Laugh at Liberals Archive for June, 2005
Democracy? Or Oligarchy?
When or founding fathers wrote our constitution, it was a government intended for 13 states. There were few rich, as 90% of the nation was made up of poor, small farmers.
Since this time, American history is filled with heroes and villains, the rise of the industrial north and the fall of the agricultural south. The conquest of the Western frontier and the slaughter of the Native Americans. The Imperialists who sought to conquer the pacific, and the oversea allies and enemies that dragged us into 2 world wars, from which we pulled out of as a economic and military super power. Far from the founding fathers vision of America, but that is a debate for another time.
As Aristotle once said there are 3 forms of government, which can be divided into 6 categories. Below is a grid from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
In which shows this view.
_____________ Correct____________ Deviant
One Ruler——-Monarchy —————–Tyranny
Few Rulers —–Aristocracy ————– Oligarchy
Many Rulers —Polity ———————–Democracy
In Political theory he goes on to say that in a democracy or a Polity, generally the poor have control over the rich. In an aristocracy or oligarchy the rich few, have control over the Poor.
Lets take this political theory and test it against our own nations history, past and present.
At the time of the Founding fathers and the era of the constitution, the nation had yet to discover true industrialization. The bulk of the economy was based on crops such as tobacco, which it would ship to Europe who was the industrial center of the world, who then shipped the product goods back to America. In this way, Europe was the nation with the classes so utterly divided between rich and poor, but they were still in monarchy. There was no rich and poor amongst Americans, only citizens. This way, the Poor had control over the nation, and the rich could do very little.
Now, in modern times, after all our history, we have become an entirely different nation. We were the industrial powerhouses there for a while, until that of late in which China has taken over that role. But, in the time of our control of this market, we have bread powerful industries such as the oil industry. Big Trusts have formed.
Recently, The government tax breaks have benefited the Richer Americans, Top 2% with a tax break of over $9,000, while the lower class citizens receive $300
Due to administration policy over the last 4 yrs or so, the Middle class of America seems to be getting thinner, and lower class seems to be getting larger. The bulk of American citizens are living off of very poor wages, some off of minimum wage, which by the way, is currently not a living wage at all. Meanwhile those who control the governments have extremely good wages. The average salary of President Bush is $200,000 a year. But add that to the multi millions he has, and has used to gain presidency. It has come to my attention, that one must be rich to be considered a serious candidate for any political office. This is because of the media access required to run an effective campaign. Those annoying political bashing commercials we see all the time during any election, aren’t cheap. Therefore, the people that control our government are the rich, and not the poor. And, it is common knowledge now to anyone, that the highest officials whether they be Democrat or republican have a political agenda, pushing us into the deviant side of Aristotle’s political theory. So, my question to you all is this, are we still a Democracy? Or are we now an Oligarchy?
Antilla The Hun
__________________________________________________________________
Literature referenced for this post:
1. Aristotle’s political theory
http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/texts/aristotle/aripold.htm
2. Article on Aristotle’s political theory
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
3. Presidential salary
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/24/pay.raise/
4. American History
http://www.geocities.com/theamericanpageant/
Have you read this? Sad and Sick
Americans United Welcomes Air Force Report On Religious Atmosphere At Academy
Air Force Officials Must Follow Up To Ensure Climate Is Changed At Military Institution, AU’s Lynn Says
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today welcomed a U.S. Air Force task force report addressing religious bias at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs as an important first step toward resolving the problem - but the group says more work needs to be done.
At a Pentagon press briefing this afternoon, the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Lt. Gen. Roger Brady and other Air Force officials released a 40-page report on the religious climate at the Academy. In early May, the Air Force announced formation of the Task Force to respond to “lingering allegations from sources such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State” of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy.
The report denies that overt religious discrimination exists at the Academy but concedes there is “a failure to fully accommodate all members’ needs and a lack of awareness over where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs.”
