The Backlash Begins

>Using your very own convoluted logic, I could argue that the

>drafters of the Constitution or the people of the states when

>it was adopted, intended it to have the effect of requiring

>the rights of women to vote, or the recognition of black

>slaves as ever being free human beings and their subsequent

>right to vote. They would have been APPALLED at the idea of

>either of those.

Please listen to this with an open mind, VaHawk. I really think this is an opportunity for a breakthrough.

When people wanted to end slavery in this country, or when they wanted to give women the right to vote, they did not try to find judges to pretend that the Constitution -- which was written by people who opposed those things -- somehow secretely compelled these results.

Instead, it was precisely because the U.S. Constitution so obviously DID NOT grant women the right to vote, and did not preclude slavery, that it was necessary to ENACT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS to provide for those things. That's how we got the 13th, 14th and 19th Amendments.

THIS IS THE CRUCIAL POINT: unlike proponents of gay marriage today, the proponents of ending slavery and of voting rights for women did not try to find judges who were willing to distort the Constitution to pretend that the Constitution ALREADY provided for this desirable social change. Instead, anti-slavery and pro-women-vote advocates went through the DEMOCRATIC process of AMENDING the Constitution in order to affect the social and constitutional change they wanted.

Don't you see how your examples PROVE the stupidity and self-destructiveness of trying to force gay marriage down the throats of our fellow citizens by getting judges to IMPOSE it, rather than by persuading citizens that it is the right thing to do?

Gay advocates are too lazy and too narcissistic to think that they should have to convince their fellow citizens of the desirability of the social change they want. As a result, they seek out liberal judges who agree with them as a POLITICAL matter, and those judges then impose that agenda on the majority of citizens, regardless of whether they agree or not. Or even WORSE, they have elected officials ignore and violate THE LAW simply because the official disagrees with the law, as the Mayor of San Fransisco tryanically did.

THAT, and that alone, is what spawned this backlash that played such a significant role in the smashing, humiliating defeat of the Democrats. This country was founded upon a backlash against the notion that an aristocratic minority was so smart, knowledgable, and superior that they could impose its will on the drooling, inferior, stupid majority.

Until gay people - and liberals generally - give up the pathetic, self-serving myth that they are so superior, so much smarter, so much more just than everyone else that they are ENTITLED to have their political views IMPOSED on a majority that opposes them, they are going to continue to suffer the types of defeats that we just witnessed - and even worse. And when that happens, it will be well-deserved.

>Wow, you really don't get it do you? It is NOT THE FUNCTION

>of the Constitution to DENY rights to any group of citizens of

>the United States via amendments that explicity deny their

>rights. You only have to look at the 13th and 19th amendments

>to find precedent for the granting of rights to oppressed,

>minority American citizens.

Every right, by definition, grants rights to one group or individual but TAKES AWAY rights from some other group. The right to the free exercise of religion takes away the rights of those who want to suppress that free exercise. The right to be free from the establishment of a state relgion takes away the right of those who want to have such a state relgion. The right of free speech takes away the rights of people who want to enact laws restricting speech. Every right, by definition, both grants freedoms and takes them away. So the distinction you are drawing is quite meaningless.

People have the right not to have their democratic liberties deprived by judges who exploit the Constitution to impose their own political views on a majority which rejects those views. That is tryanny, pure and simple. So while a Constitutional amendment may take away the "right" of gay people to marry, it also protects the rights of citizens who oppose such marriages to only have laws which are enacted through our democratic processes.

I am not for that Amendment, but the anger visible in this election over gay marriage is NOT, for the most part, a by-product of irrational homophobia, but instead, an understandable - even justifiable - reaction against these anti-democratic schemes.

Until liberals give up the illusion that they are so much smarter and more elevated and rational than the people who disagree with them, they will forver consign themselves to defeat. Anyone who wants to be disabused of the myth that liberals are smart need do nothing more than come and read this Board regularly.

