Yikes, some perspective, please!

[tubbacheez]

Goodness, it's amazing to see so many foregone conclusions so quickly about the Roberts nomination.

If recent topics are to be believed:
- Roberts is almost guaranteed to somehow lead a rehearing of Roe v. Wade for the sole purpose of overturning it.
- Any Democrat who doesn't favor a filibuster against Roberts is automatically turning his/her back against women, GBLTs, civil rights, etc.
- Justice O'Connor was a liberal judge.



Call me crazy, but I saw O'Conner as a Republican with some openness to progressive ideas. Sure, she was the big boost on Roe v. Wade, but let's not inflate that one case into an act of liberal heroism on her part.

The entire bench has been solidly conservative ever since the mid-70s. And the replacement of a moderate conservative with another moderate conservative probably won't make our chances significantly worse than they already were.

Yes, it'd be nice if we got some help with the new judge. No doubt about that. But if it doesn't happen, it's a bummer. I'm not ready to call it the end of the world though.






Also, I think people are confusing doctrine with strategy with tactics. We can believe in the same ideals while still debating various strategies to make them happen, not to mention tactics to further those strategies.

If we believe in a woman's right to choose, that's a doctrine. Stacking the Supreme Court with liberal judges is one strategy for furthering it. There are others. Given our large numbers and talents, it shouldn't be surprising to pursue more than one strategy at a time.

And even if we settle on one strategy for everyone to either "get with it or get lost", there are many tactics to employ. Politics (like most human interactions) is an art, not a formula. Yes, the Democratic filibuster is a powerful tactic. It isn't the only one.



Basically, we're been up against a conservative Supreme Court for decades. As long as we keep the bench free of crazed neocons or Dominionists, I don't see the appointment of a generic conservative as changing the terrain much. We had an uphill fight before, and we will still have it for years to come.

There doesn't have to be any abandonment of our ideals and principles to debate how to proceed. We can agree where we want to go, all while discussing different ideas on how to get there.

[seabeyond]

1. thank you. reasoned, not the end of the world

a good post to go to bed with. after being challenged by a guy, that i ...an old woman, dont support women. wow.

[tubbacheez]

2. I'm sorry you had that encounter.

Some of our more passionate brethern could use a little more training in people skills and/or logic.

Thanks for your reply and have a good night! :)

[NAO]

3. Conservative vs. Religious Reich - VERY DIFFERENT

We need to be careful NOT to think of things on the political scene right now in terms of liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

The Rabid Religious Reich is a WHOLE DIFFERENT brand of insanity. They are much crazier, more extreme, and FAR MORE DANGEROUS than even people like Norquest, Rove, and Cheney.

The Religious Right is marching stronger than ever and is exerting a greater and greater influence on our society. They are flexing their muscles in the political process, the economy and our entire culture.

Let us remember that the first time Christianity spread rapidly and gained control of the government (in Rome from 200 - 500 AD) it resulted in the utter collapse of Western Civilization and ushered in 1,000 years of darkness, superstition, ignorance and suffering.

****
****

Dominionism's Theocratic Designs and Radical Clerics

Fundamentalist Radical Clerics such as Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson are not merely medieval throwbacks or misguided religious hacks. They are part of a well organized subversionary movement known as "Dominionism". Dominionism constitutes a serious threat to American Democracy. These Radical Clerics have developed and are executing a detailed plan to gradually replace the free, secular democratic society of the United States with a Theocracy.

It is critical that people become aware of the extreme agenda these people have for the United States and ultimately for the world. The results of the 2004 Presidential Election were not a fluke or something that was drummed up over a period of months. It has been in planning for over 20 years, and what we are seeing take place now is, in the words of Katherine Yurica, "the swift advance of a planned coup".

The Swift Advance of a Planned Coup: Conquering by Stealth and Deception - How the Dominionists Are Succeeding in Their Quest for National Control and World Power
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheSwiftAdvanceOfaPlannedCoup.htm

The Despoiling of America: How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

Video on the Christian Reconstructionist Dominionist Theocratic Agenda
http://www.theocracywatch.org/av/video_dominion.ram

The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
a public information project from TheocracyWatch.org
http://www.theocracywatch.org

The Religious Right - An Anti-American Terrorist Movement
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8816.htm

****
****

Antidote to Fundamentalist Nut-Cases is a Revival of the Freethought Movement

I think what we need is a Freethought movement similar to what the US had around the turn of the 20th century. Robert Ingersoll was touring the country, lecturing on secularism and exposing the claims of revealed religion to be false. Unless something breaks the stranglehold of religious fundamentalism in the US - and in the world - I think we are going to continue the slide into Theocracy and destruction.

