How Bush is Different From Every Other Worst President Ever!

Since 1948, historians and lay folk have ranked US Presidents. At various times, Nixon and Andrew Johnson have topped the list. Now, the game is over. The decision is in. The very worst President in American history is George W. Bush. Alone among "worst" Presidents, Bush has tried to overthrow and subvert the government of our Constitution and replace it with a dictatorship in which both courts and legislature --if either are to exist at all --are expected merely to kowtow to his wishes.

At the same time, the rights of habeas corpus and due process so carefully crafted by James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution", are wiped away with an imperious decision. If because you oppose Bush, you are declared either a traitor or a terrorist, you may be imprisoned without trial, denied the right of counsel, a phone call, or the right to defend yourself against the charges. You may be tortured. You may be held indefinitely. You may be executed! Who would know? For centuries, this kind of high-handed rule by decree has been called tyranny. I call it tyranny now and I accuse Bush of high treason, capital crimes and subversion.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

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No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." But the swift American victory in the war, Polk's decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With more than two years to go in Bush's second term and no swift victory in sight, Bush's reputation will probably have no such reprieve..

--The Worst President in History?, One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush, Sean Wilentz, Rolling Stone

Nixon is remembered for abuses of executive power and his outright disdain for the Constitutional "separation of powers". Like Bush, Nixon equated dissent with treason and considered critics to be threats to national security. He spied on US citizens, pried into income tax returns and considered himself above the law: "if the President does it, it is not illegal". Nevertheless, his assaults on the Constitution pale beside those of Bush. If Bush's various treasons are allowed to stand, he will have rendered the Constitution moot and the United States of its creation destroyed, perhaps forever. Nixon never came close, primarily because Nixon was courageously opposed by the media, the Congress and the courts. Where are those real "patriots" now? Where is courage? Where is outrage?

That he lied about Iraq’s ‘threat’ to the United States is no unsubstantiated allegation. The recently revealed “Downing Street Memo” is the report of Britain’s’ intelligence chief made to Prime Minister Blair about his trip to the United States eight months before the war in Iraq began, long before it was publicly considered.

The memo makes clear that deception and the fitting of facts to serve a military agenda was a high priority for the Bush administration. (‘C’ in the following is Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service — MI 6 — who had just returned from meetings in Washington.) “C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Let us be blunt. Basing a war on ‘fixed’ evidence is a high crime, a betrayal of the trust of the nation’s citizens. In the United States, it is grounds for impeaching the president and removing him from office.

--Huck Gutman, The Worst US President Ever?

It is interesting that "worst" Presidents always seem connected in some way with the lingering consequences of slavery. Bush's base of support is not merely the south; demographically, it's base is found in the "disaffected" south, the south that felt persecuted by an admittedly harsh and reactionary re-construction. But it is also the "south" that would never have abolished slavery short of Civil War.

Nixon, for example, is remembered for his "Southern Strategy", an exploitation of bigotry if not an outright appeal to it. What had been a Democratic south (the south had hated Lincoln) has been solid "red" since the sixties. There is even some credence given the opinion that the rest of the US would have been better off if the south had gone its own way. That position, however, does not wash Northern hands of the crime of slavery, a crime against humanity if there ever was one.

The American political system has long used different groups and issues to divide people into an "us" and a "them." The reason America remains, and has always been, a two-political-party country is that we prefer our beliefs as simple duality—black white, good bad, us them. On every issue from slavery to communism to abortion, Americans have preferred to fight rather than to compromise. Sometimes, as with slavery, this is the correct choice. Sometimes, as with the issue of abortion, the American political path makes it too easy to tear each other apart and never resolve anything.

The truth about Wallace using race as a dividing tool is that he was simply being true to the nature of the American political system.

Being on the receiving end of school-yard politics is shit. I, along with every other recipient of a bully's pain, take a certain joy when the bully finally gets theirs. I heard a friend talking about Frank the other day—Frank is now even fatter, along with being divorced and stuck in a dead-end job. I won't lie and say I didn't smile at that.

When Wallace was shot, how many people saw that as just payment for his sins?

But there is also something sad about Wallace. The other virulent race-baiters from those days, like Senator Strom Thurmond, have been rehabilitated and accepted. Not George Wallace. Even though he spoke at black churches and NAACP meetings in the two decades leading up to his death, seeking to bury his past with Christian atonement, people still saw him as he had been during the Civil Rights era. The fact that Wallace said he didn't want to meet his maker with his sins unforgiven just didn't matter to most people.

