How 'Stealth Ideology' Helped Bush Shred the Constitution

In his short reign of terror, Bush accomplished what no terrorist could ever have accomplished by any means including those crimes called '911'. Bush will have left our Constitution in an ash heap. His tragic legacy can be summed up in three clauses: he destroyed the separation of powers and ruled by decree; he denied every citizen every right that is associated with being an 'American; he waged war upon a deliberate and treasonous fraud and is, thus, criminally responsible for the deaths of some 1.5 million innocent people! Bush infamously stated: 'The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" In his wake, it is not even that! It is ashes up in smoke, a fading memory.

Bush's rise to power was made possible by the strong support given him by America's religious right or more accurately, the 'religious wrong'. Of the many crimes that may be attributed to Bush alone, let us consider the endemic dishonesty that may be found among his early supporters --the proponents of a focus-group ideology called 'Intelligent Design'.

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact.

...

The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "‘the rich’ are overwhelmingly people – entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. – who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work."

...

The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash.

--Robert B. Reich, Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism" and, worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. Interestingly, the term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin. It has been variously attributed, but Hofstadter seems to attribute that phrase to rail road men:

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

Hofstadter identified Social Darwinsism not in terms of any school that used the term to describe it ... in tterms of the usage of key prases such as "natural selection', "struggle for existence", and "survival of the fittest". After Hofstadter the term "Social Darwinism" was used not only as a general description for abuses of biology by the Nazis and other, but also as a means of sustaining the established separation between the societ science and biology. Despite the decisive defeat of fascism in 1945, the use of the term rose inexorably and exponentially for the remainder of the twentieth century. It acquired mythological attributes, referring to a pre-1914 era when its use was assumed to be prevalent. At least as far as the Anglophone academic journals are concerned this assumption is false.

--Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: a Contribution to the History of the Term, p430

Elsewhere, the term is attributed to Herbert Spencer who clearly inspired a generation of radicalized, latter-day robber barons and, bluntly, few of them evince the "...quality of mercy" so immortalized with but a few words by Shakespeare:

[Herbert] Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.

—Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism

An equally fallacious corollary to "Social Darwinism" is often phrased this way: the rich are rich because they are better, work harder and are more intelligent. George W. Bush put it more crudely: “The poor are poor because they are lazy!” In the same vein, the conservative economist Joseph A. Schumpeter likened recessions to a "douche" leaving us to wonder just who is "douched" and how? More importantly: who gets to make those life and death decisions? It is difficult not to conclude that New Orleans after Katrina is but the disastrous consequence of this kind of "blame the victim" thinking.

It is not surprising, then, that Spencer's influence continues, not in the field of biology, but in economics, specifically those theories most often associated with the right wing: the American apologists, William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.

No doubt, Spencer’s ideas received a major boost after Darwin's theories were published, but unfortunately the issues have been muddled ever since, The application of "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". Social Darwinists have fallaciously confused Darwin's description of an observed phenomenon with an ethical commandant.

Of late, critics of Darwin have taken a new tact, a 'stealth ideology' that it is hoped will pass for science among those who think science is nothing more than ideology expressed with big words. The stealth ideology is called 'intelligent design'. Intelligent design was thus packaged. It is stealth ideology designed (not so intelligently) to pass itself off as science. But it was found out and exposed.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator. To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

—Judge John E. Jones III, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

An issues clarification is in order. The case was not about whether one has a right to believe, indeed, teach "intelligent design". It was about whether or not the state has a right to teach religious dogma in state and locally supported schools.

It was not so long ago, that opponents of evolution had, in fact, passed laws that prohibited the teaching of real science in the public classrooms. That attempt was made in Tennessee where a law was passed on March 13, 1925 which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The case has been called a 'a watershed' in the history of the creationist-evolutionist argument.

The issue was forced. Scopes broke the law intentionally so that it might be challenged in court. The trial attracted one time Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, famous for his 'Cross of Gold' speech on behalf of an agrarian population that had favored the free coinage of silver and, for the defense, the champion of liberal and labor causes --Clarence Darrow. At a time when many trials were called 'the Trial of the Century', this 'Scopes Monkey Trial' might well have been. --H. L. Mencken, "THE MONKEY TRIAL": A Reporter's Account

Edward R. Murrow: Darrow, Darwin and Dayton, a video by Len Hart

Future discoveries will modify our view of Darwin, but that does not discount it. Our view of Einstein is already modified but he is, in no way, discounted. Moreover, no one has ever sued because Einstein is at odds with a particular dogma. It is certain, however, that no future discovery will confirm "intelligent design" —a logical fallacy on its face and quite beyond any confirmation of any kind!

'Intelligent design' is religious dogma but it's modern proponents have not the integrity of William Jennings Bryan who simply admitted his religious bias upfront. I disagree with Bryan. But he at least had the integrity to admit and defend his bias. Modern proponents of ID, by contrast, have no such intellectual honesty. Bryan did not pretend that his ideas were 'science' or 'scientific'. He did not try to re-package or spin his religious dogma. He didn't try to wrap it up in a fancy package or worse, a cloak, and try to sell it for something that it was not. Proponents of ID are liars and shysters, modern snake oil salesmen, practitioners of a 'stealth ideology'!

While Judge Jones struck deep into the heart of the conspiracy, Mill's objections may still be applied to so-called "faith based initiatives" and other voucher programs. They amount to nothing more nor less than the state finance of parochial schools. With regard to "faith based" initiatives, any federal expenditure in support of religious schools or religious, "faith-based" programs is a prima facie violation of the First Amendment which states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

Having lost that argument, the religious right now tries to re-frame the debate. It is more recently insinuated that "God" should not be kept out of the affairs of state. But —whose God should be consulted? The fact that Muslims, Christians, and Jews, presumably, worship the same "God" hasn't kept the three "religions" from warring with one another over a period of some 2,000 years. And what of Satanists? Is their 'God' --Satan --to be given equal status? What of those who worship Moloch? Should either Moloch or Satan share equal influence in the conduct of our public schools?

The founders of this nation were absolutely correct. Thomas Jefferson was properly blunt when he espoused a "wall of separation" between church and state. The US Supreme Court and Thomas Jefferson have been very clear on these points:

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State'.