“This report is not perfect, but it is an important first step,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It acknowledges the extent of the problem and promises changes. It is now incumbent upon the Air Force to make certain that promise is fulfilled.”
On April 28, Americans United sent a letter and a 14-page report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force officials detailing allegations that Academy staff and cadets have used coercive tactics to promote evangelical Christianity at the institution.
Since the report’s release, Americans United has received more complaints from former and current Air Force cadets regarding the mixing of church and state at the Academy. The allegations have also drawn national press attention. Capt. MeLinda Morton, a former Lutheran chaplain at the Academy, told USA Today of pervasive proselytizing on behalf Academy staff, describing the situation as “malfeasance in the chaplaincy here.”
Lynn emphasized that AU will continue to closely monitor the situation and work with members of Congress to make certain that all religious and philosophical points of view are welcome at the institution.
“I wish the Air Force Academy had been more forthcoming in admitting that religious intolerance does exist at the Academy,” said Lynn. “Members of our military are charged with defending our way of life, which includes religious liberty. It would be ironic indeed if the Air Force failed to protect that basic right for Academy cadets.
“We intend to remain involved to ensure that the basic constitutional rights of all cadets are respected,” Lynn concluded.
_____________________________________________
House Retreats On Stopping Religious Bias At Air Force Academ
Does Pleading the 5th only work for criminals?
Does pleading the 5th Amendment only apply to criminals? Can American homeowners and property owners not plead the 5th effectively? It would appear not.
It looks like homeowners nationwide have the (mostly) liberal judges to thank for having our homes taken from us if our city or state officials get a greedy (or even well-meaning but misguided) gleam in their eye and our homes are in the way of their plans.
The very small majority of judges in the highest court of our land have ruled that our personal right to private property is overruled by the ‘public’ right to possible higher revenue…or anything else deemed for the ‘public good’ by public officials; who, I will add, are not the ones losing their homes here- nor are the judges who made the ruling.
I’m pretty sure that the authors of the Bill of Rights had them added to the Constitution to protect citizens from this very type of thing, and not for public officials to have the right to grab land using loopholes or poorly interpreted phrases from it. The main reason for the Bill of Rights was that the people be given the rights and the government be limited.
It’s not the Bush administration here that is grabbing land or even okaying it; it’s known liberal judges whose idea of the Constitution seems to be that it was written to limit people’s rights rather than limit government power. While liberals, moderates and even many conservatives are decrying the Patriot Act, the Supreme Court is chipping away at our personal rights that are supposed to be guaranteed in the very document they are using to take them away.
It’s well past time to wake up and let our legislators know we want judges in the Supreme Court who will uphold the rights of the people as our Constitution was meant to do, rather than use it to take away our rights. The judges’ ruling histories need to be examined in this light and then the judges voted on accordingly.
In the meantime, we’d better look to our own states to see that their powers are limited regarding the ability to remove our personal rights and we need to take appropriate preventive measures that ensure this.
Hopefully the people of Connecticut get an initiative going that will limit their state’s powers back to what they should be regarding this issue.
Pleading the 5th Amendment should work at least as well if not better for law-abiding citizens than it does for criminals.
LOGIC OF THE CENTER CAST AWAY!
One wonders why others take such umbrage when people discuss the president and his actions. Why are we so Partisan in our views? This leaves that great mass of centrist America, and rational thought, cast aside in favors of political attacks on both parties that solve no problems, answer no questions, and fog the issues at hand.
It is not only ones right, but ones duty as a citizen of the republic to question the decisions of our Elected officials. No elected official is above scrutiny, not even the President. When the possibility of wrong doing is revealed, it is misguided to defend someone who may have done harm to our country, its citizens, and our standing in the world. The errant official should be pursued regardless of the political affiliation of the offender.
Previous administrations have been put under intense scrutiny.
