This is Chapter 20 of the 2024 Serialization of the 2nd edition of my book: The 15% Soluton: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022. The book was first published in 1996. The second edition was published in 2013 and is available in Kindle on Amazon. A third, printed edition of the book is currently in preparation and will be in publication later this month.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Commentary: The Progress of the War
The Economic Sanctions
It was only after the revelation of the Second Final Solution that the United States of Europe (USE) and the East Asian Confederation (EAC), the Two Major Powers, first imposed economic sanctions on the NAR, in the fall of 2020. That they did so was not entirely a sign of altruism or dedication to the cause of freedom and liberty. For years the Two Major Powers had stood by idly as the Hagueites and the American Christian Nation Party had brought fascism to the old United States, and then extended it into Canada and Latin America. Once the NAR was established, both governments happily traded with it. As noted, it was one of the world's two principal suppliers of raw materials and fossil/biomass energy resources.
However, unlike the old U.S. and the NAR itself, both the USE and the EAC realized that the key to future economic security lay with renewable energy sources and that biomass, although renewable, had its limitations. So they had forged ahead with solar, geothermal, tidal, wind, and thermonuclear energy development. (There had been precedent for this. For example, by the mid-90s one of the principal members of the USE, France, was already supplying 75% of its electricity needs from nuclear power, an intermediate-stage energy source between the polluting non-renewables and the non-polluting renewables.) Thus, by the time the Second U.S. Civil War broke out, the Two Major Powers were already well on their way to energy independence from the NAR and even from their own Siberian energy resources, making it easier for them to step away.
Further, there was the matter of the NAR's foreign trade debt. It dated from the time during the Transition Era when the old U.S. ran such huge negative trade balances with the old Japan and the old People's Republic of China. The annual amounts of the deficits had been reduced somewhat under the NAR as energy and raw material exports increased and the purchasing power of its citizens and subjects decreased, reducing imports. (Non"'Whites, of course, had been virtually wiped out of the market for consumer goods.)
Nevertheless, the total debt continued to increase and questions were continually being raised about the on"'going ability of the Hague regime to meet its interest payments. The economic sanctions were strengthened by early winter 2021, as the international community became increasingly concerned not only with what was going on in North America but also with the very disruptive nature of the Latin Wars. The noose had begun to tighten around the Hague regime's neck.
The International Brigade
A new element increasing the pressure on the Hague regime appeared in the spring of 2021. At that time, the first units of the Ed ward K. Barsky [1] International Brigade arrived to fight on the side of the forces of the MRCD. The original International Brigade was a volunteer military unit that had been organized for and served on the democratically-elected Republican government's side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). It had been made up of people from over 40 nations around the world, including Germans and Italians who fought against the German Nazi and Italian fascist forces which had intervened on the side of the Spanish fascists under the future Spanish Fascist Dictator Franco (see previous chapter). The original International Brigade had defied the arms embargo established by the so"'called "Western Democracies" (primarily the old United States, Great Britain, and France). In the end, it could do nothing to stem the fascist tide in Spain, but it established a glorious tradition. This new International Brigade, the "E K Bees" as they were called [2], constituted the first non"'mercenary, non"'governmental external military force to intervene in a civil war anywhere in the world since the one in Spain.
The first E. K. Bee forces were dispatched to three fronts. The Alaskan Force linked up with Inuit units to harry the last Hagueite forces as they pulled back from Alaska just before the spring thaw of 2021, the Hagueites having already decided that that northern outpost was no longer defensible. The Canadian Force established a free"'standing front along the New Canada/New England border and also helped the forces of New Canada in their struggle against the Quebec fascists. The Southwestern Force, landing in Baja California of the old Mexico, was able to make its way through to the Navajo/Hopi Native American Sector in Arizona. Additional E K Bee units would arrive through the summer of 2021 in various locations.
The Summer of 2021
The Hagueite Sieges of selected Sectors were intensified. Newark, NJ, Atlanta, GA, and Gary, IN, were over"'run and demolished. Much as happened following the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the German Nazi forces in April, 1943, those of their inhabitants and de- fenders not killed in the fighting were sent to camps. (The destinations did not include the Devil's Playground, already shut down in response to international pressure.)
