Planet GOP

What motivates people like 11 Colorado State Senators (almost the entire GOP caucus in the State Senate): Kent Lambert, Bill Cadman, Scott Renfroe, Mark Scheffel, Keith and Steve King, Nancy Spence, Kevin Grantham, Ted Harvey, Mike Kopp, and Kevin Lundberg, to sponsor "Birther" legislation? (In fairness, the legislation proposed, which is prospective, does not itself on its face question the legitimacy of President Obama's current tenure in office.)

What makes Republicans like Scott Gessler, our Secretary of State, convinced that there are massive numbers of illegal immigrants voting our elections, in the absence of evidence that this is happening (or does he really believe it)?

What drives Republicans like Retired General William Boykin to forward an agenda arguing that Islam is Satanic and shouldn't be included in the freedom of religion?

Why do so many Republicans support succession? Why do so many think contrary to the historical fact, that the Founders were evangelical Christians trying to create a Christian nation?

Why do so many Republicans think it is O.K. to pass laws that are clearly unconstitutional either because they violate the Supremacy clause and assert a state right to disregard binding federal law, or because they violate well established precedents like Roe v. Wade?

Why do so many Republicans claim that President Obama is a Muslim? If one wanted to sully the President's religious credentials, surely the claim that he was a closet atheist, given his adult conversion to Christianity after a secular youth would have been more plausible and atheists are almost as despised by Americans as Muslims in public opinion polls.

How did the Republican party manage to secure a lock on the crazy absurd positions and ideas so fervantly opposed to our constitutional traditions, while claiming a banner of greater patriotism?

Really, factually incredible claims simply don't have the same political currency in the Democratic party that some factually incredible claims do in Republican circles. Really, the Democratic party is far more comfortable with the framework established by mainstream constitutional law than Republicans. Even when Democrats disagree with authoritative interpretations of the constitution in areas such as corporate free speech rights in political debates, they generally don't argue that their view is the absolute law which other parts of the political system are free to ignore. Republicans, in contrast, seem to delight in proclaiming a fantasy constitution to be the real one.

Democrats live with a world view that is bounded by a sense of legal and factual reality; an important subset of Republicans seem entirely divorced from both.

It is hard to hope for politics based on a reasoned search for the truth when a significant share seem to be delusional in many cases. How does one build common political ground with people who don't seem to be playing by the same rules?

Not all Republicans, especially among the rank and file in professional and managerial ranks in America fit this stereotype. But, a surprisingly large number do seem to be a fit for it.

What is going on? Is this really a stable ideology, or a case where a small, tightly disciplined cadre of of extremists have taken hold? For how many are these beliefs sincere and heartfelt, and for how many is this calculated hypocricy and stagemanship?

I know some of the outlines of where some of these ideas have roots in intellectual history, their political roots, and the origins of the political identity of people who now identify as the conservative Republican right wing. But, that doesn't make it seem any less bizzare when I encounter it. How did ideas from Glen Beck recycled from a John Bircher political philosopher gain such much currency with so many people? Why was the intellectual environment so fertile for these ideas? How did right wing media and mainstream media (there scarcely is any truly left wing media) become so disconnected from each other? Why has the outcome of the Civil War been so hard for so many to accept a century and a half later?

Europeans aren't rushing to talk radio stations proclaiming that the monarchies deposed in the 1870s are still the legitimate governments of their countries today and winning majority support in polls of members of major political parties. Why are an important subset of Americans engaged in the same exercise?

Why are Tea Party members so angry at government's existence and operations? Does it make any sense for what is at its roots, as the name suggests, an anti-tax party, to be thriving at a point when taxes are already at sixty year lows?

Why is the public so succeptible to mass political hysteria? Is there something in the political process that is encouraging this kind of sentiment? Or, is this kind of sentiment inextricably intertwined with democracy itself? What does it take to make the masses see crazy talk for what it is?

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Pakistani Politics Still Violent

"A Pakistani government minister who had said he was getting death threats because of his opposition to a controversial blasphemy law was shot to death Wednesday.

Shahbaz Bhatti was the only Christian member of the Cabinet in Pakistan, where 95 percent of people are Muslim. He served as the government’s minister of minority affairs....

The Taliban claimed responsibility. “(The) assassination of Bhatti is a message to all of those who are against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, a Taliban spokesman."

Two months ago, a governor of a Pakistan state — Salman Taseer — was murdered for the same reason.

From here.

How do you run a democratic civilian government when senior government officials who take positions on issues (never mind waiting around to see how the political and legal process resolved the dispute), that somebody else in the system doesn't like, are routinely murdered or executed?

It has been this way for a long time. Pakistan's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951, after which the first President, Iskander Mirza declared martial law and discarded the constitution, which lead to his removal from office in a coup by General Ayub Khan, the same day, October 7, 1958.

Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan's People's Party became President after a democratic election on December 20, 1971, was replaced in a coup in July 1977, and was executed for complicity in a 1974 political murder on April 4, 1979.

President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq was killed when his plane exploded in August 1988. Suffice it to say that it certainly sounds like suspicious circumstance.

Benazir Bhutto (the late Zulifikar Ali Bhutto's daughter) became Prime Minister in 1988, was removed by the President based on corruption charges August 1990, returned to power October 1990, and was removed for more corruption charges November 1996.

A coup removed the civilian regime entirely over dissatisfaction with the decisions on military matter being made by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999, and the leading General Pevez Musharraf declared himself to be President on June 20, 2001. Between then and 2007, he survived four assassination attempts.

More than 140 people died in a suicide bomber's unsuccessful attempt to kill Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned for President after eight years in exile on October 18, 2007, and she was successfully assassinated December 27, 2007 after a political rally, in which the leaders of the regime of Pakistan in power at the time is accused of being complicit.

Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari lead the Pakistan Peoples Party to an electoral victory Febraury 18, 2008, and after street protests and a threatened impeachment, General Musharraf stepped down in August, and Zardari was sworn in as President.

This, of course, just includes the highlights, without mentioning assassinations and assassination attempts on lower level figures, and a constant low level parade of other political killings and suicide bombings. For example, seven more famous political assassinations in Pakistan can be found here (many of which are discussed with more narration here.) I've also omitted multiple wars, some still in progress today. The separation of Pakistan from India was not bloodless. One bloody civil war split Bangladesh and Pakistan into separate countries in the 1970s. There have been wars with India over the Kashmir and out of general mutual antipathy. There have been subnational insurgencies and violent counterinsurgencies in the country's "frontier provinces" since 1958, and one of them is in progress right now.

Xe Services, which is currently embroiled in revelations related to the arrest of a U.S. CIA contractor who used to work for them, was accused in 2009 of having conducted political assassinations of its own without Presidential approval. This is in addition to the many Presidentially authorized CIA assassinations of people believed to be involved with the Taliban, mostly with drone deployed missiles, pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force by Congress following 9/11.

Pakistan is not Yemen. It is a developing country with a viable middle class and more than a hundred million people, with one of the oldest histories of civilization in the world, and a substantial GDP, that has nuclear weapons, not a sparsely populated poor nation in the middle of a desert. In theory, it is a nation of Muslims who have a lot in common with each other in a "nation-state" sense.

Even without any new provocations, it would take a lifetime just to settle the scores for all the political killings that have occurred so far. A simple change of President pursuant to election results in the ordinary manner, without assassinations, impeachments or coups, that takes place in the United States every four to eight years, most of the time, is almost unprecedented in Pakistan.

As much as we can become concerned with minor happenings in Pakistan, the very basics of orderly, peaceful civilian government of any kind seem elusive.

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Really Big Love and Bunhill Fields

Ziona Chana, a 66-year-old man in India's remote northeast who has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren -- and wouldn't mind having more. They all live in a four storied building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, media reports said. "I once married 10 women in one year," he was quoted as saying.

His wives share a dormitory near Ziona's private bedroom and locals said he likes to have seven or eight of them by his side at all times. The sons and their wives, and all their children, live in different rooms in the same building, but share a common kitchen.

The wives take turns cooking, while his daughters clean the house and do washing. The men do outdoor jobs like farming and taking care of livestock. . . . They are supported by their own resources and occasional donations from followers.

From here.

The man leads a Christian polygamous sect (called "Chana Pawl" after the patriarch's late father) founded in 1942 with about four hundred families as members in a single village, "this industrious group manufactures wooden furniture and aluminium utensils."

A brief historical account of the Chana puts it in the context of the "fact that it took barely 50 years for the entire Mizo community to embrace Christianity, then a totally alien religion, [which] has been attributed to the revival movements. . . . The first European missionaries arrived at Aizawl (then Aijal) in 1894, and 12 years later, revival movements effecting mass conversions started. Wave upon wave of revival swept the land until the entire Mizo community abandoned its old religion, animism, for the new religion, Christianity before the end of World War II." Mizoram State is about 95% Christian (Wikipedia puts the figure at 90.5% based on a 2001 census), and the vast majority are adherents of more traditional forms of the Christian faith, predominantly as part of Presybeterian denominations. It was granted statehood in 1986, twenty years after an armed insurgency movement began there. Another sect that arose in the same period consists of people who moved to the jungle and stopped wearing clothes. The revival movement also gave rise to a Jewish sect known as "Bnei Manashe" which has now mostly migrated to Israel.

Islam limits a man to four wives and has canons of interpretation that discourage the practice on the grounds that the fairness to all wives demanded by Islamic law is difficult to manage, although serial polygamy can circumvent this limit to some extent. The limit in Islam was a reform from prior law that permitted more spouses.

