Re: Tuesday's elections

Jane wrote: 
John P said:

<<<Where and when do you think this began? I noticed this polarization
in
the middle of the Clinton years, when the Ginrich and the Republicans
first shut down the government. But it may have its genesis earlier. I
wasn't paying as much attention before that.

Do you think Bush has exacerbated it, or tried to, in soem way, dampen
it?



     I think Bush has neither tried to exacerbate it nor dampen it.
He--and other Republicans--have just benefited from it.

     Look, in a world where BOTH sides are trying to shove their
parochial point of view down your throat, you'll go with the guy whose
side advocates more of what you believe already.

     So when did the polarization start?

     In the administration of Lyndon Johnson when the IRS went after
the tax exempt status of a group of Southern private schools that they
claimed were "white only" academies, trying to yank their tax-exempt
status because they discriminated on the basis of race.

    Eventually, the courts resolved for the schools--IRS rulings on tax
status had to be content-neutral, but right there, the Religious Right
was born.


There was an HBO documentary on the Religious Right that I saw earlier this year (with footage of a very young Billy Graham declaring that Jesus was in favor of private property!!!) that espoused the viewpoint that the religious right movement dates to the 50s or 60s, with the liberalization of the U. S. Supreme Court opinions on social issues (for instance, civil rights decisions on race, decisions requiring states under the full faith and credit clause to recognize divorces from other jurisdictions, Griswold v. Connecticut establishing the right to privacy with respect to birth control). Roe v. Wade was the lightning rod.


    Because some of those schools were white only, and some were just
run by small denominations that didn't happen to have much in the way
of black membership, but ALL of them saw the writing on the wall:  the
federal government had declared its right to decide what morality was
and to enforce it at the point of a gun if it had to.

Forget freedom of religion,

No, it is quite strong. The only issues these days seem to involve religious practices that compete with military discipline or school safety.


or freedom of association-


Now that is under attack, both as to abortion (which derives from right to privacy that was declared a penumbra of the freedom of association clause) and as to ethnic other groups that appear to the government to endanger national security, especially since The Patriot Act.


-you only had 
those freedoms if you agreed with the powers in Washington.  If not,
tough luck.

    April said that she would continue to think the Right was going
after her way of life as long as they supported "restrictions" on
"freedom," but as far as the Right is concerned,  April and you and I
support lots and lots of restrictions on freedom.

    The Constitution say that Congress shall make no law...prohibiting
the free exercise [of religion]?

    Forget it.  If your religion says that homosexual practice is a
grave sin and no member of your religion can practice it and remain a
member in good standing, you're SOOL, because laws should be passed to
require you to hire active homosexuals to positions in church-run
enterprises on "antidiscrimination" grounds.


Without looking it up, I think that the Supremes recently held that a church can so discriminate. Issues like that involve a difficult balancing of competing rights.


   Same with abortion and birth control--you don't get to  provide
health insurance tha doesn't cover those, even if covering them is
against your religion's doctrines, because your employees "rights" (to
what?) are supposed to come first.

    Meaning--YOU have no rights.  You only have the right to go along
with what Washington thinks you ought to think.


The "you" in this case must mean "an employer". Employers have many rights, and they have much power. It is because of this power that Congress enacted legislation to ensure certain rights for employees. The courts have the effect that legislation. If the statutory employee rights come into conflict with employer rights, then the courts have to decide whether the interests of the employer outweigh that of the employee. For instance, the Supremes ruled that a commercial airline does not have to hire a pilot who needs eyeglasses to correct his vision to normal.


    Most members of the  RR are absolutely convinced that liberals and
bureaucrats are trying to make Christianity illegal through the back
door--by branding it a "hate crime" to say that homosexuality is wrong,
for instance.

   That's why they fight so hard.

    There's only one way to solve this--and that's to let federalism
actually work.   It means liberals don't get to tell conservatives that
they have to hire gay people or black people or the disabled in their
PRIVATE enterprises, and conservatives don't get to tell liberals that
their states can't instituted civil unions or gay marriage.


I am shocked, actually. You actually think that race and gender discrimination is acceptable? That property rights (the "PRIVATE enterprises" you mentioned) are more important than human rights?

By the way, federalism in the USA is not as simplistic as you describe by any means. First, federalism is alive and well with many states going in different directions on a host of issues (California and auto pollution, for instance). But it gets complex if a state makes laws that affect either the federally protected civil liberties of people (remember that there would not have been a Constitution and United States of America but for the Bill of Rights - read "The Federalist Papers") or if the state tries to affect the rights of people in or from other states. Examples (and these all happened): (1) Nevada gave a couple a divorce and New York did not want to recognize it; (2) a mixed race couple from the north is not allowed to stay in a hotel in a southern state; (3) a gay or lesbian married couple from Massachusetts moves to a southern state.

That is why the federal government is needed and why the Constitution requires each state to give full faith and credit to the actions of all other states.


    But it's pushing reality to blame the drive to get Washington to
enforce one moral code over another on conservatives.   It started with
liberals, and liberals have not given it up.

      I say let Roe go and let the states each make their own
decisions.  Abolish the Department of Education and let localities go
back to making up their own minds about what to teach their own
children.  Withdraw all antidiscrimination law as it applies to private
enterprises and institutions.  Let's ALL stop trying to get everybody
to do it our way and admit that we just don't agree.


And if a state were to re-enact poll tax laws? or slavery laws? Where would you draw the line? You leave no room for the federal government to curb the excesses of local extremists? Remember, this country is a republic, not a democracy, and the drafters of the Constitution recognized the need for preservation of liberties by the federal government.


     If we don't do that, we can't keep the country together.

         Jane Haddam
http://www.janehaddam.com


Frankly, it seems to me that your opinions represent one of the polarized extremes that this country is facing.


Francis A. Miniter
.

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