--Jason Sanford, Weeping for Wallace: George Wallace, school-yard bullies, and how we're all living with the politics of the new south

Bush has taken his disdain for law much further than Nixon. The Washington Post wrote recently that Bush sought "...to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta". Bush, in fact, arrogated unto himself the right to declare anyone opposing him an "enemy combatant -- two words which deprive you of the right to be told what you have been charged with, the right to retain defense counsel, the right to a "speedy trial" by an impartial jury of one's peers.

Bush's treatment of prisoners of war have disgraced the US and alienated the world which now sees the US as a rogue nation, a banana republic, a fascist dictatorship. As Bush is owned by large corporate support and those corporate interests that make up the Military/Industrial complex, the charge is absolutely, irrefutably true. The US, under Bush, has become a fascist dictatorship. Live with it or change it!

It was not Nixon who blazed the trail for Bush. It was Ronald Reagan, who managed to sugar coat tyranny and make incipient goppers feel good about being jingos, narrow mindeded bigots, fascists and/or militarists. Ronald Reagan put an elderly, kindly smiley face on government incompetence and criminality. The reality was worse. Perverts ran a child prostitution ring right out of the White House. A program of endemic treason, Iran/Contra armed avowed enemies as well as right wing terrorists. Not surprisingly, terrorism was worse under Reagan than under any Democratic administration since WWII. Terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes.

Ronald Reagan clearly has become the sort of polarizing figure that Franklin Roosevelt was for an earlier generation—or, perhaps a better way to understand the phenomenon is that Reagan has become the personification of the pole opposite to Roosevelt. That polarization is evident in historians’ evaluations of George W. Bush’s presidency. “If one believes Bush is a ‘good’ president (or great),” one poll respondent noted, he or she “would necessarily also believe Reagan to be a pretty good president.” They also tend to despise Roosevelt. “There is no indication,” one historian said of Bush, “that he has advisors who are closet communist traitors as FDR had. Based on his record to date, history is likely to judge him as one of America’s greatest presidents, in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.”

--History News Network, Historians vs. George W. Bush

Bush claims the right to ignore those parts of the law with which he disagrees. He rules by decree. He exploits the fatal flaw in the US political system. The Supreme Court has typically given "Presidents" a free hand in the conduct of national defense, particularly in times of "war", a flaw merely waiting to be exploited by a demagogue, a would-be Buzz Windrip!

Bush would manufacture a phony war on terrorism and, in the period of panic that followed, the would ram through the Congress his own "enabling act", given the Orwellian monicker: Patriot Act. In rare cases, the court's have, at last, rebuked Bush's policies with regard to the treatment of "detainees" --another Orwellian euphemism for "Bush kidnap victims". The court has, at least, indicated how far the criminal Bush administration has subverted the very rule of law. Among numerous "worst Presidents", Bush alone tried to destroy the United States of America and succeeded.

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CIA Obstruction of Justice Designed to Shield George W. Bush?

CIA destruction of at least two torture tapes underscores the degree to which this White House, this CIA has subverted the rule of law, the Constitution and the interests of the American people. This wanton destruction of evidence is now a case of obstruction of justice, an attempt to escape the consequences of this administration's deliberate and felonious violations of US Criminal Codes as well as the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions to which this nation is bound. That it makes the news at all is surprising, given the contempt with which this government has held the people, the media and the rest of the world.

The admissions made by CIA Director Michael Hayden now establish an impressive array of alleged crimes — allegations that would easily justify a grand jury investigation in any other case. It is equally clear that some of these alleged criminal acts involved President Bush directly (most obviously, the ordering of the torture of suspects) and a variety of high-ranking administration officials.

At issue are tapes of the interrogation of Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole), which reportedly involved the use of waterboarding. Invented during the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been defined as a federal crime and a war crime by both U.S. courts and international law. The tapes were made in 2002. That date is important because the use of torture was already in the news and many, including myself, were charging that anyone ordering or engaging in such torture could be prosecuted. More importantly, both the 9/11 Commission (acting under Congressional authority) and federal courts had demanded interrogation tapes but were told that they did not exist.

--CIA Interrogation Tapes: “Bad” is Hardly the Word — Call it Criminal

The destruction of material evidence of felonies and/or treason is to be expected by this White House. Nor should we be surprised by CIA Director Michael Hayden's ham fisted handling of the entire affair. Hayden, it should be recalled, assumed his office upon the lie he told about the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. In an exchange with a reporter at the National Press Club General Hayden insisted that the standard for seizure and searches required by the Fourth Amendment was "reasonableness" or "reasonable suspicion".