--The U.S. Supreme Court, 1947

The United States was NOT founded upon the principles of the Christian religion --though religious toleration is guaranteed in the First Amendment.

In the America envisioned by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison (who authored our "Bill of Rights), all Religions should be tolerated but none should receive preferential treatment by the established governments —local, state, or federal.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

--U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment

The language is plain and unambiguous: "Congress shall pass no law..." etc etc.

An "...establishment of religion" is defined as follows:

...a church that is recognized by law, and sometimes financially supported, as the official church of a nation. Also called state church. Cf. national church.

Therefore, it is a violation of Constitutional law should tax revenues find themselves in church coffers. "Faith based charities"—like “intelligent design”—are therefore religious in nature.

Surely that fact is not lost on the Bush administration which clearly refers to them as "faith based". A program cannot be, at once, "faith-based" and "secular". But that is precisely the issue that Bush folk have tried to have both ways. What is a faith based organization apart from its affiliation with an established church? And what is a church if not a place where religion is practiced?

Jefferson's language ["wall of separation"] is unambiguous:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

--Thomas Jefferson, in his historic Danbury letter, January 1, 1802

George Washington also chimed in on the issue:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

--George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli

And it was James Madison --author of the First Amendment, indeed, the Bill of Rights --who penned the very words: "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, It ill never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

--John Adams

John Adams was a primary rabble rouser, witness to and instigator of revolution. He was a mover in the founding of this nation and, in a position to know whether or not it was founded upon Christian principles. It was not.

A final point needs to be made about the Preamble to that document George W. Bush called “…a goddamned piece of paper!” According to the "Commentaries" of Joseph Story, the Preamble to the Constitution establishes the vert source of U.S. "sovereignty’, the people themselves.

We the people of the United States ...do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That means that these 'United States' belong to us. 'We' --the people --literally and by law --created them. They belong to us --not George W. Bush, an illegitimate usurper at worst, a caretaker at best. And, in that role, he has likewise failed us utterly by subverting the Constitution which establishes as a principle of supreme law that the people are sovereign. The nation thus belongs to the people. It is, therefore, our right --as Thomas Jefferson himself told us --to overthrow any regime and any federal authority which presumes to rule outside the rule of law!

Bush who serves at our pleasure, displeases us! We may, therefore, declare him 'fired' and, should he refuse to leave, he may be thrown out on his ass by force! The people of England understood this principle if the people of the US do not! When King Charles was determined to have placed himself above the law, he was beheaded for his hubris. I will be content to leave the Bush's fate to the judgement of a bona fide court which should --by right and by law --hear the case that our own King George Bush II is guilty of capital crimes.

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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The Historical Significance and the Failure of George W. Bush

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Lincoln summed up what it was that made the United States not an alliance of separate states but a single nation of "United" states. Our nation was, he said at Gettysburg, 'conceived in liberty', an abstract, philosophical idea that had been given practical meaning in the US Constitution. We were, Lincoln said, 'dedicated' to a 'proposition'. '

Proposition' is a precise term found in philosophy and logic. Meaningful propositions are provable. They are 'meaningful' to the extent they are provable. Bush has no patience with any of that. He does not 'do nuance'. Our founders did 'nuance' and within it is found the source of American liberty: the Constitution. "The Constitution," Bush said, "is just a goddamned piece of paper!"

Thus --Americans are united not by ethnicity or other characteristics of 'nationality' but by abstract, philosophical principles. The US is a product of deliberate and considered 'choices' of an existentialist nature. Bush's failed presidency is already measured by the degree to which his administration exploited our patriotism while subverting the very source of it --those abstract ideas referred to by Lincoln: our very conception in 'liberty', our 'dedication' to the principle that all men are created equal, the 'nuance' wherein is found our nationhood.

The United States, though it is still a young nation, is already brought to the brink of its dissolution because one man, though he has derived power from the apparatus of state and nation, has failed to grasp the source of it or its significance. The political philosopher David Miller defined a nation is a group of people sharing a sense of common membership, believing that others, likewise, share the sense of membership and belonging. A nation, he wrote, is capable of acting as a 'group' the members of which share a common history, a 'shared public culture'. It is absurd to consider a regime wherein the 'defense' of this 'shared public culture' is, in fact, the destroyer of it. But --this is what Bush has done.

It is the measure of Bush's failure that the destruction of that 'shared public culture' so succinctly summarized by Lincoln, articulated significantly by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and, later, by James Madison in the Constitution, have fallen victim --not to terrorists --but to Bush's presumed defense of it.

It was Bush --not terrorists --who dismantled our Constitution with the pronouncement that 'The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper'. It was Bush --not terrorists --who declared an end of habeas corpus, due process of law, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizure, the rights of free speech, assembly and petition. It was Bush --not terrorists --who must surely 'just hate freedom'. It was Bush --not terrorists --who robbed us what it was that made us a nation!

David Miller stressed the importance of 'trust'. A history of the 20th Century is replete with stories of nations whose regimes were distrusted by citizens. The obvious examples are the communist regimes of the Soviet Union, China under Mao. But there are as many on the right wing --Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet! If my rights so ardently defended by Jefferson, so articulately described by Madison, are imperiously abrogated, what difference does it make to me whether the assault is from the left or from the right?

The US government while never perfect seemed secure in a system of checks of balances. It was Bush --not terrorists --who deliberately upset the balance. A purely partisan 5-4 Bush v Gore was the harbinger of things to come. Bush v Gore, it is said correctly, made no law. It's effect was to stop a recount that had it been completed would have elected another man to the Oval Office. The US government has been illegitimate since that date.

No one can tell if the US will ever find its way back. The Presidential primaries were uninspiring. The previews of the upcoming Obama v McCain race give me little hope. No one is talking about the only issue that without it nothing else matters: the nature and legitimacy of the government in Washington.

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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Impeach, Remove, and Try George W. Bush for War Crimes and Mass Murder!

Federal laws state that '...whoever commits a war crime' resulting in death to its victim can be put to death. It does not make an exception for whomever occupies the office of President. This is serious stuff but so too are the deaths of some 4000 US personnel as well as the total number of Iraqi deaths as a result of this war of aggression, a figure estimated at some 1.3 million people.