At the same time there were the break-outs by the MRCD forces, at The Bronx, NY, Charleston, SC, Mobile, AL, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA, and Oakland, CA (see below). In what came to be known as the Second Indian Wars, the MRCD forces also achieved a certain degree of success in the old Plains states and the Southwest. In Latin America, successive defeats of Hagueite forces holed up in the Andean city of Cuzco, Peru, the major Amazonian port, Manaus, and the Colombian port of Cali, plus the loss of control of the Panama Canal (the Pacific Locks of which the Hagueites dynamited before leaving), lead to the Hagueite Withdrawal to Mexico.
A major result of this stepped-up military pressure on the Hagueites was a further increase in the already high level of violent anti-civilian repression in the continental NAR. Hagueite atrocities featuring massacres, rape, and torture harking back to Nanking in 1937, Indonesia in the 1960s, Cambodia in the 1970s, East Timor in the 1980s, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s became evermore commonplace. The HM and the Independent Militias were especially active in this regard. There is some evidence that these tactics were the result of official policy decisions, but it is not conclusive.
The Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
As the Hagueite military position deteriorated in the summer of 2021, discussion of the possible use of nuclear and/or chemical/biological weapons was under taken at the highest levels of the Hague regime. Potential use of the latter weapons group was quickly rejected for logistical reasons: it would simply be too hard to control the potential spread of toxic agents to areas of the White Republic adjacent to any selected targets.
To this day the question of why were nuclear weapons never used by the Hagueites has not been completely answered. There has been much speculation on it, however. (The best, most recent summary of both the available evidence and the discussions of it is by Beiderbecke and Goodman [2043].) Nuclear weapons, called the "Hammer of God" by the Hagueites, were clearly considered part of their military arsenal. It was also clear that since non-Whites were considered "inferior beings" and White opponents of the regime "agents of the devil himself," "minions of the anti-Christ," and/or "black/Whites" (see Chapter 15), there would have been no compunctions about using them against either group. But nuclear weapons were not used, and the reasons why re main shrouded in mystery.
Most NAR records were destroyed before the fall of New Washing ton at the end of March 2022. (Shredding of sensitive documents had been built into the Right-Wing Reactionary mentality since the days of the Nixon Watergate scandal in the 1970s, the Ronald Reagan/William Casey/Oliver North Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and George Bush's departure from White House at the end of his Presidency in 1992.) But a few records and some recorded post"'War recollections remain. The possible reasons for non"'use may be summarized as fol lows.
First, there was a recognition by the (very few) wise heads within the NAR's inner sanctum of the very real dangers posed by the spread of radiation with damage to the NAR's own military capacity that would necessarily occur in the environs of any target area. Second, there were strong, although unsubstantiated, rumors that the MRCD had nuclear weapons too, and would retaliate with them if first at tacked. (MRCD records that would speak to this issue are still held under the highest level of security classification.) Third, in certain quarters of the NAR leadership, there was fear of the certain negative reaction around the world, and what further pressure that might bring to bear on an NAR already beginning to suffer significantly from the effects of the economic sanctions.
Then there were the technical problems. Because of the precipitous decline in the number of trained nuclear scientists, engineers, and technicians available following the abolition of the public education system and the elimination of the non-religious universities, nuclear (as well as chemical/biological) weapons stockpiles had not been well-maintained. Further, no new nuclear weapons had been produced since before the creation of the NAR. Thus, the Hagueite military could not be sure that a weapon would work, even if the attempt to use it were made. (That fear may have been justified. One nuclear weapon may well have been triggered by the NAR and failed to explode: just what the Beaumont [TX] Initiative was has never been fully explained.)
As to other possible reasons for no-'use, not surprisingly there is no evidence that either moral or general environmental considerations played a part in the decision-making process.
The Final Push
By late summer 2021, it was clear that the MRCD forces were gain ing. Following the Oakland Breakout, they had captured San Francisco. With control of both sides of the Golden Gate, there were able to clear enough of the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge, blown up by the Hagueite forces as they left the area, to create a passable channel into San Francisco Bay.