All pig-headed Hayden had to do was just read it. Here's more on a typical case of official idiocy and arrogance:

And because Hayden fell asleep during Junior High civics class here is the text of the Fourth Amentment. I suggest that Hayden block out some time to read it.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

--Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, US Constitution

If Hayden can't bother to read this elementary principle of American jurisprudence or worse he cannot understand it, then he should step down. He might try sweeping floors to "generalling".

Hayden preferred to argue, not from ignorance which can be remedied, but from the marriage of arrogance and stupidity. No one on my high school debate team would have tried getting away with what this idiot, who presumes to head the freakin' CIA, tried to get away with. Hayden is a specimen to be studied, evidence of the dumbing down of America.

Is it too much to expect of our "leaders" that they take their heads out of their criminal asses? Now --the CIA and quite possibly the Bush White House are up to those same criminal "asses" in obstruction of justice. The CIA, it is now revealed, destroyed video tapes of tortures in progress even as the CIA’s secret detention program was under Congressional and legal scrutiny.

Hayden’s letter attempts to create a rationale for what was clearly a move to hide the government’s actions from American and world public opinion and destroy evidence of criminal activity by CIA operatives and government officials, up to and including President Bush.

As the CIA well knew, if the tapes had become public—especially in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations—they would have evoked a wave of shock and revulsion in the United States and around the world, and confirmed that Abu Ghraib, far from an aberration, was the outcome of US government policy.

Hayden made the improbable claim that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA interrogators from retaliation by Al Qaeda. He wrote in his letter that the CIA halted the practice of taping interrogations in 2002, after only a few recordings had been made.

--Counter Currents

The tapes in question are destroyed despite the fact that the CIA had been "warned" against it.

White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the CIA in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two al-Qaeda operatives, government officials said yesterday.

The chief of the agency's clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the CIA's own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

--CIA told not to ruin tapes, The New York Times

Violations of both Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions had become and most certainly remain a matter of Bush administration policy. This most recent destruction of evidence, this clear case of obstruction of justice, must be considered in this context.

We are told that it is not known who authorized this case of obstruction of justice. Even so, it is fair to ask who benefits? The answer to that question is simple: George W. Bush, who has supported policies violating both Nuremberg and Geneva from the get go. The numerous violations of Nuremberg and Geneva are under US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 capital crimes.

(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.

Given Bush's numerous public pronouncements on the issue, the policy belongs to Bush. The buck stops at the White House. As I have stated repeatedly, there is enough probable cause in the public record to bring capital charges against George W. Bush. Who is protected by the destruction of these tapes of a procedure that had been denied in numerous administration lies? The answer to that question, again, is: George W. Bush!

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The Right Wing Threat of Theocracy

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are misrepresenting if not lying about their theocratic tendencies. Contrary to what both candidates will tell you, the founders believed in a "wall of separations" between church and state. The US, in George Washington's words is "in no way founded upon the Christian religion".

The founders were, in fact, not very religious at all, and fewer still espoused the Christian religion. Thought Mitt Romney tries to brush it all off, there are very real concerns about the kind of regime either candidate would try to effect. There are valid concerns about both men's public religiosity, concerns about what Thomas Jefferson called a "wall of separation" between church and state.

Romney wants to have it both ways. Even as he claims that his status inside the cult of Mormonism will not influence "his" Presidency, he implied that the founders were Christians, that the US was, in fact, founded upon the principles of "Christian religion". Romney's position is absolutely wrong. It is at best a mistaken view of our history, at worst, it is a deliberate lie.

It was Thomas Jefferson, though not a "founder", who described a "wall of separation" between church and state. George Washington, a founder who presided over the Constitutional Convention, stated that the US "was, in no way, founded upon the Christian religion". [click the pic for Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy"]

Of the many assaults on US liberty, the religious assault is the most pernicious. It is an evil influence cloaked in Godliness, premised as it is upon a pack of malicious lies about our history.

First things first --the founders were those delegates to Philadelphia who drafted the US Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention. "Christians" almost always get this wrong.

Most statements made by religious folk lump all the past and famous folk into one bag: founders. This, like almost every other thing they say, is just wrong and wrong headed. Those not present at the convention and who did not participate in the drafting of the Constitution are not founders. Thomas Jefferson, who was in France, was suspicious of what he characterized as an assembly of demigods. John Adams, likewise, was absent. Patrick Henry also did not attend and said of the convention that he "smelled a rat!" Nevertheless, James Madison, our charter's "architect", drafted a workable, secular government, and later, the legal framework for individual liberty: the Bill of Rights.

