The Conservative Elites Are Unwittingly Aiding the Far Left in Destroying America and Putting the Final Nail in Our Coffin.

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This article, published nationally under the title “History and the Judiciary” in many venues as one of the late Paul Weyrich’s syndicated columns, including TownHall.com, WorldNetDaily, NewsWithViews, Orthodoxy Today, and RenewAmerica, then widely reposted and distributed on other websites and republished in WND’s Whistleblower magazine, was ghost-written by John Haskins at Weyrich’s request near the end of his long career as a major architect of the “Reagan revolution” and the modern conservative movement.  (The first paragraph and several edits later in the text are Weyrich’s.)

Paul M. Weyrich
August 2,  2008

I am neither an attorney nor an expert in Constitutional law. Others have been good enough to say I am a good strategist. If so, then I would like to share my perspective of the current state of the judiciary. I have listened as a debate is occurring over the proper powers of the courts and the tendency of some Americans to cede to the advocates of unrestrained judicial power victories to which they are not entitled.

I am occasionally referred to as a “founder of the modern conservative movement.” Such an honor places upon me and others to whom such a description applies a special duty to warn our fellow citizens. Americans today are witnesses to the realization of the great fear of our Founding Fathers: the passing away of government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” as President Abraham Lincoln stated, in the United States of America. With respect to the courts, we need a revival of the rule of law based upon the constitutional principles laid down by those who founded this nation.

Our forefathers gave their lives to liberate us from the rule of a British Parliament unelected by the American colonists:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. (Emphasis added.)

The grand formalities of American election rituals hide a glaring fact: Americans can no longer claim that we are our own rulers in every circumstance in which we are empowered to be. Regardless of our votes, the defining judgments in our collective and personal destinies often are made by persons whom the American people have not elected to rule.

We gave judges their robes and gavels so that they might resolve specific disputes between specific plaintiffs and defendants. We never gave them authority to issue commands to our elected lawmakers, forcing us down roads which we have not chosen to travel. Judges have no constitutional authority to make laws or to amend our national and state constitutions. They have no authority to redefine words and concepts in our laws to mean what they and their ideological partisans wish for them to mean.

To Americans of previous generations this was obvious and fundamental. But for many in America today, this is meaningless, a mere technicality: judges are supreme because, well, because they just are.

When several judges opined that there ought to be no more prayer in American schools, lawyers, politicians and journalists told us that after three centuries of prayer in our schools, judges had suddenly “outlawed” it. Court opinions interpreting law and social custom magically became the law itself.

After three centuries of Americans exercising their right to control their communities as citizens and to keep pornography out of public view, several judges opined that the Founding Fathers had given pornographers a right to pollute us and our children, a right that does not exist in the United States Constitution. They put us on a course that has almost obliterated the ideal of fidelity of body, mind, imagination and the heart, upon which marriage, family and child-rearing are built.

Nevertheless, lawyers, journalists and politicians announced that this opinion was to be the new law though it had no basis in the Constitution or in any law authorized by the American people via their chosen lawmakers.

Likewise, judges — acting on behalf of a tiny, anti-constitutional, self-styled cultural “elite” dedicated to turning America into an ideological utopia — opined that the American people may neither protect children from violent murder in their mother’s womb, nor outlaw sodomy, nor restrict their civic blessing upon marriage to nature’s definition of it, nor ensure that parentless children are placed with parents as nature defines them: one father and one mother.

Nor should I forget to mention judicial disregard for centuries of customary, legal and constitutional protection of private property in order to provide legal sanction for powerful, corrupt politicians lusting after other men’s land or buildings. “Take what you please,” they said, in essence. And this was now “the law.” One hand washes the other.

Many of us received in shock and sadness the Goodridge v. the Department of Public Health of Massachusetts opinion on homosexual marriage. But why do self-styled “conservatives,” lawyers, politician and pundits among them, spread the assertion that judges have powers that the American people have never given them?

The truth is that the ruthlessly enforced illusion of judicial supremacy did not merely empower judges and disenfranchise the American people.  It made journalists, lawyers and clever politicians more influential culturally.  Most, after all, are of the same ideological bent as many judges. And those who were not, the “conservatives,” played within the new rules: judges’ opinions are “the law” in the United States of America.

If Americans paid attention, understood what is at stake and agreed upon the solution, their long-term strategy would require:

  • a string of primary victories by candidates who fully grasp the fact that judges have no authority to change our laws and who aggressively will oppose all claims to the contrary;
  • an unbroken series of triumphs by such constitutionalist candidates in general elections, year after year;
  • an unbroken series of nominations of judges who will interpret the law and will reject the noxious and absurd myth that previous court opinions are “the law of the land”; (Presidents Ronald W. Reagan and George H. W. Bush gave us activists such as Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter!);
  • an unbroken series of Senate confirmations of originalist judges;
  • unwavering constitutionalism by originalist judges in their years on the bench, withstanding daily assault by infuriated cultural “elites” who grew accustomed to using legally void and impotent court opinions as bulldozers to deceive and enslave Americans via a-moral, anti-constitutional and increasingly tyrannical judicial delusions.

 

Not a single signer of the Constitution (or of the Declaration of Independence) would have taken seriously the purportedly “conservative” view today that to restrain judges we need to replace them through attrition over decades.

That view, in my opinion, guarantees a victory of the far left because it implies that the judicial branch is the final authority on the law.

In his book and British Broadcasting Corporation series Civilization, historian Sir Kenneth Clarke noted that after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, scattered pockets of normalcy continued for a surprisingly long time. How will we know, living in such “pockets of normalcy,” when our republic has collapsed? Has it already? Are we prisoners who still think themselves free?

