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Introduction

What should be happening in the United States today is a public examination of this question: What Kind of Country is This?

I own that question, having first asked it publicly over 3 years ago (in the Wall St Journal), when it became apparent that the Bandit would invade Iraq. Since then, the issue is becoming more acute every day. In the absence of any public reaction, the United States is being transformed into a gruesome mockery of its former self.

So, What Kind of Country Is This?

What's at stake in the Alito nomination, and much else being pursued by the Bandit Administration, is an attempted giant roll-back of United States history. These Fascists want to return to conditions that supposedly existed more than 200 years ago.

That's right: 200 years ago. Conservatives cloak this reactionary revolution in the phrase "original intent," and denounce what is called "the living Constitution." Their idea is that the Constitution should be read as the Founding Fathers "originally" intended, not as recent Supreme Court decisions have interpreted it. "Original intent" presumes there is a "plain meaning" of the words written on paper, which are, somehow, infallible instructions to the reader.

According to conservatives, the Courts have departed from the "original" meaning of the Constitution, offering personal opinions instead, at least since the Warren Court. The Constitution, as interpreted under these so-called "personal opinions," is called "the living Constitution." That designation is intended to show that the Constitution changes with the times, which conservatives reject. Conservatives are only comfortable with Bibles and other documents considered to be the Infallible Word of Someone Important. In their fundamentalism, they cannot conceive that their views on these matters are not True, which makes them True Believers.

Under the "original intent" doctrine, just about everything back to, and including, Marbury v Madison needs to be reconsidered. Conservatives are displeased with far more than Roe v Wade. Conservatives believe the following:

	Brown v Bd of Education was wrongly decided. There is no justification for school desegregation and busing. Affirmative Action programs are unconstitutional. Programs that improve the position of minorities in any way are illegal because they oppose the "original intent" of universal equality. The Federal government should not meddle in the policies of the States, and has no authority to end apartheid. However, slavery is still illegal until the Constitution is amended to repeal the 13th Amendment.
	Roe v Wade and Griswold v Connecticut were wrongly decided. There is no right of privacy. This also undermines all Court decisions that repealed anti-sodomy laws. It may even repeal California's Right to Privacy in its State Constitution.
	Miranda was wrongly decided. There is no Constitutional right to protection from the police. The 14th Amendment does NOT guarantee citizens "equal protection," except for certain conditions Congress had in mind after the Civil War.

Laws based on the "liberal" interpretation of the Commerce Clause are all unconstitutional. The idea is that the Federal government has no authority over matters that are not directly commercial, even if they affect many States. The Federal government has no authority over matters strictly "internal" to the States. This means all of the Environmental Protection Agency is illegal. So is most of the Department of Education. Some regulation of financial markets is illegal, particularly laws protecting consumers. Oddly enough, conservatives even believe a lot of regulation of businesses engaging in Inter-State commerce is illegal. (It all depends on what you think the word, "commerce," means.)

The biggest whack is this: most of the New Deal is illegal under "original intent." Throw out Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps and everything else like that.

The government may establish religion, provided it is not a specific church. In others words, it is OK to be a Christian government, as opposed to Islamic, Buddhist, etc. Millions of Americans who are not Christians have no right to protection from government sponsored indoctrination. It is not illegal for the government to sponsor religious schools, including those which advocate segregation of the races and other practices based on religious law. If the majority of Americans were Shì'ites, this would justify institution of Shari'a law.

If you bothered to read Greenspan's speech to the National Association of Business Economists (reprinted in Left and Free), you would discover the radical conservative view of FDR and the New Deal. The New Deal, on that view, actually prevented the economy from recovering during the Depression. All that comes from the conservative's Bible: works of F.A. Hayek. (You should read up on what those people actually believe.)

Further commentary:

Conservatives have a view of the world, and an understanding of History, that defies any analysis. In other words, their views border on sheer fantasy.

If you read the Federalist Papers, you will find little or none of what they advocate. Most of the Founding Fathers had few religious views, and most were not Christians.

Benjamin Franklin, among others, believed the State has a right to interfere in business in ways only hoped-for by modern socialists. For example, he believed it was legal to tax (expropriate) wealth.

The biggest problem with conservatives is their near-total lack of understanding of a simple point: what they think is their OPINION. Their interpretation of the Constitution is their OPINION. I admit theirs has been a very clever propaganda campaign, intended to disguise their politicization of the Courts and everything else. I cannot understand how they were passed through college, and even professional (graduate) schools. I think it shows how far the educational standards applied by our schools have fallen as a result of the Baby Boom. (Almost all of these Yahoos are Boomers.)

You are dealing with people who are just as zealous in pursuit of their goals as were the Stalinists during the 1930s and the Maoists during the Great Cultural Revolution. Don't just think about that.

It Never Was