We are less free than our 18th Century forebears. George W. Bush represents a powerful fascist threat to US democracy. He ignores Congress, he re-writes the laws, he has abrogated habeas corpus, he has dismantled the separation of powers, he is, in fact, ruling by decree. He is a tyrant by any definition of the term. His has the potential to be the most harmful, the most damaging, the most pernicious dictatorship in world history.

When the US House passed the "Defense of the Ten Commandments" amendment to the juvenile justice bill, zealots of the Religious Right chanted the mantra: the USA is a Christian Nation! A press conference was attended by Gary Bauer and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R, Alabama), the sponsor of the amendment. Aderhold said:

The Ten Commandments represent the very cornerstone of the values this nation was built upon, and the basis of our legal system here in America".

Nonsense! And on various message boards, a chant, a mantra was taken up:

The legal foundation of this nation is the Ten Commandments

That is simply not true. In a single sentence, the founders put to rest any claim that this nation was, in any way, founded upon any religious principle of any type at any time.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

--US Constitution, First Amendment

I suggest radical fundamentalists read the Constitution, count the number of times the word "God" is used! As E.L. Doctorow so accurately pointed out in his essay, Jack London, Hemingway and the Constitution, the word God is not used once. Nor are the names of any deities used. There is, in fact, no reference to any deity of any religion, no reference to a source of supernatural power, no reference to a transcendent being, a primordial force, a first cause, an elan vital, a non-temporal, non-spatial Platonic ideal, an unmoved mover. The framers were having none of that.

This is not merely significant from a legal standpoint. Bluntly, with Faith-Based initiatives, Bush has robbed you in the name of God.

Opposition to Bush's faith-based initiatives has come from organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Both organizations have stated that the initiative represents an unconstitutional merging of church and state.

- Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives Launched

In constitutional terms, charitable choice boils down to this: religious organizations can receive government money to provide public services without sacrificing their religious character provided (1) the funding scheme does not somehow give bonus points to organizations simply because they are religious, and (2) individual users of the services have meaningful choices among providers and are only exposed to religious providers voluntarily. It’s an approach to First Amendment interpretation that over the last two decades has been gaining ground at the Supreme Court, evidenced most dramatically by this summer’s landmark decision blessing the use of education vouchers at religious schools.

- Dennis R. Hoover, Faith Based Administration

It is doubtful that any of Bush's "faith based initiatives" money has gone to Jewish, Islamic, or, indeed, any organization but Evangelical Christian organizations!

"Bush's faith-based initiative also privileges Christianity above all other religions. After sifting through every grant announcement I could get my hands on from Bush's faith-based offices, I couldn't find a single grant issued to a religious charity that wasn't Christian -- no Jewish charities, no Muslim charities, nothing. And when I spoke with Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he confirmed that no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group. This kind of religious favoritism is exactly what the Constitution's establishment clause was put in place to prevent."

- Esther Kaplan, Journalist and community activist

This is highway robbery. Your tax money finding its way into the coffers of Evangelical Christian organizations with which you most certainly disagree is most certainly theft!! You have been robbed. Like the Military/Industrial complex itself, Bush's axis of ideology is a racket designed to enrich his fundamentalist base.

"We will rid the world of evil doers"

--George W. Bush

The world would be better off now had Bush started with himself! The Bush administration represents an insidious, dangerous sea change in how this nation has viewed its own history. Right wing attempts to rewrite our history are insidious and Orwellian. The US, it must be repeated, is not a theocracy. The founders have cited no other authority for their work but the people themselves. God does not get even a footnote.

The US Constitution is not a "Ten Commandants" handed down by God. The US Constitution is the work of men, a convention of elected delegates to Philadelphia in 1787. If the Constitution should prove faulty, unworkable, or, in any other way, impractical, the people themselves bear the responsibility. It is no use blaming God.

The US Constitution is an existentialist document, a deliberate choice made by a people facing up to the facts of their founding, a people willing to take responsibility for a future they believed they could create, were free to create and adult enough to be responsible for. If God was to be summoned, it would be done by individuals free to act alone and within the dictates of their consciences. It would not be done by a theocracy; it would not be done by an act of Congress; it would not be done by a single article or phrase in the new charter; it would not be done by a GOP police state.