Dougie, your time would be better spent packing that suitcase and sticking it under the bed. You're gonna need it before long. . .

Yes, get your baggage ready...

>Dougie, your time would be better spent packing that suitcase

>and sticking it under the bed. You're gonna need it before

>long. . .

Unlike you, whose life is driven by fear and anxiety and neurotic perceptions of persecution and self-victimization, I'm not going anywhere. I would rather fight than flee.

But there have always been cowards who slink away at the first signs of conflict. And I think it's at least commendable that you admit that you are an example of that sort of sickness.

Our country was founded upon attributes of courage and principled battle which are the precise antitheses of everything that you are. That's why I can't think of anything more enjoyable and just than the image of you fleeing in fear.

Shouldn't your time be spent convincing your fellow "Republicans-are-Nazis," America-hating, "WE'RE GOING TO CONCENRATION CAMPS" paranoids, such as Glutes and SouthBchBttm, to join you in your exile?

RE: Hole in the Head

>A major part of the backlash against gay marriage is the fact

>the courts have begun imposing gay marriage against the will

>of the majority of the people, and with no regard to the

>wishes of the people. In a Democracy, the laws are to be made

>by the people or their elected representatives. But the

>liberals have realized that by packing the courts with liberal

>activist judges, they can impose the liberal agenda on the

>people against their will. Abortion, late term abortion,

>affirmative action, etc, and now gay marriage. If these major

>changes in society were arrived at through the democratic

>process there would be less heartburn and resistence.

If you take out the stupid language about "liberal activist judges," I have to agree with Merlin.

The fact is that the advances in civil rights cited by trilingual in the previous subthread -- votes for women, abolition of slavery and segregation, access to public facilities for the handicapped -- all came about primarily as the result of LEGISLATION. Women achieved the vote when duly elected representatives in Congress and the state legislatures approved a constitutional amendment providing that women will have the vote. They didn't achieve it by having a judge look at a document that says nothing about votes for women and pronouncing "This document means women must have the vote." Anyone who doesn't understand why so many Americans have a problem with the latter procedure doesn't understand why the Repubs keep winning elections.

The Democratic Party needs to be identified with forcing social change on an unwilling population by court decisions like it needs a hole in the head. There is no better method of reinforcing the conservative cant about a liberal elite who want to trash the country's traditions.

>Unlike you, whose life is driven by fear and anxiety and

>neurotic perceptions of persecution and self-victimization,

>I'm not going anywhere. I would rather fight than flee.

In what way do you ever "fight" aside from bickering on this website, Doug?

>In what way do you ever "fight" aside from bickering on this

>website, Doug?

Well, for starters, I make my living by having sex with old men for a couple hundred dollars. I also mindlessly cut and paste what I find on the websites of leftist socialist groups and dried out, old, stupid singers in lieu of actual thought. And, finally, I whittle away my spare time, when I'm not whoring myself out, sitting in front of the television watching re-runs of 1950s sitcoms.

Oh, wait - that's what you do. So I won't even bother answering your question, because I could never compete with such a Prime Mover of Social Change as you.

RE: Hole in the Head

Rights do not exist in a vacuum. At one time people argued for "natural rights" but where do they come from? Jefferson and the other founding fathers argued that people are "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights". Realistically there is no such thing as a "right" until there is a Constitution or law granting such a "right" and a means to enforce it. The writers here seem to believe that minorites have a "right" to anything they desire. The only viable argument for a right to same-sex marriage arises from the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. But the law has always been that the States may legislate with respect to real differences between goups of people. The easiest example are children, who are not entitled to equal protection with adults. Children to not have a right to drive cars, for instance. Nor do they have the right to have sex with adults or vice versa. The question then is whether the States may treat man+woman couples differently than same sex couple or multiple party groups (polygamy or polyandry). Until a few years ago, no one would have doubted that the court may treat man+woman couples differently. Now Gays will argue that the State must prove the need to limit marriage to men+woman couples. Conservative judges will hold that states may make that distincion, liberal judges will hold that there is not sufficient proof of the necessity. If the need to treat man+woman couples differently is not found, then, the state will be required to provide not only same-sex marriages but eventually, polygamy and polyandry.

