(Click Here to Access Part 1)
The Ruling Party
So, rather than attempt to discuss this in terms of the political parties as they now exist in this country, and, all over the world, I think the easiest way to view any political system is by way of categorizing people in terms of whether they are members of one of these two parties: The Ruling Party or The Opposition Party.
The Ruling Party at both the federal level and the state level now consists of an amalgamation of Republicans, neoconservatives (“neocons”), and theocrats. Not “right-wingers” or “far-right wingers,” but “theocrats.” If you define anyone on the “right” as “far-right” or “ultra-right,” that really implies that you think they are headed into the direction of less government and more anarchy. And, that’s not what people who use those terms mean to say.
The Opposition Party consists of every party not in power. This is where the Democrats are now. Up until 2002 in this state, we were the Opposition Party and the Dems were the Ruling Party.
Even if you attended the worst public schools of Georgia you should have learned what’s on the “right” and what’s on the “left” in the political spectrum. Anything on the left side are political influences that seek to impose more and more control over individual liberty. The differences between communists, socialists and fascists are only in their degrees of intrusiveness and their methods of enforcing that intrusiveness. The communists desire a totalitarian stranglehold on the individual, much like George Orwell’s classic book 1984, which, if today’s theocrats had their way, that book would be on the permanently banned list.
The right side of the spectrum are those people desiring less and less government control. That is, the Goldwater/Reagan Republicans, the Libertarians, and, at the extreme right, the Anarchists, who want absolutely no government at all.
The neocons are not interested in protecting your liberties as they do not resemble conservatives in any way. Neocons have been around for about 30 years. A full dissertation on what neocons are and what they believe can be found in Texas Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul’s speech to Congress on July 10, 2003. It is very long to read, but if you take the time, you will more fully understand what the neocons are about, and, most importantly, how antithetical they are to the platform of either the Goldwater Republicans or the Reagan Republicans.
In the middle of his speech, Ron Paul lists 17 basic beliefs of the neocons. Several of the most damning of these beliefs are 1) The ends justify the means, 2) They endorse attacks on civil liberties such as what is found in the Patriot Act, and 3) They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive. This last one should strike a cord with you…because that is exactly what members of the politburo engaged in to hold their power for so long in the Soviet Union. The politburo was composed of nothing but members of the Communist Party who lied to everyone, and lied the best. That is who is now in control of both the state and the federal government.
The theocrats are even less interested in your liberties, and, much more frequent practitioners of the “lying at all costs” to accomplish their ends. All of their Bible-thumping-you-over-the-head actions are an attempt to tighten control over your life. I have no doubt that, if they could get away with it, they would impose religious controls over this state and country in much the same way that the Taliban controlled Afghanistan prior to bunker-buster bombs being dropped on their heads.
Only the true Republicans of today’s Ruling Party are interested in preserving this constitutional republic in the form it was intended. However, it is debatable as to how many of those are still in elected office that can stand independently and fight for those ideals.
To put this in even more real-world perspective, though I am consistently labeled as a “moderate” by the theocrats, I am closer to being a true Reagan Republican than any of the neocons or the theocrats. People like Sadie Fields, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are nothing more than theocrats who cleverly cloak themselves as Republicans. They have no problem with using the force of government to impose their religious beliefs on Americans, regardless of whether it is accomplished by hook or crook. One need only look at how this marriage amendment will appear on the ballot to understand that crook is right up their alley.
If the wording of the amendment passes Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance Russell or the Georgia Supreme Court, it will not be due to the “moral nature” of the amendment. It will be due only to the law, which is either legal or illegal, not moral or immoral. No religious beliefs are used in trying to interpret case law. Nothing but clearly thought-out interpretation of Georgia case law will be allowed to stand.
However, for Goldwater Republicans like me, I have to ask people like Crotts, Stephens, Lamutt, Seabaugh et al. a simple question: Why did you seek to write it in a way to directly deceive the voters as to the full content of the amendment? We do not have a problem with too little blank space on the ballot or running out of room on the electronic ballot.
You senators had the clear ability to put the entire amendment on the ballot question, and you chose to omit the second part. If you’re so sure, as I hear from Crotts every time he opens his mouth in public, that the entire amendment would “pass anyway,” then why not put the whole amendment on there? Ah, I thought so. Because you know it might not pass, and that would defeat the purpose of shoving your religious socialism down the throats of the voters.
Yes, according to constitutional law, you were not obligated to put the entire text on the ballot. But, you are being deliberately dishonest in writing the amendment the way you did. True, it passed “LC” and “every legislator voted on it” and it passed both houses. So what? Just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean you should, does it? It’s obvious to me that you folks who went behind secret doors and colluded with Sadie Fields on how to write the amendment know very, very little about the meaning of the Ninth Commandment, which is concerned with bearing false witness.
Something That Will Make The Theocrats Very Edgy
As I said in the beginning, I have no interest in debating the gay vs. straight lifestyle, and I am not changing that. However, there is a very interesting U.S. Supreme Court case that provides an interesting backdrop for the case of “gay marriages.”
This era is not the first time the theocrats have influenced our government. In fact, there were laws not very long ago that prohibited interracial marriages, so-called “anti-miscegenation” laws. These laws were developed by theocrats who believed that it was biblically ordained that white people should not marry black people.
The case that is relevant for this discussion is the case of Loving vs. Virginia, decided on June 12, 1967. The case involves an interracial married couple (white man and black woman) married in 1958 in the District of Columbia. There were 16 states back then that had laws on the books that prevented interracial marriage by statute and provided punishment of marriage that violated their laws. Virginia was one of these states. Georgia and a lot of the Southern states also had these laws.
