no less a threat to the entire citizenry here in the US of A than it was in South Africa, because once this kind of thing is permitted to take root, it will only grow.

For this (I would think obvious) reason, our brilliant Constitution limits police powers, reserves border control to the federal government, protects us from unreasonable search and seizure, and prohibits indefinite detention without specific cause and due process. We undermine and debase those protections at everyone’s peril, because the generation that will sells its country’s freedoms at any price is also least equipped to buy them back again.

The bottom line here is that, as history repeatedly affirms, if given enough popular fear and outrage, lawmakers everywhere can and will justify anything, no matter how heinous or obscene. In my view, that simple truth puts the participation of Tom Tanton’s Immigration Reform Law Institute in writing SB 1070 into what I hope is horrifying focus. Please: Follow that link.

A lawyer for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI)--the group that helped write Arizona's law--boasted about being "approached by lawmakers from four other states who have asked for advice on how they can do the same thing. IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Immigration Reform (FAIR), an extreme anti-immigrant group that has recently been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 'In a nutshell, the IRLI has been behind most, if not every, local legislative immigration crackdown over the past few years. . . .'

[The Progress Report, April 29, 2010] Please: Follow that link, too.

In other words, entities that the very estimable Southern Poverty Law Center calls “hate groups,” entities that, with the help of Fox News and Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh other loud-mouthed Far Right propagandists, have been spewing virulent lies for years about the extent and consequences of illegal Hispanic, Latino, Mestizo, and indigenous immigration are now drafting Arizona state law.

If that doesn't frighten you and make you hopping mad, either you’re not breathing or you’re stupider than a can of sand, and you sure as hell aren’t an American patriot.

I'm scared and I'm furious. I’m also frightened and sickened by the enormous erosion in the last 30 years of Americans’ common understanding of ourselves as a people and of what we stand for as a nation. More and more of us—mostly good people, many well educated—are entirely ready to jettison somebody else’s constitutional protections in less time than it takes to strike a match, and then have a party to brag about it.

We’ve already seen Americans lie down and take it as GOP lawmakers happily cut out some of our constitutional right of privacy and some of our habeas corpus protection in the wake of 9-11. We’ve also mostly kept our mouths shut as state after state has made a lower caste of gays and lesbians. And now the Arizona GOP, unwilling to name, much less target, the real causes of illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and human trafficking, has made itself a racist police state the likes of which the USA hasn’t seen since Jim Crow.

Horribly, mystifyingly, no body of fact, no argument however elegant, no appeal to reason or Christ or common decency--no force in the known universe can make these people see that it actually isn’t white skin, flag waving, Bible thumping, and prayer in public schools that makes a person an American.

What makes us real Americans is standing up to fascism whenever, wherever, and however it arrives. It doesn’t make a bit of difference whether fascism gets here on the tip of a missile, carrying a cross and draped in the flag, or on the pen of a fundamentalist, white supremacist lawmaker, because once we let it in the door, it’s hell to get it out again. As we know.

From its predictable and profound negative economic, tourist, and international repercussions, to the human fodder this law throws to Arizona’s obscene for-profit prisons, to the hoped-for decimation of Hispanic votes in November, to the legislature’s usurpation of exclusively federal powers to regulate immigration, this law is a travesty.

But note well: This isn’t Arizona’s first modern venture into Apartheid.

In recent years, anyway, the first was Arizona’s segregation of GLBT people into a second class for which marriage and its enormous social and economic benefits are simply not accessible.

So it’s natural, now that we have yet another instance when an Arizona Republican government has intentionally created a lower-caste citizenry, that sentient beings might wonder what the third, fourth, and fifth instances will be. I’m deadly serious. These Christianist, Far Right extremists have a rather developed taste for limiting other people’s freedoms. As they’ve got Tom Tanton and Fox News to give them political cover, and an unusually high number of really whipped-up bone-stupid voters, and don’t hold themselves even the teensiest bit accountable to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, what’s to stop them?

People will always find reasons, but both the truth of history and the founding of our own country surely shout that nothing ever justifies spitting on the principles that make us uniquely American and for which many generations of our families and neighbors—yes, even “anchor babies,” “coloreds,” “Indians,” and “queers”—have died.