They were hounded by special prosecutors spending millions of tax dollars and spewing wild speculations, which finally, after years of hindering that administrations efficiency, revealed an incident involving personal moral flaw. How can we justify that past scrutiny yet balk when credible information implies impropriety by the current administration? Lets stop the Rancor, finger-pointing and partisan protectionism and deal with the issues as they arise, in an honest forthright, nonpartisan manner.
Its time to stop blaming others for the issues and perpose solutions to them.
Antilla The Hun (Mr. Jack)
Nationalism & Patriotism
“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult.” - Erich Fromm
Nationalism is an evil. It causes wars, its roots lie in xenophobia and racism, it is a recent phenomenon - an invention of the last few centuries - which has been of immense service to demagogues and tyrants but to no-one else. Disguised as patriotism and love of one’s country, it trades on the unreason of mass psychology to make a variety of horrors seem acceptable, even honourable. For example: if someone said to you, “I am going to send your son to kill the boy next door” you would hotly protest. But only let him seduce you with “Queen and Country!” “The Fatherland!” “My country right or wrong!” and you would find yourself permitting him to send all our sons to kill not just the sons of other people, but other people indiscriminately - which is what bombs and bullets do.
Demagogues know what they are about when they preach nationalism. Hitler said, “The effectiveness of the truly national leader consists in preventing his people from dividing their attention, and keeping it fixed on a common enemy.” And he knew who to appeal to. Goethe had long since remarked that nationalistic feelings “are at their strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.”
Nationalists take certain unexceptionable desires and muddle them with unacceptable ones. We individually wish to run our own affairs; that is unexceptionable. Most of us value the culture which shaped our development and gave us our sense of personal and group identity; that too is unexceptionable. But the nationalist persuades us that the existence of other groups and cultures somehow puts these things at risk, and that the only way to protect them is to see ourselves as members of a distinct collective, defined by ethnicity, geography, or sameness of language or religion, and to build a wall around ourselves to keep out “foreigners”. It is not enough that the others are other; we have to see them as a threat at very least to “our way of life”, perhaps to our jobs, even to our daughters.
Einstein called “nationalism an infantile disease, the measles of humanity.” These are harsh words but unless we are prepared to honestly look at our outmoded beliefs, our unquestioned ideologies and ourselves, there may be no hope for us.
For those who don’t know, there is a distinct difference between nationalism and patriotism. Patriotism is love for ones country, but accepting that it has its faults,
Nationalism on the other hand is the love of ones nation above everything, even our own humanity, above morality, and sometimes above common sense. Nationalism is often disgused as patriotism, or starts out as patriotism.
Here latly, I have noticed an incressed view of nationalism. My favorite example of this is the famous quote (Michael Moore is a Traitor!!!) I’ve seen both Democrats in the Clinton administration, and Republicans in the Bush administration, use such ploys to attack any one who activly threatens their agendas. They disguise Nationalism as patriotism, and therefrore claim that anyone who activly disagrees with the leader is “unpatriotic” or “Hates America!”
Add that to some parts of the “patriot” act, (which is being justified threw nationalism disguised as patriotism [hence the name]) which allow federal agents to go through Library records to be able to incriminate some middle eastern man based on their reading habits. Notice I said middle Eastern man, because we all know, that only middle easterners can be terrorists, just ignore what you heard about the uni-bomber, and the Oklahoma city bombings, both AMERICANS by the way. This is an example of the Xenophobia that breed’s nationalism.
Am I the only one who finds this frightening?
[new section]
But, as terrible as nationalism is, it pales in comparison to when religion gets involved.
Theocratic Nationalism is the entity that justifies mass slaughter.
Take Manifest destiny for example. When The Idea of Manifest destiny or the belief that it was Gods divine will that America control all of North America, it fueled the rapid expansion of the Untitled States and justified the slaughter of countless Native American tribes.
When God mixes with nationalism, the belief is taken beyond the borders of the nation, and becomes Imperialism. It’s the mass insanity fed by tyrants seeking to make atrocities honorable in the name of God. It feeds off of media outlets and spreads threw mass psychology.