Thus the MRCD was able to establish a base for a Provisional Government and a major port for the entry of supplies and equipment (by this time the international arms embargo generally existed only on pa per). Shortly thereafter, following the respective Break-Outs, the ports of Charleston, SC and Mobile, AL were opened for the MRCD forces as well. Nevertheless, although pressed on every front, the Hagueites held out. It was their default on interest payments on their very size able debt to the EAC that ultimately lead to their demise.
The East Asian Confederation had been considering military intervention for quite some time. Their supplies of raw materials had been significantly disrupted, and the remaining North American markets for their manufactured goods had virtually disappeared. There was also the increasing world-wide moral pressure to do something about a situation that created ever-intensifying human misery in the Americas and threatened stability around the world. Further, the EAC secretly obtained an agreement from the MRCD National Leadership Council that should they prevail, the MRCD would honor the NAR's foreign debt obligation, on a renegotiated, long-term repayment schedule. When the NAR defaulted, the EAC decided to move.
On December 7, 2021, the EAC declared war on the White Republic of the NAR, launching a massive invasion through the Western Provinces of the former Canada. (The USE responded with a half-hearted cheer.) The assault came 80 years to the day after the surprise attack by the fascist Imperial Japanese forces on Pearl Harbor, HI that had precipitated the entry of the old U.S. into World War II. The Japanese element in the EAC High Command had insisted upon this date for launching the attack against the fascist, anti-democratic regime in North America. This would be a symbolic way, they said, of "making amends," in part at least, for that attack by the Japanese fascists on the democratic old United States so many years before.
The invasion was made possible by one of the great technical feats of military history (akin in its day to the Carthaginian general Hannibal transiting the Alps of Switzerland with elephants during the Second Punic War). The EAC army was in winter able to rapidly move huge amounts of men and equipment across vast stretches of difficult terrain in Alaska and the old Canada. In part they accomplished this feat by developing a whole new class of motorized transport vehicles modeled on the "foot fortresses" that appeared in the pre-Transition Era science fiction movie The Return of the Jedi, the third of the great film-maker Stephen Spielberg's Star Wars trilogy.
Also, they were able to escape detection by the NAR's partially functioning satellite surveillance system. This was accomplished by the invention of "electronic ground camouflage." Among other things, this system was capable of disguising both visual and "down-looking" radar images as observed from above, and neutralizing heat emissions from internal combustion engine exhausts so that they could not be picked up by infra-red sensors.
This operation was later compared to a grand maneuver of the Imperial Japanese Army undertaken in 1942 just after its entry into World War II. It managed to pass undetected 600 miles through some of the world's thickest jungle down the Malay Peninsula to attack from the rear the then-British outpost and military base at Singapore. The British military leadership of the time had said that such a feat need not even be contemplated, much less defended against, because there was absolutely no way it could be accomplished.
The Hagueite High Command said much the same thing about the threat of an EAC invasion from the north in winter. And they were just as wrong as the British generals had been. The Winter Campaign of 2022 lead eventually to the fall of New Washington in mid-March of that year, and the end of any effective Hagueite resistance shortly there after.
The Core Issues of the Second Civil War
The MRCD leadership knew that this Second Civil War had been fought in part over the same issues that were at the core of the First: the theory of White Supremacy, the political use of racism, and the exploitation of man by man based on the color of one's skin. New were the major issues of the destruction of personal freedom and liberty for all citizens, the end of church/state separation, the re-imposition of second-class citizenship for women, and class-based oppression of all workers regardless of skin color.
Back in the 19th century, the battle of the First Civil War to abolish slavery had been won. But, the MRCD National Leadership Council knew, subsequently there had been fought an on-going, undeclared, 150 years' war still on the race issue. It was not military but it was often violent, and always political. Over time, the forces of humanism had lost that war to the forces of racism. The final, tragic end came with the formation of the NAR itself.
The Leadership knew that in the aftermath of the Second Civil War, the victory over the forces of fascism and Right-Wing Religious authoritarianism, and the destruction of the racism that Right-Wing Reaction had so effectively used for so many years to maintain its control over the American people, would have to be consciously and completely secured this time around. That would take much attention and continuing effort (which has in fact been supplied over the succeeding years, with much success).