As pundit Michael Gerson put it in yesterday's Washington Post, the only truly American answer to “May I see your papers, please?” is “Go to hell! I’ll see you in court.”

Soon as that's past our lips we'd best deal quickly with the REAL causes of illegal immigration, starting with multinationals' pillaging of the nations south of the border, the American agribusiness, meatpacking, construction, and entertainment business demand for cheap (and even slave) labor, and shoe-shined Wall Street coke dealers.

This Has to Stop. Now.

I'm pretty upset. Five minutes ago, moments after I fired off an email to Newsweek for its bogglingly irresponsible article, "Is Obama the AntiChrist?," I learned that a Roman Catholic cardinal at the Vatican has called Obama's agenda "destructive," "violent," and "apocalyptic," and inquired what grieving Catholics should do with "our hot, angry tears of betrayal."

Apparently it's not enough that Sarah Palin ignited the "patriots" and the racists to shout kill slogans. Now, no less than Newsweek and a member of the upper tier of the RC hierarchy have elected to stoke the flames still higher. Much higher.

My concern has partly to do with the overlaps among four populations: extremely conservative Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists, racists, and extreme Rightwing militia/minuteman/"patriots."

All of them are already whipped to frenzies of rage by the election of the young African American moderate. Just visit the Free Republic site for proof. Remember: This nation has been subjected to a steadily ant-liberal toxic infusion for some thirty years. I mean the likes of Michael Medved, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Tom DeLay, Tom Tancredo, Lou Dobbs, and the rest. When it takes only one zealot alight with holy conviction, pouring apocalyptic kerosene on the white-hot flames of race, religion, and nativism isn't merely irresponsible. It's explosive. It's all but inciting assassination.

As I wrote to Newsweek's editors:

Regarding http://www.newsweek.com/id/169192 -- Well, golly! Can’t you do something else to make sure some paranoid fundamentalist nut job kills the next President? It wasn’t enough for you that Palin stirred the “patriots” and the racists to shout kill threats? That Southern Law Poverty Center is warning of a sharp spike in threats and violence toward African Americans (and others)? Now you have to go the next giant step by giving credibility to those who think that he’s “the anti-Christ”? Why don’t you just take out a contract?

I’m aghast. There’s a responsible way to write about stuff like this, but surely it isn’t to give it the Newsweek imprimatur, as you do here:

"The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they're not nuts: "They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared," Staver says."

You could have troubled to interview universally respected, educated biblical scholars such as John Shelby Spong or Elaine Pagels or Bart Ehrman, who could have spoken to End Times phantasms like “the anti-Christ” from a deeply knowledgeable, profoundly Christian place. But nooooo. In tone and content, you’ve both perpetuated the public view that only fundamentalists speak for all Christians, and quite possibly put the President-Elect’s very life in graver danger than ever.

You’ve got a young wife, two little girls, the Secret Service, the majority of Americans, and a whole, breathless, hopeful world to answer to.

If anything happens to him, the ensuing chaos will dwarf today’s troubles. Thanks ever so for upping the odds. Shame on you. Serious heaps of shame on you. What were you thinking?

Even Blitzer himself--as today, for instance--is stoking the flames. Inadvertently? Who can say. All day long, his drum beats incessant fear to thrum within conservative Americans, that Obama will abolish restraints on gay men and lesbian women in the military. Whether he will or won't we don't know. It gets ratings. Consequences be damned.

What's disturbing, in other words, is that the timing is as troubling as the content, because it adds weight to the heavy backpack of outrage that zealots on the Far Right have toted since Obama was first nominated. And remember: For at least the last eight years, Bush has explicitly "Christianized" the US military and military academies, and created his own private army. Think Mikey Weinstein. Think radical extreme Christianist Erik Prince and his private mercenary military force, Blackwater.

Bush, Blackwater, the Christianization of the armed forces, and 30 years of anti-liberal hate propaganda, in my view, raise the ante far beyond anything we might have anticipated when John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. There's a sinister constellation of means and motive on a scale unprecedented in this country. Not even the run-up to the Civil War saw these things.