The Hebrew Bible, in contrast, has numerous examples of polygamy, some of which involve political leaders with more than four wives, and neither the Christian Old Testament nor the Christian New Testament expressly prohibit polygamy (Reformation figure Martin Luther once wrote a letter privately acknowledging this in a case involving a minor European aristocrat, which his solus scriptura stance caused him to acknowledge was permitted).

Of course, Christian tradition from early on, in part due to the preachings of early church fathers such as Saint Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, has generally strongly disfavored polygamy in practice (with notable exceptions such as the early Mormons and some European Anabaptists). And, while polygamy has been banned by the main denomination of the Church of Latter Day Saints for more than a century and by Utah State law (as a condition imposed for it to receive statehood status), it has been quietly tolerated in communities like Hinsdale that are an open secret, and quietly practiced on a smaller scale in suburban Utah with only rare interruptions (usually for offenses other than polygamy itself) more of less continuously since it was legally banned.

I suspect, but do not know, that this arrangement in India is made possible legally by the facet of private law in India that assigns certain domains of the law, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance in same religion couples to religious authorities rather than secular legislatures and courts (a secular legal regime applies to mixed faith families):

Indian family law is complex, with each religion having its own specific laws which they adhere to. In most states, registering of marriages and divorces is not compulsory. There are separate laws governing Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and followers of other religions. The exception to this rule is in the state of Goa, where a Portuguese uniform civil code is in place, in which all religions have a common law regarding marriages, divorces and adoption.

The practice in India actually has roots in the laws of its British colonial rulers, and is rooted in the same freedom of religion concepts that developed into the First Amendment in the United States in a somewhat different manner at around the same time. "This system of distinct laws for each religion began during the British Raj when Warren Hastings in 1772 created provisions prescribing Hindu law for Hindus and Islamic law for Muslims, for litigation relating to personal matters." This was a natural concept for him because at that point in English history, marriage, divorce and inheritance of personal property (although not real estate) were governed by the clergy under canon law, rather than common law courts:

In the Church of England, the ecclesiastical courts that formerly decided many matters such as disputes relating to marriage, divorce, wills, and defamation, still have jurisdiction of certain church-related matters (e.g., discipline of clergy, alteration of church property, and issues related to churchyards).

Their separate status dates back to the 12th century when the Normans split them off from the mixed secular/religious county and local courts used by the Saxons. In contrast to the other courts of England the law used in ecclesiastical matters is at least partially a civil law system, not common law, although heavily governed by parliamentary statutes.

Since the Reformation, ecclesiastical courts in England have been royal courts. . . . practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts were trained in civil law, receiving a Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree from Oxford, or an LL.D. from Cambridge. Such lawyers (called "doctors" and "civilians") were centred at "Doctors Commons", a few streets south of St Paul's Cathedral in London, where they monopolized probate, matrimonial, and admiralty cases until their jurisdiction was removed to the common law courts in the mid-19th century. (Admiralty law was also based on civil law instead of common law, thus was handled by the civilians too.)

At the time Hastings made his decree, for example, cemetaries were also segregated by faith under applicable English law, with dissenting religions tolerated, but restricted to cemetaries such as the famous Bunhill Fields that was active at the time (and was elevated to the highest level of historical preservation in England on a par with sites like Number 10 Downing Street, this week as a legacy of the path taken by the British towards religious toleration) despite the fact that it had and continues to have an established chruch, the Anglican Church (prior to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church). Notable residents of Bunhill Fields, who would have been subject to persecution and punishment similar to that of political prisoners in authoritarian regimes today in most countries outside England included:

•William Blake (1757-1827), poet, and his wife Catherine (1762-1831)
•John Owen (1616-83), Congregational minister
•Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John and Charles Wesley
•Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe
•John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim's Progress - his elaborate tomb includes an effigy of Bunyan and bas-reliefs of scenes from his great allegory
•Isaac Watts (1674-1748), hymnwriter
•George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - in the Quaker Gardens, next to the Bunhill Fields Meeting House

Of course, if you weren't a King, the scope of matrimonial law at the time was pretty meager. For the most part, it consisted of granting women "separation from bed and board" in particularly dire cases (legal separations still exist today, I've litigated them, but are now chosen by parties due primarily to religious beliefs rather than because divorce in unavailable as an option for lack of proof of fault). Divorces were about as common as death row pardons are today, they happened, but were highly exceptional. Unlike the inheritance laws for real estate, in which the most senior male heir received everything in order to prevent the fragmentation of the estate, personal property inheritance in canon law was similar to that under modern inheritance laws that divided it amongst all of a person's closest living descendants.

READ MORE - Really Big Love and Bunhill Fields