More is at risk than abortion and gay marriage California must protect itself from the rise of "A Handmaid's Tale" theonomist judiciary

Theonomists use Biblical moral pronouncements as the standard by which the laws of governments may be measured.

Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition is a popular meme which, if you click the link, is supported by videos viewed by millions, graphic images, and even T-shirts. It has not been used in reference to the Supreme Court. Yet.

Contrary to everything I understand about religion vis-à-vis the Judicial Branch within the Union is reflected in this from Wikipedia:

   Of the 113 justices who have been appointed to the court, 91 have been from various Protestant denominations, 12 have been Catholics (one other justice, Sherman Minton, converted to Catholicism after leaving the Court). Another, Neil Gorsuch, was raised in the Catholic Church but later attended an Episcopal church, though without specifying the denomination to which he felt he belonged.
    At the beginning of 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens was the sole remaining Protestant on the Court In April 2010, Justice Stevens announced his retirement, effective as of the Court's 2010 summer recess. Upon Justice Stevens' retirement, which formally began on June 28, 2010, the Court lacked a Protestant member, marking the first time in its history that it was exclusively composed of Jewish and Catholic justices. Although in January 2017, after seven years with no Protestant justices serving or nominated, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Court, as noted above it is unclear whether Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian.
    This development led to some comment. Law school professor Jeffrey Rosen wrote that "it's a fascinating truth that we've allowed religion to drop out of consideration on the Supreme Court, and right now, we have a Supreme Court that religiously at least, by no means looks like America".

That "we have a Supreme Court that religiously at least, by no means looks like America" is a bit of an understatement. Consider this chart:

While generally courts are expected to administer the law as written, or at least as the judge reads it, the Supreme Court applies standards to laws to decide if they violate statements such as "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

Some of us think that which religion one was raised in can influence what one believes is right and wrong. Some of us think that one's values are influenced by grade school and high school experiences. Some of us think that adults make judgements based upon their associations with their college professors and fellow university students, as much as they do based on which books they read.

So, yes, it is troubling not only for law school professor Jeffrey Rosen but of many Americans that five of the eight current Supreme Court Justices were raised Roman Catholic while the other three were raised in Judaism. It is also troubling that four of the eight (half) attended parochial schools. It is also troubling that not one attended a state institution of higher learning at any time in their college education.

Even if one ignores the fact that only three of the Justices are women, or only one is Hispanic and only one is black while seven are white, one could comfortably state that we have a Supreme Court that by no means looks like America in terms of formation of values and intellect.

Note that the caption under the picture at the top of this post states "Theonomists use Biblical moral pronouncements as the standard by which the laws of governments may be measured." It's surprisingly easy for many older persons to dismiss this theonomist concern about the Court when discussed only in the context of abortion or gay marriage. But it isn't quite as easy to dismiss it when considering Justice Neil Gorsuch's reasoned doctoral thesis that asserts that assisted suicide for the terminally ill is homicide - no mitigations are allowed:

What if within the next decade the Constitutionality of state laws allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients is resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court? Here are excerpts from The Right to Receive Assistance in Suicide and Euthanasia, with Particular Reference to the Law of the United States written in 2004 by Trump-appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, when he was a candidate for a DPhil degree in law (legal philosophy), University College, Oxford, supervised by the natural law philosopher John Finnis :
    I consider legal doctrine surrounding autonomy and personal privacy, and conclude that it is likely too weak a foundation on which to build a judicially created right to assisted suicide (Chapter V).
    I submit that there is a secular moral theory which, to date, has been largely neglected in contemporary American debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia. This theory rests on the notion that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.
    After considering arguments from history, fairness, autonomy doctrine and theory, and utilitarianism, I suggested that courts and legislators may wish to consider a less frequently voiced perspective on the assisted suicide and euthanasia question, one grounded in the recognition of human life as a fundamental good. Under this view, private intentional acts of homicide are always wrong. Recognizing human life as intrinsically, not instrumentally, valuable, I submitted, would rule out assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Take a hard look at that list of Justices above.