It troubles me enormouslythat I'm not seeing or hearing, anywhere, even a sporadic appearance from even one universally respected, highly educated biblical scholar to speak for Christians (as contrasted with Christianists) about the meaning of concepts like "the anti-Christ," Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the like--what they are, what they aren't, what they mean, what they don't mean.

For that reason, all--and I mean ALL--that most Americans know are the fevered nightmare fantasiesof extreme Christianist militant Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind chronicles.

And remember: The Left Behind series of cheap novels--close to 100 million copies have sold--hawk a violent, bloody fundamentalist vision of the End Times, and reportedly have inspired at least one computer game that advocates killing anyone who can't be converted to militant Christianist fundamentalism. These things weren't even on the horizon when the Kennedys and King were assassinated. And we have no way of knowing how many folks are running around out there who've been fed this poison since birth. We do know there are a lot of them.

What can you and I do? Make ourselves and everyone we know acutely aware of these developments, challenge anything in the media anywhere that fans these flames even inadvertently, and hold the whole country accountable for ensuring that we protect this young President-Elect and all the hope that he has stirred in hearts across the world.

The alternative is unthinkable.

An Open Letter to Mormons from a Fancher Granddaughter

Readers in the Southwestern USA are probably aware of it, but others might not know that leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), whose members are informally called Mormons, have formally taken sides in the California anti-gay proposition banning "gay" marriage. In a move that has divided Mormons themselves, the church is actively soliciting its members to oppose both CA Proposition 8 and the similar Arizona Proposition 102. From The Advocate: A letter sent to Mormon bishops and signed by church president Thomas S. Monson and his two top counselors calls on Mormons to donate ''means and time'' to the ballot measure. A note on the letter, dated June 20, says it should be read during church services on June 29, but the letter was published Saturday on several websites.

Following is an open letter to Mormons drawing parallels between 19th C Christian zealots' vicious persecution of Mormons and 21st C Christian zealots' vicious persecution of gay men and lesbian women. The parallels, while not exact, are close enough: zealots lack compassion, allegiance to constitutional justice, and humility. Consequently, they behave in ways that de-humanize themselves and others to a degree that often cannot be measured, much less atoned for. It might be expected that Mormons would understand this simple fact better than most and refrain from acting to restrain others' constitutional rights on the basis of malicious bigotry.

Hello.

I suspect you know the name "Fancher."

For those who don't, one Capt. Alexander Fancher headed "the Fancher Train," a wagon train passing through Mountain Meadows, UT, en route to California in September, 1857. The Salt Lake Tribune reported what happened:

"A California-bound wagon train of about 140 Arkansas emigrants led by John Baker and Alexander Fancher camped near the present-day southwestern Utah town of Enterprise in September 1857. Fears that the U.S. Army was preparing to forcefully remove Brigham Young as Utah territorial governor and impose martial law were at their height. Spurred by inflammatory sermons of LDS leaders, a siege mentality focused Mormon resentment on the 'gentile' wagon train.

"Early on Sept. 7, a group of American Indians and local Mormon 'Indian missionaries' attacked the encircled wagon train without warning. ... With their ammunition, food and water almost gone, the emigrants were persuaded by Mormon officials on the afternoon of Sept. 11 to surrender their arms in exchange for a safe escort past the Indians to Cedar City. ... On a pre-arranged command, the rescuers turned upon the emigrants, joined by Indians who had been lying in wait. Estimates of the death toll include 14 Arkansas men shot in the head, 12 women and 35 youngsters clubbed or knifed to death, with 17 children younger than age 8 surviving the double-cross.

"Nine cowhands hired to drive cattle also were murdered, along with at least 35 other unknown victims. In all, 120 people, mostly women and children, were slain." (Salt Lake Tribune, March 14, 2000, p. A-4)"

This is a bitter part of American history. Accordingly, historians for decades have debated the motives for and precise authority for this massacre. They need not concern us here.

What I know beyond any doubt, and the main point of my recitation here, is that this massacre occurred in a wider context of abuse, violence, fear, and anger caused by America's perception of Mormonism.

