Dr. Steven Jonas

archived: 2 - 7 Jan, 2005 Back Next

UPDATED: January 6, 2005

“THE ‘UNLESS’ OF THE ‘COMING SECOND CIVIL WAR’ SERIES
PART II”

This column is the third in this series. Each entry will be preceded with variations on this brief introduction. In my view, the projected cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR). As stated at different times and in different arenas by sources ranging the 2004 Republican Party Platform through George Bush to Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist, their primary goals are to: impose their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reduce the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-industrial, prison-industrial, and thought/private-behavior-control sectors; and replace Constitutional government as we have known it with Executive Branch dominance operating entirely on its own authority.

Except in appealing to their base in the Christian Right, the RRR does its best to conceal most of its true goals from the American public, to camouflage them alternatively with foreign wars, the “terror” threat, lies, and appeals to the basest instincts of fear and prejudice. When the American public becomes fully aware of the true aims of the RRR, I am confident that they will reject it. The rejection may come sooner, as the result of the political process (the “Unless” of the title of the series). Unfortunately, it may come later as the result of a Second Civil War, which itself could come either before the RRR were able to institute a true fascist dictatorship, or after the occurrence of such a disaster for some period of time. Some will characterize my position as alarmist and premature. I fully intend it to be. We have got to start focusing on what the RRR is really about. The Firebell, to use Jefferson’s characterization of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as indicating future bloody conflict over slavery, is ringing in the night. But first to the topic of this column, Part II of the “Unless” of the Series title.

In 1992, I published a book entitled The New Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency. In it, I offered a proposal for that “broad, embracing, expansive vision” for the Democratic Party, for its then present and the nation’s future, that all of the observers and authorities quoted in last week’s column called for. I believe that it is still very much what the doctor ordered for the Democratic Party. It may indeed be, in the famous words of the late Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen (who would almost certainly find himself now on the left-wing of his party), “an idea whose time has come.”

In brief, it is a simple concept with a precise mission: to find the new grand vision for the Democratic Party, to find the bed-rock foundation upon which both the traditional agenda and the 21^st century agenda of the Democratic Party can be established, to find the language and the civil weapons that our nation needs if the determined Georgite assault on American Constitutional Democracy as we have known it for 200 years is to be halted in its tracks and reversed, without bloodshed. The New Americanism finds this vision in the very founding documents of our great nation.

The New Americanism projects a grand, integrated, overarching, forward-looking domestic and foreign policy based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Together they provide the Statement of Purpose for our nation, the Purpose of our National Government, and the Primary Functions of that Government in achieving in the stated Purpose.

Our National Purpose is made clear by the Declaration: to demonstrate unequivocally that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . .”

The primary Purpose of our National Government is also made clear in the Declaration: “[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men.”

The Primary functions of our National Government in achieving this purpose are spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Why this is enough to make a strict constructionist out of anyone (other than the Republican Religious Right, of course)!

In my view, and in the view of increasing number of other political observers, if the Georgites are to be stopped, control of the Democratic Party must be wrested from the clutches of the “me-too” Democratic Leadership Council and their fellow-traveling “New Democrats.” In their folly, these interests think that the salvation of both the Democratic Party and our nation is to be found in making our Party look as much like the RRR as possible. The vision that I propose could be the rallying point around which the objective of recreating the Democratic Party as the true alternative to the RRR, in ideology, policies, and programs, can be achieved. Then it could become the means by which the Democratic Party can win elections again, and the nation saved from the terrible suffering and bloodshed that will occur both here and abroad if they do not. And truly, what better weapon to take into battle against the Georgite regime and its primary goal of destroying U.S. Constitutional Democracy than the text of the Constitution itself?

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