Column No. 44 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 18, 2005
This column is the fifth in this series. In my view, the projected cataclysm will come to our nation, if it does, because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR). As stated at different times and in different arenas by sources ranging the 2004 Republican Party Platform through George Bush to Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist, their primary goals are to: impose their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reduce the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum outside of the military-industrial, prison-industrial, and private-thought/behavior-control sectors; and replace Constitutional government as we have known it with Executive Branch dominance operating entirely on its own authority.
Except in appealing to their base in the Christian Right, the RRR does its best to conceal most of its true goals from the American public, however. In this “Inaugural Address,” a newly elected President, using only the words of real leaders of the movement, is very open about them. If the philosophy reflected by these words does fully take hold of our government, then that Second Civil War is truly in the offing.
As many readers of The Political Junkies know, in 1996, under the pseudonym “Jonathan Westminster,” I published a book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022. In it, I postulated that the Presidential election of 2000 would be won by a not-too-bright Republican totally beholden to the Christian Right, and that the election of 2004 would be won by a younger brighter candidate of a new political entity called the Republic Christian Alliance.
The new (future-fictional) President was named Jefferson Davis (J.D.) Hague. He was a great-grand nephew of the pre‑World War II Mayor of Jersey City, NJ, Frank Hague, a man who once said: "You hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!' You never hear a real American talk like that.” J.D.'s father, "Big Daddy Hague," was a truck driver who sported the old Confederate States of America flag on the radiator of his 22-wheeler's tractor, and carried a loaded sawed‑off double‑barreled shotgun underneath the passenger seat. It was there, Big Daddy would confide in friends, "to protect myself from the niggers." His choice of name for his second‑born son came as no surprise to his friends, especially since his first‑born son "Nat" had been named after the Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest. This man's principal claim to fame was that a year after the end of the First Civil War he had founded the virulently anti‑black terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan.
As one of Hague’s principal staffers, Constance “Connie” Conroy noted at the time, the speech-writers had had a hard time coming up with anything original for Hague to say. They needed, she wrote, “a new way to say the same old thing he had been saying over and over in the campaign. And so what did we do? We went back to some tried and true stuff from our ‘Patron Saints:’ Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, the Newt Man. Just took some of their best stuff, threw it together, nobody was the wiser, especially the Prez, and presto! The best speech money couldn't begin to buy.”
And so you have here the “Hague First Inaugural,” made up entirely from excerpts of pre-1996 writings of the gang listed above. The name of each writer follows the section each “contributed” (references available upon request). It is offered here as a preview of the Bush Second Inaugural to be delivered on Jan. 20, 2005. It will be interesting to note the similarities and differences between the Bush Second and the Hague First, especially given the fact, as Karl Rove has told us more than once, that Bush was the candidate of a true-in-everything-but-name Republican-Christian Alliance.
The First Inaugural Address of President Jefferson Davis Hague, delivered in the National Cathedral on the newly designated Inauguration Day, December 25, 2004[1]
[1] Note: There is no indication or evidence that any of the historical figures quoted in the Hague First Inaugural Address or elsewhere in this chapter, among whom are Patrick Buchanan, M.G. Robertson, Paul Weyrich, Keith Fournier, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, and Newton Gingrich, would have supported or associated themselves in any way with any of the actual positions or actions that Jefferson Davis Hague or any members of his government or political parties took, at that time or in the future.
Mr. President, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Speaker, my fellow Americans under God. I stand here before you today, on the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all humility awaiting my time to do His bidding. And I can tell you that his bidding now is to fight the good fight, for the Lord, and for you the American people under God.
For there is a religious war going on in this country. And we, the Americans of God, must win it. We must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country [Buchanan]. To do this, we must return to our Christian roots. If we do not, we will continue to legalize sodomy, slaughter innocent babies, destroy the minds of our children, squander our resources, and yes, sink into oblivion [Robertson].
We are in an eternal battle. The battle is between right and wrong, between truth and lies, between life and death. And if we ever forget what it is about, if we think we are in a battle for electing people to hold office, simply controlling political parties, then we will not accomplish what we are to achieve. We need to hold to our principles, and stick to them regardless.
The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset, which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society. The fight that we are fighting, the battle we have joined, is one that encompasses our entire life span. Remember, you have God. You have your families; you have your community, your church community, your neighborhood, and all the things you are concerned about. They have only power. That's all that matters to them. They will fight with everything that's in them to keep that power [Weyrich].
Today we face what I believe is an even greater threat to our lives. The enemy is more insidious, more chameleon‑like than a Hitler. And this enemy is even more deadly. The enemy is lethal and must be stopped [Fournier]. So far from having ended, the cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. Now that the other 'Cold War' is over, the real cold war has begun [Kristol, quoted in Starr].
Yes, we are engaged in a social, political, and cultural civil war. There is a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But you can't have a society whose highest value is merely live and let live. The bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. Somebody is going to win this civil war. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe about things like life and death, love and sex, and freedom and slavery.
As I have traveled the length and breadth of this great God‑given land of ours, I have often run into skeptics. They say, "Well, J.D., if there is a civil war going on, where are the two sides?" And my explanation is that on one side there are men and women like Americans under God. People who believe that God is. And believing that God is, they are required, they are obligated to take the positions they take on a whole host of issues. And on the other side of this great conflict there are people at very significant positions in our culture who begin their thinking with the belief that God isn't. They are our enemy [Bauer].
Yes, it is time to take America back, from the liberal politicians who are attempting to erase every evidence of God from public life, from government officials who hide their radical, anti‑Christian bigotry behind a twisted view of "the separation of church and state," from gay and lesbian radicals who not only claim the right to lead their Godless lifestyle, but demand that we support this abominable behavior, from the radical feminists whose "right to choose" has caused the murder of millions of innocent unborn little babies, from the militant left which is the fount of all evil—take her back from every group or individual that refuses to recognize our beloved nation for what it truly is—a nation under God! [Falwell]
We are the only society in history that says that power comes from God to you . . . and if you don't tell the truth about the role of God and the centrality of God in America, you can't explain the rest of our civilization. I look forward to the day when a belief in God is once more at the center of the definition of being an American [Gingrich, 1].
As to the future, if you think about the notion that the great challenge of our lifetime is first to imagine a future that is worth spending our lives getting to, and then, because of the technologies and the capabilities we have today, to get it up to sort of a virtual state, although that's done in terms of actual levels of sophistication, all that's done in your mind.
And that takes leadership. Most studies of leadership argue that leaders actually are acting out past decisions. The problem when you get certainty with great leaders is that they have already thoroughly envisioned the achievement, and now it is just a matter of implementation. And so it is very different. And so in a sense, virtuality at the mental level is something I think you find in leadership over historical periods. But in addition, we are not in a new place; it is just becoming harder and harder to avoid the place where we are [Gingrich, 2].
In fighting this fight to avoid this place, we face an increasingly militant, radical, socialist left. And this is how we are going to win the war against this left. We will use the same strategy General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific in World War II: by‑pass their strong‑holds, then surround them, isolate them, bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand‑to‑hand combat. The battle for Iwo Jima [Author's Note: the penultimate major battle of the Pacific War in 1945] was not pleasant, but our troops won it. The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant either, but we will win it [Robertson].
Yes, with your help and God's blessing we will win it. Thank you and good night.