When the Lovings moved to Virginia towards the latter part of 1958, a grand jury in the Circuit Court of Caroline County issued an indictment against the couple, charging them with violation of Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. The Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail. However, the trial judge suspended the verdict for a period of 25 years and stated in an opinion that:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
The Lovings left Virginia to return to D.C. where they began an appeals process that took them all the way up to the Supreme Court of Virginia who found nothing wrong with the anti-interracial marriage laws.
Then, the Lovings took their case up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where, as you politburo members might have guessed, those “activist judges” on the Supreme Court at the time dared to strike the Virginia statutes (and all 15 of the other states’ similar statutes) banning interracial marriage down because they found they violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Here are some of the judges’ comments from the majority opinion:
"We have consistently denied [388 U.S. 1, 12] the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."
"These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
"Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. {Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888)}. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.
"The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
I don’t know if the argument to strike down racial discrimination can be applied to gender discrimination. But, it certainly appears to be a strong possibility that, based on this country's Rule of Law, there appears to be an opportunity for the strike-down of any state amendment banning marriage between same-sex couples.
This would explain why President Bush is so intent on passing a constitutional amendment at the federal level banning gay marriage. For all of his efforts and hubris, he could probably obtain a constitutional majority from the House and the Senate, but it is very doubtful that he will get 37 states (three-quarters of the states) to ratify it...thus another amendment would be dashed on the rocks of the dastardly U.S. Constitution, just like the Equal Rights Amendment.
But, I do know that both the federal neocons and the theocrats are hard at work trying to destroy legal precedents like our Rule of Law (e.g., by demonizing judges who don’t rule their way and trying to install theocrats in their place). Just last week, the House voted to limit the powers of the Judiciary branch (thereby reducing the strength of Separation of Powers spelled-out in the U.S. Constitution) by passing a bill restricting the USSC from being involved in the case regarding the Pledge of Allegiance containing the word "God" in it.
The Beginning of The End
Bit-by-bit, the neocons and the theocrats are deconstructing our entire constitutional republic. I do not recall any time during the Democrats reign of power in the 1990s that they talked as vociferously about amending the Constitution to deliberately tear apart the Constitutional structure for their political ends. Sure, they lied a lot. Sure, they violated federal statutes all over the map. But, I do not recall any serious talk (to the level the neocons are now talking) about passing constitutional amendments to restrict this activity or that activity in the name of protecting the republic.
This talk about amending the constitution is the talk of revolutionists. These revolutionists resemble Nationalists in many ways except (for the moment) the restriction of equal rights for Jewish people. If you replace the word “Russian” with “American” in that Web-linked list of definitions of Nationalism, then all of this becomes a lot clearer.
Notice how the neocons will roll lies off of their tongues like "Protesting this legislation makes it look like we’re not together as a country and emboldens the terrorists." OR "Questioning the President on his decisions in Iraq helps send a message to the terrorists and hurts our boys and girls fighting in Iraq." Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...these statements are specifically designed by Double-Speak Professionals to redirect your attention elsewhere instead of focusing on the failures in addressing all of our domestic problems NOT related to terrorism (e.g., illegal immigration).
I watched the interview on this recent Sunday morning’s Meet The Press between Tim Russert and General Abizaid, Commander of the U.S. Central Command in Iraq. I found it strikingly interesting that when Russert asked Abizaid if he thought that Kerry's challenges to Bush on his Iraq policy would adversely affected the performance of the troops in Iraq and send the wrong signal to the terrorists, Abizaid responded with (I'm paraphrasing here) "No, Tim. Debate is one of this country’s hallmarks and debate is good. Debate is what we are fighting for the Iraqi people to enjoy as free people."
Oooohhhhh...the neocons just got sucker-punched by their own guy. Obviously the neocons forgot to brief Abizaid on the new nationalism that they are trying to implement. I have no doubt that Abizaid will soon be replaced in some convenient way. His truth about debate in America is very bad for the neocons’ efforts. (Truth = Bad. Lies = Good. Get with the program Abizaid!)
Conclusions
What does all of this have to do with the upcoming marriage amendment on the Georgia ballot? Everything.
When legislators are allowed to hide from the people what they are voting on, then that pretty much spells the end of our republic. Truth becomes an inconvenience to the goals sought. It’s gays today, but who’s to say it won’t be non-Christians tomorrow?
In this weekend’s Saturday Edition of the AJC, Jerry Falwell claimed that the Evangelical Christians rule the GOP base. If that is true, these theocrats will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of Christianizing the entire country and to heck with the First Amendment. They are right behind the neocons in their goals of writing amendment after amendment to the Constitution to achieve their theocratic ends.
When legislators are so much in love with their positions of power that they would make deals with socialists (religious or otherwise) in order to maintain power, it is an invitation for the communists to take over. It is the communists who the socialists most fear. It is the communists who can take advantage of the mistakes of the socialists and overthrow government. The socialists really don’t want to use physical force to achieve their end game, but the communists have no problem using brutal, physical force (who’s up for standing in front of a tank?).
Being deliberately deceptive at the ballot box is the mark of someone who has absolutely no interest in presenting the truth to the people and letting them decide the question. You’re not being Democrat, Republican, liberal, or conservative if you believe deception is okay. You are simply an unethical and immoral LIAR.
| Bill Simon - Thinking Outside The Box Bill Simon is the creator, editor, and publisher of The Political Vine. He has been a Republican since 1990 and been active in Republican politics since 1996. Professionally, Bill runs a political research services firm called Political Intelligence, Inc. and has another venture called ID Builders that helps political and business clients promote and market themselves using effective and innovative promotional products. He is single and lives with his adopted 90 lb. Yellow Lab named Brewster. |