The vast majority of those deaths were of innocent civilians, family members, tradespeople, store keepers --not men well-armed against a high tech invader/aggressor! This is serious enough to require that those responsible be tried for war crimes, and, when found guilty, punished to the extent and the letter of the law.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

This is not a case that would baffle Sherlock Holmes. Among many complicit co-conspirators, one name stands out, the name of the person whose name is on the order to commence battle. It was George W. Bush who ordered the commencement of war. This act has already proven to be among the most horrific war crimes since those of Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot.

I have called for the prosecution of George Bush for 'war crimes' since it became clear that the US attack and invasion of Afghanistan was all about natural gas and pipelines. Before creating this blog, I had long posted those views on NPR's now defunct "How's Bush Doing" discussion forum as well as the likewise defunct "The Opinion". Recently, our lonely voices are joined by distinguished experts, jurists, attorneys and specialists in international law. Adding considerable weight in this area are the opinions of a Nuremberg chief prosecutor who states that there is a case for trying Bush for the 'supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.'

The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, US-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, blood-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."

--Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

Bush's war against Iraq was begun upon a series of deliberate frauds. Earlier, Bush had targeted Afghanistan where the US would defend --not freedom --but the interests of US oil barons, primarily a consortium of US oil companies which had planned to build the Centgas Trans-Afghan pipeline linking Turkmenistan's abundant gas reserves with markets in Pakistan. The Group was led by Unocal of California and Delta Oil Company of Saudi Arabia. Members of the Taliban actually met with Unocal officials at offices in Sugarland, TX, a Houston suburb, famous primarily as the home district of Tom DeLay who had introduced measures that would absolve Bush of the very war crimes that he most certainly had planned to commit. [See: How Bush Helped Establish a Corporate 'New World Order'; US 'planned attack on Taliban' [Before 911]; Dick Cheney Made Millions with Saddam Hussein ]

Not only is the war against Iraq a war crime prosecutable in US Courts for the violations it represents under the above cited US Codes, Title 18 [op cit], but also in US Federal Courts for the 'mass murder' of some 4,000 US armed forces personnel that have died upon this evil fraud. According to Charles Manson's prosecutor Vince Bugliosi, the penalty is death!

The measure exempting US troops from 'war crimes' was introduced by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) as an amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001, on May 8, 2001. It passed the House 282-137 on May 10 and introduced as S. 857 in the Senate on May 9 by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC), Zell Miller (D-GA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John Warner (R-VA), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Frank Murkowski (R-AK) --the usual suspects! Their very support of this measure --I suspect may be itself a violation of the international laws and conventions it seeks to circumvent or subvert.

The bill authorized Bush "...to use all means (including the provision of legal assistance) necessary to bring about the release of covered US persons and covered allied persons held captive by or on behalf of the Court [International Criminal Court, ICC, in the Hague]. Some highlights:

• The President is authorized to invade The Hague. Specifically, the bill empowers Bush to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release from captivity of US or Allied personnel detained or imprisoned against their will by or on behalf of the Court.
• No US governmental entity --including State or local governments and court of any US jurisdiction --may cooperate with the ICC in arrests, extraditions, searches and seizures, taking of evidence, seizure of assets, or similar matters.
• No ICC agent may conduct any investigation in the US.
• No classified national security information can be transferred directly or indirectly to the ICC or to countries Party to the Rome Statute.
• These provisions are in addition to existing US law (the 2000-2001 Foreign Relations Authorization Act) which prohibits any US funds going to the ICC once it has been established unless the Senate has given its advice and consent to the Rome Treaty.

This measure was introduced before 911 in anticipation of a 'War on Terrorism' that only those with guilty foreknowledge could have anticipated, a 'war' that would include US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. Certainly no one but Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, the Project for the New American Century and high level members of the Bush administration could have anticipated the improbable series of events leading to the American quagmire in Iraq. Certainly, they are not 'psychic' despite a mantra repeated ad nauseam post 911: "No one could have foreseen...."! In fact, only the Bush administration 'foresaw' 911 in such detail, that they planned in advance to make legal the very laws they have in fact violated in the post-911 world. What incredible coincidences!

What war crimes were Bush and his junta planning even then that would require they be immunized from the prosecution of their intended crimes?

How does a man of no charisma, little talent and less intelligence get himself into a position in which he rules the world? Typically it is always done the Adolph Hitler way --a phony terrorist attack, a homegrown version of the Reichstag Fire. In Bush's case 911! [See: Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks note: if all you have to refute this is a stupid label that you picked up somewhere, spare me! I will delete it! This blog deals in verifiable facts and/or meaningful statements. Labels --the staple of right wing, pro-Bush propaganda gets trashed where it belongs! ]

Well...hold on to your sorry ass, Mr. Bush! The people have the power to restore the Constitution, an essential outcome which begins with the removal of George W. Bush as 'President'! The second step is the subject of this article: the several prosecutions of George W. Bush in federal courts for mass murder and in world courts for war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity.

Principle I Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle Vl

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law:

1. Crimes against peace:
   1. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
      
   2. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
      
2. War crimes:
   Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
   
3. Crimes against humanity:
   Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.

--Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal

An October 2006 poll by New York Times and CBS News indicated that some 84 percent of Americans don't believe George W. Bush is telling the truth about what he knew prior to the attacks of 911. In the same year, Zogby reported that 45 percent of Americans support an investigation of George W. Bush by an International Tribunal. Such a tribunal should re-investigate whether officials of the US government allowed or consciously and deliberately helped or facilitated the attacks.

In the same year, 911truth.org commissioned Zogby which found that about half the population of New York believes that members of the Bush administration 'knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." 911 was, therefore, a deliberate act of mass murder perpetrated upon the American people by the man who presumes the office of 'dictator'. Since that is the title he prefers to 'president', then I suggest we stoo calling him "President Bush'. He is merely Bush or, more properly, Mass Murderer Bush, if you must attach a title.