For the sake of this republic I urge my friends, fellow leaders and Americans emphatically to repudiate the devastating myth that judges have the power to make and redefine our laws. We should do so rapidly and forcefully before our republic is replaced by the irresistible tyranny of men and women who believe that nihilist elites should make the rules and pass them to judges for formal announcement when the time is ripe for the latest step into the post-rule of law, post-moral abyss. Otherwise our “conservatism” will continue to be merely the rearguard for subtle left-wing revolution.

The tragedy of how we have reached this point: in our desire for social acceptance and respectability among the anti-constitutional, anti-rule of law, anti-Christian, anti-family nihilist left, “conservative” elites have abandoned the core principles of our Constitution. We have flouted the warnings of the likes of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. …The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.”

Alexander Hamilton was perhaps the strongest advocate of “judicial review” — the right of judges to opine on our Constitution. But an opinion on the meaning of the Constitution is merely an advisory opinion to the legislative and executive branches of government. Not even Hamilton imagined that the right to opine is a power to rule. Courts, he pointed out, intentionally have been given no means of enforcing their opinions, noting that the executive and legislative branches are not compelled to obey false or dubious opinions. Therefore, he wrote:

“The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution. … [T]he judiciary …has no influence over either the sword or purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will….

Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that court opinions were binding upon the specific parties involved and “entitled to very high respect and consideration…by all other departments of the government.” But like the Founding Fathers, he utterly rejected the myth that judges’ opinions are the law of the land:

“If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In the last century cultural elites created an illusion of judicial power that would be unrecognizable to earlier Americans, lawyers and laymen. After the American Revolution, the framers of the Constitution rejected any judicial authority over the other branches of government.

I fear the conservative elites are putting the final nail in our coffin. I know these men. They mean well. They are not pursuing their view out of malice. They believe what they are doing is right. Nor do I associate myself with some of their critics who often are accusatory, judgmental and angry. I look at results, and it seems to me that proponents of the status quo are allowing the legal profession and the courts to impose moral and civil codes which cannot pass federal and state legislatures. They foolishly are handing absolute power to anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-family ideologues.

This is where the trajectory of the post-constitutional pragmatism undergirding the “conservative revolution” has taken us. The story is not yet complete, but if we continue on this trajectory we may reach the point of tyranny and persecution. History reveals this to be true.

Many of those with whom I have worked for years unwittingly are aiding the far left in the destruction of America. It is time for our presidents, governors, legislatures and prominent citizens to call the bluff of impotent judges as Jefferson did and to ask them, as President Andrew Jackson did, how they will enforce their impotent opinions. The myth of judicial supremacy cannot justify governors violating state and federal constitutions, their oaths of office and the sovereignty of the American people. Look at the way so-called gay marriage has been imposed by judicial fiat, running ruthlessly over elected legislatures and the will of the people.

The Massachusetts Constitution contains the quintessential statement of the American form of government:

“The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, ought never to be exercised but by the legislature….” (Part the First, Article XX.)

“[T]he people…are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” (Part the First, Article X.)

“The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” (Part the First, Article XXX.)

“All the laws which have heretofore been adopted, used and approved …shall still remain and be in full force, until altered or repealed by the legislature ….” (Part the Second, Article VI.)

Americans must debunk the Orwellian lie that has obliterated self-government in the United States and acknowledge Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg in 1863:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…. It is for us the living…to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

18John Haskins is IAI’s Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of the Law, Propaganda, and Cultural Revolution.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

A Warning to the “Conservative Elites” about Mitt Romney

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An open letter from leaders of the conservative grassroots

January 2, 2008

Through their silence, the elites are assisting a political cancer that has profound consequences for our children and grandchildren

We write the following because we must oppose the deception of the American people by powerful and influential conservatives. Many in the conservative grassroots no longer trust the “conservative” media, lawyers and leaders, whom they see as serving the GOP establishment regardless of the will of the conservative base, regardless of the truth.

Most of us are not allied with any presidential candidate. But we are troubled by the unethical and Orwellian cover-up of Mitt Romney’s role in catastrophic events in Massachusetts, once the cradle of American liberty. Actions he took as governor were beyond the pale. As Romney twice explained to the homosexual “Log Cabin” Republicans, it would take a Republican to enact their agenda. (See article in homosexual newspaper Bay Windows.)

Attorneys, journalists and pundits must be fearless and selfless watchdogs of politicians and guardians of democracy. This is a sacred trust that is being defiled. Silence about ugly truths, such as the points enumerated below, is a betrayal of the lofty status we claim in a constitutional republic. Pay the price of courage. Tell America the truth.

Phony Pro-Life “Conversion”

Issue # 1. Mitt Romney established abortion as a “healthcare benefit” in his own government-run healthcare plan at $50 per abortion — after his supposed “pro-life conversion.” He created a permanent, official government role for an unelected Planned Parenthood representative on the health care board.

Issue #2. Romney’s well-timed “pro-life” conversion for the Republican primary pulled a “states’ rights” committment out of nowhere to hedge his political bets. His claim that states’ rights trump the unalienable right to life is inconsistent and unprincipled: he simultaneously opposes an amendment to protect human life, but claims to support one to preserve marriage! What happened to Romney’s committment to “states’ rights?”