Symbolism
As part of that effort, the National Leadership Council knew the strong supporting role that symbol ism could play in achieving long"'term success. And so, the MRCD leadership arranged for the formal unconditional surrender of the NAR forces and the coincident absolute and complete dissolution of the NAR government to be held at the Appomattox, VA, Court House, on April 9, 2022. That was 187 years to the day after the Union commander Ulysses S. Grant had accepted the surrender of the Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee in the same place, marking the end of the First Civil War. And passing through Richmond, VA on their way to Appomattox, the MRCD forces took care to demolish every one of the equestrian statues of Confederate generals that had lined Richmond's Monument Avenue for so many years (Allen). Those egregious reminders of the horrors of slavery, not a noble institution in any way, were finally gone.
On the same day there was a ceremonial co-surrender by NAR forces to Native American forces. It was held at the Little Big Horn, Montana site of the defeat, on July 25-26, 1876, of U.S. Army troops under Gen. George Armstrong Custer, by Sioux/Cheyenne forces lead by Chief Sitting Bull. That action had been the last significant victory in the Native Americans' long-term losing struggle for self-determination against European settlers. (That struggle, as most readers of this book know, spanned close to three centuries. It would come to its final, bitter end 14 years after the U. S. victory at Little Big Horn with the massacre of non-combatant Native Americans by U.S. Army troops at Wounded Knee, S.D. [Brown].)
A Provisional Government was established by the MRCD National Leadership Council on the day of the Hagueite surrender. It ruled until Constitutional government on the territory of the contiguous 48 states of the old U.S. was restored a little over a year later, on July 4, 2023, with the name, the Re"'United States of America. A Restored Constitution was duly promulgated after ratification by the re-formed states. Although many important functional changes were made, in overall structure the new Constitution and the government for which it provided the authority were largely drawn on the original (see below and Appendix VII).
A new holiday to coincide with Independence Day was declared. It is called Restoration Day, in honor of the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy in the Re-United States of America, and the formal dissolution of the NAR. Restoration also recognized the renewal of the nation of Canada (restored to its former borders), the re-establishment of the U.S.-Canadian border, and, with certain changes made by the anti-fascist forces there, the re-establishment of the nations of Latin America.
The Restored and Revised Constitution
When the National Leadership Council of the Movement for the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy convened the Restoration Convention to write the document that would be the means to achieve their goals, they laid down several ground rules. Primary among them was that the drafters would start with the old Constitution as the foundation of their work. They would not attempt to create something entirely new. The old one had worked very well for two centuries, until the people and the Constitutionalist leadership had let down their guard against the forces of the economic oligarchy (as the author Jack London had labeled them a century and a half before in his prescient book The Iron Heel [1907]), and religious authoritarianism.
Furthermore, no one was convinced that anything better than the political framework created by the Founding Fathers could be devised anyway. Federalism, the Separation of Powers, and the System of Checks and Balances were sound principles for effective government of a large nation. For years, the whole resistance movement had gathered its strength from the Restoration Declaration which focused on the Constitution. This was no time to scrap it. Thus the drafters simply had to put into it certain new provisions and principles that would permit the new government established under it to achieve the goals for the nation the MRCD had set forth in the Restoration Declaration. And that the drafters did. (The Constitution of the Re-United States of America is reproduced in Appendix VII.)
It is interesting to note that among those changes were not any specific measures designed to make it more difficult in the future to concentrate power in the Executive Branch, the occurrence that had ultimately lead to fascism. It was decided that the task of preventing the re"'occurrence of fascism or anything like it is ultimately the responsibility of the people, actively participating in the democratic process, and an active, aware, and responsible pro-democracy, pro-Constitutionalist leadership.
It was strongly felt that attempting to prevent the reassertion of Executive Branch domination by the means of written clauses in a Constitution would be fruitless in any case. After all, the political success of "The 15% Solution" had showed precisely how Constitutional means could be used to destroy Constitutional democracy itself. If it happened before, it could happen again.