Additional resources

• Should Bush be tried for war crimes?
• Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

Related news:

Karl Rove defies Congressional subpoena, refuses to testify. That puts him in danger of a contempt of Congress citation, if Democrats can actually find a pair between them. Good luck with that.

Israel hints at pre-emptive attack on Iran. Let's see, Israel carries out war games to practice bombing runs on Iran, and the "news" media calls it "defensive," but when Iran responds with missile tests to show it can defend itself from such an attack, it's called "provocative." Now that's what I call Demonic.

Federal judge ruling: George W. Bush is a felon. Confessions of a war criminal. But hey, he was just following the lead of the War Criminal in Chief.

Book reveals that Bush lied about never seeing Red Cross report on torture. [...] Let me know if evidence turns up that he's ever told the truth!

It worked for Hitler. FBI planning to "profile" muslims. What they need to do is profile Republicans! US military defends marriage by murdering entire wedding party of 47 people. Get married, go to jail. Wisconsin to arrest same sex couples who get married in California?

--Thomas McCullock

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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E. L. Doctorow: "I fault this President for not knowing what death is"

Doctorow's brilliant essay --The Unfeeling President --appeared originally in the September 9th issue of the Easthampton Star. Doctorow could not have known then that Dennis Kucinich, having introduced some 35 articles of impoeachment, would now say of our 'unfeeling' President: "There has been a breach of faith between the Commander in Chief and the troops."

There is no denying that the source of Bush's 'unfeeling' is that of an even earlier 'breach of faith' with the American people. One who is morally dead may not feel, may not experience faith. Bush never intended to 'lead' this nation. He intended to destroy it --our Constitution, our heritage, our most cherished traditions, indeed, our lives.

Our nation's Constitution, called a 'goddamned piece of paper', is derived from the ancient, venerable notion that the legitimacy of government is its contract with the people. Contracts not supported by faith are not worth the paper they are written on. Bush had in mind his subversion of our charter when in a temper tantrum he screamed the nine words that alone should have impeached and removed him from office: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!"

The following brilliant and insightful essay by novelist E.L. Doctorow appeared in the Sept. 9 edition of the Easthampton Star.

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I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944, General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life; they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you must.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the President who does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. A litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

There is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember when millions of people around the world marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into, and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report: he becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail.

How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America, given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn, but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

--The Unfeeling President, E.L. Doctorow

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of American literature. On a shortlist that might also include Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow is generally considered to be among the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Long celebrated for his vivid evocations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American life (particularly New York life), Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal.

Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931, and, like the novelist Everett in City of God, attended the Bronx High School of Science. After graduating with honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army, which stationed him in Germany. In 1954, he married Helen Setzer. They have three children. Doctorow was senior editor for New American Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until 1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California, Irvine.

With The Book of Daniel, his third novel, Doctorow emerged as an important American novelist with a strongly political bent. A fictional retelling of the notorious Rosenberg spy case, the novel deftly evokes the complex anxieties of Cold War America, shuttling back and forth in time from the 1950s, when Paul and Roselle Isaacson are convicted and electrocuted, to the late 1960s, when their troubled son, Daniel, a grad student at Columbia, must deal with the consequences of his unusual birthright. The Book of Daniel was adapted in 1983 into the film, Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton and directed by Sidney Lumet. Four years after The Book of Daniel came Ragtime, a dazzling reimagining of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century by means of a plot that, like City of God, ingeniously brings together real-life figures—such as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, and Emma Goldman—with an array of invented characters. Ragtime was named one of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century by the editorial board of the Modern Library and was adapted into a successful Broadway musical in 1998. The March was published in 2005.

Widely acclaimed for the beauty of his prose, his innovative narratives, his feel for atmospherics, and above all for his talent for evoking the past in a way that makes it at once mysterious and familiar, Doctorow has created one of the most substantial bodies of work of any living American writer.

--Biography of E.L. Doctorow

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Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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Federal Judge Ruling: George W. Bush is a Felon

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The US District Court in California has ruled that President George W. Bush is a felon. The ruling stems from the case of Al-Harmain Islamic Foundation Inc. v Bush, a case which will now be remembered as making it official that Bush's program of 'warrantless spying' is illegal.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously -- at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics -- to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.

--Suing George W. Bush: A bizarre and troubling tale

The complete story at Sott.net outlines the sorry history of how the Bush administration has defined the law of this nation as well as the laws of common sense and decency to carry out a program that would have made even Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover blush.

It would seem to me that it's now well established that Bush is indictable in a Federal Court. It is also my understanding that any sitting federal judge can now --upon his/her own motion --convene a federal grand jury to investigate Bush's many violations of federal law, not the least of which are US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441, which make Bush subject to the penalty of death for each death of his war of aggression in Iraq.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

It's easy to find evidences of Bush's tyranny. Here's a headline linked from the article cited above.

Editor's note: This article is part of a Salon investigative series on spying inside the United States by the Bush administration. Research support for the article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.

Spying on Americans without warrants, charges based on secret evidence, a small town divided by fear. Welcome to the world of Bush's "specially designated global terrorists."

May 19, 2008 | RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, and ASHLAND, Ore.

One day in March 2004, Soliman Hamd Al-Buthe, a former member of Saudi Arabia's national basketball team and a government official in the city of Riyadh, picked up his phone for an urgent call with two American lawyers in Washington, DC Most of the call concerned a growing confrontation between the US government and the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Ashland, Ore., the US branch of a global Saudi Arabian charity organization under investigation for possible links to terrorism. Al-Buthe had been an advisor to Al-Haramain from 1995 to 2002 and was a member of the Oregon foundation's board of directors. Just weeks prior to the call, the foundation -- a respected fixture in the Ashland community run for years by an Iranian-American Muslim named Pete Seda -- had been raided by US law enforcement agents.

--Blacklisted by the Bush government, Tim Shorrock, Salon

It is the Bush administration which has pressed this issue, an issue that has come up, until Bush, just four times in 23 years. But since 911 and the Bush wars for which it is fraudulently cited in justification, Bush has seized upon a Supreme Court ruling of 1953 to justify sweeping authority far beyond anything that could have been envisioned by the courts. Mere mention of two words --'state secrets' --was always enough to get a wink and nod from a federal judge. Things have changed. There is the possibility that George W. Bush is under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury as we write this.

