George Will and Phyllis Schlafly: Tools of NeoCon GREED

April Fool's Day saw two jokes played through the Internet, one funny one not. The first announced that Homeland Security had closed Buzz Flash. Funny. The other April Fool's joke, the one by George Will, was not funny; it was ugly.

Why is it that on April 1^st all of these NeoCons simultaneously began attacking the Equal Rights Amendment? The ERA is not a feminist issue; it is about freedom and what it means to be a real American. Their actions have their own logic. Pundits as Will and Schlafly oppose the ERA to obfuscate the historic bait and switch that allows all of us to be chopped up like liverwurst for the profit of the corporate state.

Obviously marching orders were issued. We know how that works. The White House Briefing goes out; operatives such as John Fund, Matt Drudge, and Robert Novak call those further down the power chain. Articles slamming the ERA appear at nearly the same moment. Steve Frank's Capitol News, is one example of that. Frank, an old friend of Fund's probably chatted with John Fund directly. Will might have talked with Novak. Or those instructions could have come through those special briefings Fund is so proud of receiving from the White House.

You can't manipulate public opinion without inserting opinions; to make that work you use operatives to let those 'on salary' know the issue so they can produce their specialized spin. So George Will sat down to construct his hit job on the the Equal Rights Amendment. He used a front end of sneering and demeaning comments,“dolled up in love beads and bell-bottomed trousers.” He followed with an argument that has been worn threadbare but never really examined that insists the ERA is redundant. Will cited, without naming it, a decision by the Supreme Court in 1971. There were reasons he did not want those examined too closely. There were two relevant decisions rendered that year and between the two is a world of difference.

Those two decisions tell a story that the NeoCons can't afford to have known. Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp affirms the right of the State to intrude into the private affairs of individuals, effectively canceling our inherent rights, the other, Reed v. Reed, and with a salutatory 7-0 decision, says, “the Court struck down an Illinois law giving preference to a male seeking to administrate an estate over an equally entitled female. This case concerned a set of separated parents whose adopted son had died without a will. Both sought to administrate the deceased's estate; following the law, a lower court had placed the father in charge. The Supreme Court ruled that men and women could be treated differently only when there was some reasonable and relevant cause for doing so; while the Illinois law simplified judicial proceedings, arbitrarily giving preference to men over women was "to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

It must have annoyed them that the two decisions came in the same year.

That is one part of the obfescation Will, Schlafly, and other NeoCon operatives routinely use. The other one is ignoring the lower standard used on gender issues by the Supreme Court. According to those standards women are second class citizens and the NeoCons oppose the ERA because they are hoping to reduce even the consideration of 'Intermediate Scrutiny' cases of gender discrimination have now. Cute how Will glosses over that, isn't it? You can just hear him say, “Stupid women should shut up and be glad we let them wear shoes now.”

After that vague reference to 1971 Will moves on to his finale. There, he rather neatly segues again, unintentionally affirming the corporate connivance between government and megacorporations by citing as accepted fact the right of the State to make determinations on insurance questions. Success for the megacorporations and for people like Will depend on constantly reinforcing the idea government and corporations are not violating our rights every time they assert the power to regulate.

In a free market the state would have no such role. Until after WWII the State had no role there. Fraternal Orders had been providing for the needs of Americans for nearly a century by then. They made no profit, seeking only to provide security for their members. All kinds of fraternal orders were growing briskly and providing for those needs when FDR, himself a member of the Elks and Redmen, suggested with the best of intentions, a voluntary insurance plan available to Americans. Until it became obvious how profitable selling insurance could be all commercial purveyors of insurance were viewed as conmen, which of course they are.

Voluntary. Limited. Money held in trust.

That was, of course, Social Security. It took less that 20 years for Democrats to convert it into a tax imposed by law on all. Notice who benefited, megacorporations. Who made it possible? Congress. How was it accomplished? By ignoring the fact that such decisions are clearly outside the purview of government. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

George Will is not going to talk about unisex bathrooms or be caught saying that passage of the ERA will put women in combat. He knows his audience. But he did his best to deliver the goods for his NeoCon cronies that makes his posh lifestyle possible.