RE: Hole in the Head

>If the need to treat

>man+woman couples differently is not found, then, the state

>will be required to provide not only same-sex marriages but

>eventually, polygamy and polyandry.

Don't forget dogs and sheep!

RE: Hole in the Head

Sorry, but the polygamy and polyandry arguments are classic red herrings. To start, there are a number of valid public policy arguments that can be made against them (when there are none that can be made about same-sex couples). More importantly, Judaism and Christianity are unanimous in their rejection of polygamy (not to mention polyandry). Even though they aren't forbidden by the Bible, both faiths eventually progressed to the point where they understood the undesirability of such arrangements and prohibited them. Although Islam still permits polygamy, it is illegal in some Muslim countries and discouraged in many others (for the same reasons Jews and Christians turned against the practice).

Legislating morality is a tricky thing, but it's not so difficult when there's very wide consensus on an issue. Murder and theft are condemned in the Scriptures, and agreement is universal that those are bad things, so it's not a problem to legislate against them. Adultery is no longer a crime in most countries, but it's almost universally condemned in all societies, which is why it's such a common ground for divorce.

Legislating morality becomes problematic when there ISN'T widespread agreement. That's why we have such problems with the abortion and capital punishment issues in the U.S., where opinion is far from unanimous. The same is true about decriminalizing sodomy or permitting same-sex marriage. But nobody is going to legalize a practice when there is virtually universal consensus against it, like there is against polygamy or polyandry. And courts (at least in the U.S.) will definitely avoid legalizing such practices when there is no consensus at all in their favor.

So let's keep these discussion realistic, and leave out the red herrings.

RE: Hole in the Head

>The Democratic Party needs to be identified with forcing

>social change on an unwilling population by court decisions

>like it needs a hole in the head. There is no better method

>of reinforcing the conservative cant about a liberal elite

>who want to trash the country's traditions.

Yes, yes and yes.

The best example of this was the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned Bowers v. Hardwick.

Ever since the Court issued its decision in Bowers (which had held that it was constitutional for states to criminalize homosexual sodomy), numerous state LEGISLATURES had decided that such laws were ill-advised and stupid. As a result, they began REPEALING those laws on their own, i.e., through the democratic process. This was all part and parcel of the increasing, indeed dramatic, acceptance of gay equality among the American public over the last 15-20 years.

But as soon as Lawrence was decided, by which the Supreme Court took away from the people the right to have the debate over whether anti-sodomy laws were desirable, a huge and immediate backlash ensued, and polls showed a precipitous drop in public support for civil unions, gay marriage and gay rights generally. That's because people dislike, and understandably rebel against, being deprived of the right to have laws enacted DEMOCRATICALLY.

Personally, I think there's a pretty decent argument to make that the type of sex which adults have in the privacy of their own home is constitutionally protected (certainly, that's a MUCH BETTER argument than the ludicrious proposition that the Constitution somehow COMPELS same-sex marriage).

But as a practical matter, it is infinitely preferable to have these matters decided democratically, through debate and by the elected representatives of the people. When we seek to impose social change by judicial decree - rather than via persuasion of our fellow citizens -- it inevitably, and justifiably, creates enormous resentment and anger among those who have it shoved down their throat. That's particularly true when it is the courts, rather than the people, who end up resolving particularly controversial matters of great social change (such as gay marriage).

Several VERY LIBERAL members of the Massachusettes Judicial Council made that very point when dissenting in that court's 4-3 decision: namely, that although they PERSONALLY favored gay marriage as a matter of public policy, it was clear that the State Constitution could not be reasonably construed to FORCE the Legislature to do that, and that doing so would likely (and understandably) create huge anger among the population.