Federal grand juries do two things: They investigate to determine if federal crimes have been committed; and they indict, or bring criminal charges against, those whom the grand jury believes committed federal crimes. To indict, the grand jurors must have probable cause to believe the persons indicted did violate federal criminal law.

Grand juries offer prosecutors several advantages in conducting a criminal investigation, especially a high-profile, factually complicated investigation. For one thing, grand juries operate in secret; this not only gives prosecutors the ability to shield the evidence they are gathering from disclosure to the press and others, it can also encourage people to cooperate with a grand jury. Unless a witness reveals that he or she testified before a federal grand jury, no one ever needs to know that occurred, and since the transcripts of grand jury testimony are secret, no one will know what the witness said. This can be an advantage in an investigation, such as an investigation into terrorism, where witnesses may be afraid of retaliation if they cooperate with investigators.

Grand juries also give prosecutors the power to subpoena witnesses and evidence from around the country and, in some circumstances, from other countries, as well. (Getting evidence from abroad is discussed below.) If federal agents want to interview someone, the person can refuse to speak to them; this is true even if the person is arrested as a material witness, because persons who are arrested can invoke the Miranda rights to silence and to an attorney. The U.S. Supreme Court has held, however, that the Miranda rights are not available to witnesses subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. Unlike someone being interrogated by federal agents, a grand jury witness not only has not right to silence or counsel, he or she is required to answer questions posed by the prosecutor working with the grand jury and by the grand jurors. A grand jury witness can refuse to answer if he or she can invoke the Fifth Amendment as to a question, but the privilege must be claimed as to each question and the prosecutor can challenge a witness' ability to invoke the privilege.

--Using a Grand Jury to Investigate the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, Susan Brenner & Lori Shaw

It is against both the letter of the law, logic, and common sense to allow Bush carte blanche to dismiss out-of-hand legal challenges to his various assumptions of dictatorial powers. This is crucial! Bush wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and 'terror' can be shown to be criminal and fraudulent. No other criminal defendant could simply invoke 'executive privilege' in order to have the smoking gun evidence against him thrown out of court. And Bush must no be allowed to do so either!

In this case, the evidence that must be allowed, the evidence that must be weighed by a federal grand jury will prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the panoply of frauds and lies Bush perpetrated upon the sovereign people of the US amount to high treason, mass murder, and war crimes for which US Codes themselves demand the death penalty.

A very important and related story at Alternet: Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House. Bush should worry. Any competent prosecutor could make an open and shut case right now that George W. Bush, who ordered the illegal attack and invasion of Iraq, is personally guilty of war crimes that demand the death penalty.

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The Psychopathic Origins of Bush/GOP Wars, Torture, and Injustice

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

If Bush can immunize himself for his own crimes after he's committed them, then he can, likewise, prosecute you for breaking laws for which he has yet to issue a decree! There is a word for this: tyranny! The people of England beheaded a King for less egregious offenses. This outcome has flowed from a single spring: GOP psychopathy!

Bush has effectively repealed the Bill of Rights while immunizing himself after the fact from prosecution for laws he's already broken, specifically, federal statutes prescribing the death penalty for war crimes resulting in death. These crimes should be listed at the top of the indictment against Bush.

There are, in fact, no exceptions under the law. Not even for 'Presidents'. Certainly not for those who have convinced themselves that they are 'dictators'.

Over the years we came to expect nothing less than excellent reporting from Bill Moyers and it reasonable to conclude that that is the very reason Moyers is not seen regularly on PBS today. Since the stolen election of 2000, every journalist of integrity has paid a price. In his analysis of the motion picture --The Lives of Others --Moyers quoted Roger Hebert who had made the obvious analogy between the Bush administration and that of East Germany during the height of the Cold War.

"The movie is relevant today, as our [own] government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany. They destroyed it by making it a country it's most loyal citizens could no longer believe in."

Moyer's has said what many still fear to say: a secret government has mushroomed in the United States.

The Bush Injustice Department

Bush's criminal and unconstitutional assault on the Bill of Rights as much as the well-planned campaign of frauds intended to justify the attack and invasion of Iraq stem from an identifiable 'conservative mindset', a pathology, which psychologists have lately categorized as 'psychopathy'. Bob Altermeyer calls these people RWA, or Right Wing Authoritarians.

I like 'psychopath'! It's shorter, precise, and has a longer history. As a result of his numerous interviews of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Dr. Gustav Gilbert identified a common psychopathic symptom --an 'utter lack of empathy'! On this subject, I recommend John Dean's 'Conservatives Without Consciences', in which Dean cites the work of Bob Altemeyer who sums up his own work accurately and wittily in The Authoritarians.

'Authoritarians' are submissive to authority as were Hitler's Nazi minions but they are, like Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush, tyrannical when they are themselves in power or positions of 'authority'. This mentality is most surely the origin of the Nazi war criminal defense: "But ve vere only folloving orters!"

With eagerly subservient Republican majorities controlling both houses of Congress, Bush and his vice-president could do anything they wanted. And so they did. Greed ruled, the rich got big, big tax cuts, the environment took one body blow [190] after another, religious opinions decided scientific issues, the country went to war, and so on. Bush and his allies had the political and military power to impose their will at home and abroad, it seemed, and they most decidedly used it.

A stunning, and widely overlooked example of the arrogance that followed streaked across the sky in 2002 when the administration refused to sign onto the International Criminal Court. This court was established by over a hundred nations, including virtually all of the United States’ allies, to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and so on when the country for whom they acted would not or could not do the prosecuting itself. It is a “court of last resort” in the human race’s defense against brutality.

Why on earth would the United States, as one of the conveners of the Nuremberg Trials and conceivers of the charge, “crimes against humanity,” want nothing to do with this agreement? The motivation did not become clear until later. But not only did America refuse to ratify the treaty, in 2002 Congress passed an act that allowed the United States to punish nations that did join in the international effort to prosecute the worst crimes anyone could commit! Talk about throwing your weight around, and in a way that insulted almost every friend you had on the planet.