Unisex bathrooms, military service for women, and other such silliness are Phyllis Schlafly's ideas. Afew days ago at a forum in Maine Schlafly also said about rape, “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape." Let's not think about her fantasy life. It is amazing that today she can still deliver her lines with a straight face. One wonders what she would do if her husband decided his needs had to be met while she was at the podium. If she is consistent she would probably just assume the position.

The Equal Rights Amendment has never been more essential because if action is not taken America will become a corporate plantation with us as the slaves. It is not the freedom of women that is most on point but the freedom of all Americans.

To understand you need to revisit a moment in time; you need to taste and breathe in the vision a people who hungered for freedom.

Those people began a Revolution; that war is not finished. America has an unrealized Mission Statement, the Declaration of Independence. Mission Statements define the goal and motivate those whose pay in blood, sweat, and tears, to achieve that goal.

The Declaration enunciated a spiritual truth to a people not yet free in July of 1776. The violence and sacrifices that would come were supported by men and women who believed that each of us possessed rights granted by God. Of the four major cultures that founded the colonies two were fully committed to the idea that each human being is born possessed of spiritual autonomy that gives each of us control of our own souls. The physical corollary is our control over out own persons, property and destiny. Descendants of Quakers and Puritans understood and provided most of the labor and capital for the War. The Revolution was at one time both a political revolution and spiritual epiphany; their spiritual relationship to God would be mirrored on Earth.

That Revolution began in 1775 with Lexington-Concord. It will not be finished until the inherent rights of women are affirmed in the Constitution. Laws are only privilege, rescindable at the touch of a pen.

Allowing legislation to limit and mandate personal choice is the ggggggg-grandchild of the mistake made by the Founders to ratify the Constitution by compromising the principle that government has no right to change, alter or modify the rights each of us bring with us into life.

By allowing blacks to remain slaves so they could achieve a political goal they set us up, destroying the moral basis for the Constitution. They thought the compromise would be of short duration and their act justified in the interest of national security. They were wrong. Seemingly small exceptions that allow the greedy unearned power, sex, and wealth, are never willingly given back. A centralized federal government that allowed its state members to use legislation to limit the economic and legal options of women transferred wealth and power from women to men. Women had expected freedom, they received serfdom. Legislators, corporate interests, and others who had come to view legislation as a tool for their own enrichment wanted the transferability of unearned wealth to continue.

That is what happened.

The arguments for refusing women dominion over their own lives were endless, demeaning and disgusting. Through eight generations women worked. They struggled to be educated; worked as teachers for 1/3 the wages paid to men. They endured and persisted. No one gave them anything. Finally, through dent of hard and unremitting struggle they achieved a semblance of those rights in the late 20^th Century. At the same time the State and such idea mongers as Phyllis Schlafly and George Will and their now deceased cronies, have been busy attacking that simulation because it is a chink in the justification used by the corporate-state to continue to steal. To enhance their profits corporations would like to discriminate while ensuring that women have no recourse. They are near to accomplishing their goal.

If you are going to have a feudal State then you must build its walls of ideas that keep the people quiescent.

The greedy from all parties love power; all have been working to obfuscate the real issue. They have screamed about abortion, gay marriage, the family, our borders, and National Security. The first issue has always been individual, inherent, rights, the rights that government should never have touched; was sworn to protect.

No one has a right to require action from anyone else. Our Rights are the natural,human ability to act, using those opportunities life offers. The appropriate means for social progress is persuasion, not force. Government is constrained. The people are not.

I cannot demand equal outcomes, neither can I can be limited by laws that deny me the right to start any business or make the life decisions I choose. Those are only limited by my ability, my circumstances, and my inclinations. As long as we do not lie, coerce or use violence we can do what we will - within the confines of life's absolute accountability.