The reason most often cited was "Christian" opposition to Mormon practices. But whatever such practices were, and why they existed, and what good or evil they did or didn't spawn was not even remotely relevant. What mattered--all that mattered--was perception.

So violent was the storm of rhetoric and outrage that swept the country that Mormons believed their very lives depended upon making a strategic exodus, en mass, to Utah. So it can't have been a matter of perfect joy and tranquility when a wealthy and large wagon train of "Gentiles" (non-Mormons) appeared in the lush Mountain Meadows valley.

Who knew why they came, or where they were headed, or what would follow? Would the US Army come along shortly to evict everyone in favor of new settlers like these? Who could know? There must have been grave concern among everyone of good will, not just about the immigrants' ultimate intentions and their possible potential for being abusive or violent, but also about how the local people would respond if anything untoward did occur. At least that's how I imagine it.

I've been to Mountain Meadow. Without planning or even expecting to, I ended up on the hill overlooking the valley talking with a local descendant, a Mormon farmer who had climbed up to get a fix on his cattle's whereabouts. When he asked me what had brought me there, I just said that my grandmother was a Fancher. Nothing else was required.

We talked for an hour after my partner left for town to get our camera fixed.

I said I hadn't come for vindication, that I didn't even feel particular rage: 1857 was a long time ago. Rage seemed superfluous at best in 1997, and at worst, a ridiculous extravagance that would only perpetuate grief. So I told him that I had just wanted to come because I wanted to get a sense of what else might have happened on both sides. I said that while nothing could ever excuse that extermination, I had a feeling that events surrounding the massacre were more complicated than either side wanted to dwell on.

(And the debate is full of speculation. You can get a sense of it from the unsubstantiated entry about Mountain Meadows at Wikipedia. The fact is, we'll never know if some Christian supremacist acted in brute ignorance and committed an incindiary obscenity or not. Maybe, but we just don't know.)

We talked without animosity, almost as friends. In fact he told me things I'd never have known without him--that some of the children from the train had been brought up by the local families as their own, and where I could find the communal grave holding some of the remains.

He couldn't have missed the fact that we are a lesbian couple. It's evident wherever we go, in our interactions--the habitual fond gestures of a long-married couple--and in our tone and vocabulary with each other. Appropriately enough, that made no difference to him.

I couldn't have missed the fact that he is a Mountain Meadeows Mormon. It was evident in all he said about himself. Appropriately enough, that made no difference to me.

What mattered--the only thing that ever matters--was our mutual kindness and humility.


Though I can't know what transpired in 1857, I am sure that the leading actors on the stage that day were the same ones who are hogging the stage now, in today's debate about gays and lesbians. And then as now, when moral umbrage, misunderstanding, fear, and paranoia overshadow reason, the actual human beings caught up in the clash are rendered invisible. What becomes of them, what horrors play out in their numerous small daily lives as a result is also invisible. It can't be measured, much less accounted for. Only the extremes--the Matthew Shepards and the Mountain Meadows--are noted, and then too briefly.

So this is an appeal to you. You've seen the decades of misery that ensued from the massacre at Mountain Meadows. You know why it occurred, and what relationship it had to years of bigotry poured out on Mormons by "Christians" utterly convinced of their own superiority.

If you remember how it feels to be vilified, abused, ostracized, and penalized because of someone else's misconceptions, maybe you can summon a little humility and a little kindness. No matter what church leaders may tell you, when you pull the level, vote no on Arizona's Proposition 102 and no on California's Proposition 8.

It's only justice.

Arizona Republicans' War on the Constitution, Again

Point One: Let's get clear. Proposition 102 isn't about marriage.

Proposition 102 is only one state-level deployment of a powerful weapon in radical Christianist Republicans' war on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. That weapon is a fierce 30-year PR campaign to gin up heterosexual Americans' suspicion, dislike, and fear of gay men and lesbian women.

Again, their target--keep this front and center--is not gay marriage. Gay marriage is merely the decoy. Their target is the US Constitution.

Here's why.