But the social dominators classically overreached. Using military power in Iraq to “get Saddam” produced, not a shining democracy, but a lot of dead Americans, at least fifty times as many dead Iraqis, and the predicted civil war. The “war on terrorism” backfired considerably, as enraged Muslims around the world, with little or no connection to al Qaeda, formed their own “home-grown” terrorist cells bent on suicide attacks--especially after news of American atrocities in Iraq raced around the globe. Occupying Iraq tied down most of America’s mobile ground forces, preventing their use against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan which had supported the 9/11 attacks, and making American troops easy targets in the kind of guerilla warfare that produces revenge-driven massacres within even elite units.

--Bob Altemyer, The Authoritarians

Both Altemeyer and Dean are confirmed in their opinions of the state of the American conservative movement by 'conservative' criticism leveled at them. It is characterized by fallacious appeals to authority and orthodoxy --tactics that are observed to be rampant throughout 'conservative' politics.

Their [Altermeyer, Dean] work does not appear to have earned widespread acceptance among academic psychologists. No matter: in Dean’s mind, as he spends the bulk of Conservatives Without Conscience arguing, the theory of the authoritarian personality establishes the malevolence of conservatives as scientific fact.

Dean, of course, speaks from the 'experience' of having been a 'Goldwater Conservative'. I speak from the experience of having interviewed numerous 'conservatives' and, in the process collecting a series of 'self-reinforcing' rationalizations.

Is it true, for example, that “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us”? Maybe Altemeyer thinks that anyone who answers “yes” pines for a charismatic nationalist leader a la—who else?—Adolf Hitler. But, in fact, any effective political leader could fit the description. In the civil-rights era, for example, did not our country “desperately need” (to rectify injustice) a “mighty leader” (he certainly had a large following) such as the sainted Martin Luther King Jr. who was willing to “do what it takes” (organize marches and boycotts) to “stamp out” (end) “sinfulness” (segregation) and “radical new ways” (racist backlash)? Logical consistency would compel nearly everyone to agree with the statement, no matter how provocatively phrased. If it turns out that only conservatives say that they agree, this shows only that conservatives understand the meaning of words.

--Conformity Without Conscience, The American Conservative

The 'refutation' misses the point that 'conservatives' --statistically --will never recognize any other condition. In other words, any status quo --especially those caused by the conservative mindset itself--will always be seen by the RWA as requiring a strong leader. Nothing is proven. The 'conservative' mindset just repeats a faulty premise or, worse, mistakes a pre-conceived notion for one. The conservative mindset may never notice or grasp the significance of evidence that the 'mindset' itself and policies issuing it from it are the cause of the status quo cited to justify war, torture, or even atrocities. This is most certainly the case with 'terrorism' cited to justify wars of aggression and torture which are themselves the root cause of 'terrorism'. You have thus entered the circular, self-reinforced world of GOP delusion! [See: Terrorism is worse under GOP regimes]

Typically, as predicted by Altemeyer, his studies are dismissed not because they are objectively flawed but because they do not conform to pre-conceived, conservative models of the world.

It does not follow that because Martin Luther King Jr may have been a 'great leader' that he was, therefore, 'authoritarian'. It is interesting that the example of Ghandi was not cited by the conservative authors whose assumptions are predictable and self-reinforcing: that no one but 'authoritarian conservatives' may be great leaders. Conservative logic argues as follows: Martin Luther King was a great leader. Therefore, he must have been an 'authoritarian conservative'. In the GOP/conservative bizarro world, houses precede their foundations, conclusions precede their premises. Welcome to Alice in Wonderland!

That, of course, brings me to yet another symptom to be found in abundance among members of the Bush regime and his many supporters throughout the GOP: delusions! Delusions are typically associated with 'psychoses' --schizophrenia, global psychopathology. I am inclined to assign Bush and his supporters into one of two camps: those who are truly 'delusional' and those who exploit delusions for political gain, i.e, those who know better but tell the lies anyway knowing that they will be eagerly lapped up by those whose belief in them is irrational and symptomatic. The GOP thus feeds upon its own insanity.

Yet another category are those 'Republicans' who may know better but for emotional reasons choose to support Bush. It was Republicans of this sort who supported the disastrous economic policies of Ronald Reagan, 'trickle down' theory, in particular, because it made them 'feel good about themselves'. The tax cuts, they willfully believed, would not merely make them even richer but monies not paid in taxes would somehow 'trickle down' and assuage them of the guilt they might have felt about being petty, greedy, intellectually dishonest members of a self-absorbed and 'psychopathic' elite of 'Right Wing Authoritarians'.

The last string of studies I want to lay before you ... concerns authoritarians’ willingness to hold officials accountable for their misdeeds. Or rather, their lack of willingness--which catches your eye because high RWAs generally favor punishing the bejabbers out of misdoers. But they proved less likely than most people to punish a police officer who beat up a handcuffed demonstrator, or a chief of detectives who assaulted an accused child molester being held in jail, or--paralleling the trial of US Army Lt. William Calley--an Air Force officer convicted of murder after leading unauthorized raids on Vietnamese villages.

...

If some day George W. Bush is indicted for authorizing torture, you can bet your bottom dollar the high RWAs will howl to the heavens in protest. It won’t matter how extensive the torture was, how cruel and sickening it was, how many years it went on, how many prisoners died, how devious Bush was in trying to evade America’s laws and traditional stand against torture, or how many treaties the US
broke. Such an indictment would grind right up against the core of authoritarian followers, and they won’t have it. Maybe they’ll even say, “The president was busy running the war. He didn’t really know. It was all done by Rumsfeld and others.”

--Altermeyer, op cit

Applying standards inequitably must surely stem from the observed inability of 'conservatives' to think logically. 'Conservatives' work backward from conclusions, in a biased search for supporting premises. Dick Cheney is a text-book example! He recently quashed facts not liked by the conservative 'authoritarian' in power; he moved to quash a report that supports the critics of the Bush administration with regard to the greenhouse effect.

"This is the story of a White House and vice president's office that work together to squelch information, to squash it, to stop it from getting to the public so that there would be no information out there, so that there wouldn't be a push for them to act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who appeared with Burnett at a press conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Boxer accused White House Press Secretary Dana Perino of lying about the redaction of Gerberding's testimony and engaging in a cover-up.