Issue #3. Unforced by anyone, Romney overruled his own Commissioner of Public Health and lied about state law in order to compel Catholic hospitals to issue abortifacient pills — in violation of their freedom of religion enshrined in the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions. Using exactly the crafty political theatre he employed to cover his actions on same-sex “marriage” and homosexual adoption, Romney posed as defender of the very thing he was destroying, gallantly “asking” the legislature to create a special “religious exemption” for Catholic institutions. Even Democrat former governor Mike Dukakis publicly agreed with Romney’s commissioner of public health that state law already grants a “religious exemption.”

“Gay Marriage,” Gay Adoption and Pro-Homosexuality Propaganda In Schools

Issue #1. In another flagrant lie about the law, Romney told Catholic Charities’ adoption and foster agency they had to give children to homosexuals even when normal mother-father families were lined up to give them a home. Again, he deployed his standard smokescreen, gallantly proposing a “special exemption,” with a wink of his eye to the militantly pro-homosexuality legislature. Again, he got caught. Former governor Dukakis pointed out that the “state law” that Romney was citing as requiring gay adoption was non-existent. It was merely an executive regulation that a governor can rescind with a few strokes of his pen. Romney was apparently fulfilling secret 2002 campaign promises to Republican homosexual power brokers whose endorsement he coveted and received. He had sought no backing from social conservatives.

Issue #2. Romney says the Boy Scouts should accept homosexual scoutmasters and that homosexuals have “a legitimate interest” in adopting or producing and raising children.

Issue #3. Though Romney pretends he opposed homosexual “marriage,” he did the opposite. In 2002 he opposed a marriage amendment that would have prevented homosexual “marriage.” 120,000 citizens, including his wife, son and daughter-in-law signed the amendment petition. Romney’s militant pro-homosexuality Republican predecessor, Governor Jane Swift, and Democrat legislators openly violated the constitution to deny the citizens their right to vote on the amendment. Even the ultra-liberal Massachusetts court ruled that they were violating their oaths and the Constitution. Romney failed to oppose their subversion of the law or to defend the people’s right to amend their own Constitution.

Issue #4. Since the notorious Goodridge court opinion discovering a constitutional right to “gay marriage,” Romney has methodically lied about the judges’ legal authority and his own legal duty to enforce the Constitution. As professor of jurisprudence Hadley Arkes pointed out, under the state Constitution, the court has no jurisdiction over marriage law. An opinion issued without jurisdiction is legally void and cannot be “enforced.” Romney also knew that the same judges had recently admitted they have no power over the legislature or governor.

The Legislature never “obeyed” the judges by changing the marriage statute to legalize “gay marriage.” Under the state constitution that was the end of the line. The court neither ordered nor even suggested any intervention by the governor. Many lawyers and law professors (including Hugh Hewitt: http://massresistance.blogspot.com/2007/12/hugh-hewitt-told-romney-to-defy-mass.html ) told Romney to ignore the unconstitutional Goodridge opinion and embarrass the judges. Mysteriously, Romney rejected their advice. Why? The New York Times finally revealed four years later that, to win a coveted endorsement, Romney secretly promised the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans in 2002 that he would not defend the constitution against an illegal attempt by the judges to sneak same-sex “marriage” past the voters. (See New York Rimes article here).

When the Legislature did not legalize homosexual “marriage,” to fulfill his secret promise, Romney claimed that the judges had. This is a blatant lie plainly refuted by the state constitution Romney swore to uphold! He quickly found willing “conservative” lawyers, pundits and “pro-family leaders” to back him up. Rather than challenge the motives, integrity and “expertise” of their own friends and colleagues, most of the conservative establishment suddenly went silent. Ignoring his oath to faithfully enforce the statutes, Romney ordered officials to violate the marriage statutes and perform homosexual “marriages.” His Department of Public Health illegally bypassed the legislature by changing the marriage certificates from “husband” and “wife” to “Party A” and “Party B.”

Romney gave orders that illegally usurped the exclusive constitutional authority of the Legislature, as proven in this devastating “Letter to Governor Mitt Romney from Pro-Family Leaders.” (www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/dec_letter/letter.pdf). He violated multiple Articles of the Massachusetts Constitution, including one of the most vital principles of American government, which John Adams stated more forcefully than anywhere else in American law:

“In the government of this commonwealth…the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, …the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, …to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men. – Article XXX, Part The First

We deplore the glaring refusal of the “conservative” establishment to face the implications of a devastating article by a leading constitutional scholar, illuminating why pro-establishment attorneys have covered up Romney’s unconstitutional actions:

“The deeper failure must go to the man who stood as governor, holding the levers of the executive. And if it is countdown for marriage…it is countdown also for Mitt Romney, whose political demise may be measured along the scale of moves he could have taken and the record of his receding, step by step… [I]t became clear that even conservative lawyers had come to incorporate, and accept, the premises that gave to the courts a position of supremacy in our constitutional schemes.” — Hadley Arkes, Professor of Jurisprudence, Amherst College ( The Missing Governor, National Review Online May 17, 2004 )

We equally deplore the refusal to acknowledge the obvious truth in highly respected conservative attorney Phyllis Schlafly’s assessment:

“Massachusetts public officials … are groveling before the four judges… (Romney) said: ‘We obviously have to follow the law as provided by the [Court] and … decide ‘what kind of statute we can fashion which is consistent with the law.’