All that stands between you and me and the kind of radical fundamentalist theocracy that Sarah Palin represents are the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court that interprets them.

At present, only a tiny handful of constitutional guarantees, explicit and implicit, keep a possible President Sarah Palin from, say, criminalizing homosexual conduct, defining those who protest as "terrorists" under the Patriot Acts, and seizing our assets. Absurd? Not if you've paid attention to Guantanamo and St. Paul.

The distinction is merely one of degree. The thing is, if these few constitutional protections can be neutralized, there's nothing in US law to stop a powerful movement from turning its guns elsewhere: On you, for example. Even the little that we citizens have been permitted to know of the Patriot Acts makes that clear.

Exaggerated? Not at all. After all, that movement has already seized control of the Republican Party. Fact, not opinion.

The so-called "marriage protection" campaign has nothing to do with marriage except in the minds of a sector of citizens--evangelical and fundamentalist Republicans--who've been bombarded with virulent anti-gay propaganda for 30 years. This has taken the form of mass-distributed CDs, videos, direct-mail campaigns, and voter guides, and a whole host of home-schooling and private Christianist academy curricular materials, and conservative church and legal initiatives orchestrated by the extreme Christianist Right. Fact, not opinion.

The point of all this is to reverse 250 years of traditional American legal thought in order to neutralize the Constitution's defense of women, minorities, and the interests of the people as a whole vs. the rights of the individual. Campaigns like "Defense of Marriage" exist solely to draw conservatives to the polls to directly assail a handful of key constitutional protections, and to vote into office the next phalanx of radical Christianists to make laws and appoint judges who will reverse the great liberal legal tradition that has made America the beacon for freedom all over the world. Fact, not opinion.

The Targets

The Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee to every individual of equal protection of the law is the springboard from which judges and justices at every level have found in favor of minorities since Brown v. Board of Education (1954). From that Supreme Court decision flows every subsequent legal advance in US human rights.

Its privacy protection, implicit in the 9th Amendment and reinforced in Amendments 3, 4, and 5 of the Bill of Rights, is absolutely central to each individual's defense against unwarranted state intrusion into personal matters such as non-exploitative sexual relations between consenting adults, and a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy under strict and limited conditions. It also underlies the sensible search warrant.

The Constitution's powerful 1st Amendment affirmation of every individual's freedom to choose his or her religion (or to decline religion), and the wall it imposes between your religion and mine, between my religion and yours, and between a state religion and all of us, are the last and greatest defense each of us has against the radical ideology represented by Sarah Palin, James Dobson, and John McCain.


The Strategy

It isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact that a radical, extraordinarily powerful, richly-funded, highly orchestrated Christian Right already virtually controls the Republican party. Moderate Republicans know it and discuss it openly. If you doubt it, consider this. A few days ago, its own presidential candidate was powerless to select his own vice president. John McCain knuckled under to the Christianist Right because he had to.

Radical Christianists' takeover of the party began in 1991. Why?

Because when extreme fundamental Christianist Pat Robertson lost his White House bid in 1988, radical Christianists got it that they could never take control of the country from the top down. In 1989, they founded the Christian Coalition and developed a winning strategy to seize control of the country from the grassroot up, by seizing control of the Republican party.

This they accomplished by fielding closeted radical fundamentalists for grassroots offices in order to gain, and eventually dominate, delegates to the Republican National Convention. By this means they can, and as we can observe today, they do, write its platform and determine its presidential candidates. Obviously, with control of the platform and the presidency, they control political appointees at every bureaucratic level, dictate what happens in state and local elections, and above all, determine federal appeals court and US Supreme Court appointees.

The fundamentalists' decisive take-control strategy first came to national attention in the well-known San Diego Stealth Initiative. It continues today, more powerful than ever. If in 2000, John McCain could still denounce its takeover, by 2008, John McCain has been forced to capitulate to it and to advance it one giant step by placing extreme Christianist Sarah Palin one heartbeat from the presidency.