--Cheney Wanted Cuts in Climate Change Testimony, Boxer Claims Cover-Up, ABC News

It is in this mindset that we find the origins of the GOP attack on the Bill of Rights.

Altermeyer believes that conservatives have a problem with 'evidence' in general. This is an issue that seems especially relevant to the debate about 'torture', a debate in which the 'conservative' defense of Bush is flatly indefensible.

Authoritarian followers aren’t going to question, they’re going to parrot. After all, in the ethnocentric mind “We are the Good Guys and our opponents are abominations”--which is precisely the thinking of the Islamic authoritarian followers who become suicide bombers in Iraq. And if we turn out not to be such good guys, as news of massacres and the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, by the CIA, and by the arms-length “companies” set up to torture prisoners becomes known, authoritarian followers simply don’t want to know. It was just a few, lower level “bad apples.” Didn’t the president say he was sickened by the revelations of torture, and all American wrong-doers would be punished?

...

Sitting in the jury room of the Port Angeles, Washington court house in 1989, Mary Wegmann might have felt she had suddenly been transferred to a parallel 76 universe in some Twilight Zone story. For certain fellow-jury members seemed to have attended a different trial than the one she had just witnessed. They could not remember some pieces of evidence, they invented evidence that did not exist, and they steadily made erroneous inferences from the material that everyone could agree on. Encountering my research as she was later developing her Ph.D. dissertation project, she suspected the people who “got it wrong” had been mainly high RWAs. So she recruited a sample of adults from the Clallam County jury list, and a group of students from Peninsula College and gave them various memory and inference tests. For example, they listened to a tape of two lawyers debating a school segregation case on a McNeil/Lehrer News Hour program. Wegmann found High RWAs indeed had more trouble remembering details of the material they’d encountered, and they made more incorrect inferences on a reasoning test than others usually did. Overall, the authoritarians had lots of trouble simply thinking straight.

Intrigued, I gave the inferences test that Mary Wegmann had used to two large samples of students at my university. In both studies high RWAs went down in flames more than others did. They particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong. To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:

All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea..
Therefore, sharks are fish.

The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, “Because sharks are fish.” In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don’t “get it” that the reasoning matters--especially on a reasoning test.

Authoritarians do not 'infer' well; in other words, as a class, they lack critical thinking skills, logic! They are often fail to execute simple syllogisms.

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

--Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

We should teach people while they are still in school real critical thinking skills! Now --that would shake up the political landscape and blast holes in the 'conventional wisdom'. It would also put more than a few loudmouths, pundits, and poll-impaired consultants out of a job! Somehow --the message must be made clear even to conservatives, in language that even they must understand: torture is not OK! EVER! It is immoral and it is a war crime! Bush is culpable and should be prosecuted.

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

The findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll put the United States alongside countries like Russia, Egypt and the Ukraine and lagging far behind allies like Great Britain, Spain and France in how its citizens view torture.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believed all torture should be prohibited; the average in all 19 countries polled was 57 percent. Poll: 44% of Americans favor torture for terrorist suspects

--Nick Juliano, Tuesday, 24 June 2008, Majority disapprove of torture, 1 in 10 favor in any instance

I have never thought it coincidental that the symptoms of 'psychopathy' precisely describe America's GOP. That has been the case at least since the 1992 GOP national convention in Houston, TX where Republicans, enamored of Ronald Reagan, swooned: "But he made us feel good about ourselves!" Thus -- Ronald Reagan must be forever remembered as a feeble minded 'psychopath' who made an entire 'party' of psychopaths feel good about themselves and, presumably, about being psychopaths. A GOP convention is a meeting of several thousand psychopaths feeling good about being psychopathic together. It's the feelings! It's the warm fuzzies! You have to be there!

This 'divide', sometimes compared to that of the Eloi and Morlocks, has come to define this nation. On the one hand there is a truth-based, hard-nosed empiricism to be found in support of liberals and so-called 'progressives'. For all their tough-talk, the 'conservative movement' is a house of cards, premised upon cherished fairy-tales and neurotic, often psychotic, delusions that serve no other purpose but to make the GOP base feel better about themselves. Poor babies! There is something rotten, something sick about a nation that must murder innocents abroad in order to make evil Morlocks like Dick Cheney feel good about themselves!

PRINCETON, NJ -- There is a significant political divide in beliefs about the origin of human beings, with 60% of Republicans saying humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago, a belief shared by only 40% of independents and 38% of Democrats.

Gallup has been asking this three-part question about the origin of humans since 1982. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the results for the broad sample of adult Americans show very little change over the years.

Between 43% and 47% of Americans have agreed during this 26-year time period with the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. Between 35% and 40% have agreed with the alternative explanation that humans evolved, but with God guiding the process, while 9% to 14% have chosen a pure secularist evolution perspective that humans evolved with no guidance by God.

The significantly higher percentage of Republicans who select the creationist view reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and views on the origin of humans. Republicans are significantly more likely to attend church weekly than are others, and Americans who attend church weekly are highly likely to select the creationist alternative for the origin of humans.

Implications

Although it is not a front-burner issue (particularly in light of the economy and the price of gasoline) the issue of teaching evolution in schools came up on the campaign trail last year, and could resurface in one way or the other between now and the November election.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is facing the challenge of gaining the confidence and enthusiasm of conservative Republicans. Turnout among this group could be an important factor in determining the final vote outcome in a number of key swing states. As seen here, Republicans are in general sympathetic to the creationist explanation of the origin of humans, and if the issue of what is taught in schools relating to evolution and creationism surfaces as a campaign issue, McCain's response could turn out to be quite important.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,017 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 8-11, 2008. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

I prefer facts to frames, verifiable data to punditry, reality to myth making and slick, focus group approved propaganda. Jacob Bronowski summed it all up very well in a single sentence: behave in such a way that what is true may be verified to be so!