But what ‘law’? There is no law that requires or even allows same-sex marriages.” — Phyllis Schlafly ( It’s Time To Rebuke The Judicial Oligarchy (EagleForum.org, Dec. 3, 2003) )

Schlafly was right, as any honest and competent lawyer knows. The Massachusetts Constitution powerfully refutes Romney’s entire story that the judges changed marriage law and forced him to give unconstitutional orders:

“[T]he people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” Article X, Part the First of the Massachusetts Constitution

“The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, ought never to be exercised but by the legislature…” Article XX, Part the First of the Massachusetts Constitution

Mitt Romney created homosexual “marriage.” His “conservative” legal experts are aggressively covering up both his role and the plain language of the Supreme Law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Issue #5. Though Romney admitted the Goodridge opinion was not based on the Constitution and that the judges had exceeded their power, he opposed a citizen’s drive to remove the four rogue judges who violated their oaths. ( http://massresistance.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-romney-working-with-log-cabin.htm )

Issue #6. Though Romney says same-sex “marriage” will damage religious freedom and harm children, who need both a mother and a father, he personally issued more than 190 special one-day certificates to allow homosexual “marriages” to be performed by legally unqualified persons. He claims he was “just applying the marriage statutes evenly.” But As Phyllis Schlafly reminded America, and as even the outlaw Goodridge judges admitted, the statutes do not allow homosexual “marriages,” despite Romney’s false claim that the court “legalized” homosexual “marriage. Moreover, a governor is not obliged to issue any special marriage certificates to anyone. Since Romney says same-sex “marriage” will harm children and erode religious freedom, why did he violate the marriage statutes and issue hundreds of special permits? ( www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/record/ )

Issue #7. As governor, to please Massachusetts’ militant homosexual groups, Romney aggressively BOOSTED government funding for pro-homosexuality indoctrination, starting in kindergarten. He refused to defend schoolchildren and parents’ rights against this indoctrination. He refused to order his education officials to obey the law guaranteeing that parents’ can protect their children from sexual brainwashing. ( www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/record/ ) This is a continuation of his views since 1994 when he opposed congressional efforts to protect children by banning federal funding to public schools that encourage “homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative.” His deference to militant homosexual groups’ “right” to indoctrinate other people’s children was jaw-dropping:

“I think that’s a dangerous precedent in general. I would have opposed that. It also grossly misunderstands the gay community by insinuating that there’s an attempt to proselytize a gay lifestyle on the part of the gay community. I think it’s wrong-headed…” ( See Boston.com article.)

With their silence about the illegal actions and toxic legacy of Mitt Romney, the elites are assisting a political cancer that has profound consequences for our future. If anyone has convinced themselves that so-called “same sex marriage” is a fringe issue and not a grave threat to the rule of law and to children they should read Maggie Gallagher’s stunning article “Banned in Boston.” They should also investigate the pro-homosexuality indoctrination of Massachusetts children (“It’s 1984 in Massachusetts – And Big Brother Is Gay” https://inter-american.org/commentary/157-its-1984-in-massachusetts-and-big-brother-is-gay.html ) which had been covert, but in the aftermath of Romney’s illegal orders imposing homosexual marriage, is swallowing up parents’ most fundamental right to protect their children and control their moral education. To remain silent about the re-engineering of the human family and child psychology, and the active and dishonest role Romney has played, is a dereliction of our highest duties.

We are among those who believe that same-sex “marriage,” homosexual adoption and pro-homosexuality indoctrination of schoolchildren hasten the decline of Western Civilization in its most crucial aspects, whether the elites face that and comprehend it or not. Yet many who have the greatest obligation are cowering in the shadows or even aiding the deception. Our silence is a fatal abdication of duty to our children and future generations, a breech of faith. It is a betrayal of the honor of young soldiers dying overseas for principles that we decided in our hearts long ago require no profound sacrifice from the elites.

The truth is this: Mitt Romney’s fictional defense of natural marriage, childhood innocence, life in the womb and constitutional governance is sustained only by our silence in the face of overwhelming propaganda. Edmund Burke famously said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Dante went further: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”

It is telling of today’s “conservatism” — an endless regression of sophist ironies and nuances, dissolving, in the end, into absolutely nothing at all — that dire warnings from ancient voices seem like faint, distant echoes bouncing absurdly against rock walls far below our feet, beneath a precipice that we scaled long ago in the conceits of our modern conservative minds.

To continue in silence or in support of the craftiness and ruthless ambition of Willard Mitt Romney betrays generations past, present and future, including our own children and grandchildren.

Pay the price of courage, friends. Tell America the truth.

Sincerely,

Massachusetts:

Judge Ned Kirby (ret.), former Assistant Minority Leader, Massachusetts Senate
Atty. Edgar Kelley, former Assistant United States Attorney, Massachusetts District
Ray Neary, Director, Pro-Life Massachusetts (former President, Massachusetts Citizens for Life)
John O’Gorman, Member of the Board of Directors, Massachusetts Citizens for Life
John Haskins, The Parents’ Rights Coalition
Gregg Jackson, Co-host, “Pundit Review,” author: “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies,” contributor, TownHall.com,
William Cotter, President, Operation Rescue: Boston*
Brian Camenker, President, MassResistance
Mark Charalambous, Spokesman, CPF-Fatherhood Coalition, Massachusetts
Amy Contrada, MassResistance blog

Across America:

Dr. William Greene, President, RightMarch.com
Dr. Ted Baehr, Chairman, Christian Film and Television Commission
Linda Harvey, President, Mission America
Gary Glenn, President, American Family Association of Michigan*
Janet Folger, President, Faith2Action
Michael Heath, Executive Director, Christian Civic League of Maine *
Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth*
Dianne Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania
Nedd Kareiva, President, Stop the ACLU Coalition
Phillip Magnan, President, Biblical Family Advocates
Rev. Earle Fox, D. Phil, (Oxford), President, Road to Emmaus, School of Judeo-Christian Apologetics
Janet Folger, author, columnist, President, Faith2Action
Michael W. Calsetta, Former President, Conservative Democratic Alliance
Allyson Smith, Director, Americans for Truth – California

Also:
Atty. “Robert Paine,” author: The Governor’s New Clothes; How Mitt Romney Brought Same-Sex Marriage To America

* For identification purposes only. All persons are signing as concerned private citizens. This information is solely for educational purposes and not in support of any candidate.