The US Constitution is significant by what it does not do. It does not cite a transcendent being as its source of authority. It does not favor the Christian religion, nor any religion, in any language. It does not cite or reference the works of theologians, saints, or prophets of any religion. It does not anoint a "King" who, in turn, cites a "divine right" to rule. The word "Christian" is not used once. Nor "Muslim", nor "Buddhist", "nor "Hindu". No article mandates a liturgy. No article mandates a day of worship. The names of deities, religions or sects are not mentioned.

The word "myth" is too kind for latter day ideologues who persist in trying to rewrite our nation's history. Assertions that our legal system is founded on the Christian Bible are more than mythical. They are deliberate lies manufactured and perpetrated by American fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and other evangelists who make big bucks in the God business, exploiting irrational belief systems, misconceptions, deliberate lies, and naive myths.

Neither a State nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither a State nor the Federal Government, openly or secretly, can participate in the affairs of any religious organization 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.' " Everson, 330 U. S., at 16, quoting Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164 (1879). The dissenters agreed: "The Amendment's purpose . . . was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion." 330 U.S., at 31-32 (Rutledge, J., dissenting, joined by Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton, JJ.).

- The U.S. Supreme Court, ROBERT E. LEE, individually and as PRINCIPAL OF NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL, et al., PETITIONERS v. DANIEL WEISMAN etc.

Following is the quote by Jefferson, referenced by the Justices, in which Jefferson referred to the "wall of separation" between church and state:

"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's Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802

The justices have simply buttoned it all up. There is no ambiguity in the decision itself. There is most certainly none in Jefferson's phrase "wall of separation." We may dispense with the persistent myths about our "Christian" founders. For a start, few of them were Christian, if any. Many were deists. Others were, we suspect, atheists.

Deism is a religious philosophy and movement that became prominent in England, France, and the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries. Deists typically reject supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and divine revelation prominent in organized religion, along with holy books and revealed religions that assert the existence of such things. Instead, deists hold that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of one God or supreme being.

- Wikipedia entry for "Deism"

Thomas Paine did say:

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

But Thomas Paine was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He was not a founder however great his treatise: Common Sense. Then, of course, there is the opinion of the man who has was and is called the Father of his Country, George Washington:

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

- George Washington

This sentiment would be echoed in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

- 1797 Treaty of Tripoli

About that, Tom Peters writes:

Does the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli say that "The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion?" YES!

...

More generally, we can't imagine how the absence of Article 11 in the Arabic version effects [sic] the separationist argument. It was the English version of the treaty that was approved by President Adams and Secretary Pickering, and this version unquestionably contained Article 11. Similarly, when the Senate ratified the treaty, they did so knowing full well that the English version declared that the United States was not a Christian nation. The separationist implications of the treaty can't be escaped by arguing that the Arabic version may not have contained Article 11; the President, Secretary of State, and Senate thought it did, but approved the treaty anyway.

...

--Tom Peters, 1797 TREATY WITH TRIPOLI

This debate should be over, the case should be closed. By law, the separation of church and state is complete. But, as we have learned, the rule of law, under Bush, means nothing. As is typical of dictatorship in general, the "decrees" of George W. Bush replace the law itself.

To bolster their case, accommodationists have produced reams of quotations from famous early Americans to the effect that religion is important to public life, or that the founders themselves were religious men. As we demonstrate elsewhere, some of these quotes are either fabricated or taken out of context. Others (as we suggest in this section) are taken from people who were either opponents of the Constitution (eg., Patrick Henry), or who played no role in the framing of the Constitution or other important American documents (eg., Daniel Webster). Finally, we argue that the overwhelming majority of these quotations are irrelevant to what's at issue in the separation debate: one can be religious, and even believe that religion is important for public life, without believing that the state should have the power to aid religion, either preferentially or non-preferentially. -

Separation of Church and State Homepage

Fundamentalists have lately tried a different tact, arguing that the "wall" is "one way". In other words, government may not prohibit or, in any way, interfere with religion but that religion may interfere with the functions of government. But which religion? I wonder. Islam? Hindu? Certainly, America's Religious Right would confine such "interference" to Christianity. The late Steve Kangas argued that if the Founders had intended that our nation be a Christian Republic, they would have done so in the Constitution. They would not have separated Church and State.

Many of the founders, the authors of our Constitution, were Deists or atheists, not Christians; it would have been uncharacteristic, hypocritical, indeed, impossible for them to have intended a Christian Republic. By definition, religious control i.e, "interference" with the "state" infringes upon the rights of other sects, atheists, deists, or agnostics. The best refutation, however, is found in a decision of the US Supreme Court:

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, ROBERT E. LEE, individually and as PRINCIPAL OF NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL, et al., PETITIONERS v. DANIEL WEISMAN etc.

