Choice America Network

At the "Justice Sunday" event hyped to national prominence by Bill Frist's appearance, Chuck Colson told America that we should read the Federalist Papers to understand the intent and the mind of the Founders.

Apparently Colson overlooked Federalist 47, published by James Madison on February 1, 1788. Titled, "The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts," Madison wrote about how important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other.

"No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty," wrote Madison of the concern about any one particular group dominating all branches of government. He added, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

A paragraph later, Madison quotes the Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu, inserting his own capital letters for emphasis:

"'When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,' says he [Montesquieu], 'there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner.'

"Again: 'Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR.'"

Or perhaps Colson could read Federalist 48, in which Madison quotes from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia."

"All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body," wrote Jefferson in this commentary quoted in Federalist 48. "The concentrating of these in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government.

"It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."

Jefferson added, "An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one ... in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

"For this reason, that Convention which passed the ordinance of government [the Constitution], laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time.''

Unless, of course, you are a Republican sponsored by massive corporate interests and willing to invade people's bedrooms to score political points with religious extremists.

The real power of the Republican Party is held by the corporatists - who Vice President Henry Wallace called "the American fascists" - whose loyalty is to hereditary wealth and corporate rule. (As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.")

But this is such a small minority of Americans that Frist's wealthy fascists had to bring along somebody else. They chose the religious fundamentalists for their unholy alliance.

The fundamentalists want to replace the Constitution with their unique and particular interpretation of Christian scripture. Their main assertion is that this nation's first laws were based on the Ten Commandments.

The Founders disagree. As Jefferson famously wrote in his "Notes on Virginia":

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

In fact, Jefferson said, the idea that this nation was founded in Christianity, or that the Ten Commandments were a pattern for the Constitution, was a "fraud of the clergy."

"Christianity was not introduced [to England] till the seventh century," wrote Jefferson in a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, "the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. ...

"In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are."

But the bottom line for the corporatists is that if the religious conservatives - whipped into a frenzy by the thought that a woman may deign to control her own body - can change the courts to be more "conservative," the corporatists can be sure that the "conservative" judges are both opposed to abortion, and also radically in favor of corporate interests and hereditary wealth.

By helping out religious extremists, Frist's corporate fascists will have much greater power to put into place judges who won't overturn laws that deny the working class access to bankruptcy courts, the right to sue as a class when harmed, and will give multinational corporations the freedom to import, pollute, and profit at the expense of small businesses and communities. They'll get judges who will outlaw birth control at the same time they outlaw unions and the minimum wage.

It's nothing new, really. Most recently, the Saudi royal family made a similar deal with their religious conservatives. The oil barons gave the fundamentalists the power to enforce their religious agenda, stacking the courts with fundamentalist judges, who in turn acted as enforcers to preserve the oil barons' political and economic power.

It worked for two generations, until the fundamentalists became so powerful that they decided the oil money should be theirs. The religious movement to take control of Saudi Arabia's wealth was led by none other than Osama Bin Laden, who suggested that oil should sell for $200 a barrel, with the proceeds subsidizing evangelism around the world.

The House of Saud was appalled and threw him out of the country, so he went back to Afghanistan and hooked up with the Taliban, men after his own heart, and decided to take on the power that he felt was propping up the royal family - America.

Thus the ultimate irony, that a radical Catholic speaker at Sunday's telecast would complain that his bunch was perceived by many as "America's Taliban." All while George W. Bush had moved over a billion taxpayer dollars to churches through his "faith based programs," and fundamentalists avoided paying billions in taxes by promising to stay out of politics.

As Jefferson said in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, "What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!"

Frauds of the clergy in the Middle East brought us 9/11, an explosion of Muslim conservativism, and a fourfold spike in terrorist incidents worldwide, while enriching the Saudi oil and Afghan heroin industries, and helping George W. Bush lead the world to the brink of war.

The merger of corporatist Republicans and the new "frauds of the clergy" could bring this nation to an even more terrible crossroad, unless Americans of good conscience contact their members of the Senate to support Jefferson's and Madison's ideal of democracy.

The number to reach any member of the Senate is 202-224-3121.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show and a morning progressive talk show on KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?"

Frances Kissling, the well-known and respected leader of Catholics for a Free Choice, recently sent me an interesting letter in which she shared her thoughts on the fight to save Roe v. Wade. Kissling, like other pro-choice advocates, is right to proactively frame the political debate — redefining the frayed strategies of our movement and devising a long-term vision of what reproductive freedom means for all Americans.

Kissling needs the support of pro-choice leaders to initiate this important national dialogue on the accessibility to a full range of reproductive-health services in a way that captivates the majority of Americans — especially those in support of reproductive rights.

Most Americans continue to believe that abortion is a matter of privacy. But with impending legislative and court battles, this message must be articulated in a way that will resonate with the greater masses.

The Bush administration has played politics with women's lives, from reimposing the global gag rule to seeking medical records of women who have sought reproductive- health services. They have been successful in packing the federal courts with anti-choice judges and they will try to do the same in the Supreme Court when there is a vacancy.

With more vocal conservatives now in firm control of Congress, brave Democrats will begin to work with the anti-choice majority to seek some middle ground. Before this occurs, we must proactively stake our claim to the principle of freedom, and hold firm to our values. We must define the issues this time, instead of remaining on the defensive. We must control the dialogue and message.

The language used in defending our support of abortion rights makes some pro-choice supporters uncomfortable in discussing the issue. I know why many of these lawmakers have become weary.

As a black woman and abortion-rights activist (and former board member of Voters for Choice), I have found myself standing alone in church looking for ways to bridge the informational and cultural divide. Leaders of the reproductive- rights movement must work with civil rights leaders to help educate all Americans before it's too late. Now that the right-wing extremists have entered our houses of worship, at the invitation of several black clergy, we must speak up.

Reproductive rights, as embraced by many black women leaders, means "the right to the full range of contraceptive services and appropriate information about reproduction." It means the right to "choose not to have a child or the right to choose to have a child." The bottom line is we believe in the right to reproductive health and to make our own reproductive choices. This is something our parents and grandparents understood because they did not control their own bodies.

The best way to stop the religious right from moving into our pulpits and pushing their agenda to restrict and overturn abortion rights (as well as civil rights) is for women leaders to work more aggressively in defining our values and speaking with conviction on matters involving our own bodies.

For starters, it's time we retell our stories. One of my friends in Oregon recently wrote me a letter in which he recalled growing up in a small town in the days of back-alley doctors and coat hangers. Billy wrote about the women who died and those who were scarred for life. "I never want to see women treated like that again," he said.

Billy is right. No one wants to go back, but unless we tell our stories now, the enemies of choice will continue to "own the story" that is being told to the American people. We can win the battle over words.

We can win the battle for the courts. We can win the heart and soul of the American people on the issue of reproductive freedom. All of this can be accomplished in a manner that will not allow our message to be misinterpreted and construed by anti-choice extremists as further evidence in support of their unwavering position. Let's renew our commitment to fight and, this time, to win for the majority.

Donna Brazile is chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

© 2005 Ms. Magazine