[Mb-civic] FW: Hello, my friend!

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: BRYAN.PETERSON at lw.com
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:46:47 -0800
To: michael at michaelbutler.com
Subject: Hello, my friend!

Maestro:
 
I've been having an ongoing exchange with a fundamentalist
right-winger type in San Diego...boy, you want to talk about
exasperating, yet I just won't give up...found an interesting article
which I excerpted for her today that partially lays out the
fundamentals of our U.S. legal system, democracy as opposed to
theocracy, etc.
 


  _____  

From: Peterson, Bryan (LA)
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 3:11 PM
To: 'Peterson, Carlene'
Subject: I tried to pull info from an article more specific about how
our laws work in the U.S.
 Carlene: 

I'm going to excerpt something I just read in a newspaper for you.
See if you agree or disagree with this writer's interpretation of how
he views certain elements of the Christian right's purposeful intent
to change the United States from a Democracy to a Theocracy.  I'd be
interested in knowing what you think.
 
...
 
 
"The evangelical Christian right-wingers actually don't believe people
have the right to think for themselves, develop opinions and make
moral choices.  In their worldview, morality is absolute, and it is
embodied in their version of rightwing fundamentalist dogma.  And if
other people (who they call "the world" or "the liberal press" or
"activist judges") don't agree, if their own political leaders seem to
vacillate, if many ordinary people shrink before the heartlessness and
mindlessness of their dogma--that just further proves that humans are
sinful creatures who need imposed theocracy.
 
These forces know perfectly well that the vast majority of people
don't agree with them--on censorship, on abortion, on prayer in
schools, on separation of church and state, on birth control, on sex
before marriage, on their whole approach of militant and mindless
obedience--and they are determined to define politics and culture
anyway.  
 
In their theocratic absolutism, all of the preceding legal norms of
the U.S. mean nothing:  If the courts defy them, damn the courts.  If
state law defies them, damn state law.  If privacy and personal rights
get in the way, they should be abolished.  If the Constitution proves
to be an obstacle, then rewrite it or ignore it.  That's how they
think.
 
These are the same forces who have shot down doctors for performing
abortion.  And as Terri Schiavo finally approached death, their fangs
came out.  Preachers demanded that the White House "send the Army" to
seize Schiavo's body and pump food into it.  (Some compared it to
Eisenhower sending troops to enforce school desegregation!)  Death
threats were made against Michael Schiavo.
 
...
 
SEPARATION OF POWERS:  Congress--the legislative branch--is supposed
to make laws.  The courts--the judicial branch--are supposed to
interpret how those laws get applied in individual cases.  The Supreme
Court has long held that Congress may not enact legislation that
nullifies, suspends, or reverses a judicial determination in a
particular case.  In fact, the so-called "Founding Fathers" bragged
that usurpation of judicial power by the legislature would be
impossible under the new constitution because the Congress could not
reverse a decision once made in particular case; Congress could only
prescribe new laws for the future (see The Federalist, No. 81).  Yet
reversing a particular decision is exactly what Congress attempted to
do in this case (Schiavo bill).
 
EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAW:  Laws are supposed to apply to everyone,
particularly when they pertain to people's rights before the law.  But
out of 260 million people, this special law was passed setting up a
special legal procedure "for the relief of the parents of Theresa
Marie Schiavo."  The law applies to the Terri Schiavo case alone, and
gives one federal district court in Florida special jurisdiction to
hear a new lawsuit brought by her parents.  This is totally at
variance with the principle that laws are to apply equally to
everyone.  (The Federal district court, however, refused to be
persuaded and disallowed further interference by the Schindler's.)
 
NO EX POST FACTO LAWS:  A fundamental principle of U.S. law has been
the prohibition of "ex post facto" laws.  (Ex post facto means "after
the fact.")  Laws are supposed to apply from their passage on, not
work backward in time to apply to events before they were passed.  Yet
that is what Congress did here.  The "act for the relief of the
parents of Terri Schiavo" explicitly does not apply to future such
cases in other families.  It only applies to Schiavo, whose case has
already been fully adjudicated.
 
RES JUDICATA ("A MATTER ALREADY DECIDED"):  Another major principle of
U.S. law is that you cannot keep going back into court to re-litigate
an issue over and over again until you get the result you want.  Yet
that is what the "Terri Schiavo bill" tries to do.  It gives a federal
district court in Florida the power to reopen and re-litigate the
whole case from scratch--this after ten years of litigation with
several trips to the Supreme Court along the way.  In short, the
evangelical Christian right-wingers simply don't like what the courts
have repeatedly found to be the facts in the case, so they want to
have all the previous decisions thrown out and are trying to force the
courts to decide the case all over again.
 
DUE PROCESS UNDER THE LAW:  The right not to have her life
artificially prolonged belongs to Terri Schiavo alone, under Florida
state law.  She expressed her wishes to several people in advance of
the illness that led to her brain death, and the Florida state courts
have acknowledged that those were her wishes and upheld her decision.
Now this new legislation would compel Terri Schiavo's body to be
artificially maintained based on other people's values and wishes, not
hers.  The new law would have her basic rights taken away by a new
"special process."
 
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE:  Once again, the driving force in all
this has been the attempt to impose a particular brand of
fundamentalist Christian theology as compulsory public policy upon a
country of 260 million citizens who profess a vast array of religious
or nonreligious ideas.  The Terri Schiavo drama shows just how far the
Christian right and their chief spokesperson, president George W.
Bush, are willing to go in striking down the rule of law--in order to
impose the principles of theocratic rule ("the rule of god").
(Theocracy as defined in The American Heritage College Dictionary:  a
government ruled by or subject to a religious authority.)
 
...
 
But all of those specific objectives (overturning a host of
progressive social policies installed over decades) are not the whole
picture.  Because there is something more fundamental and sweeping
revealed by their approach to this case:  The Christian Right's plans
are to replace the concept of "rule of law" by their notion of "rule
by god."  They are clearly determined to overrule any previous
precedent that stands in their way and to impose a form of political
rule on society that can only be called "theocracy," and which in
practice would mean a modern American form of fascism.
 
                               written by C. Clark Kissinger
 





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