> >From www.wsws.org
>
>WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Elections
>The US elections: Lieberman's holy war against the Bill of Rights
>By Barry Grey
>1 September 2000
>
>Speaking on Sunday, August 27 at the Fellowship Chapel Church in Detroit,
>Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman declared, "the
>Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."
>This statement is a defining moment in the 2000 presidential campaign. It is
>the Connecticut senator's most explicit attack to date on the Constitutional
>principles of freedom of thought and expression and the separation of church
>and state.
>
>In the same address Lieberman extolled belief in God as the basis of morality
>and the informing principle of American society. He told his audience, "As a
>people, we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation
>and ourselves to God and God's purpose."
>
>The speech was in keeping with the general tenor of the Connecticut senator's
>public remarks since his selection as Democrat Al Gore's running mate. With
>Gore's blessing, Lieberman has flaunted his religion and cited it
>repeatedly as
>the justification for a crackdown on what he deems to be gratuitous sex and
>violence in the media, as well as other measures of an anti-democratic
>character.
>
>Lieberman has backed the efforts of the Republican right to break down legal
>barriers to the intrusion of religion into public education, calling for a
>"moment of silence" in the schools. He is a supporter of government vouchers
>for private, including religious, schools. For all his claims to the contrary,
>he promotes censorship of the media and the arts. He has proposed, for
>example,
>that the Federal Communications Commission consider so-called "violent
>content"
>when it renews radio and television licenses.
>
>It is no accident that this self-styled guardian of morality and faith was the
>first prominent Democrat to publicly denounce Clinton during the Monica
>Lewinsky affair, legitimizing the right-wing conspiracy headed by Independent
>Counsel Kenneth Starr that sought to use a sex scandal as the pretext for a
>political coup d'etat. Gore chose Lieberman for his running mate precisely
>because of the Connecticut senator's right-wing credentials, in line with the
>efforts of the Democrats to appropriate the social policies of the
>Republicans.
>In the face of scattered criticism of Lieberman's Detroit speech, Gore
>defended
>his running mate, while Lieberman himself said he would continue to preach
>from
>the campaign stump, calling his invocation of God and religion "the American
>way."
>
>For the Democratic candidates and the political advisers managing their
>campaign, Lieberman's religious protestations have more to do with immediate
>electoral tactics than any deeply held convictions or considered political
>conceptions. Operating as they do at the most banal and crudely opportunistic
>level, they calculate that a Democratic ticket that echoes the sermonizing of
>the Republican right will neutralize their opponents' attempts to exploit the
>Lewinsky scandal, while garnering support from certain sections of the
>electorate.
>
>The implications of Lieberman's Constitutional claims
>
>However limited the motivations behind Lieberman's preachments, his claim that
>the Constitution does not guarantee freedom from religion has far-reaching
>implications. He himself is, in all likelihood, incapable of conceiving of the
>political consequences that can result from prominent political figures
>trifling with such core Constitutional issues.
>
>On its face, Lieberman's interpretation of the First Amendment prohibition of
>state support for religion is inane. There cannot be freedom of religion
>without the right to be free from religion. The conceptual foundation for all
>democratic rights to free thought and expression is undermined if the
>secularist basis of the state is removed.
>
>The centrality of the principle of freedom of conscience to the
>Constitution as
>a whole is indicated by the fact that it is proclaimed in the very first
>sentence of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is explicit in rejecting
>theocracy and asserting the secularist basis of the American republic:
>"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or
>prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
>
>Lieberman has responded to criticisms of his statement by reassuring one and
>all that he supports the separation of church and state and opposes the
>religious right on issues like abortion. Those who are disturbed by his
>characterization of the First Amendment are, he implies, making a mountain out
>of a molehill.