This is what Suzanne is talking about when she talks about separation of church and state. While religion offers morals, it also offers justification of mass murder of those who do not worship as you do, or, if it gets bad enough, every one else, Indiscriminately, simply because a few people claim gods will.
Antilla The Hun (Mr. Jack)
We are Obligated to Defend -
PART - A
This week, a Senate committee in secret session approved new Patriot Act provisions that are nothing less than
an end-run around the Constitution. The proposed new government powers would allow the FBI to issue
search orders without prior judicial approval and to seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels,
gun dealers, banks and other businesses without any specific suspicion of criminal activity, or any
specific facts connecting the records sought to an agent of a foreign government
Efforts to reform the Patriot Act and resist this latest Bush Administration power grab are well underway,
and Congress is facing new pressure from Americans across the political spectrum
The Bush Administration wants the Patriot Act made permanent, it wants even more power, and it does not
want Congress to ask any more meddlesome questions about the Bill of Rights.
The full Congress could debate and vote on the Patriot Act as early as the end of this month.
Without exaggeration, the stakes have never been higher for civil liberties in America.
This historic debate over our system of laws, our fundamental freedoms and our national character.
The Patriot Act should not be made permanent, and it absolutely must not be expanded.
Our rights as individuals — the very foundation of our great democracy — depend on our willingness
to defend them.
PART - B
WE ARE OBLIGATED TO DEFEND
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
As American Citizens we are obligated to defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
This also applies to George Bush, who does not defend the Constitution . . . he merely hires people
to figure out how to shred that Constitution . . . The judges to rule on this shredding of the Constitution.
In addition, the Constitution also states, “If we have a leader who attempts to undermine the Constitution,
we not only have a right, but a DUTY to put him down . . . BY FORCE, IF NECESSARY!”
There are many American Citizens who have awaken and realize the road this country is taking,
these Americans are not just sitting around and talking about this problem, they are taking action.
Some are Liberal, some are of the Religious Right, some are Democrat some are Republican.
Some are Moderate some are radical. They come from all categories of political and religious beliefs.
These groups of Americans, though very diversified, have one common goal.
To protect and defend the “Constitution of the United States” and the “Bill of Rights”
Your rights, my rights, our rights as individuals - the very foundation of this country -
The future of our great democracy – depend upon the willingness of a generation of citizens
I will call The Samarians of America.
“The Samarians of America” are willing to defend and to protect all of our rights as American Citizens,
as so specified in our Constitution and “Bill of Rights”.
It is not just one girl you have named the Wacko Moderate Wordy Drama Queen,
The Samarians of America are of a generation born when America was Apple Pie, Country Nights,
and Drive-in-Movies on Friday night. School dances with chaperones. Then one day the Apple Pie spoiled,
the Country Nights turned into Protests and killings, the Drive-in-Movies were replaced by children
leaving to Vietnam and coming back home in body bags. The Great Men this generation
looked up to and believed in - were murdered, shot down in the streets of America.
There became danger of death on college grounds.
The streets of quiet little country towns overflowed with hateful war protesters.
Then the Vietnam War ended, and those younger and those older thought this generation would just
fade into the mainstream of America. We did, for a long time, but now we are again, with sword in hand,
but this time there will be no protest in the streets, no killing on College grounds.
This time our Samaria Sword has changed into legal documents.
Our blade is not sharp it is the Constitution of The United States of America.
This time the battle of The Samaria Generation is to defend this great country from those who are
shredding these great documents - in the name of - - - - - ?
I am proud to be of The Samaria Generation,
In all that I have stated above, I stand behind my President, but still have the right to question my
President if I believe he is not defending that which I am defending, The Constitution.
I stand behind my President on the War in Iraq. This is my duty as an American Citizen.
