“If the lesser party
dissenting…still persist in dissenting, then doe the major part judicially
admonish them, who being thus under censure, their voice is now extinct, and
made voide. And so the rest proceed to vote.”
Puritan voting doctrine, ca. 1630s.
Puritan voting doctrine, ca. 1630s.
If you’re a glutton for punishment, and you live in Montana,
you’ve probably been following the doings of the A.L.E.C. sponsored NASCAR race
otherwise known as the Montana Legislature[i]. And if you want a refresher course on exactly
what flavor of religious control freak our founders framed a constitution
around to limit the damage that religious control freaks always inflict on
societies, John Barry’s latest book, “Roger Williams and the Creation of the
American Soul” is a good read for you.
That’s because the Montana Republican Party has devolved
into a marriage of convenience between the John Birch Society[ii]
and the Montana Constitution Party, both of whom trace their pseudo-legal
“patriot” tenets back to the Mayflower Compact, which they insist was “holy
writ”. They further insist that since the pilgrims' witch-hunting brand of “democracy” has been in America since its beginnings, they are
entitled to beat you over your believing or non-believing head with their god's brand of witch-hunting.
I’m talking about voter repression, but lest we lose sight
of the Big Picture, let’s step back for a minute and ask ourselves incredulously…What??!!
The Republican Party? Hijacked by archaic jokes like John Birch Society and
that “sovereign-citizen” outfit founded by a man who was involved in a bizarre
conspiracy to kill county officials in Kalispell[iii]?!
How in Pilgrims’ Hell can that be?!?!
How indeed. But before I get back to witch hunts, if you
don’t believe me about the Montana Republican Party, read their platform[iv] and
while you’re doing that, consider its context. The “patriot” tenets within that
document were promoted by such domestic terrorist outfits as the Montana
Freemen, Posse Comitatus, David Burgert[v],
Militia of Montana (M.O.M.) Cal Greenup and gang, and a fistful of other groups
and individuals who were deemed so extreme even ten years ago that no
mainstream party would have dared touch their tenets with an eleven-foot pole,
let alone enshrine them in a platform. Now let’s take a look at what’s in there:
·
County Supremacy? It’s in there.
·
Jury nullification? It’s in there.
·
Sheriff’s First/ Oathkeeper dogma? It’s in there.
·
Fear-based science-bashing such as creationism
and global-warming-denial? It’s in there.
·
Paranoid anti-U.N./Agenda 21 conspiracy
theories? It’s in there.
·
Even something as whacky and arcane as a bill which would censure the Montana University
Board of Regents for not allowing students to carry guns to class??!! You
guessed it. It’s right in there, in black and white, in the Montana Republican
Party Platform.
In other words, ALL Montana Republicans, in the legislature
at least, run on an extremist platform that Timothy McVeigh could have run on
and, given that M.O.M. has a sitting senator in the current session[vi], maybe
could have won. What a difference a corporate-funded tea party can make, eh?
This isn’t a book review, but to restate, John Barry’s excellent
and detailed account of 17th century religious bigotry in the
English Colonies is important when we consider the wreckage that is the modern Republican Party. To them, Cotton Mather was
one of our “founders” and they’re exactly correct when they thump their chests
while claiming that their Old-Testament God has been here since the Mayflower.
They simply fall overboard when they further insist that since this is so then case
closed, mind dismissed. It’s true. The Intolerable witch-burning God has been
present since the founding of the original colonies. But, as Barry describes
and American history screams, so has His opposition.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a personal stake
in this argument of whose god is bigger. My grandma always told us that our
ancestors came over on “the second ship after the Mayflower”, and I’ve tried to
trace that family story back to its source ever since. But as all of us
grownups (“progressives” in the vernacular) know by now, American history, as
written by Americans, is replete with omissions, including the fact that the Mayflower was only one ship of many crossing and
recrossing the Atlantic during that period for a wide variety of reasons, a
relatively minor one of which was the transportation of Puritans to a
less-and-less spanking-new World.
Maybe my grandma's quip was just a time-worn folksy saying by the time I heard it. Be that as it may, by 1640 the Halseys were indeed in New
England being “Pilgrims”, and that same year the family patriarch, Thomas
Halsey, sailed down from Connecticut to Long Island, then “owned” by the Dutch.
There his small party bought some land from the Shinnecock tribe (who actually
did own the land) and helped found Southhampton, the first permanent English
settlement in what we newcomers now call New York.
It so happened that a lot of other “pilgrims” were heading
south or west about the same time, including Roger Williams, who bought land
from the Narragansett tribe, effectively founding Rhode Island. Many were simply
seeking out new lands for their expanding populations. But many, like Williams,
were escaping the extreme religious intolerances of the original Plymouth,
Salem and Massachusetts Bay plantations[vii].