The irrefutable proof that Romney’s “conservative” lawyers are lying to America:
“Letter to Governor Mitt Romney from Pro-Family Leaders.”
www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/dec_letter/letter.pdf
“Governor’s New Clothes; How Mitt Romney Brought Same-Sex Marriage To America,” by Robert Paine, Esq. http://robertpaine.blogspot.com/2006/06/governors-new-clothes-how-mitt-romney_17.html
The most thorough documentation of Mitt Romney’s record anywhere is at:http://massresistance.org/romney/

18John Haskins is IAI’s Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of Law, Propaganda and Cultural Revolution

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

Gender Warrior’s Theory Belied As Junk Science

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In June 1998 a stunning press release from a Harvard University research hospital announced findings that “carry massive implications for what appears to be a larger national crisis, one that we are now seeing can cause serious violence…. The time has come to change the way boys are raised — in our homes, in our schools and in society.”

Sounding the alarm was Harvard psychologist William Pollack. His book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myth of Boyhood, boasted groundbreaking “findings about the true nature of boys” the dangers of “conventional expectations about masculinity” and “outdated gender stereotypes”

With breathtaking leaps, Real Boys spun anecdotes of adolescent turmoil into proof of the claim by radical feminists and homosexuals that traditional masculinity is pathological.

By the following spring, seeking a politically correct spin on the Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colo., the media anointed Pollack as Harvard’s genius on boyhood and prophet of an apocalypse of masculinity. Real Boys was driven to best-seller status by media attention.

Pollack confidently asserted the politically correct view of homosexuality: “For generations, experts in psychology and psychotherapy did not entirely understand homosexuality. Based on numerous studies by top scientists we now know that homosexuality is not a psychological `disorder’ or `disease.'”

Offering no evidence, Pollack alluded airily to “scientific findings” but conceded offhand that scientists still don’t really know anything about homosexuality.

Nonetheless, he had no doubt about his own competence to handle any sexual ambivalence that might ail your son. For example, one distraught client discovered that her 17-year-old son and a male teen neighbor “had been getting together in the afternoons, drinking beer and then masturbating each other” Unsurprisingly, the mother sought help.

Pollack said he “would be happy to help the boy examine the feelings he was experiencing” but was “not willing to try to change the boy from being whoever he truly was.”

Among Pollack’s “discoveries”:

* People’s “irrational fears” and “hate” — code words for Judeo-Christian morality — cause suicide among teen-agers experiencing homosexual feelings;

* “[H]omophobia — not homosexuality itself — is what makes the lives of gay people so difficult”;

* “We need to help our sons to puncture old myths about homosexuality”; and

* “Failure to impart these messages to boys can place our sons in serious psychological, if not physical, danger.”

What did Pollack cite as evidence for the above? One wispy anecdote about a 15-year-old who hanged himself.

“Findings” such as these from Harvard get you on television to sell books. The New York Times, Newsweek magazine, 20/20 and the Today show all came running. Sequels followed. The media ignored academics who smelled not science but politics. Meanwhile, Pollack remained strangely evasive about the location and content of his research.

But several parents whose sons recently graduated from the Belmont Hill School in Massachusetts told the Parents’ Rights Coalition and a local newspaper that the research done on their sons couldn’t possibly justify announcement of a national crisis of disturbed boys. They complained that their sons were used to drive a political agenda and that Pollack bypassed the crucial matter of parental consent. One father was even refused a copy of the questions his son had answered.

Moreover, the boys apparently had no choice about participating, despite their discomfort with Pollack’s questions. One vividly remembers, “I was asked how often I thought about killing myself — not if I did [but] how much I did.” The options: once a year, once a month, once a week or once a day.

“No one around me took the exam seriously with such one-sided and leading questions” another boy told the Massachusetts News. “The test turned into a complete farce when kids began calling out their answers to their classmates in an effort to make a joke.” The former student adds: “We were absolutely shocked when [told] threateningly [to] sign our names.” Coercion to participate or to sign one’s name violates the guidelines of the American Psychological Association.

Bruce Cohen, president of the renowned McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., admits that if the allegations are true the research would not have met the standards of the Harvard-affiliated hospital where Pollack works. Cohen told me: “Certainly, one would have to get permission from someone before doing research on children.”

In the days after Pollack surveyed the Belmont Hill boys, a former pupil says, “It became a badge of honor to admit that one had filled it out incorrectly to spite this test which, no matter how accurately answered, in no way reflected the student.”

“Pollack’s claims are so contradicted by statistical evidence about boys, which causes professionals like me to wonder by what methodology he could have arrived at such conclusions,” says Gwen Broude, professor of psychology and cognitive science at Vassar College.

Howard Schwartz, professor of organizational behavior at Oakland University, says the new revelations confirm what he suspected: “The only question is how much of his interviews Pollack made up. I suspect it was a lot.”

“Given the importance of his claims and the disagreement of other evidence, it is extremely unfortunate that the media treat Pollack’s work so uncritically” says Broude. “Pollack and other trendy experts on boyhood represent a real danger to boys.” In her view, “there is simply no evidence that boys suffer mass anxiety about premature separation from mothers — no evidence of any emotional epidemic of depression and low self-esteem.