It was THAT resentment - resentment against the anti-democratic judicial imposition of social change - rather than standard homophobia, that the Republicans exploited so effectively in this election.

When you combine that anti-democratic tactic with what is so obviously the prevailing view among so many liberals that middle-of-the-country Christians are too stupid and primitive to make rational decisions, then it should hardly come as a surprise that those same people turned out in great numbers to vote against what they perceive as the candidates who heap condescending scorn on them and who seek to deprive them of their democratic rights.

RE: Hole in the Posterior

Justice Burger's concurring opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick relied, among other sources, on religion to support his position. Can you imagine that?

Well, yes, nowadays...

Here's the ham Burger:

As the Court notes, ante, at 192, the proscriptions against sodomy have very "ancient roots." Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeao-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law. See Code Theod. 9.7.6; Code Just. 9.9.31. See also D. Bailey, Homosexuality [478 U.S. 186, 197] and the Western Christian Tradition 70-81 (1975). During the English Reformation when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed. 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 6. Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *215. The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816 the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.

Constitutional Amendments are not the only proper source of increased "rights". There is a tradition as old as the republic of judicial decisions serving as the basis of changes in society. Civil rights for minorities is a good example. Slavery was officially ended by the Emancipation Proclamation, obviously not immediately effective in the South. The 14th Amendment ended slavery but was written very broadly to protect all citizens, not just racial minorities. However civil rights for racial minorities, particularly African-Americans were initiated by judicial decisions. The US Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education was based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment -- the very clause that could possibly be used to argue for gay marriage. There was great opposition to this decision, particularly in the South, and federal legislation for civil rights did not come for another decade.

Your argument that judicial decisions that break new ground against the wishes of the majority is doubtless true in that it makes the many people angry. Many Southerners have still not forgiven the Supreme Court for Brown vs. Board, or for subsequent decisions like school busing. That's probably the main reason the South is solidly Republican territory today.

It is not true, however, that appeals to the courts to redress grievances that result in huge social change are something new or unusual.

>Well, for starters, I make my living by having sex with old

>men for a couple hundred dollars. I also mindlessly cut and

>paste what I find on the websites of leftist socialist groups

>and dried out, old, stupid singers in lieu of actual thought.

>And, finally, I whittle away my spare time, when I'm not

>whoring myself out, sitting in front of the television

>watching re-runs of 1950s sitcoms.

Cool! We really should hang out more often, Doug. I never realized we had so much in common (except for the "old men" part; my clients comprise every age group from college students to daddies) (oh, and I actually prefer 70's-90's sitcoms on DVD, but you can bring along your "My Little Margie" tapes if you want).

Karl Rove thanks you

>It is not true, however, that appeals to the courts to redress

>grievances that result in huge social change are something new

>or unusual.

Virtually all gains made by black people in this country - from the abolition of slavery, to obtaining the right to vote, to anti-discrimination and voting rights protections - came as a result of DEMOCRATIC processes and PERSUASION of citizens, not from judicial fiat. When courts did act, as they did in Brown, it was only by virtue of reference to Constitutional Amendments which were written with the SPECIFIC AND EXPRESS intent to end racial discrimination.

If you want to maintain that there are Constitutional Amendments which were similarly enacted with the specific and express intent to end the prohibition on same-sex marriages, then you are either too intellectually dishonest or too ill-informed about constitutional law to merit a response.

But if you are intent upon continuining along this path of getting judges to shove gay marriage and other laws you want down the throat of your fellow citizens, feel free. Just prepare yourself for even more, and worse, defeats (and possibly worse) than the one you justifiably suffered last Tuesday.

If you don't believe me, listen to Karl Rove in today's New York Times. He explains that the reason Bush won and the Republicans KEEP WINNING so decisively is because of PEOPLE LIKE YOU:

_________________________________________________________

'Moral Values' Carried Bush, Rove Says

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: November 10, 2004

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, said Tuesday that opposition to gay marriage was one of the most powerful forces in American politics today and that politicians ignored it at their peril.