The Religious Right will often cite certain isolated professions of faith. In themselves, the quotes fall far short of proving that the founders had in mind founding the nation upon the Christian religion, indeed, creating a Christian theocracy. Worth repeating: the assertion that the US was founded upon the Christian religion is a pernicious, evil, destructive lie. And I happen to believe that facts are preferable to falsehoods. Facts are better than opinions. Facts are better than destructive myths.

Jefferson, moreover, backed up with deeds his belief that there should be a "wall of separation" between church and state. When Patrick Henry proposed to tax the citizens of Virginia in order to support "some form of Christian worship", Jefferson opposed it. He designed a bill for Religious Freedom which completely separated religion from government in Virginia. His bill passed while none of Henry's "theocratic" ideas were even introduced in either Virginia or US government.

The right, however, will cite other aspects of American history, the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. It must be pointed out, however, that the original pledge, authored by Francis Bellamy in 1892, did not contain the words "under God". I remember well when those were words introduced having first learned the original version. Moreover, it was not until after the Civil War that US currency had printed on it the words: "In God We Trust".

Nor can fundamentalists find a principle of law in a SCOTUS decision of 1892. In the case of Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, Justice David Brewer wrote that "this is a Christian nation." But Brewer wrote this in dicta i.e., a personal opinion. As a personal opinion so qualified by the justice himself, it does not establish case law. It is not a legal pronouncement. It does not have the force of law. Feeling obliged to explain, Brewer himself stated:

But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all.

-

It may be left to the scrappy John Adams to close the book on the absurd assertions of religious folk.

"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, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will 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, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788],

Though he had hopes that "...men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice", he foresaw the present debate. In doing so, he gave us the best ammunition against them. Reason! I love his line "...it will never be pretended that any persons ... had interviews with the gods ..." Isn't it interesting that the 21st Century is in danger of slipping into a new dark age. It is equally interesting that the antidote is found in the lucid minds of 18th Century statesmen - Jefferson, Washington, Adams et al. It is time to put aside the campaign of lies by the Religious Right!

Mixing governance with religion is a bad and discredited idea as evidenced by those who espouse it.

"The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality."

--Adolf Hitler

Have not similar statements issued from the likes of Falwell, Robertson, Ashcroft, or George W. Bush and the American Taliban of John Ashcroft, Pat Robertson, and Gary Bauer?

At last, I refer interested readers to Joseph Storey's Commentaries on the Constitution - especially the significance he attributes to the Preamble which states:

"We the People of the United States, ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Significantly, the Preamble does not state that God ordained it, nor, indeed, any lawgiver but the people themselves. Nor is the Constitution based - as Gary Bauer had said - on the Ten Commandments. The "Ten Commandants" are not cited anywhere in the Constitution. Though it has the tone and voice of "Sacred Text" [See E.L Doctorow previously cited], the only authority cited by the Constitution is that of the people themselves.

That is important. According to Joseph Story, a preamble may not enlarge or confer power that is not found in the body of the document:

§ 459. The importance of examining the preamble, for the purpose of expounding the language of a statute, has been long felt, and universally conceded in all juridical discussions. It is an admitted maxim in the ordinary course of the administration of justice, that the preamble of a statute is a key to open the mind of the makers, as to the mischiefs, which are to be remedied, and the objects, which are to be accomplished by the provisions of the statute.

. . . . .

§ 462. And, here, we must guard ourselves against an error, which is too often allowed to creep into the discussions upon this subject. The preamble never can be resorted to, to enlarge the powers confided to the general government, or any of its departments. It cannot confer any power per se; it can never amount, by implication, to an enlargement of any power expressly given. It can never be the legitimate source of any impliedd power, when otherwise withdrawn from the constitution. Its true office is to expound the nature, and extent, and application of the powers actually conferred by the constitution, and not substantively to create them.

- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

But until he is impeached, removed, tried, convicted and imprisoned, Bush conducts daily "interviews" with God. He has always implied a special relationship between him and a deity of his imagining. It is the basis of his dictatorship! It means that you are always wrong, Bush is always right. He's on a mission from God. He's not just a run of the mill, banana republic, tin horn dictator. He is infallible. He is the Pope!

Naomi Wolf Celebrated Author of "The End of America"

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