“Between one and four percent of boys display such problems. And there is certainly no basis for any feminist claim that we can treat the boys who are in trouble by purging them of their basic masculine nature” Broude adds. “But the fact is that, in Pollack’s world, being male is a malady, a mental illness.”

Pollack’s underlying goal is “to provide a theoretical basis for social engineering for a certain kind of parenting — from a feminist perspective,” says Schwartz, who studies the impact of political correctness on institutions. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to take Pollack seriously. It makes the head spin to think that he has generalized (this) into a full-blown diagnosis of cultural crisis.”

Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital may have come quietly to the same conclusion. Cohen discreetly refused to comment on the allegations but, revealingly, now claims Pollack’s research was not sponsored by the hospital. This contradicts both Pollack’s book and the 1998 press release announcing a “McLean study” declaring that boys feel “sadness about growing up to be men, a study by researchers at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School has shown.” Cohen also downplayed the link to Harvard and referred me to Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs Margaret Dale, who said, “To the best of my knowledge,” Pollack’s research was not a Harvard study.” “Pollack’s study was not under Harvard Medical School jurisdiction and was not approved by HMS,” according to Carolyn Connelly, director of the medical school’s office for research protection. But Real Boys portrayed it as “derived in part from … my ongoing research project at Harvard Medical School.”

Both Cohen and Connelly reiterated that “issues” about the research had arisen previously and that Pollack had been instructed not to link the McLean or Harvard names to his research. But one would have to say it’s a little late. McLean and Harvard did, after all, share the glory when the New York Times and the network-news celebrities rushed to hear their professor on the need to feminize American boys before they blow us up.

Reminded of the release, Cohen said he’d have to talk with public relations about announcements of non-McLean studies. But Real Boys cites the research assistance of the hospital’s chief librarian and four employees who typed Pollack’s manuscript. Like the Belmont Hill School, and the boys whom Pollack “studied,” Cohen and his hospital have found themselves well used.

Pollack, still counting his cash, is popping up all over the media and making speeches to educators and school counselors even in Texas, where the locals should know better than to buy this brand of snake oil.

Word should have gotten out long ago. Pollack’s findings took a whipping last year in The War Against Boys by the American Enterprise Institute’s Christina Hoff Sommers (see “Detailing the Abuse of Boys” Aug. 21, 2000). To Sommers, Harvard’s “national emergency” that called for “major social reform” smelled funny. After requesting a copy of Pollack’s study, she got a 30-page manuscript she described as “riddled with errors” and with “none of the properties of a professional paper.”

“Unlike most scientific papers, which alert readers to their limits, Pollack’s paper was unabashedly extravagant, declaring findings unprecedented in the literature of research psychology,” Sommers wrote. “Pollack’s paper does not present a single persuasive piece of evidence for a national boy crisis.” She continued: “Its sparse data and its strident and implausible conclusions render it unpublishable as a scholarly article.”

What was Pollack up to? “He sees no particular meaning in the role of the father. His images of fathers are just about uniformly negative,” says Schwartz, author of a new book on the psychodynamics of political correctness. “The whole idea behind the revolution in parenting that he is trying to bring about is that the traditional family is throwing boys into distress by raising them to be like their fathers, rather than like women.”

“I am still outraged” says one former subject, conscious of what the media made of Pollack’s study. “Our immature attempt at humor four years ago should not be the benchmark for the 21st century.”

18 John Haskins is IAI’s Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of Law, Propaganda and Cultural Revolution..

This article was originally published in Insight On the News on January 6, 2001.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

It’s 1984 in Massachusetts – And Big Brother Is Gay

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Mary Clossey’s children see no American flags at school to remind them that it is their safety that young men are risking their lives to defend. Rather, her daughter and other pupils are filed into an auditorium to hear a speaker liken the U.S. military to terrorists.

For years the Newton, Mass., public schools have blithely violated a Massachusetts law that the flag be on display in every classroom. On the other hand, there are many flags on display if you count rainbow flags that symbolize a “gay-friendly” environment.

When Clossey enrolled her son in Newton North High School’s reading program little did she know that the teacher had bragged in the Boston Globe (July 8, 2001) of quietly introducing homosexual and transsexual subjects into his classes. The teacher, Michael Kozuch, handed out The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky with instructions to write an essay on it. What literary “treats” did Kozuch consider mandatory for other people’s children? Sex between a boy and a dog, man-boy sex, anal sex between boys, male masturbation and female masturbation with a hot dog. By chance Clossey opened the book her son brought home. But what came after that shock was worse: She encountered public officials who saw protective parents as obstacles.

Clossey called her mayor. He never called back. Calling school officials, she says she encountered “arrogant disrespect for parents.” So she filed a criminal complaint against the teacher for corrupting a minor. Even Boston’s hard-line pro-homosexuality newspapers and TV stations couldn’t sit on this. But the complaint went nowhere. It emerged that Kozuch was not acting alone. The book was on a reading list given to every student. Urged by other furious parents, Clossey went to the local prosecutor. But the receptionist had been warned to expect her, according to Clossey. She waited and waited, but was not allowed to speak to her district attorney.

After parents discovered the book, Newton North High School educators removed it from class discussion but refused to remove it from the reading list. Alert parents already knew the high-school language department, on one pretext or another, had showed Ma Vie en Rose, an R-rated film about a “homosexual” child. Pupils learned how “Ludo enjoys being a girl. Borrowing mommy’s red high heels, her lipstick, her earrings … yummy!” Trouble is, 7-year-old Ludo is a boy, even if he is pretty in pink.