Paralleling this GOP take-over strategy is Part 1 of radical Christianists' legal strategy. Their lynchpin legal initiative is the "original intent" campaign, a point-blank assault on traditional American constitutional values as enunciated since the founding of the country. It asserts (absurdly) that at some unknowable place and point in time, all the founders universally concurred on one interpretation of every constitutional issue for all time. That this never occurred--and that the idea itself was denounced even by Madison himself--doesn't stand in the way of fundamentalist extremists. Truth is irrelevant.

Part 2 is the fear-based, seductive PR campaign against so-called "activist judges," also a chimera: The fact is that any so-called "activist" judge exists only in the eye of the beholder. It's a PR tactic obvious because radical Christianists deem only mainstream judges who interpret the Constitution in accord with traditional American values as "activist."

Not surprisingly, in other words, the only "activist" judges are those the Christianists denounce as "liberal." These are the judges and justices who find that the Constitution and Bill of Rights actually give equal protection to women, minorities, labor, and--powerfully--sometimes to the people as a whole (as in environmental protection and gun control) over individuals.

Given this reality check, in the real light of day, Proposition 102, Arizona's GOP-dominated legislature's upchucked version of a measure we defeated just two years ago, can be seen for what it is, and the reason it's back on the ballot can be exposed for what it is.

These are heavy duty weapons aimed at the heart of American freedoms. They and the radical theocratic ideals they serve constitute the most serious threat to democracy in our history. Such propositions are first-line guns in a war on the ideals that make Americans uniquely Americans. The ironic thing is, those guns aren't just aimed at queers.

What the founders who drafted our majestic core documents saw is this simple paradox: A Constitution that defends the rights of one American defends the rights of all Americans. Without our Constitution intact, and without a committed, staunch legal tradition and Supreme Court unshakably devoted to that simple principle, we're all at the mercy of the next commander in chief and the hidden strings that control him or her. That's not democracy. That's fascism.

So don't be stupid. If you vote for Prop 102, it's just youself you're firing at.

Bookmark Religious Right Watch

From Religious Right Watch:

"The East Anglian Daily Times reports on Dr. Lee Marsden, Lecturer in Politics at the University of East Anglia, whose new book, For God's Sake, 'argues that the religious core values of Middle America have potentially disastrous consequences for both the United States and the planet.'"

He's right, except that the views of the Christianists are not universally embraced by all of Middle America, thank God. That's the good news. The bad news is that they are embraced by not a few of the most powerful men in Washington, including the President and four men on the US Supreme Court.

McCain, who earned my praise for denouncing the Christianists back when, did a complete U-turn this election in order to further his presidential ambitions. If he's installed in the White House, he will owe all to militant, uncompromising feudal Christianists who (seriously) believe that nuclear holocaust is a good thing because it will bring the Second Coming and that environmentalism is a slap in God's face because "He" wants us to exploit the planet. (And that's just for starters. After that? Old Testament-style theocracy, Talibanist views of women and GLBT folk, and of course white male supremacy.)

The combination of "owing all to" and "some of the most powerful men in Washington" is not a promising formula for planetary life.

If you aren't thoroughly familiar with the size, scope, wealth, power, and views of this dangerous extremist phalanx, and don't fully understand its hold on key US power centers, please: Get up to speed. This is the best site yet for that purpose. Check out the righthand column, link by link. Then you'll know what I've been yelling since the mid-80s: No, Virginia, they're not a lunatic fringe. They're the lunatic center who got into power because we were sound asleep.

Conservative v. Rightwinger

Maybe it would help to define my terms.

I'm not sure everyone would agree, but my perception is that there's a continuum on the Right, just as there's a continuum on the Left. To wit, I see a huge difference between conservatives and Rightwingers. Because I see a fundamental regard for the Constitution on the part of genuine mainstream American conservatives, I generally respect them. I think of conservatives as Eisenhower, Bush 41, and Billy Graham--even Goldwater up to a point. We disagree, often profoundly, but we play by the rules and are more oriented to the common good than to any ideology. Compromise is possible, and one's religion is not to be imposed on anyone.

