Religions > Atheism > Memo exposes anti-democratic agenda of US Supreme Court nominee
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18 Nov 2005 09:36:53 AM |
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Memo exposes anti-democratic agenda of US Supreme Court nominee |
Memo exposes anti-democratic agenda of US Supreme Court nominee
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/alit-n17.shtml
[excerpt]
Memo exposes anti-democratic agenda of US Supreme Court nominee
By John Andrews and Barry Grey
17 November 2005
A 1985 job application submitted by Samuel Alito, then seeking a promotion
within the Reagan administration, demonstrates that President Bush’s
nominee to the Supreme Court is a life-long political reactionary committed
to dismantling the social and legal gains achieved in the United States
during the decades following World War II.
Alito’s two-page description of his political development and legal views
must serve as a stark warning to the American people on the breadth and
depth of the next stage of the US ruling elite’s attack on democratic
rights.
Monday’s release of the application in the right-wing Washington Times was
likely intended to strengthen support for Alito among religious
fundamentalists and other political reactionaries within the Republican
Party base. The exposure of his hostility to high court precedents
protecting civil and voting rights for blacks and other minorities,
limiting police abuse and governmental invasions of privacy, and defending
the secular foundations of the US Constitution has placed in sharp relief
the cowardice and complicity of Senate Democrats, who have shown no
willingness to seriously oppose Alito’s elevation to the high court.
Alito’s securing of lifetime tenure on the Court, replacing the “swing”
vote of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, will dramatically
shift the Court further to the right.
The 1985 document, prepared when Alito, then 35, was seeking a promotion to
deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese, outlined Alito’s
political and judicial agenda, revealing his adherence to the full panoply
of anti-democratic policies long pursued by the most right-wing sections of
the US ruling elite. (The document can be accessed at:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/alito/111585stmnt.html)
Alito began by declaring: “I am and always have been a conservative and an
adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this
Administration.” Those views were expressed in a brutal attack on social
welfare programs, massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and
government-backed union-busting, beginning with Reagan’s smashing of the
PATCO air traffic controllers union in 1981. These policies inaugurated the
plundering of the national economy to vastly increase the wealth of the
financial aristocracy at the expense of the broad mass of working people,
resulting in a staggering increase in social inequality that has continued
ever since.
Using legalistic euphemisms employed by the right wing, Alito wrote that he
believed “very strongly in limited government, federalism, free enterprise,
the supremacy of the elected branches of government, the need for a strong
defense and effective law enforcement, and the legitimacy of a government
role in protecting traditional values.”
This translates into dismantling social programs aimed at insuring access
to health, housing and education (“limited government”), ending
restrictions on the power of local governments to disenfranchise ethnic
minorities (“federalism”), revoking government regulations that protect
workers and the environment (“free enterprise”), overturning judicial
precedents that recognize and enforce individual rights (“the supremacy of
the elected branches”), supporting imperialism abroad and repression at
home (“a strong defense and effective law enforcement”), and sanctioning
discrimination against unmarried parents, homosexuals and others not living
according to the moral prescriptions of religious fundamentalists
(“traditional family values”).
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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