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Ashcroft, the Neo-Confederacy Movement, Bush and Orwell
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
From the BuzzFlash Archives: Originally Posted on BuzzFlash on January 3, 2001
Bush May Not be a Book Guy, But He Sure Knows Orwell
It's 16 years after the predicted date, but 1984 has finally arrived. And a hard rain’s a gonna fall.
The head of People for the American Way says that only Jesse Helms has a worse record on civil rights than the man who Bush has nominated as attorney general, John Ashcroft. Phyllis Schlafly loves Johnny A. to pieces though, which should tell you more than you want to know right off the bat.
Our next attorney general is anti-choice, pro-Christian conservative, anti-civil rights, and pro-gun just for starters. He is an NRA made man, and no doubt looks forward to receiving legal guidance on the Second Amendment from Charlton Heston. If you wanted to find a guy who is in the Amen chorus for Falwell and Robertson, but who has a senatorial look that goes over well in collegial confirmation hearings, then Ashcroft is your man.
Bush had the gall to assert that Ashcroft "will be faithful to the law, pursuing justice without favor. He will enforce the law and will follow the truth." It's a perverted Orwellian turn of the phrase. Ashcroft outdid his benefactor when he asserted "We will strive to be a guardian of liberty and equal justice. For freedom, as President-elect Bush has noted, can flourish only in a culture defined by the rule of law, a rule of law that knows no class, that sees no color, and bows to no creed."
Of course, every word is dripping with sneering cynicism. Ashcroft was the Senator who viciously fought the appointment of a black judge, rated highly qualified by the Bar Association, to the federal court, using lies to derail his nomination by President Clinton. As Missouri's Attorney General, he opposed even a VOLUNTARY desegregation plan for St. Louis schools. And just last year he proudly accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University.
Journalist Joshua Micah Marshall recently revealed an appalling statement by Ashcroft that only reconfirms the worst fears: "Back in 1998 Ashcroft gave an interview to Southern Partisan magazine in which he said that ''traditionalists must do more'' to defend Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee. ''We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect," Ashcroft continued, "or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.''
Hey, in BuzzFlash's book, as Marshall notes, slavery is a perverted agenda. But obviously not for Mr. Ashcroft. The Southern Partisan is a "Southern Heritage" publication that sugar coats its racism.
BuzzFlash can go on forever about the reprehensible corrosion of language used by Bush to portray Ashcroft as a man of the "highest integrity." We have entered the world of Orwellian doublespeak, where the noblest of terms mean their most sinister antonym. Orwell's 1984 has arrived. It just took 16 years longer than the author expected.
And what are the Democratic Senators doing? As BuzzFlash reader David Podvin notes in a commentary posted in Tuesday’s edition, they are mostly playing the role of doormats. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is promising tough pro forma questioning, but not much more. More reflective of the Democratic "roll over and take it" strategy is New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli, who is emerging as the de facto leader of the appeasement wing of the Democratic party. "While I have obvious philosophical differences with John Ashcroft, his ability and integrity can’t be questioned," Torricelli said.
The Democrats are once again lining up to let Bush get away with his corruption of values and language. Democrats need to understand that if you don’t call a lie a lie, it becomes the truth. We may have four years of Orwellian truth.
In many respects, it already has arrived. Didn’t we have five pro-Bush Supreme Court justices stop a recount because it "might undermine the legitimacy" of the man who probably lost the election. Is anything more Orwellian than asserting, as Antonin Scalia did, that there should be no recount because if Gore were found to have received more votes it would undermine the "legitimacy" of a Bush presidency? In short, we can’t let the people know that the man the Supreme Court is installing in the White House actually lost the election. That would hurt his ability to govern, no doubt, by letting people know that he was the "illegitimate" President, a usurper.
At
this very moment, the greatest threat to America is the corruption of
the very values and legal system that we have held in common, the desecration
of the sacred language of democracy, those noble words that are now being
used to throw a tarp of respectability over the appalling truth. And the
Democratic Congessional leadership is enabling our entrance into this
Orwellian world with hardly a whimper.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