The NeoCons - and those who have become accustomed to shackling us through statute – work diligently to disguise their real intentions, which is to install a 21st Century Feudal State. To do that they must continue to smother the truth before it can be born. Traditional political parties only argue about what part of our freedoms they are going to consume first by selling control to this or that agency or corporation.

Protecting our inherent rights remains the original and only true Mission of America; government is just a tool; a contractor, providing those services the people cannot provide for themselves. We are each of us sovereign, that is the truth of America. Government should be reduced to the size it was in 1787 - or smaller since the Post Office is clearly incompetent to do that job. For foreign policy listen to Cousin George Washington. Bring all the troops home.

The confusion would never have arisen if the Founders had not made that unholy compromise and instead said, "OK, since we can't ratify because doing so would compromise those inherent rights which we have no power to modify we will instead be 13 small countries who each compete to get people to come to us as the best supplier of governmental services." (The South lost a half a million in population after the Revolution when it became clear that slavery was going to continue; decent people were opposed to slavery.) Failing to do the right thing always costs you in the end.

If that had happened we would have saved the expense of the Civil War, which was not fought about slavery anyway; it was all about the right to tax. That would have pleased my ancestors, making their volunteer work in Abolition and Women's Rights unnecessary.

Women are born with the same rights, granted by God, as anyone. Ratifying the ERA cements that forever in front of everyone. Then we can rescind the kludge of legislation that was passed in the unending attempts to simulate a real freedom. Women want the real thing; the real thing for freedom is the ERA; simple justice long ignored.

Ratifying the ERA tolls out the doom of the Corporate State. The time for both freedom and an accounting has now arrived.

The State of the Union, Precarious: What matters and what doesn't.

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(A little bird in Karl Rove's Office might have heard this)

Mr. President, have you read over the speech? (pause) I know. It doesn't matter if Congress believes it. (pause) Of course the public will swallow it. (pause) Your friends will understand that you have to say you support alternative energy. Anyway, you already have the donations in for the Library. (pause) Health care is an issue, try to read those briefing papers. (pause) I do think it is a nice piece of work, yeah, I like the new typeface. Just make sure you don't say her name that way Tuesday night. (pause) Keep working at it. If you find any other words you don't understand just call back.

Tuesday night a man got up and gave a speech. The focus of the world was on every word he uttered even though they knew what he was going to say. Today a rally is taking place in Arkansas. One event matters, the other does not in the long run.

Wording of the Equal Rights Amendment
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Today all of the Constitutional officers for the State of Arkansas, mostly in office for the first time, attended a rally held at the State Capitol along with two hundred enthusiastic supporters for the ERA. Mike Beebe, the new governor, stepped up to the podium to announce his support of a measure that, pro and con, was one of the dividing points in the gubernatorial election last November, according to Zack Wright, Communications Coordinator for the Governor. Wright added that Beebe's position is that ratification is long overdue.

A few months ago the widower and children of Marjorie Rudolph called Lindsley Smith, Representative for the 92^nd District of Arkansas, at her office and put into her hands the ERA bracelet their wife and mother had cherished since 1972. Marjorie, they said, had always hoped the ERA would be ratified. They asked Ms. Smith if she would accept the bracelet since she had introduced the ERA for ratification in their home state of Arkansas. Ms. Smith accepted; she told them she would be wearing the bracelet when she dropped the bill in the box and when it is passed. Ms. Smith expects this will happen very soon, perhaps in just a matter of days.

After the rally Ms Smith said, “It was wonderful; people were crowded into the Rotunda and hallways. I knew that we were taking a stand; doing the right thing – acting on principle. Knowing that was happening here, in Arkansas, made me proud.”

America's women have waited since July 1788. When the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to those assembled in July of 1776 it said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In this way the mission statement for America was established. All are equal; the rights exercised come not from government, but from God. Women believed and labored mightily in the cause of freedom, as they would in all the wars that followed.

Women poured their lives into activism. Generations of women have died waiting to know that their rights were affirmed under the Constitution. As women talk today they share the stories of mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers, who fought for their freedom and died knowing they had failed. It is a sad heritage for a country founded on the idea of individual freedom.