I think of Rightwingers, however, as Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, David Duke, Joe McCarthy, John Birch, Dick Cheney, Bush 43, Pat Robertson, and Karl Rove. Each without the slightest doubt openly disregards the Constitution and Bill of Rights and systematically seeks or sought to undermine them. The rules are Christianist-Corporatist Right uber alles, and all is fair in love and war. It's this crowd whose views and values are not consistent with our founding (defining) documents. And if they're not only consistent with, but also actively seek to dismantle the only things that make an American uniquely American, then how should I evaluate them politically?

This is the crux of the issue for me. I'm no more comfortable with Rightwing extremism than I am with Leftwing extremism, and for the same reasons. At some point that continuum makes a circle and joins ends. At that point, the mechanics and ends--justify-means fanaticism of Nazism and Maoism, of the Weather Underground and Timothy McVeigh really are indistinguishable even if the ideology and rhetoric differ.

What the Founding Fathers Believed?

Let's take this discussion about how any genuine (constitutional) American can be a rightwinger one bite at a time, for clarity and sanity's sake.

Responding to my post asking that question, Rightwing Reader (RWR) said this:

"Ok I'll bite. We obviously have very different views of what the founding fathers believed. For instance, they did not advocate for gay marriage, comprehensive welfare, social security, lack of personal responsibility, unions controlling schools, abortion, flag burning, open borders, experimentation with embryos, euthanasia, high taxes and a slew of other things. The reason I am conservative is that I believe in what they believed, staring with the right to LIFE, then liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

OK. Groundrules: We will remain civil and we will provide citations for assertions of fact. These are the rules, because without civility and without a solid and shared set of data, we'll soon end up in a hailstorm of useless accusations that harden the divide.

RWR, let me clear up a couple of things from the get-go. I didn't address "what the founding fathers believed" for good reasons (see following). I discussed the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, no. We don't disagree about "what the founding fathers believed." We do disagree on appropriate policy for a variety of problems, and I disagree with your presentation of (I suppose you'd say) liberal positions. That said, it's not my intent or mission to change your mind about social policy.

Your comment about "what the founding fathers believed" is based on this assumption: that it can be proved that somewhere, at some time, all the founders expressed unanimous agreement on how to resolve all the issues addressed in the Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments, and the Bill of Rights, and on how the words in all these documents were to be interpreted forevermore. This is the conservative doctrine of "original intent." Debate about "original intent" has been with us from Day 1. It's not a new invention.

The facts are these: (1) The founders did not officially preserve the proceedings leading up to ratification. This is a matter of record. That's mighty odd if they actually universally "believed" their "intent" mattered even greatly, let alone more than anything.

(2) Madison, who is to conservatives what Jefferson is to progressives, and one of the greatest of the brilliant minds of the period, actually "subordinated original intent to other considerations, as when he said that the sense of the Constitution would be found 'in the proceedings of the Convention, the contemporary expositions, and, above all, in the ratifying conventions of the States.'" (Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution. Leonard Levy. McMillan, 1988. Pp. 5-29.)

Note well: For the greatest conservative mind of that era (and possibly since), the drafters themselves were not important. What counted were the RATIFIERS: the conventions of the States themselves. The reason is clear: it is the will of The People, as expressed in the acts of ratification, that makes these documents sacred to Americans.

Madison is also on record repeatedly noting that the meaning of the Constitution would emerge in discussions of The People over time. (Ibid., 21) He wasn't thrilled about that, but he knew that such is the nature of human language, life, and experience. This means that to Madison, The People are the "founding fathers." If you think--or think Madison thought--that The People agree on anything always and forever--possess original intent, we'll, we'll have to disagree.

[Correction: I had inadvertently left in the word "didn't" in this sentence when I originally posted it. It has now been deleted.] As to change, these brilliant men clearly did realize that the future would bring changes in technology, circumstance, science, common attitudes, etc., that would affect how The People would interpret the founding documents. Because they realized that, it seems clear that they also realized that the founding documents would necessarily be interpreted differently over time, in light of new circumstances affecting The People. Surely that's not arguable.

So: We know for a fact that the only things the founders agreed on was to sign the documents they drafted and to present them for ratification. Even then, many had reservations, which we know based on their letters and other writings. This is a matter of record, but for proof, I cite The Federalist Papers and also The Anti-Federalist Papers. There was wide disagreement even about ratification!

