archived: 10 - 16 Apr, 2005         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  April 14, 2005 

                        “THE SCHIAVO CASE, II: WILLIAM BENNETT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE
                          END OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS”                         

                        (SJ TPJ No. 56, “The Coming 2^nd Civil War,” No. 8)                                  

This column is the eighth in this series.  The cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR) and their policy arm, the Georgites.  The RRR agenda is clearly stated in writing by its ideologues from Norquist to Wolfowitz to Falwell.  For obvious political reasons it is hardly ever articulated by its front men from Bush to Frist to DeLay, for if they spelled it out, it would be a sure loser.  The major components are: imposing their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reducing the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-and-prison-industrial, opposition-repression/suppression, and private-thought/behavior-control complexes; and replacing Constitutional government as we have known it with overwhelming Executive Branch dominance operating on its own authority – that is via a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.   

I do not write the term “Second Civil War” lightly.  As you know, I believe that Georgitism is leading us directly to the destruction of traditional American Constitutional Democracy and instituting in its place a theocratic-fascist dictatorship.  I originally planned up to three columns on the Schiavo case.  The Schiavo “mini-series” (sorry about this) will now stretch to at least four, perhaps five essays.  I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Major elements of the Georgite campaign to tear apart the Constitution piece by piece, already well underway, are clearly illustrated by it and how the Georgites have dealt with it.  Today’s column highlights a proposal by one of the leading ideologues of the Republican Religious Right, William Bennett, to destroy the independence of the Judiciary and thus remove one of the legs of the three-legged stool that presently symbolizes the bedrock of true Americanism, the separation of powers at both the Federal and State levels in our country. 

One of the central elements of fascism is replacing of the Rule of Law by the Rule of Man.  The Rule of Law governs most modern countries.  A central element of the doctrine of the Rule of Man is that there is no such thing as an independent judiciary that has legal power over the legislative and, in particular, the executive, branches of government.  Established practice in the United States since its founding has been that the executive and legislative branches are, without any form of coercion, to follow direct orders arising from decisions of the judicial branch.  The trade-off has been that the judicial branch is to follow legislated Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, legal precedent, and customary legal practices in arriving at its decisions.

This is all part of the unwritten part of the Constitution of the United States.  This particular unwritten part began as an add-on to the written part with the creation of the concept and practice of “judicial review.”  This was established by the third Chief Justice, John Marshall, and his fellows on the Court, in a series of decisions handed down during the first two decades of the 19th century.  The concept and processes of judicial review, and its implied supremacy over certain actions of the other two branches as described above, are nowhere specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  Nevertheless, both the concept and the practice were fully accepted at the time as part of US constitutional government by the leaders of the other two branches, many of whom had been major actors in the creation of the Constitution.  Their number included President Jefferson, who did not consider judicial review with the power of the final say a particularly good idea, but went along with it nevertheless.

William Bennett was the Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Bush I.  In that role, Bennett proclaimed, among other things, that the use of certain recreational mood-altering addictive drugs was illegal because, well, they were addictive (bad) and the law said so, and whatever the law said was right and it had to be followed.  (Bennett at the time happened to be addicted to a drug four times as addictive as cocaine --- nicotine in cigarette tobacco --- but it wasn't illegal, so that didn't matter.  He was also overweight and out-of-shape and it came out later that he was a compulsive gambler, but that apparently did not matter then, either.)  He also proclaimed, upon finding out that in 17th century Persia heroin dealers were beheaded, that beheading might not be a bad idea for heroin dealers in the US either.  Treatment for addiction?  Forget it.  The law is the law he said, and it has to be obeyed.

Then along comes the Terry Schiavo case, so convenient for the Georgites and the rest of the Republican Religious Right in, among other things, their continuing and strengthening assault on the courts and the rest of the foundations of the US legal system.  In an article on the National Review Online March 24, 2005, Bennett strongly recommended that Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida directly disobey the order of the Florida courts regarding Terry Schiavo.  He also recommended that this Bush (III, mark my word) should ignore the fact that the Federal court system refused to enter into the matter, therefore directly reinforcing the decisions and outcomes of the Florida judicial process.  

So here is Mr. Law-and-Order incarnate advocating law-busting by an elected official, just because they both disagree with the outcome of the judicial process (over a seven-year period) in a particular case.  This is the Rule of Man, not the Rule of Law.  This is fascism, folks, plain and simple.  According to a report in the Miami Herald Jeb Bush was prepared to follow this advice and send State law enforcement officers to remove Mrs. Schiavo from the hospice where she was under care, and reinsert the famous feeding tube.  He was deterred from doing so only because the local police informed the governor’s office that they would resist any attempt to interfere with a lawful court order.  But just think.  That hospice might have been Jeb Bush’s Fort Sumter.   

Am I over-emphasizing these aspects of the Schiavo case?  I do not think so.  Not enough people, particularly in the media and the so-called opposition party, are paying enough attention to them.   

Such issues were also ignored in pre-Nazi Germany.

________________  

Dr. Steven Jonas is a TPJ contributing author.  He is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author of over twenty books. Dr. Jonas is one of America's most perceptive Democratic political analysts.

In his book The New Americanism, Dr. Jonas presents his case that the Democratic Party has come adrift from its founding principles.  He urges the Party to turn to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to find the new vision and mission that it, and our country, so desperately need.  "The New Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency  is available from Amazon.com (go to "Books;" enter the title) and BarnesandNoble.com (same). 

He is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, originally published in 1996 under the pseudonym “Jonathan Westminster,” and republished with a New Introduction in 2004, under the same author's name.  The 2004 edition is available at www.barnesandnoble.com (search with author’s name) and www.xlibris.com (click on “Bookstore,” then “Search” with title).  Both versions are available at www.amazon.com (go to "Books;" search with title).