In 2000, 212 years after the Constitution was ratified and women were excluded as people, a retired executive, Dr. Jennifer Macleod, gave a presentation to a group of Girl Scouts on the Equal Rights Amendment. The excited girls asked if Dr. Macleod could help them do a project on the ERA. The Doctor, an expert in survey research, prepared a simple poll and showed the girls how to conduct it. Later, Macleod would admit that she expected that the poll would reflect mixed opinions to the idea of equality for women. She was wrong.

There were three questions. Jennifer expected the Girl Scouts, polling their classmates, teachers, and parents, to find a range of opinions on equality for women. Instead, they found close to unanimous support for the idea that all of us are born possessed of inherent rights, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence. Dumbfounded, Jennifer Macleod arranged for a national survey professionally conducted in July 2001, among American adults all across the country. The findings? 96% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?"; 88% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?"; and, demonstrating a public lack of knowledge, 72% mistakenly answered "yes" to the question, "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" The results were similar for both men and women, and in all age groups, educational levels, regions of the country, racial categories, and household composition. The results were the same. While the legislatures of 15 states had refused to ratify the ERA Americans had done so in their hearts and minds.

In this way a new wave of activism for ratification began, erasing the sense of hopelessness left in the wake of the failure of the 70s. In Arkansas today women wept tears of joy. At this moment Representative Smith says that the measure has 67 co-sponsors in the House, including the Speaker, Benny C. Petrus.

When the newly passed ERA was sent to the states from Congress in 1972 everyone believed that it would be ratified by the required 38 states quickly but instead it became a political football linked to issues that have nothing to do with simple equality. Women like Phyllis Schlafly have made careers of opposing the equality that was promised to all Americans in 1776. The final blow to the effort came when Ronald Reagan took the ERA out of the Republican Platform, despite the pleas of scores of Republican Women, including his own daughter, Maureen. For women, the promise of equality receded into the distance.

Instead women were forced to rely on a series of laws that assert 'fairness', many passed on the state level. Such laws can be rescinded by simple legislation.

Today women still hang their trust that their rights are protected by privileges conferred by legislators . Without the clear and specific backing of the federal Constitution all laws improving women's rights and opportunities can be overturned. For women in America freedom is provisional. If you ever doubted the need for ratification the crew just booted from Congress should have demonstrated to you just how fragile these rights can be. Consider the present make up of the Supreme Court; Consider the moral fiber demonstrated by an Administration that rescinded the 4^th Amendment and used torture and deceit. Simple justice long overdue is also desperately needed. Securing it need not be difficult.

Three State Strategy

The Constitution, in setting forth how amendments can be made, said NOTHING about any time limits on ratification by the states -- although, as was the case for several amendments, a time limit can if desired be included in the body of a proposed amendment. The 1972 Congress, in passing the ERA -- which, fully intentionally, contains no mention of any time limit -- chose to attach a 7-year ratification time limit separate from the amendment itself. Then, when the 1978 Congress extended the time limit by 3 years, that set the precedent such that any Congress can legitimately vote to change such a time limit.

How could equality ever fail to be relevant? In an era when women are serving in the military in roles that expose them to combat, the arguments that they are frail and must be protected fail to persuade Americans. It was not women's weaknesses that moved men to deny them their inherent rights, it was the habit of control.

In addition to Arkansas, vigorous ratification drives are well underway in Illinois (which came very close to ratification in 2004), Florida and Missouri, while many of the other not-yet-ratified states, including Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and Georgia are building support for their own ratification drives. Perhaps the legislators in three of these states now understand just how important our rights are. Now that we have seen a Congress and President commit the treason of negating the 4th Amendment the time to be patient is over. Now we can demand action from Democrats and the Republicans who are now distancing themselves from the corrupt Bush Administration.

The states that are not yet ratified are:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

By the time you read this Arkansas may proudly be the 36^th State to ratify.

Two events took place this week. One man talked; a coalition of women and men, united in defense of real freedom, took action. It is doing the right thing that matters, no matter how long it takes.