It does not matter if I believe the war is right or wrong. I took the oath and I stand behind my oath.
Overall, the only action I am taking is that of a responsible American Citizen.
Suzanne
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
Averting Eyes from Darfur’s Fate
Ok, I was reading the commentary in today’s Local Paper, and found an article from a guy in the middle of the Darfur Genocide, I liked it a lot, so I’m going to post it here on the site.
LABADO, Sudan-
Last Fall President Bush declared the slaughter here in Darfur to be genocide, and then looked away. One Reason for his paralysis is apparently the fear that Darfur may be another black hole of murder and mutilation, a hopeless quagmire to suck in well meaning Americans, another Somalia, or Iraq.
It’s not.
We’re again making the same mistake we’ve made in past genocides: As in the slaughter of Americans, Jews, Rwandans, Cambodians, and Bosnians, we see not perfect solutions, so we end up doing very little. Because we could not Change Nazi policies, we did not bother to bomb rail lines leading to death camps; today, because we have little leverage over Sudan, we do not impose a no fly zone to stop the strafing of civilians, or even bother to speak out forcefully.
Yet this town of Lambado underscores that Darfur is not hopeless, that even the very modest actions that the international community has taken so far has saved hundreds of lives.
A desert town that used to hold about 25,000 people, Labado was attacked in December by the Sudanese Military, and the Militia, known as the Janjaweed. Fir days, the army burned huts, looted shops, Killed men, and raped women.
For Months, Labado was completely deserted and appeared destined to become a ghost town. But then, African Union forces, soldiers from across Africa who have been dispatched to stop the slaughter, set up a small security outpost of 50 troops here. Almost immediately, refugees began returning to Lambado, followed by international aid groups.
Today there are perhaps 5,000 people living in the town again. The revival of Labado underscores how little it takes to make a huge difference on the ground. If western Governments help the African Union establish security, if we lean hard on both the government and the rebels to reach a peace agreement, then by the end of this year, Darfur might see peace breaking out.
For now, Labado is only an oasis and when people here step outside the town, they risk being murdered or raped by the Janjaweed militia.
Refugees fleeing to Kalma from a village called Saleya described how boys were seized by the Janjaweed stripped naked and tied up, their noses and ears cut off and their eyes gouged out. They were shot dead and left near a public well. Villagers got the message and fled.
Yet with all the atrocities, there have been hopeful signs. While Bush should do more, he has forthrightingly called the killings genocide and heaped aid on Darfur probably saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
If bush lead a determined effort to save Darfur there would be real hope for peace here, plus, the international image of the United States would improve. And a new Zogby poll commissioned by the international crisis group found that Americans by margins of 6 to 1 favor bolder action in Darfur.
But Bush is covering his eyes. Last year, administration figures such as Colin Powel and John Danforth led the response to Darfur, but now, Condoleeza Rice and the white house don’t seem much interested.
Darfur will never be another simolia or Iraq, because nobody is talking about sending in American combat troops. But simply an ounce of top-level attention such as a simple no-fly zone would go a long way to save lives.
In 1999, Madeleine Albright traveled to Sierra Leone and met child amputees there, wrenching that hearts of American television viewers and making that crisis a priority in a way that eventually resolved it. Rice could do the same for Darfur if only she would bother to go.
Bush values a frozen embryo. But, he hasn’t mustered much compassion for an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes from the first genocide of the 21st century.
Commentary by Nicholas Kristof
It’s sad, that all it would really thake to resolve this issue is a few of our f-15 fighters and an international no-fly zone, to shhot down any non comercial aircraft, to save hundreds of thousands of lives, yet, we choose to do nothing.
Antilla The Hun (Mr. Jack)
Thanks to our Veterans and Troops
This is for the American veterans and troops. Whether readers agree with the present war or not, we can lay aside differing opinions for a moment and thank each person in the armed forces who comes across this site to let them know that we appreciate their personal service and sacrifice. And, being a mom, I’ll add that if you don’t have something good to say here, don’t say anything.