>
>But Lieberman's cavalier attitude does not alter the fact that his attack on
>the secularist principle embodied in the First Amendment places a question
>mark
>over the legal foundation for a host of democratic rights, from the right to
>abortion to such issues as gay rights, divorce, equality of the sexes, and
>basic matters of privacy. A critical aspect of the Constitutional
>separation of
>church and state is the right to be "left alone," i.e., to be free from the
>intrusive meddling of organized religion or the state into one's private
>affairs. If, as Lieberman claims, the Constitution does not guarantee freedom
>from religion, then what is to prevent the state from imposing its concept of
>morality, based on religious beliefs, when it comes to sexual practices
>between
>consenting adults, personal relations inside and outside of wedlock, the
>teaching of evolution, or the content of the books, films, plays and music
>made
>available to the public?
>
>Not only atheists, but also religious agnostics would be potentially
>subject to
>legal sanction or discrimination on account of their beliefs. The government
>could demand to know one's attitude toward God, or toward a specific religion,
>and one could be punished for not professing a belief in God or adherence to a
>particular faith. There would be nothing in the Constitution that in principle
>protected a person from being fired from his job because of his ideas on
>religion. Nor would there be a Constitutional barrier preventing the state
>from
>taxing the populace to support religions institutions.
>
>Lieberman's phrase "freedom of religion but not freedom from religion" is a
>formula that could be accepted by the Islamic fundamentalist rulers of Iran.
>They do not insist that all Iranians become Shiite Muslims, but they do insist
>that religion infuse every pore of society and shape both law and public
>policy.
>
>The evolution of American common law
>
>The Democratic vice presidential candidate's claim is wrong not only from the
>standpoint of Constitutional law, but also from the standpoint of the history
>of American jurisprudence. American common law has undergone a long evolution,
>beginning in the colonial period. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a
>theocracy,
>and the growth of the democratic element within American common law has been
>bound up precisely with an increasingly prominent assertion of freedom from
>religion.
>
>The Pilgrims fled England toward the beginning of the seventeenth century to
>achieve freedom of worship. But in the New World they set up a theocracy that
>repressed all other religions. There was no freedom from religion in the
>Massachusetts Bay Colony. The theocratic order found its most tragic
>expression
>in the Salem witch trials of 1692.
>
>In the course of the eighteenth century, under the influence of the European
>Enlightenment, the theocratic element in the American colonies receded and
>more
>democratic principles gained strength. A critical factor in the development of
>American common law into the most advanced form of bourgeois democratic
>jurisprudence was the transition from the earlier theocratic principle to the
>establishment of a firm separation between church and state.
>
>The American Revolution imparted a powerful impulse to the elimination of the
>tyranny of religion over the American people. Its most important political and
>intellectual leaders were imbued with the anti-clerical tradition associated
>with the Enlightenment and embedded in the progressive evolution of common law
>in the colonies. They were freethinkers and opponents of religious dogma.
>
>Tom Paine was a deist, as were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, two of the
>most important framers of the Bill of Rights. Despite the prevalence of
>religious backwardness within the population, they insisted that the new
>republic be founded on a secularist legal code.
>
>Historically speaking, a seminal factor in the development of American
>jurisprudence and the expansion of democratic rights in general has been the
>restriction of the authority of religion and the power of the state to impose
>an officially sanctioned moral code. This battle has continued into the
>present, in the struggle against Blue Laws, anti-abortion laws and other legal
>impositions of religious doctrine.
>
>Lieberman, in defending his views on religion and political affairs, has
>repeatedly stressed the role of religion in establishing a unifying ethical
>principle among the American people. He may sincerely believe in this
>conception. That, however, does not detract from the fact that his notion of
>the role of religion is reactionary, and reflects ignorance of the history of
>American common law and the evolution of the democratic principles that were
>laid down in the Constitution and subsequently expanded.
>
>The extension of democratic rights in the US was bound up with the idea that
>people had the right to think whatever they pleased, as long as they did not
>harm others or break the law. Whether they chose to live by the
>Judeo-Christian
>moral code was their own affair. What Lieberman is proposing is a
>retrogressive
>throwback to the notion of religious-based "ethical unity" that was prevalent
>prior to the American Revolution.