Freshmen learn about masturbation and sodomy in a required course that uses street language, as if proper vocabulary would ruin the educational experience. A large mural in a corridor depicts two girls holding hands, reading something called “Romea and Juliet.”

Is Newton a rogue town? In nearby Brookline a transsexual told first-graders how his penis was cut off and he became a woman. With no sense of irony, the Globe called it “sex-change counseling.” Parents, never notified, had to comfort their terrified children.

Ashland children were instructed to play homosexuals in a skit. As reported in the Middlesex News on April 1, 1994, one boy’s line was: “It’s natural to be attracted to the same sex.” Girls were told to hold hands and pretend they were lesbians.

As reported widely in Massachusetts in 1992, at a required assembly in Chelmsford, an instructor used four-letter words describing the joys of anal and oral sex. The children then licked condoms.

Framingham pupils found themselves answering this Orwellian questionnaire:

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?

2. When did you first decide you were heterosexual?

3. Is it possible heterosexuality is a phase you will grow out of?

4. Is it possible you are heterosexual because you fear the same sex?

5. If you have never slept with anyone of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn’t prefer it? Is it possible you merely need a good gay experience?

6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexuality? How did they react?

7. Why are heterosexuals so blatant, always making a spectacle of their heterosexuality? Why can’t they just be who they are and not flaunt their sexuality by kissing in public, wearing wedding rings, etc.?

In Lexington, a parent discovered that her 13-year-old could borrow a book telling how gay men at the opera can socialize with “the backs of their trousers discreetly parted so they could experience a little extra pleasure while viewing the spectacle on stage.” Her school purchased it with health funds.

A prominent psychiatrist says the sex-ed curricula at these schools can lower children “to the level of animals” and inflict lasting harm. “Massachusetts schools’ systematic promotion of homosexuality and promiscuity fosters sexual confusion and experimentation,” says Nathaniel S. Lehrman, former clinical director of the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in New York. “They dilute and trivialize [the capacity for] faithful sexual passion which should [later] be the cement of these children’s marriages. Unstable youngsters may become particularly vulnerable to homosexuals who actively recruit them.”

There are teachers all over North America quietly mainstreaming homosexual behavior to children as young as 5 years old. As widely reported, on “Gay Days” classes are cancelled and students led to compulsory activities where homosexuals explain their “lifestyles.” The mind-control techniques are straight from Soviet schools.

Officials often confront parents who express anger, telling each parent, “You’re the only one who complained.” The implied message: “It would be unconstitutional to teach Judeo-Christian morality. So we’re obliged to teach its polar opposite.”

Samuel Blumenfeld, a much-published author on education, says many school superintendents implicitly assert “that children (are) owned by the state.” Compelling evidence from Massachusetts:

» Silver Lake’s freshman health text says: “Testing your ability to function sexually and give pleasure to another person may be less threatening in the early teens with people of your own sex.” And, “You may come to the conclusion that growing up means rejecting the values of your parents.” Pupils were ordered to keep the book at school and never take it home.

» Needham High School violated the parents’-rights law by concealing from parents a schoolwide assembly in which a girl described her first lesbian kiss and rhapsodized about lesbianism. Teachers continued the discussion in homeroom. They also broke the law by failing to tell pupils of their right not to attend. Later, the gay club’s faculty adviser announced, in poor English, that parents’ decisions to remove their children next year would not be honored, as the “assembly (taught no) moral or religious beliefs.”

» After a “Homophobia Week” of mandatory assemblies in Beverly, a 14-year-old told her father he was a “homophobe.” She had learned that homosexuals have a right to marry and adopt children. Parents were not notified. A boy wrote to a local paper: “I felt disturbed and nauseated. I witnessed biased testimonies by gays and the public mocking of a priest in our auditorium.”

» A Beverly parent removed a child after discovering the content of a four-day “sexual-harassment” program that replaced algebra. The teacher encouraged the pupil to come back, saying, “Your parents don’t have to know.”

» In Manomet, a health instructor passed out material that an eighth-grader said violated his parents’ beliefs. “If you have any trouble with your parents, tell me and I’ll handle them,” the instructor replied.

» A Newton principal refused to remove children from the condom-distribution program, telling their parents, “It’s too important.”

Local media cover such stories reluctantly, with headlines such as “Local Mother Angered by Sex Ed.” They treat not the provocation, but the reaction, as newsworthy. Imagine this back-page headline informing the public of Watergate: “Partisan Democrats Criticize White House.”

In the July 8, 2001 Globe article headlined “More schools tackling gay issues,” Kozuch discussed his efforts to use schools to shape children’s views of homosexuality under the radar screen of parents. “It’s low key,” he said. “The point is that we want to treat (bisexual, homosexual and transsexual) issues in a way that’s matter of course.”

Giving gay pornography to other people’s children didn’t used to be called “treating issues,” say critics. And who told schools to “tackle” anal sex?

“Where the radical homosexual movement is gaining control of curricula the citizenry must stop schools’ systematic sabotage of children’s moral development,” says Lehrman, former chairman of the Task Force on Religion and Mental Health of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

Some militant homosexuals increasingly feel “called’ into teaching the way other people are called to be missionaries. “Tolerance” programs claiming to support gay children (gay children?) provide cover for introducing obscene material and guiding troubled pupils toward homosexuality.

The self-righteous comments of some educators suggest they see innocence as a thing to crush. A child not knowing about sodomy, they feel, is a thing to be corrected. Every child has a right and a need to know what homosexuals do to each other’s bodies — and be told it is equivalent to Mommy and Daddy’s marriage. “Leave no child behind.”