This post is not about the war.
It is not about Iraq.
It is not about any administration.
This post is about our Veterans and Troops, without whom we would not have the freedoms we too often take for granted.
Thank-you, Servicemen and women.
THE GREAT DEBATE OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Ok, here’s a touchy subject bound to get every one all riled up, Social security.
Social Security is a documenting of a basic reality about America: that the people of America can not and will never in good conscience allow our elderly, regardless of the reason, to lie homeless on the streets.
The biggest objection to privatizing Social Security has been the transition to a privatized system. The yearly transition deficit would be offset after about 14 years.
14 years add that to the current deficit spending and you have a major problem.
But enough of that for now, allow me to quote here a copy of president Bushes plan from http://www.aft.org/topics/social-security/
The negitive side of President Bush’s Proposal:
Privatizing Social Security has been a goal of George W. Bush since he ran for Congress in the 1970s. Since 2001, when he named a special commission composed exclusively of members committed to privatization, the president has made private accounts a top priority. In his Feb. 2, 2005, State of the Union address, the president called for a radical overhaul of the nation’s retirement security program. Although he has so far left details of the actual plan to Republican leaders in Congress, incorporating the president’s ideas would involve the following measures:
- Creating individual private accounts diverting up to 4 percent of the 12.4 percent of the Social Security payroll tax into individual private accounts.
- Borrowing $4.9 trillion in the first 20 years of the program to pay full benefits to current retirees and all American workers now 55 and older.
- Changing the formula for calculating benefits from the increases in wages during the retiree’s working lifetime to the increase in prices for all workers under 55.
- Requiring most retirees with private accounts to buy an annuity when they retire.
Here is the other side of the debate courtesy of http://www.cato.org/pubs/ssps/ssp8es.html
- Current workers could be free to choose either the private option or Social Security. For those who choose the private plan, workers and employers will each pay 5 percent of wages, instead of the current Social Security payroll tax of 6.2 percent for each, into private investment accounts, resulting in an eventual payroll tax cut of 20 percent. Besides supporting retirement benefits, the accounts would finance private life and disability insurance, thus replacing Social Security survivors and disability benefits.
- Workers who opt out of the current Social Security system would receive recognition bonds from the federal government that would pay them a proportion of future Social Security benefits equal to the proportion of lifetime taxes they had already paid.
- Benefits promised to current retirees would be paid in full, with no reduction of any kind.
The problem with this side of the debate is the Social Security payroll tax of 6.2 percent. While most of us have that 6.2% taken right off the top of everything we earn, this is not the case for everyone. This 6.2% is only taken out on the salary you earn up to $87,000. So for people earning over that, they get a massive tax break of 6.2% on the rest of what they earn, while the rest of us pay the 6.2% on every penny.
The Heritage Foundation and other groups try to defend this setup, saying it was historically how the program was set and so it should stay that way. But these are the same people who then propose to replace guaranteed benefits with win-or-lose private investment accounts, who are okay with raising and raising the retirement age, and who are for changing how payout benefits are figured so that what you pay in no longer correlates to what you get in benefits by tying benefits instead to a generic cost-of-living percentage rather than what you pay in.
This is an obvious fraud on the Heritage Foundation’s part and those who are pushing their dishonest, falsely pious claims to be standing for principle.
Private accounts will cost everyone a lot of money. Under President Bushes proposals, the average worker who lives 20 years beyond retirement will see a $152,000 cut in benefits whether or not he or she chooses to have a private account. If the formula the White House proposes were in place now, the average retiree worker retiring this year with full benefits would get $515 a month instead of $1,278 per month. Retirement will be less secure because guaranteed benefits will be cut by 40 percent or more for workers who put in a full career under the new system, according to the experts at the Social Security Administration.
Also, Wall Street is filled with people willing to do anything to make a buck, not the place where I would want my money to go. Also, this would require unnecessary government to manage the new system.