"This is an issue on which there is a broad consensus," Mr. Rove said, discussing a presidential election that took place as voters in 11 states backed constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriages.

"In all 11 states, it won by considerable margins," Mr. Rove said, adding, "People do not like the idea or the concept of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman being uprooted and overturned by a few activist judges or a couple of activist local officials."

He said he was not certain that the votes necessarily helped Mr. Bush to defeat Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. He noted that Mr. Kerry had won Michigan and Oregon, where the amendments passed by large margins.

"I do think it was part and parcel of a broader fabric where this year moral values ranked higher than they traditionally do," he said, adding: "I think people would be well advised to pay attention to what the American people are saying."

Mr. Rove suggested that the Republican Party's success was even broader than some Democrats had acknowledged, citing increased Republican vote totals in states like Hawaii and Connecticut.

"You're starting to see some growth of the Republican Party in places where you might not think there was a chance for growth," he said.

Mr. Rove appeared to stifle a grin when asked whether he was "indebted" to Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, who opened his City Hall to gay marriages until he was blocked by a court, and to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, for ruling that gay couples have a right to marriage.

"If you look at things that intrude into American politics through a nontraditional method - through a judicial vein - they tend to have a huge impact," he said.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Kerry met with Democratic leaders - Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the incoming Senate minority leader - as he prepared to return to the Senate.

>>In what way do you ever "fight" aside from bickering on

>this

>>website, Doug?

>

>Well, for starters, I make my living by having sex with old

>men for a couple hundred dollars. I also mindlessly cut and

>paste what I find on the websites of leftist socialist groups

>and dried out, old, stupid singers in lieu of actual thought.

>And, finally, I whittle away my spare time, when I'm not

>whoring myself out, sitting in front of the television

>watching re-runs of 1950s sitcoms.

>

>Oh, wait - that's what you do. So I won't even bother

>answering your question, because I could never compete with

>such a Prime Mover of Social Change as you.

ouch

I see Doug69 took my course "How To Put Someone In Their Place" that I taught at The New School last spring.

Educationally yours,

FFF

RE: Hole in the Posterior

Yeah, but that ignores the fact that morality (at least parts of it) is relative and changeable. Divorce, for example, was considered heinous and taboo among Christians for centuries. But attitudes changed, and divorce is now legal virtually everywhere. Attitudes have changed about sodomy, which is a significant part of what underlies the Lawrence decision. In the time between Bowers and Lawrence, a majority of states repealed their sodomy laws, either legislatively or by decisions of the respective state supreme courts. (Mostly by the latter method, a minor detail that the house fascists conveniently ignore.)

Burger knew this when he wrote his decision. So his recitation of the history of sodomy laws was just icing spread over a mound of shit. Sure it was illegal in earlier days. But so was adultery. And witchcraft. We also don't hang people in the public square or put them into stocks anymore, either. We've discerned a right of privacy in the Constitution that isn't explicitly written into it, but which is certainly a necessary prerequisite to the pursuit of happiness, and as part of that right the courts have found that women have the right to decide for themselves whether they will bear a child. We now allow people of different races to marry. All of these decisions reflect changing morality and public sentiment. The courts aren't isolated from society, although they tend to act cautiously and conservatively when dealing with social issues. But sometimes, as in the case of racial integration, the judiciary will take the lead when it's obvious that the executive and legislative branches are too cowardly to take action.

And for all the "conservative" spouting about radical judges and how undemocratic they are, don't you believe a word of it. The judiciary is an essential and indispensable part of any democratic society and any such society established under a constitution. Without an independent judiciary, the system can't work. (You end up with either tyranny or paralysis, or both, without an independent judiciary.) In the U.S., the judiciary is established by the Constitution, as is the method of selecting judges for the federal bench. So the judiciary is just as "democratic" as any of the other branches, even if it works differently and federal judges aren't directly elected (they're appointed and approved by elected officials, however: the President appoints and the Senate approves or disapproves such appointments). And the "conservatives" among us love judicial decisions, no matter how radically activist they may be, when the decisions favor their interests. Like the violently anti-states-rights decision in 2000 that handed the presidency to the fascist current occupant of the office. . . So take their fulminations about the judiciary with a pound or two of salt!