The Freethought Zone
Science and Reason Over Religion and Superstition
http://freethought.freeservers.com /

Freedom from Religion Foundation
http://www.ffrf.org /

Secular Humanism
http://www.secularhumanism.org /

Secular Web
http://www.infidels.org/index.shtml

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/index.shtml

Complete Works of Robert Ingersoll - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/index.shtml

[tubbacheez]

4. I agree with you. Your post would make a good topic on its own. n/t

[expatriot]

5. That is what is so sad - ultra-conservative corporatism looks moderate.

This guy is a corporatist from head to toe with a social conservative background. Sure, he isn't a religious nut but he is a GOP political hack and a yes-man to corporate rule. At least O'Connor was an independent mind beholden only to her own intellectual faculties.... this guy is going to be doing the dirty work of the future Roves of the evil side for a good 30 or more years.

Sad.

[NAO]

7. I will take Corporatists over Religionists ANY DAY

Corporatists do exploit people to drive up their own earnings. They will create a culture where people will work hard every day for meager wages and then create a consumer society where people will squander their hard eared pittance for crap. That sounds pretty bad until you look at it next to what religionists do.

Christianity is the longest running atrocity in human history...from the persecution of Gnostics and other sects in the first few centuries, through the Inquisition, the Witch Hunts, right up to today's pedophile priests, Christianity has inflicted more suffering on mankind than Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Kahn, Pol Pot and all the "really bad guys" combined. It has been a 2,000 year nightmare of violence, intolerance, torture, murder, destruction and child molestation.

Christianity and other religions - NOT business interests - invented the thumbscrew, the rack, the fagot. They burned people alive - literally, and then prayed to their imaginary god and asked him to continue to burn their victims forever in some nightmarish eternal torture chamber. Many Christians today still believe that the infinite creator of the universe will torment in eternal agony many of the souls he created.

Business interests sometimes use 'dirty tricks' to outdo their competition. Sometimes they buy up all the concerns and create a monopoly for themselves. Unlike politically empowered religion, they do not hunt down and KILL their competition. They do not torture. They do not burn libraries. They sometimes are guilty of influencing government, but even then they keep some semblance of a democracy. Whenever they have been able, Religionists have completely seized control of governments and declared their crumbling creeds and superstitions to be THE LAW.

Business interests sometimes callously use Science to create and/or promote their products, but they do not suppress scientific inquiry and persecute scientists for holding 'heretical notions'.

Corporatism has it's share of downsides, but it is nothing compared to the nightmare of religious superstition.

[expatriot]

8. sure... but that wasn't my point....

my point is that they have successfully orchestrated it so the fascistic corporatist is seen as "moderate" against the theocratic religionist. They WANT America to be obsessed with the culture war to keep our mind of the class war. So if a "corporatist" is moderate compared to a "religionist" but what percentage of Americans are ultra-conservative fundamentalists?

The Rapture Right has been coddled and fed and encouraged by the Corporate Fascists to be propped up to their right so they look like the safe, moderate choice.

[NAO]

10. The Rapture Right is dead serious . They are a danger to corporations too

I will concede that Corporations have used the culture wars to fire up the reactionary base. But that does not mean that the 'real power' is the corporations and the 'people of faith' are mere tools.

The Religious Reich may have gone into a weird alliance with the corporatists, but when they think they have enough power, they will attempt a theocratic coup. It is already happening on a gradual basis - but I think the time is rapidly nearing when they will butt heads with big corporations, and sane people will recoil in horror as behemoths of industry are slain by these fanatics.

If they find out that a big company is promoting an 'immoral agenda' they will use all of their power - economic boycotts, political pressure, connections with 'christian businessmen', their mature grassroots political infrastructure - in a ruthless, disciplined attack and an 'as-long-as it-takes' siege that will bring an offending company into compliance or will drive them out of existence.

If they discover a drug company is making big profits off of a morning after pill - even if only in foreign countries - they will threaten to boycott, dump stock, and have every churchgoer call their congressman to demand that the drug company stop making the morning after pill, even if it means that company will lose profits or incur loss.

I don't think any industry will be big enough or powerful enough to survive a full-scale attack and siege by the Religious Reich. (Remember, these are the same fanatical lunatics that caused the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Collapse of Western Civilization in the first few centuries AD.).

I think corporations will curse the day they allied with these nut-cases and fired up the culture wars. They will long for the good old days of the New Deal when all they had to contend with was reasonable regulations and progressive taxation. They will bitterly regret the day they awakened the sleeping giant of religious superstition.