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Bush: Three Generations of Betrayal and High Treason

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When every other remedy is repressed, quashed or made illegal, guerrilla tactics are all we have left! Thomas Jefferson said that guerrilla tactics are justified in cases of tyranny. We have a 'right', Jefferson said, to 'abolish' a government that has become, like that of Bush, tyrannical. The revolutionary spirit of Jefferson was with those who protested Bush at Monticello! The spirit of Jefferson is 'anti-Bush'.

A defender of Bush's shameful and smirk-filled presence at Monticello said that 'fighting words' are not protected speech. Yet --our Declaration of Independence itself was made of 'fighting words'. King George III thought so. Bush himself resorted to 'fighting words' to rally a stunned populace into supporting his wars of aggression and other war crimes. 'Bring it on', he said! A fat lot of good his fighting words have done us!

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

--H. L. Mencken

Bush has been more successful at suppressing dissent at home and than he has been at fighting real 'terrorists' abroad. Armed with an Orwellian 'Patriot Act', Bush need only 'deem' you a 'terrorist' and you can be incarcerated in a hell-hole in violation of every principle put forward by real statesmen like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. Bluntly -- you are living under the absolute rule of a tyrant! Thomas Jefferson would have supported efforts to remove Bush and would most certainly be called 'radical' or 'liberal' or even 'conspiracy theorist' if he were alive today.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness"

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

Che Guevara said essentially the same thing in his classic treatise on guerrilla warfare.

"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."

--Che Guevara, Chapter I: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

Che might have been prescient. Certainly --the 'forces of oppression' maintain themselves in power 'against established law'. In fact, Bush has personally ordered the illegal and treasonous dismantling of 'established' Constitutional law, which he dismissed with a smirk: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"! Bush broke the law, subverted the law, ordered the law changed to suit him, and re-written the law --on the fly --with signing statements. He has ordered his attorneys to render opinions that tell him what he wants to hear, i.e, that the crimes he's already committed are made legal after he had already committed them. Many of those broken laws are found in the supreme law of the land --the Constitution.

Altering or abolishing this government is precisely what 'we' have in mind. It is precisely what had been foreseen by the founders and by the man who occupied Monticello.

David Hume wrote:

"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

--David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government

Bush has taken to new heights nefarious efforts to shut up his opposition. Due to right wing policies and media consolidation throughout the regimes of Reagan and Bush Sr, the media is but a right wing echo chamber. No one can, therefore, reasonably deny a voice to folk for whom Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is symbolic of free speech and a revolution in support of it!

Bush may have been within the letter of the law to quash 'free speech' at Monticello, but to do so on Jefferson's soil, is a poke in the eye! The downside for Bush is that it tips his hand. It betrays his anti-Jefferson mindset, his anti-Democratic, dictatorial, fascist bent.

It was Mr. Bumble in Dicken's David Copperfield who said "If that is the law, sir, then the law is a ass!" I'm with Jefferson, Che, Hume, and Mr. Bumble. I say RIGHT ON to the protesters! What passes for law under Bush is --indeed --'a ass'! I denounce the war criminal Bush for having soiled the ground Jefferson walked on. I accuse Bush of war crimes, high treason, graft, and other capital crimes as stated succinctly in US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 --significantly the very portion that Bush has worked so assiduously to rewrite but only after he had already earned himself a death penalty upon conviction.

If the US is to survive, the people must restore the rule of law. Clearly --the rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush occupies the White House. Clearly --the rule of law will forever be subverted if exceptions are made for Bush! The rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush is allowed to make it all up as he goes along, ruling by decrees called 'signing statement', an unconstitutional procedure, perhaps a crime in context. There is absolutely no authorization for this Bush 'invention' to be found anywhere in the US Constitution, just as there is absolutely no Constitutional basis whatsoever for 'executive privilege'.

Over the years, I met and interviewed numerous famous folk --politicians, some world leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Bush Sr, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xio Peng, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, et al. My interviews with Ford, Bush and Reagan always left me quietly alarmed. I can best describe these personalities with words Ada Louise Huxtable used to describe Los Angeles: 'there is no there, there!' I often left an interview feeling like the character so memorably portrayed by Kevin McCarthy in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Bush Sr in particular left me fighting the urge to run into the streets shouting: "Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone. They're here already. YOU'RE NEXT!!

Bush's Grandfather --Prescott Bush --commits treason

It has become clear that Bush family efforts to create a fascist dictatorship in America did not end with Prescott Bush. Nor did it merely resume with Bush Jr, the lesser Shrub. The Senior Bush's efforts in China must be re-examined! I have always suspected that the Chinese outsmarted the idiots of the Bush clan. At the time of Nixon's visit, the US still had a car industry, still had steel industry, still had an electronics industry! People had real jobs. And there were no Wal-Marts!

Bush Sr went to China in advance of Nixon's famous visit. Back in the USA, the Senior Bush, in a meeting room of the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, TX, told me that he ate 'aromatic meats' ['Lip of the dog'] at a diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City in Beijing. [It was much later --1992 -- that Bush actually vomitted at an official dinner, perhaps on the Prime Minister of Japan] What Bush would not tell me were the details of the Faustian bargain that he set up in China, the 'deal' that was later agreed to by Nixon and his criminal counterparts inside the Chinese regime. Bush Sr's flat, slightly nasal monotone was enough to give you chills --especially when he talked of the New World Order!

Bush Sr's 'New World Order'

The decline and fall of the US economy can be traced to Bush Sr's trip to China where the Senior Bush laid the groundwork for Nixon's 'operatic' visit there. It was a sell-out, a Faustian bargain, a betrayal of American labor. Later, Carter was reviled but he had but four years to plug the hole in the dike! Ronald Reagan's regime must be remembered as years of 'decline and fall', specifically the decline of US manufacturing and the fall of the American labor movement.

In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Gore Vidal dates America's demise to that date in the 1980s when the US became a net debtor nation. It is no coincidence that US currency has declined vis a vis the Yuan ever since. As the years pass, as the American sun has set and that of China rises, I am increasingly curious about what Bush Sr discussed (other than eating dog meat) with his Chinese hosts over dinner in the Forbidden City.

I've always wanted to know what deals were cut! What were the specific clauses with which the Bush crime family --in service to Richard Nixon --betrayed the people of America!

Bush Pukes and Dana Carvey (?) Does an Impressive Impression

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