Fellow Somodites, The Backlash Begins

We Are All Dubya's Doormat

News flash for ordinary Repubs and born-agains: Bush doesn't care about you, either

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

This just in: millions of moderate Republicans and gay-terrified evangelical Christians and intellectually numbed conservative parents who thought they were doing some sort of good by blindly voting for Dubya and hence protecting their wee ones from swarthy Islamic evildoers who want to steal their kids' Kraft Lunchables and nuke Disneyland all should be emerging from a deep fog of savage denial any minute now.

Wake, they will, to the increasingly obvious fact that their beloved smirkin' president, the one who seemed to care about them so deeply just a couple weeks ago and who reached out to them and promised them the gun-happy gay-unfriendly moon in exchange for full access to their civil rights and a blank check to do whatever the hell he likes, he apparently doesn't give a damn about them. Not anymore.

The truth will soon be hitting much of the conservative nation like a redneck smacks a dog: now that the fear-saturated Right has handed this failed oilman four more unrestrained years to do his dirtiest deeds and a deeply contaminated, well-greased Congress to do it with, he no longer needs their support and he couldn't care less about their "moral values" or their positions on Social Security reform or the war in Iraq or just what the hell he meant about spending the "political capital" he claims he's earned by winning the election (by the slimmest margin of any incumbent president in history).

Oh, sure, Bush reached out, didn't he, Mrs. Moderate Republican? He made you a believer. He promised more intolerance for gays and more Bible classes in the White House and more laughably irresponsible tax breaks you don't really need and more dumbed-down, black-and-white, good-versus-evil perspectives that take all the pressure off of having to, you know, think.

And because he unconditionally refused to acknowledge any sort of mistake, any sort of massive error in judgment or policy related the appalling Vietnam-grade quagmire that is Iraq, because he stayed "on message" and never fired Rumsfeld for gross incompetence and because he let the lower-rank military plebes take the fall for Abu Ghraib and never once wavered in the most disgusting of lies about why we needed to invade Iraq and kill over 100,000 of their people in the first place, why, he "earned" your vote.

It's so true, isn't it? Despite proof after proof and report after report and dead U.S. soldier after dead U.S. soldier, you thought Bush would do better than Kerry in "defeating" terrorism. No matter that Bush's very actions, his ugly little war, his very poisonous foreign policy that has so violently destabilized the Middle East, no matter that this is what has, in fact, amplified the terror threat a hundredfold and made the U.S. more detested than ever. Ahh, irony. It's what's for dinner.

And now, your reward. You get to be as misrepresented, as tossed aside, as openly ignored as the rest of us. Isn't politics fun?

We are all suckers, all losers in this election. Are you a Democrat? Republican? Doesn't matter. The line is no longer liberal/conservative. It is no longer tax 'n' spend versus cut 'n' deficit, Toyota Prius versus Ford Expedition, happy godless heathen sodomite versus Mel Gibson.

It is now ultrawealthy, power-hungry Bushite CEO versus, well, the rest. Do you see? News flash to conservatives: Bush just pretended to care about you, because he had to, because Karl Rove told him to, because he needed your fear and your blind faith to win another term. You matter about as much as a U.S. soldier in Fallujah, now.

Oh how you will be disappointed from here on out. Oh how you will gnash your teeth and sigh your sighs and wonder what the hell happened to your fearful leader, why you feel so abandoned as your schools implode and your health-care costs explode and your air quality suffers and your jobs vanish and your women get smacked back to 1953 and your kids die miserable and forgotten in Iraq.