>
>The progressive significance of the abandonment of "ethical unity" is
>explained
>by a noted scholar in his study of the evolution of American jurisprudence:
>"Taken together, the various libertarian changes in law [in the late
>eighteenth
>and early nineteenth centuries] did far more than merely restructure
>institutions, safeguard the procedural rights of criminal defendants, and
>grant
>equal rights to certain previously underprivileged classes. Those changes
>contributed in important ways to the breakdown of the ideal inherited from the
>pre-revolutionary period that communities should stand united in the
>pursuit of
>shared ethical ends.
>
>"The breakdown of ethical unity began in the 1780s with the virtual cessation
>of criminal prosecutions for various sorts of immorality ...
>"What was beginning to occur after the Revolution was not significantly more
>immorality but an abandonment of the pre-revolutionary notion that there was
>any one set of ethical standards that all men ought to obey" (William E.
>Nelson, The Americanization of the Common Law, Cambridge, Mass.: 1979, pp.
>109-
>11).
>
>Indifference to core issues of democratic rights
>
>Given the enormity of Lieberman's attack on core Constitutional issues, the
>response has been remarkably and disturbingly muted. An exception to the
>general unconcern is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which issued an open
>letter on August 28 denouncing Lieberman's use of the elections to promote
>religion. The signatories, ADL National Chairman Howard Berkowitz and National
>Director Abraham Foxman, correctly wrote, "The First Amendment requires that
>government neither support one religion over another nor the religious
>over the
>nonreligious."
>
>They went on to say, "The United States is made up of many different types of
>people from different backgrounds and different faiths, including individuals
>who do not believe in any god, and none of our citizens, including atheistic
>Americans, should be made to feel outside of the electoral or political
>process." Significantly, B'nai B'rith, the Jewish service organization and
>parent group of the ADL, came to the defense of Lieberman and disassociated
>itself from Berkowitz and Foxman.
>
>More is involved in Lieberman's light-minded attitude to fundamental political
>issues than sheer ignorance. A man who can make such an inane statement about
>the First Amendment is one who has not thought seriously about Constitutional
>questions for a long time, if ever.
>
>Lieberman expresses an indifference to democratic principles that marks the
>political establishment as a whole. This political trait cannot be ascribed
>simply to subjective qualities of this or that politician. Rather it
>reflects a
>political phenomenon with objective roots in the structure of American
>society.
>Just 40 years ago John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic to be elected president,
>made the absolute separation of religion from political life the foundation of
>his campaign. He insisted that his religious beliefs were nobody's
>business but
>his own, and that, if elected, they would play no role in the formulation of
>government policy.
>
>How is one to account for the transition from Kennedy to Lieberman? It is the
>expression of a profound process of political decay and erosion of American
>democratic institutions. This political decline is, in turn, rooted in social
>transformations, above all the enormous growth of economic inequality.
>
>The chasm that separates the richest 5 or 10 percent from the rest of the
>population is reflected in the alienation of the entire political
>establishment
>from the masses of working people, and the extreme narrowing of the popular
>base of both big business parties. The candidates of these parties, whatever
>their election rhetoric, speak for social layers whose wealth has
>mushroomed in
>the course of the prolonged boom on Wall Street. Along with the rise in share
>values, the corruption of the political system has grown more naked and
>pervasive. The result is a political elite that is incapable of articulating
>the most basic democratic principles.
>
>Despite the cavalier attitude of Lieberman and company, ideas have a logic of
>their own. The promotion of the notion that there is no freedom from religion
>in America may prove to have tragic consequences. What is to prevent in the
>future a law from being introduced in Congress proclaiming the United States a
>Christian nation, with all that such a law would imply in terms of mass
>political repression?
>
>Lieberman's statements have exposed the acute dangers posed by the decay of
>political life in the US. They have put paid to the notion that the elections
>are a choice between the "lesser of two evils," and that a Democratic victory
>will safeguard democratic rights. If the Clinton administration has provided a
>degrading demonstration of prostration before the extreme right, a Gore
>administration will embody the adoption by the Democratic Party of broad
>sections of the Republican right's program.
>
>Whatever the outcome of the elections, the seeds have been sown for a dramatic
>escalation in the assault on democratic rights.
>
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