The Supreme Court’s Christmas Present, 2015.

It’s that time of year. Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All Men. (Why not women? Thanks are due in part to Thomas Jefferson. Your Declaration of Independence, holding equality for all men must go down well with the feminine gender!) It will soon be time for gifts. So, I have asked myself, what might the Supreme Court give to the American people? Maybe kicking out for all time the endless objections to Obamacare? Perhaps exercising some common sense to restrain political campaign finance? Presently, any individual or corporation or trade union can give as much as they decide to Political Action Committees.

So far, these gifts are absent. However, those of us opposed to lax gun laws were given a present last week when the Supremes ignored an opportunity to loosen these laws even more by defying members and supporters of the National Riflemen’s Association. The Court declined to review the prohibition by some cities and states on retention in the home of automatic and semi-automatic, high-capacity assault weapons. These are the kind of weapons used in many of the nation’s most deadly mass shootings this year. This decision in Friedman v. Highland Park will be very disappointing for gun rights advocates, especially the NRA, who were unable to persuade most members of the Court to amplify and extend its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment gives the right for an individual to keep any weapon in his or her home.

Two Justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, were unable to persuade their seven colleagues to review the law. Both Justices criticized lower court decisions that have allowed jurisdictions to impose what Thomas called “categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes.” Their argument on ground that the current law “flouts the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence” was firmly rejected.  

Maybe it is time for the Court time to reconsider the Second Amendment as a whole. Let me review its history. The Amendment is merely one sentence: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Constitutional experts debate the bizarre comma placements, trying to parse the various clauses. The debate often gets heated. Only academics would worry about the Amendment’s punctuation, not the practical effect of its current application.

The Amendment resulted from political tumult surrounding the 1787 Constitution, which was agreed in private by a group of mostly wealthy white men who had experienced chaos and mob violence of the Revolution and who feared the consequences of a weak central authority. After the Constitution was rejected, the Framers produced a set of Amendments to shift power into the hands of the states and away from central government.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until the Heller case struck down the law banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had always ruled against the proposition. The answers for the turnaround are not found in law books or theory.

The NRA’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson. Constitutional change is often less the product of public argument than political chicanery. The pro-gun argument may have started with academic logic but the NRA targeted both public opinion and shifted the organs of government by funding many elected politicians from both main Parties. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the new proposition fell on willing ears of the right-wing Justices.

Warren Burger was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court until 1960. He was a Nixon appointee and a conservative. He was opposed to gay rights but supported busing to help reduce the tensions of racial segregation. In 1990, when he had retired from the Bench, Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to gun ownership as “a fraud on the American public.” These words were not said lightly. Burger was mindful that the Amendment had been written nearly 200 years previously when militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion which is totally alien to us today.

Let me be clear. Burger was not saying that guns should be banned. His view was that Americans had no unfettered right to ownership and keeping a gun in the home required regulation. Take the analogy of the motor car, which can be a lethal weapon. Should people have an unfettered right to drive? Of course not. However, if they have a drivers licence and insurance, then they had the right to drive unless and until disqualified for breaking the rules.

There is not a single word in the Amendment about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defence or recreation. The U.S. House of Representatives did not discuss the matter when marking up the Bill of Rights. From 1793, gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule the Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia.

These days, the NRA’s considerable influence at the ballot box and legislation is patent. In 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, President Clinton complained: “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Their financial support of successful candidates had won the day. Only last year, the NRA supported and encouraged successful filibusters of the modest US Senate proposal to tighten background-checks, despite massive public support for the measure.

Even if the current Court will not follow the opinion of Justice Burger, there is still hope that the new Supremes who will be appointed by the next President may swing the balance on the Court and give common sense interpretations of the Second Amendment. Yes, I’m tilting at windmills. Should such a case come before the Court, the arguments by the gun lobby will no doubt be backed up by threats to any legislator who opposes the status quo that he or she will lose their seat at the next election. However, the gun lobby enjoys freedom of speech, not freedom to threaten. As it is Christmas, I can dream.

PS. This is probably my final blog for 2015. I wish all my readers the Compliments of the Season and a Happy New Year.

Donald J. Trump: Bad for all Times and Ages.

