http://www.newsforreal.com/July 20
House Divided
Stephen Pizzo
snip
That's about to change as the Supreme Court shifts to the right. A conservative Court, hostile to the power of a central government, will slowly but steadily return power to the states. The process has already begun. State and local governments can now, thanks to the Court's decision just last month, seize your property and give it to a private developer in order to increase the local tax base. Local politicians seeking tax revenues teaming up with private developers seeking profits. Has there ever been a more unholy alliance sanctified by the Court?
Get ready for more of the same in the years ahead. Conservatives have been waiting fifty years for this moment, when they can begin turning around the ship of state. Just where they think they are taking us is not be entirely clear. They are seeking a return to an America that few of them actually know. They think they know it, but they never lived it. What lures them is a gauzy Norman Rockwell-ish vision, an America where men are men, women are women, kids mow suburban lawns and set up lemonade stands. And, though they would never admit it, a vision in which everyone but waiters, gardeners and doormen, are white.
And what about women in this vision. Well, they stay home, bake stuff, raise kids, go to PTA meetings and arrange church raffles. And, if an unmarried girl should get pregnant? Well, the little tramp!
As this new conservative Court rolls back earlier rulings protecting equal access, personal choice, freedom from religious indoctrination, rights to a speedy trial, even the right to a lawyer, states will fill that vacuum. Citizens of progressive states, like California and New York, will see little change. They will just have be more careful while on vacation in those other states. Don't get caught with a joint while in vacation in Georgia or try to get an abortion for a daughter attending school in Mississippi, for example. Oh, and why did their daughter get pregnant in the first place? Because Mississippi passed a law allowing pharmacists to refuse to sell contraceptives on religious grounds. (Coat hanger, anyone?)
The biggest changes will come in redneck states which will quickly pass redneck-friendly laws. Their public schools will become Christian-oriented madrases. Creationism will be taught as science while doubt provoking science like evolution will be dismissed as godless "theory." School vouchers will again allow white kids - using public money - to attend private all-white schools as their parents exercise embrace their newly returned right of association – association with other white folks. And yes, there will be a copy of the Ten Commandments in every class -- but that would be the least of our worries by then.. Conservative states will reinstate the right of housing developments to have charters that exclude "undesirables," like Jews, blacks, and -- under the rubric of national security -- Arabs would be the newest excludees.
After a century of creating a common house, the new Supreme Court will begin dividing it up once again. In a decade or so it will no longer be one nation, but fifty, each with it's own take on what rights Americans within their boarder have and what rights they no longer have.
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