Because now you get to sit by with the "liberal elite" as we watch in bitter satisfaction as Bush will now have to wallow in his own nasty, vicious mess, lie in his own snide and war-torn and economically gutted bed for four more years, as much of the country sits deeply ashamed and the international community sits stunned and horrified at our sheer ignorance and gall.

But wait, there's more. See, we know that Bush has never been so beautifully set up than now for a cataclysmic, Nixon-like fall. This most secretive and corruption-filled and Rove-stained administration in history, with its 9/11 cover-ups and well-documented stack of fumbles and flubs and murderous misprisions leading up to the Iraq mess, it is positively bursting at the seams with potential impeachment-level calamity. You think the Nixon tapes were ruinous? Just wait for the Bush mumbles.

Every sign points to the fact that history will look back on Dubya Dubya II as one of the worst-run, least accountable and most abusive, warmongering, homophobic, environmentally unfriendly presidencies in American history. Which means either one of two things: there is a very slight chance that Dubya will now try to ease off some of his party's more heartless and voracious of policies, if just to try to create a more appetizing and appealing "legacy."

But don't bet on it. If Rove's recent spittle-filled announcement that Shrub will again seek a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is any indication, Bush might very well go the other direction entirely, making history the cold-blooded, autocratic way: through policies so hollow and self-righteous and smirking, history can't help but be impressed. After all, neofascism makes great textbook fodder.

What else? Well, now BushCo has no one to blame but themselves. The neocons own the White House and Congress. All fingers of blame for most impending disasters and war ills and social meltdowns point straight back to the GOP. Furthermore, the U.S. has already crashed through the $7.3 trillion debt limit, thanks to Bush. Unless Congress raises the debt ceiling ASAP, as BushCo so desperately demands they do, the U.S. government will run out of cash. We are, in NASCAR parlance, running on fumes.

This, then, is the sour truth for the Repubs and the born-agains, and the sliver of bittersweet solace for the liberals. Will it not be laughable, in a soul-deadening, kill-me-now sort of way, to watch BushCo try to pin the imminent economic implosions and cultural backlashes and catastrophic social-service breakdowns this nation now faces on, say, Bill Clinton? Will it not be horribly amusing to watch this administration sink into its own self-made quicksand?

Will it not be, in short, just all sorts of tragic fun to watch the cancer eat itself?

RE: Karl Rove thanks you

.

>

>Virtually all gains made by black people in this country -

>from the abolition of slavery, to obtaining the right to vote,

>to anti-discrimination and voting rights protections - came as

>a result of DEMOCRATIC processes and PERSUASION of citizens,

>not from judicial fiat.

This is just not true. From Brown vs. Board, through the Montgomery Bus Boycott, finally settled by the Supreme Court which ended discrimination in transportation, through the numerous school busing decisions around the country, the Civil Rights movement was a long series of judicial decisions that forced racial equality on an unwilling public. Changing people's minds largely came later, especially in the areas most affected.

But there's another point that you seem to have missed. Although you tend to label judges as liberal or conservative, a great many judges surely make decisions based on the best arguments presented. Many constitutional questions are easily argued both ways, as I suspect gay marriage can be. As I posted earlier, the probability that a strong case can be made for it in many states is the reason rightwingers feel the necessity of a federal constitutional amendment. It's this probability of a strong case more than "liberal" judges who you seem to think are inevitably and hopelessly partial that necessitates the amendment.

But judges whether liberal, conservative, or centrist, are also a part of the democratic system. They are either elected or appointed by elected leaders and confirmed by yet another layer of elected officials. So they, too, have been selected by a democratic system, although often indirectly.

I suspect that your rash labelling of judges is not necessarily warranted though. There are several Supreme Court justices, for instance, that swing both ways, so to speak. I'm sure a close look at many other judges on the federal benches around the country would find a similar flexibility.

The right wing's hysterical charges against liberal judges very likely reflects their nervousness about the validity of their arguments and their likelihood of success.