This week, I intended to write about the appalling mass murders in San Bernardino and the anticipated reaction of the Supreme Court to gun control. However, I have been distracted by the latest verbal sideshow of Donald Trump. I have to accept I got him wrong. I thought he was just a buffoon, a supernova who would implode and soon leave the political scene. Instead, he remains the Republican front-runner in the race for the nomination for President. He is polling far better than his seventeen rivals, maybe because there are so many of them.

Donald is a brash New Yorker. He knows how to put on a show. And he spouts the kind of political trash that Republican audiences in Beaumont, Texas, and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, like. Never mind that few of us had even heard of these places and that his audiences numbered little over 500. He speaks outrageously to harvest publicity. Since subtlety is wasted on Trump, he fails to distinguish between a limited number of jihadists whose creed is death from those who comprise mainstream Islam. His demagoguery and messages – all Mexicans are killers and rapists, build a wall to keep out Mexican illegals, ban all Muslims from entry to USA – seem to play well to certain right-wing Americans. And so, Trump’s ego, already the size of Alaska, will only get bigger as his statements get wilder.

However, Trump can point to precedent. At least three Democratic Presidents have had their administrations behave and legislate to support insular, discriminative and reactionary tendencies. Fear of radical leftism, Communism and people who just look different, has in the past promoted policies which we in Western Europe could regard as anathema.

Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, anarchist and left-wing social agitation aggravated national, social, and political tensions in the United States. When the Industrial Workers of the World backed several labor strikes in 1916 and 1917, the press portrayed the Union’s actions as "radical threats to American society inspired by left-wing, foreign agent provocateurs." In April, 1919, a leftist plot was discovered when 36 bombs were mailed to prominent members of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller.

Two months later, eight bombs exploded in eight American cities. One of the targets was the DC home of US Attorney General Palmer who, at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson, ordered the Justice Department to raid numerous homes and offices. Before the bombings, Wilson had pressurized Congress to pass the anti-immigrant, anti-anarchist Sedition Act, 1918, purportedly to protect the populace by deporting putatively undesirable political people.

At the end of WWII, the US was enmeshed in the Cold War and feared the spread of Communism. Congressional committees focused on both national and foreign communists who were thought to be influencing society and infiltrating the federal government. The House Un-American Activities Committee, HUAC, was prominent in the fight. Richard Nixon started to build his national political reputation as a member of HUAC, having Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, both NKD spies, testifying that Soviet spies and communist sympathizers had penetrated the U.S. government before, during and after the war. Other U.S. citizens confessed, some with pride, to their acts of espionage in situations where the statute of limitations on prosecuting them had run out.

In March 1947, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the "Federal Employees Loyalty Program." Political-loyalty review boards determined the "Americanism" of Federal Government employees, and recommended termination of those who had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union, as well as some suspected of being "Un-American.” With such a mandate, witch hunts were inevitable.

The anti-communist process launched the successful political careers of Robert F. Kennedy and Joseph McCarthy. There was a minor level of Soviet infiltration of the United States government at low levels. However, HUAC damaged many careers of Hollywood writers and actors for nothing. More seriously, it wrecked the careers of numerous academics who had communist sympathies in the 1920s and 1930s but whose activities since then had been patriotic. As for McCarthy, he became discredited and died in disgrace in 1957. McCarthy made no significant inroads against communists. Like Trump, he was a blow-hard.

If Trump seeks another precedent for his pronunciations, he need look no further than President Franklin Roosevelt. Within days of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration interned all Japanese-Americans who lived on the west coast, mainly in the San Francisco area. Families were separated and shipped to states like Montana and Wisconsin to see out the war. The fact that these people were American citizens who lost their properties, businesses and freedom, and had done nothing to support the Japanese war effort, was seen as irrelevant. Two days after Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on America. Germany was allied with Italy. The Roosevelt administration did not intern or take any action against German-Americans or Italian-Americans.

Trump’s outburst against Muslims, like all his other fatuous statements, is intended to gain votes. He says he wants Americans to protect what they have and seek protection from adverse outside influences, not to mention foreigners. No wonder Trump is preaching to the converted. He can speak to the working class, the blue collar types who fear job competition and to the self-righteous, many of whom may feel Trump is talking sense. However, there are vast numbers of Americans who are disgusted by Trump’s small-minded, discriminatory, racist and Islamophobic remarks.