In addition, a significantly weakened Executive Branch would have made it even more difficult than it already was to solve the vast problems the nation faced in the wake of the NAR's economic, social, political, and physical destruction and desecration. Democracy cannot be legislated for any more than morality can. It requires the continued participation of an enlightened citizenship corresponding to the elector ate. It also requires effective, informed, dedicated leadership. Fortunately, to this day, at least, we have been blessed with both.
The basic principles of the Restored Constitution are as follows:
1. The structure of the Federal government as originally designed is not changed. As noted, Federalism (the division of sovereignty between the Federal government and the states), the Separation of Powers, and the System of Checks and Balances among the three branches are all maintained.
2. The Federal government is an entity with independent powers, representing the people of the nation as a whole. An American citizen is a citizen of a nation, not of a separate state. These principles, all implied or stated only in ambiguous terms in the old Constitution, were made explicit in the restored one.
3. The Federal government has a major role to play in the social, economic and political life of the nation as a whole. This principle was also implied in the old Constitution and made explicit in the restored one. The restored Constitution makes it clear that the Federal government is to take an active role in the economic affairs of the country. The impetus for this emphasis was the so-called "anti-government," so-called "free market" forces' miserable failure in all aspects of their stewardship of the economy through the Transition Era and the Fascist Period.
4. Finally, again as implied in the original, the Federal and state governments' abilities to interfere with and limit individual freedom and liberty, as long as the expression of those rights on balance harms no one else, is severely limited. At the same time, reflecting the Jeffersonian principle so clearly stated by him in the original Declaration of Independence with the statement "it is to secure these rights [of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"] that governments are instituted among men," under the restored Constitution the government has the obligation to actively protect individual freedoms and liberties and de fend their expression, again with the caveat, as long as the expression of those rights on balance harms no one else. Just what that "balance" in each and every case was, was to be left to the courts to decide.
Some of the Details
Although the overall structure remained unchanged, many detailed changes were made. For example, the Electoral College system for the election of the President was replaced with direct, popular election, the Senate was enlarged to one-third the size of the House of Representatives and the seats were allotted to the states roughly in proportion to their population (rather than the arbitrary two each) with a provision for cumulative voting, and the old First Amendment was significantly expanded. As noted, the full text (with extensive "Author's Notes" dealing with most of the changes) is reproduced in Appendix VII. For quick reference, many of those changes are summarized below, not necessarily in order of importance, but in order of how they appear in the document.
The Preamble, largely ignored by politicians of all stripes in the old United States, was explicitly incorporated into the sections of the re-established Constitution that described the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the Federal government. Further, it was significantly expanded, to wit:
"We the people of the Re-United States, with faith in our humanity and ability to work together within the democratic process, in order to form a more perfect Union, banish the disease of racism, create respect for the dignity and individuality of each human being, establish justice, implement true multi-culturalism, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, protect our environment, provide for the common defence, recognize the essentiality of inter-dependence and community to individual and species survival, and secure the blessings of freedom and liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and re-establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Article I, among other things, clearly established the Federal government's authority over the composition of the State and local governments. It also removed from anyone with any official connection to the old NAR regime eligibility for participation in the restored Constitutional government, except in very special circumstances. As else where in the Constitution, with the creation of the system of direct election for President/Vice-President, the former reference to "electors" was deleted.
The old political practice of "gerrymandering" electoral districts to fit political needs, named after an early nineteenth century governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, was prohibited. The old national "Election Day," the first Tuesday in November, was retained by specification.
The Senate as a separate, longer-term, hopefully more deliberative institution was preserved, but representation by State in it was made proportional to population. With the adoption of cumulative voting for Senatorial candidates, some provision for proportional representation was made. The re-institution of the old "filibuster rule" in the Senate, under which a minority could prevent a matter even from coming to a vote, and the enactment of any "3/5ths" rule for categories of legislation like tax-increases that were so favored by Right-Wing Reaction during the late Transition Era, or any similar anti-democratic measures, were prohibited.
The practice of buying the votes of Senators and Representatives through the medium of political campaign contributions had accelerated during the Transition Era. Various attempts to institute "campaign finance" and "lobbying" reforms all failed before the onset of the Fascist Period, while the practices at which such reform attempts were aimed played a major role in the onset of fascism. Thus the reforms were put directly into the new Constitution.