And, here’s my favorite, Privatization would hurt the economy and explode the deficit, which is already at an all time high, passing on almost $5 trillion more in debt to younger Americans during the first two decades alone. Foreigners hold Eighty percent of all U.S. debt, the lion’s share by bankers in China and Japan. And if you’ve read my previous articles on the economy, you’d know about my concerns about the Yuan, and the housing market. In this, I estimated that is the dollar looses it’s value slowly, everything would work out fine, but a sharp drop in the dollars value would almost certainly cause Mortgage rates to skyrocket, well, guess what, the added debt to make the Privatization of social security would cause a sharp drop in the dollars value, as our administration would be forced to payback almost, and it absolutely pains me to say this, $7 trillion dollars in deficits.
But, there are benefits to the program, but I ask you to weigh those benefits against the consequences and make up your own mind.
Antilla the Hun, (Mr. Jack)
Janice Brown - Suzanne gift to Buck
ANSWER TO BUCK DARE – JANICE ROGERS BROWN
I believe that the confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown would do tremendous damage to religious liberty rights of millions of Americans.
In a speech to the Pepperdine Bible Lectureship in 1999 entitled, “Beyond the Abyss: Restoring Religion on the Public Square,� Justice Brown made clear that she seriously questions firmly settled constitutional law applying the protections in the Bill of Rights to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937). This extreme view would have dramatic consequences for Americans’ most basic and fundamental First Amendment rights, among many others. In her speech, Justice Brown stated: The United States Supreme Court . . . began in the 1940’s to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment. Now, that has an interesting effect on how the law about religious expression gets developed. Because they incorporated all of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, that not only made them binding on the States, that is to say that now the States were covered by the first ten amendments as the Federal government, it also gave tremendous power to the Federal judiciary, because now they [would] decide at least the minimum level of protection that would be provided for all of these rights. The historical evidence supporting what the Supreme Court did here is pretty sketchy . . . So if you went by the language you certainly would not get there. They relied on some historical materials which [are] not overwhelming. The argument on the other side is pretty overwhelming that it’s probably not incorporated.
If Justice Brown were able to act on such a radical view, she would effectively bar religious minorities from exercising any rights under the U.S. Constitution for the protection of their religious practices against State intrusion. At a time when America should be reaffirming its commitment to religious pluralism, Justice Brown is advocating a dangerous course.
Justice Brown also belittled the importance of the separation of church and state in the Pepperdine speech. She maintained that the U.S. Supreme Court had: skipped over a lot of formidable interpretive problems that required a real attention to language and history and purposes that had been Lavished on other parts of the Constitution but were not really given to this part of the First Amendment. The Court instead relied on a rather uninformative metaphor of the “wall of separation between church and state.� And that was their substitute for really getting in and trying to figure out what this meant.
These views would threaten the fundamental rights of countless Americans, especially in view of the D.C. Circuit’s exceptionally powerful role among the federal circuit courts.
I am seriously concerned that such a position could result in States blatantly violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the rolling back of basic Free Exercise rights to State employees, beneficiaries of State government programs, and other individuals interacting with State governments. The results of any alteration to the “incorporation doctrine,� established decades ago, would have devastating consequences for millions of Americans relying on the federal courts to protect their individual rights.
I do not oppose Brown’s nomination because of her personal religious beliefs or her conservative views in general. Rather, I have serious concerns that her extreme views of the non-applicability of the Bill of Rights to the States, as well as her rejection of the separation of church and state embodied in the Establishment Clause could dramatically undermine core religious liberty protections.
Now, Buck, as you know The Establishment Clause is a very big issue with me, but not only just me, this is becoming a wide spread issue all over The United States. People are no longer just hiding their heads and accepting whatever is thrown to them. They are beginning to stand up and YELL!
You dared me I accepted the dare
Suzanne