What infuriates me is that Trump wants to deny entry to all Muslims as potential murderers, yet he embraces gun ownership and all National Rifleman’s Association policies. His outspoken support for guns after the Paris shootings demonstrates a lack of understanding that those who live in the West - America apart - loathe gun culture and see gun ownership as counter-productive. Trump is content to accept mass killings almost daily on the streets of American cities. Talk about double standards. Recently, President Obama summed up the facts. In the past decade, 24 Americans have lost their lives to terrorist activities. In the same period, more than 280,000 Americans have died from guns.

One wonders what populist cause Trump will embrace next in order to hog headlines and ensure he remains in the news.

2016 presidential election is anyone's guess

American politics provides a rich vein of language during election time, often with sports references. Horse racing and boxing are the most popular. Expressions like “Who’s ahead?” “Who’s fallen in the race?” and “Did he deliver a knock-out blow?” proliferate.

However, one of my favorite pieces of political jargon is “the October Surprise,” an event unrelated to sport. It is deliberately created or timed or occurring on its own to influence the outcome of an election, especially the U.S. presidency. Events that take place in October have real potential to influence the decisions of undecided voters because voting day is so close.

The term came into use after the 1972 presidential election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. The United States was in the fourth year of negotiations to end the divisive Vietnam War. On October 26, 1972, twelve days before the election, Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, announced at a White House press conference, "We believe that peace is at hand." Nixon had promised to end the unpopular war during his presidential election campaign four years earlier. With Kissinger's "peace is at hand" declaration, Nixon's already high standing with the electorate increased.

Since the 1972 election, the term "October Surprise" has often been used preemptively during campaign season by partisans of one side to discredit late-campaign news from the other side. In the 1980 election, Reagan was relieved to avoid the October Surprise when American hostages taken in the Teheran Embassy siege were not released until after he was sworn in. Had Carter secured their release days before the election, such a “Surprise” might have altered the outcome.

I am wondering whether a “Surprise” might happen during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the moment, Mrs. Clinton looks assured of the nomination from the Democratic Party. Her closest rival, Bernie Sanders, may be polling well in the liberal north east but nowhere else. Although Hillary may get into hot water by giving the impression that she is entitled to the nomination, at the moment she has no serious Democratic Party rival. Whether she can turn the nomination into a win next November is a different matter.

In comparison, the Republicans still have an array of around 18 contenders for the presidency. None of them has separated himself or herself yet from the pack. Despite massive media attention, Donald Trump has no significant lead. Since many of the 18 have been campaigning for up to a year and not one of them has received the acclaim of the majority of Republican voters, the primary season offers prospects of Republican blood sport. I suspect that after the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, several hopefuls will leave the arena fatally wounded. Campaigning in the primaries is very expensive and money is like a magnet, attracted to winners, not losers.

Let us assume that, after Super Tuesday, there are still four or five Republican contenders in the race. Might this not be of serious interest to a well-known outsider in the Party, perhaps a Mitt Romney type, who might be tempted to offer himself or herself to Republican voters as a better candidate than political novices like Trump and Carson and political extremists like Rubio? Could there possibly be a March Surprise in the forthcoming election?

If the Democrats win in 2016, it gives them another four years in charge of the executive branch with a good chance of a further four years from 2020. White House incumbents usually have an in-built advantage in presidential races. Take into consideration that Americans are fed up with members of Congress and blame the Republicans more than the Democrats for legislative grid-lock and government shut-down, Republican leaders must be worried about serious inroads in next year’s elections from both their political opponents and the extreme right wing of their own Party.

If you add the possibility of military success in Syria/Iran with the routing of ISIL, an accord with Russia that helps reduce military tensions, deals with China and Europe which improve the American economy, etc, the Obama administration could leave office with the USA in good order and condition and significantly more popular than now. Voters might feel their lives would be in better and safer hands by voting the Democratic ticket in both the White House and Congressional elections.

Who knows? Maybe next November we might see the biggest Surprise of all.