Blumenfeld wrote of the 19th-century establishment of Massachusetts’ universal state education that fierce resistance by parents and voters was overcome only by a solemn oath by the state to confine itself to academic matters. The right of parents to guide the moral training of their children was guaranteed. But that was back when children belonged to their parents.

Clossey got a letter from the district attorney informing her that Massachusetts schools, libraries and museums are immune from laws against exposing children to pornography.

It’s time to make it a federal felony to crush the innocence of children, with punishments trebled for “educators.”

18John Haskins is IAI’s Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of Law, Propaganda and Cultural Revolution.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

No More Striking Down Constitutions

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Conservatives contemplating George Bush’s judicial legacy — and his bizarre vision of Harriet Miers among the nine highest potentates in the democratic world — should expect no counter-revolution. True, he promised constitutionalist judges. But talking constitutionalism (like talking Christianity) is easy.

Our governing elite punishes unvarnished clarity about our Constitution. Intellectual honesty, for lawyers, schoolteachers, psychologists, professors and actors, is costly. Most lie low or join the enforcers. Surely even Roberts, Scalia, and Alito see the gap between them and the Founding Fathers, for whom precedent was impotent against the Constitution.

Absurd though it is, only “constitutional” conservatives honor precedent. The Liberal “mainstream” savors precedents they’ve shot down — or will next chance. Their favorite rulings violate centuries of precedent. But the obvious is hard to see, especially as monumental, abstract questions are addressed in isolation from thoughts of personal advancement. The realm of the mind and methodology that do this are not the pragmatic part that wins court cases, campaigns, and useful friendships. The former withers when neglected for the latter. Even “all star” conservative constitutionalists steer a careful course between the Constitution and what the establishment will tolerate.

Righteous refinement obliges conservatives (holy and secular) to treat these points as uncouth. They are not. They address why Republicans are winning elections and “conservatives” are losing the Culture War, waiting for strict constructionists to fix everything. If we want to preserve for our children what was handed to us we’ll need to stop describing things in grays that are actually black and white.

Let’s drop the talking points about “conservative,” “constructionist” and “originalist” nominees. Such language obscures what’s going on. These nuances are a polite way of pretending that the mainstream in law and government interprets the Constitution differently than we do. No. They are oblivious to the actual content of the Constitution, or they are anti-constitutional. A polite term would be “post-constitutional.”

If Ginsburg, Souter, and friends have a “theory” of constitutional interpretation, they’re keeping it to themselves. When they shake the foundations of the earth from their bench it is neither theory, nor constitutional, nor interpretation. They are, wrote Jonah Goldberg after one heinous ruling, “making it up as they go along.”

We could also call this school of jurisprudence “striking down the Constitution.” “Interpreting” is not “striking down.” Opposite concepts. Conservatives desperately need to call things what they are.

While we’re at it, Roe v. Wade is not “bad law” or “settled law” or any other kind of law. It’s a court opinion on one case. Calling it “law” is a way of reassuring Chuck Schumer that he is a direct spiritual descendant of the Founding Fathers and Justice Thomas is not.

Signers of the Declaration and the Constitution and justices until FDR’s time would cringe to hear constitutionalists call rulings “law” — binding though illegal. Citizens and officials are to reject unconstitutional rulings. Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln did, citing their sworn oath. It is no accident that judges have no army.

If constitutions count, homosexual marriage remains illegal in Massachusetts. John Adams’s constitution says explicitly the people are “not bound” by any law not ratified by their Legislature. Four Boston judges struck down a constitution that stood in their way — one they’ve sworn to uphold. The word “treason” comes to mind — a strong word that Liberals would use lustily if they could, but then the Left is all about winning and conservatives are about slowing them down.

Has “conservative” governor Mitt Romney refused to enforce a ruling dissenting justices and Harvard law professors say is bogus? His oath compels him to refuse the court its pleasure. He pleads impotence. Do constitutionalists demand that the outlaw justices resign? Silence. Or Romney? No, they fancy him in the White House. At what point will “constitutionalists” stop siding with the establishment against the Constitution?

CONSERVATIVES JUST don’t get it. In a republic judges don’t get to make laws and others are sworn to stop them when they try. Yet we speak as if this is splitting hairs. Jefferson wrote that an unconstitutional ruling is null and void. What part of “void” can’t we understand? Why are “conservative” presidents, governors, legislatures, mayors, sheriffs and school committees siding with Laurence Tribe against Jefferson and Lincoln?

Law schools haven’t taught the Constitution for years. They teach precedent. Conservatives dignify mockery of the Constitution by pretending it’s a matter of dueling legal theories. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s interpretation…”

No. That ain’t interpretation. “Impeachable” is what it is — prestigious degrees notwithstanding. Respect swindlers in high places?

Subjecting Americans to foreign laws, as our Supremes have proudly done, is an impeachable act. That needs no debate and should have been unanimously stated by respectable conservatives when the Supremes announced that we are under nihilist European rulers whom we did not elect and cannot impeach.

We need no nuanced legal taxonomy to tell the White House what we expect in our judges. There’s an oath involved in the job. “Support and defend” does not mean “subvert and pretend.” If that excludes everyone in what liberals call the “mainstream,” fine. If the mainstream is post-constitutional we’ll take someone outside the mainstream.

Lifelong legal conformists need not apply. We want someone who can read the instruction book and for whom a solemn oath does not expire when their fanny hits the bench.

18 John Haskins is IAI’s Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of Law, Propaganda and Cultural Revolution..

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.