In other words, it seemed that the Puritians’ core intent in founding their American
“city on the hill” after being mercilessly persecuted in England was to
transform themselves into merciless persecutors on their own terms, which terms
they deemed divinely-ordained. This they frankly stated again and again over the decades of settlement in the 17th
century and again and again through the ages and up to our present tea-soaked time.
Now that we’ve fairly and “judicially” eviscerated the Republican
Party platform to resemble the marginally-edible dogfood pulp that it is, let’s
look at that Puritan quote from the top one more time.
“If the lesser party
dissenting…still persist in dissenting, then doe the major part judicially admonish
them, who being thus under censure, their voice is now extinct, and made voide.
And so the rest proceed to vote.”
Sound familiar? If you’re following the Montana Legislature
and the plethora of anti-voters’ bills sponsored by A.L.E.C. lap dogs with
short choke collars (Republican ALL), who in turn cloak the venal obfuscation
of their handlers with tax-wasting witch-hunting expeditions, it should. Voter-nullification
that would do Cotton Mather and Jim Crow proud? It’s in there.
As for myself, I have no way of knowing whether my ancestors
were merely looking for land when they settled Long Island or, like Roger
Williams and many others, were part of the migration away from the mirror-image
of the bigotry and brutality they had left England to escape. But as Montana poet
Dick Hugo used to say, “You owe the facts nothing. You owe the Truth
everything”. So, since I’m related in word (my grandma’s), deed (westering
hippy) and seed, now that I’ve read Barry’s book, I’ve decided that my
ancestors were indeed fleeing the Fundamentalist Diplidons[viii]
whom my ancestors would be damned if they were going to let jack them around
with their snake-oil magic. Furthermore, the democratic test tube we call the
Constitution borrowed as much from the Iroquois Confederation as it did from
the European Age of Enlightenment. Therefore, We the People (“progressives” in the modern
vernacular) have been here since before the God some of our intolerant and intolerable citizens ardently believe they're pledging allegiance to. That’s my story from now on,
and I’m sticking to it.
Excerpt from the Montana
Republican Party Platform:
“The Montana
Republican Party supports efforts to return control and authority to local
units, as the government closest and most responsive to the people.”
“We recognize the
destructive and insidious nature of the United Nations Agenda 21 and hereby
expose to the public and public policy makers the dangerous intent of the
Agenda 21 plan.”
“We encourage the
State of Montana and its political subdivisions to engage in the coordination
process with all federal government agencies that adopt policies.”
“Although the
Montana Constitution gives the Board of Regents “full power” to “supervise,
coordinate, manage and control the Montana university system,” it does not give
the Board of any authority to amend, alter, or abolish the Montana
Constitution, nor does it give the University System the authority to deny
citizens of Montana the rights they have reserved to themselves from government
interference in the Montana Constitution, including the right to keep and bear
arms.”
“We affirm our
belief in traditional family values and support the preservation of innocent
human life at every stage of life beginning at conception through natural
death.”
“We support the
right of parents to choose the way their children are educated through public,
private, church, charter, virtual and home schooling or any combination of
those, and through funding which more readily follows the student.”
“Parents shall be
allowed to reasonably discipline their children, without legal consequences.”
“We support
requiring judges to fully inform jurors of their constitutional rights and
responsibilities.”
“We support the
repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as
ObamaCare.”
“We hold…that the
States not only have the right, but also the duty to nullify unconstitutional
laws in order to protect their citizens.”
“We call upon our
Congressional Delegation to urge strong states’ rights policies governing the
use of public lands and resources in the West.”
“We oppose any
extension of federal or regional bureaucratic control over water originating in
Montana and consider any such action an infringement on states' rights.”
“The Sherriff is
the chief law enforcement officer of the county. We support the requirement
that a federal officer may not arrest, search or seize in Montana without the
advanced, written permission of the elected county sheriff.”
“We oppose the
federal government yielding to any international pressure to oppose any
regulation on domestic energy production or consumption. We oppose any
classification of CO2 or other greenhouse gasses as dangerous gasses or
pollutants.”
“We oppose the
federal government and any foreign or international entity, such as the United
Nations, exercising authority over domestic land use decisions.”
[ii] Co-founded
by A.L.E.C. founders’ “libertarian” father, Fred C. Koch
[vi] http://billlacroix.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-01-30T10:05:00-08:00&max-results=7&start=2&by-date=false
[vii] One
of the reasons that the Dutch were more tolerant in the 17th century
Culture Wars was their nature. They were simply much less concerned about the
pilgrims’ infatuation with ghosts and witches and much more infatuated with
America’s other emerging god—money. In fact, by the 1640s they were very active
enshrining their deity of choice behind the walls of New Amsterdam along the
base of which actual wall sprang the avenue ever-after known as Wall Street.
[viii]
An
extinct human species that, like zombies, can never die.
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