[More Than A Feeling]

9. Check the rules

With regard to religion (or the lack thereof), Democratic Underground is a diverse community which includes Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, and others. All are welcome here. For this reason, we expect members to make an extra effort to be sensitive to different religious beliefs, and to show respect to members who hold different religious beliefs. Members are permitted to discuss whether they agree or disagree with particular religious beliefs, provided that they do so in a relatively sensitive and respectful manner. But members should avoid posting broad-brush bigoted statements about people who hold specific religious beliefs. Members should avoid highly provocative postings, such as comparing religion to fairy tales or mental illness, or arguing that religion (or the lack thereof) is the source of most of the world's problems.

[NAO]

11. Most Christians are better than their creeds.

I think most Christians are good people. I think most are trying to do what is right and what they believe to be moral. Most Christians are better than their creed.

But aside from some moral precepts, which are not unique to Christianity, the effect of the religion on the human race has been largely negative. Someone once said "ye shall know them by their fruits". The Christian Church has produced many really horrific things over its long history.

In the past 200 years or so Christians have forced Christianity to become more civilized, more humane. But there has been a backlash, and the old guard is fighting to regain control. Even the election of the latest pope betrays a desire to 'purge' the church of 'impurities', even if it means the Catholic Church becomes smaller.

There are many things (religious intolerence up to killing of unbelivers, eternal damnation, endorsement of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, etc.) in Bible-based Christian teachings which are abhorrent to modern sensibilities but are nonetheless clearly present in the Bible. Unless Christians are willing to let go of the notion that the Bible is "The inspired, inerrant WORD of God" they will find themselves in many very odd moral positions.

[NAO]

12. Ranting against religion, not people

point taken.

[SerpentX]

6. I don't like the looks of Roberts ...

but I honestly half-expected * to nominate Roy Moore.

I thought of O'Conner as a principled conservative, kind of like John McCain. Respectable, but not on my favorites list. Roberts is probably about as far right a replacement as * thinks he can get away with.

[tubbacheez]

13. You're probably right.

It's the nature of today's antagonistic politics to go for as much as one can get away with, and expect one's opponents to do the same.

I think you'd be right no matter who Shrub nominated. He wants to succeed and get the confirmation. But he doesn't want to appear weak to his party. Therefore, he's always looking to for candidates right on the outer edge of acceptability.




And the reason I'm not as worried as some of my more frenzied associates on this board is because the Supreme Court has been so stoutly conservative for so long that they have mountains of precedent and doctrine that the conservatives would find embarrassingly difficult to chuck.

So we do need to keep the nutcases, zealots, and ultra-far-right weirdos off the bench. I'm not convinced Roberts is such a wacko, given the info on his opinions I've seen so far.

[cally]

14. Roberts is married to a woman

who's a co-leader of feminists for life who is anti-choice, promotes abstinence only, anti-birth control. Roberts decided that Cheney has the right to keep energy task force records secret. He decided that the President has the right, alone, to declare someone an enemy combatant and send them to military trial. I don't know what your definition of a RW out of the mainstream hack is, but he fits my definition. He's not a mainstream conservative.

[tubbacheez]

16. Interesting points. If you can point me more info, that'd be great.

Thanks.

[Armstead]

15. He's not a "generic conservative"

Christie Todd Whitman is a generic conservative. Arlen Spector is a generic consrvative.

John Roberts comes from the radical conservative branch. This is not the 1970's, and these are not your 1970's conservatives.

[tubbacheez]

17. I'm reading his judicial opinions and briefs.

He's a conservative for sure. No question about it.


But I'm not seeing the bankrupt reasoning and twisted logic I've come to recognize in the far-right. I'm not seeing the "justify my personal views at all costs" approach I see in the neo-con and Dominionist personalities we all know so well.

At least, not yet. Still researching.



As far as I can see (and I readily admit my opinion could change as I learn more), he begins from conservative legal doctrine (say, regarding how broadly or tightly to interpret the law) and then methodically arrives at his conservative conclusion.

Heck, I wish more liberals could start from their preferred legal principles and deduce their conclusions as rigorously. We'd have stronger standing in the courts at all levels if we did. (Too many people on either side simply start with their desired outcome and grasp for reasons to support it.)


Anyway, I'm not defending the guy. At this stage, I'm not ready to either attack or defend him. It's true, he could be a nightmare. It's possible. It's a possibility we should be wary of.

But I've read as much of his work (his own work, not 3rd party commentary) as I could ever since the nomination, and I'm nowhere near ready to grab a pitchfork and join the mob.