Many changes were made to Article I, Section 8, the one that describes the functions of the Congress. The broad outlines of a new economic policy, called by some the "Guided Free Market" and other "Social Capitalism," were spelled out. The provision for the income tax was incorporated directly. As in all other industrialized countries, the national government was given an explicit role in supporting of the arts and the sciences.
Full Federal representation for the residents of the Capitol district, without also creating the complex inter-governmental relations problems that outright statehood would have created, was provided for. The institution of Federal land ownership was placed in the Constitution. Finally, the Congress was given the authority and responsibility to implement one of the most important elements of the Preamble: "banish racism."
In Section 9, the authority of the restored Constitution was explicitly extended to cover the actions of government at all levels, and a non-discrimination clause, reinforced by various provisions of the new Article VIII covering Rights and Liberties, was added.
In Article II, as noted a system of direct election for the President/Vice-President was created. In Article III the power and authority of judicial review of the Constitutionality of actions of the other two branches of the Federal government, and of the actions of all branches of the State and local governments, was explicitly given to the Supreme Court. All actions taken by the Supreme Court of the old U.S. before it had handed down its decision in Anderson v. Board of Education (2003, see Chapter 5) removing from itself the judicial review power, were held to be valid as precedent for the new Court. But Supreme Court decisions from that date forward were made invalid as precedent for the new Court.
A legal category of "Crimes Against the Constitution" was to be defined by Congress, limited to acts performed by officers and employees of the NAR.
In Article V, as previously noted, even though fascism had been first brought to the old United States by entirely legal means, especially through the process of Constitutional amendment, the authors of the new Constitution were willing to put every one of its provisions at risk of future amendment. They thus put their faith in the renewal of the democratic process in the Re-United States as the primary bulwark against any future "Constitutional" re-imposition of fascism. That faith has so far been fully rewarded.
In Article VI, all debts contracted and engagements entered into, by the old United States of America as well as by the regime of the "New American Republics," before the adoption of the Constitution, were declared to be valid against the Re-United States. This provision recognized the obligation undertaken by the Movement for the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy's National Leadership Council to the East Asian Confederation, as a consideration to the latter for their intervention in the Second Civil War on the side of the MRCD.
All of the Amendments to the old Constitution after the XXVIIth were simply ignored and thus made moot, except one. The old "Supremacy Amendment" (see Chapter 9) that had enabled the placement of the "Law of God" above the Constitution itself was explicitly revoked. The "no religious test" provision of the old Constitution was reinstated.
The new Article VIII covered Rights and Liberties. In any cases of conflict with the old Bill of Rights, the original First Ten Amendments to the Constitution, the latter were amended to conform with the new, expanded list. Further, an attempt was made to remove ambiguities from the Bill of Rights, which became Sections One-Ten of this Article.
In Section 1, what had been the original "First Amendment" of the old Constitution, the "Wall of Separation" between Church and State implicit in it was made explicit. To prevent the exploitation of the right of free speech by the forces of hate, hatred, and division, as happened to an increasing extent during the Transition Era and of course the Fascist Period, a free speech limitation based on the English Common Law Intentional Tort of Assault was added.
The subsequent language in this Section is taken from language of the "Declaration of Rights" of the Treaty of Paris (1990) adopted by an international organization of the time called the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Bush, G. W.; "Charter of Paris"). Some of the language is redundant with that found in other Sections of this Article, but in the shadow of the horrors of American fascism and its prelude, the drafters wanted to be certain that the basic rights and freedoms would be clearly protected by the Constitution.
Section 2 of Article VIII clarified the original intent of the old Constitution that indeed the Second Amendment applied strictly to state militias, not the private ownership of firearms, and also explicitly provided for government-regulated ownership of same. Section 5 combined the major provisions of the old Vth and XIVth Amendments, and qualified that highly contentious promoter of selfishness, the old "takings clause." Section 8 prohibited the use of the death penalty by any level of government jurisdiction, with one, political, exception. The IXth and Xth Amendments, important defenders of individual rights and freedoms, were retained unchanged.