What they wrote about what they believed and thought (two different things, mind you) was sometimes unclear and confusing, as was how they lived their lives. Moreover, many of them are inconsistent between their writings and how they lived. Which of those would you say should prevail in an attempt to prove "what the founders believed"? Contradition, confusion, lack of consistency: Not surprising. They were human beings. To seek crystalline clarity and unanimity among them is to be bitterly disappointed.

What is significant is that they set aside their disagreements and reservations in order to sign the consensus draft Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments of their day, and the Bill of Rights and forward them for ratification. Therefore, these ratified consensus documents are what matter. Their personal "beliefs," other writings, and the history leading up to the ratification are interesting but can never provide the ultimate absolute unanimity and clarity that you imply.

The entire subsequent course of US law and legal theory is proof of that. It contains countless references to their disputes.

Some even warned us directly that their personal beliefs are irrelevant.

So, RWR, if you can point to the unanimous "founders' beliefs" document, signed and dated, of course, showing universal agreement on how all the words in all the core documents are to be interpreted, please do. Otherwise, refrain from basing your argument on the myth of what the founders believed. Because it is clear that whatever you or I say on that subject is only our personal interpretation based on what they wrote and didn't write. And my friend, as an American, my interpretation is as valid as yours.

Speaking both practically and philosophically, it doesn't matter what they believed. All that matters is what We The People joined together to ratify for posterity: The Declaration, the Constitution, its Amendments, and the Bill of Rights.

"What the founders believed"? Since there's universal disagreement among the founders, the concept is misleading from the get-go. Ever since the core documents were signed, there's been disagreement among Americans about their interpretation. That, alone, proves that they are living documents whether we like it or not. We continue to argue them because we are free, and because we too disagree on best courses of action for all these weighty matters. As long as we're humans, it can't be otherwise.

I submit that you and I disagree on how to argue them as well as on what the outcomes ought to be.

Why Would Any Genuine American Ever be a Rightwinger?

Yesterday's B-and-F with Rightwing Reader (see comments) reminds me of something I've been meaning to blog about for some time: What makes the average American take a hard-right turn?

All of us Americans grew up breathing the same constitutional air, with the same Bill of Rights, and the same cultural stories (I use the word in its large sense)about what America stands for, didn't we?

We are the Land of the Free. We're innately suspicious of government. We originated because of governmental abuse. We don't cotton to domestic spying, which we associate with Red Square and the KGB. That stuff's for the UN-free. Americans won't tolerate it. Freedom belongs to all Americans. It's our birthright.

All men are created equal. We know "men" means "people." All Americans are created equal. Well, OK, we might not be perfect, but we'll get there eventually because of our long tradition of believing that God created us all in God's image.

We have three branches of government because we don't want a king, we know that legislators make mistakes, and we need judges to balance laws against the intent of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have 230+ years of legal tradition about what all that means. The idea that judges shouldn't play that role is anathema. It's why we created the judiciary as equal to the executive and the legislative.

We have freedom of religion. Quakers, Catholics, Baptists, and all the rest came here partly to get away from somebody else's idea of what religion ought to be. The last thing we want is an official state religion, because we know where that goes. Besides, no real American would tolerate anybody telling him or her what to think or what to believe.

Now, all this, and much more, is bred in the bone of Americans. So what can possibly cause an American, of all people, to turn his or her back on our founding values?

And more mystifying than that, what make any American think that today's generations--unfamiliar as we are with state oppression, inexperienced as we are in the reality of a state religion, innocent as we generally are (so far) of applied star chambers, domestic detention centers, systematic domestic spying, and genuine authoritarian rule--think for a second that we are wiser than the founders? Our founders experienced all these things, and for that reason, wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that have sustained us so well all these years. Our experience, and our education, are paltry compared with theirs. It's hard to imagine that we could do better at governing than they did.

I'm all ears. What offense in the last forty years was so great that it even conceivably justifies a revolution--think a 180-degree revolution--in the meaning of America? I'd really like to know.