The language of the old "Equal Rights Amendment" for women, that in the early Transition Era had failed of ratification by one state following an intense campaign against it by Right-Wing Reaction was inserted. Section 12 established freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy as a Constitutional right, and established a government obligation to protect its exercise. Section 13 made it unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of gender preference, identity, or orientation in any public accommodation, facility, or institution, public or private employment, or educational institution receiving public support.
The Civil Rights Act that had been made part of the old Constitution by the XVth Amendment, but never enforced until the passage of the legislative Civil and Voting Rights Acts of the Johnson Era, was retained. Finally, the Restoration Convention chose not to enact term limits of any kind, concluding that no matter how couched and for what purpose, they were anti-democratic. Thus the XXIInd (Presidential term limit) Amendment was left out.
This then constituted the restoration of Constitutional democracy in the Re-United States of America, the work concluded on the fifth day of May in the Year of our Lord two thousand and twenty three.
References:
Allen, M., "Home of Dixie Generals Bungles Salute to Ashe," New York Times, January 4, 1996, p. A14.
Beiderbecke, B., and Goodman, B., Nuclear Weapons and the Second Civil War: To Use or Not to Use --- That Was the Question, Los Alamos, NM: Lost Horizon Press, 2043.
Brown, D., Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, New York; Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.
Bush, G. W., "CSCE: Putting Principle into Practice," U.S. Dept. of State Dis patch, Vol. 1, No. 13, Nov. 26, 1990.
"Charter of Paris," signed, November 21, 1990; excerpts printed, New York Times, Nov. 22, 1991; U.S. Dept. of State, "CSCE at a Glance: Fact Sheet," September, 1990.
London, J., The Iron Heel, reprinted, Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 1980, first published, 1907.
Author's Notes:
[1] The Brigade was named in honor of an American surgeon who was the Commander of the Medical Unit for the International Brigade. (This book is dedicated in part to Dr. Barsky's memory.) During and after the Second World War (1939-45), Dr. Barsky headed an American organization called the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (the "Spanish Committee" for short). It was established to provide assistance for refugees from Spanish fascism living all over the world, but especially in the south of France.
Shortly after the end of World War II, Dr. Barsky became a victim of what would soon become known as "McCarthyism" in the old U.S. As noted in Chap ter five, McCarthyism was an "anti-communist" political, economic, and social hysteria, aimed at repressing any left-wing activity in the country. It was named for an alcoholic junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy, who was one of its two most prominent and vicious proponents. (The other was Representative, then Senator, then Vice-President, Richard M. Nixon of California, who would in 1974 become the only President of the old U.S. to resign the office rather than face almost certain impeachment for crimes against the Constitution committed while in it.)
McCarthyism gripped the old U.S. from 1947 through the end of the 1950s. Its most prominent feature was that through a combination of legal action and socio-economic pressure left-wing citizens were made to pay a price for holding perfectly legal beliefs and taking perfectly legal actions that stood contrary to the prevailing right-wing views in the country, for refusing to disavow their beliefs, and/or before official bodies of one kind or another name others as "left-wing" or "disloyal" as well. The prices paid ranged from loss of livelihood and/or profession to going to prison.
Dr. Barsky had refused to reveal the names of contributors to his organization to the inquisitors of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. (This agency of repression was the historical predecessor of the House American Morality Committee that would, in the early Fascist Period, first bring Jefferson Davis Hague to national attention [see Chapter 6].)
Because of his refusal to "name names," along with several other prominent Americans such as the writer of progressive historical fiction Howard Fast, Dr. Barsky was cited for contempt of Congress. He was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail, of which he served four. Following his jail term, the New York State Board for Medicine suspended Dr. Barsky's medical license for two years, entirely for political reasons. After his license was restored, he returned to the practice of surgery, carrying on until his death in 1963.
[2] The name was a play on the old "Seabees" of the United States Navy during World War II, the Naval Construction Battalions that built so many fortifications on islands and atolls across the Pacific Ocean during the amphibious campaigns against the Japanese Empire, 1942-45.
(Article changed on Aug 06, 2024 at 10:53 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Aug 06, 2024 at 10:57 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Aug 06, 2024 at 7:24 PM EDT)