One of the three names most mentioned by the "Trump people" to replace Kennedy is Amy Coney Barrett. Raised a Catholic, she graduated from St. Mary's Dominican High School in New Orleans. She received her BA from Rhodes College (formerly known as Southwestern Presbyterian University after being founded as the Masonic University of Tennessee), a private college located in Memphis, Tennessee. She then went to the Catholic Notre Dame Law School, where she taught full time as a Professor of Law from 2002 until 2017. She continues to teach part-time since since November 2, 2017, when she received Senate confirmation after President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

She has seven children: five biological children and two children adopted from Haiti.

She is an active member of a particularly conservative Catholic religious group called People of Praise described as follows in Wikipedia:

    People of Praise was formed in 1971 by Kevin Ranaghan and Paul DeCelles. Both men were involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, in which Pentecostal religious experiences such as baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophecy were practiced by Catholics. In its early history, it influenced the institutional development of the Catholic Charismatic movement in the United States and played important roles in national charismatic conferences.

    People of Praise practices a controversial form of spiritual direction that involves supervision of a member by a more spiritually mature person called a "head". People of Praise maintains that members retain their freedom of conscience under such direction. The community excludes women from the highest leadership positions and teaches that men are the spiritual leaders of their families. At the same time, it encourages women to pursue higher education and employment. Former People of Praise member and Catholic critic Adrian Reimers has accused People of Praise of being too ecumenical and of compromising Catholic teaching by embracing Protestant ecclesiology.
    It is not a church or denomination, and membership is open to any baptized Christian who affirms the Nicene Creed and agrees to the community's covenant. The majority of its members are Catholics, but Protestants can also join. It has 21 branches in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean, with approximately 3,000 members including children. It founded a group of non-denominational Christian schools, Trinity Schools.

During Barrett's Circuit Judge confirmation hearing, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Barrett about whether her Catholic faith would influence her decision-making on the court. Feinstein, concerned about whether Barrett would uphold Roe v. Wade given her Catholic beliefs, stated "the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern". The line of questioning became a point of outrage from many of her defenders, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

The subject of Feinstein and other Democrats' concern was a 1998 article by Barrett where she argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases because of their moral objections to the death penalty. Feinstein's line of questioning was criticized by some observers and legal experts while defended by others.

During her hearing, Barrett said: "It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law." That might seem comforting to some, but as reported her academic writing is far less comforting to those who support Roe and Obergefell:

     "There is little reason to think that reversals [of past decisions] would do much damage" to the court's reputation, she wrote. "I tend to agree with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution" rather than to a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it.

People learn not only from the upbringing and education, but as young adults from who they work for. Barrett worked a year as clerk to late Justice Antonin Scalia. Over the years Scalia repeatedly called upon his colleagues to strike down Roe v. Wade. In Obergefell v. Hodges in which the 5-4 majority decision written by Justice Kennedy struck down laws prohibiting gay marriage, in his dissenting opinion Scalia noted there were no evangelical Christians on the Court (he also literally dismissed California which we'll explore later):

    Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single South-westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.

Unlike her male counterparts, Barrett admits she is occasionally conflicted about her role as a judge relative to her religion. In a 1998 article Barrett argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases because of their moral objections to the death penalty. Presumably she does not want the murderer to die. And presumably she would be conflicted about physician assisted suicide, but whether she would recuse herself if that subject reached a court she was on is doubtful.

It is worth noting the other blunt, though perhaps heartfult, dissents in the Obergefell case.

Chief Justice Roberts noted: "Today’s decision...creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority—actually spelled out in the Constitution." He goes further stating: "The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. ...The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses." He does not elaborate on what he means by "exercise" religion in the context of its impact on others.

Justice Samuel Alito expressed concern that the majority's opinion would be used to attack the beliefs of those who disagree with same-sex marriage, who "will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools", leading to "bitter and lasting wounds" and defending the rationale of the states, accepting the premise that same-sex marriage bans serve to promote procreation and the optimal child rearing environment.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote: "Aside from undermining the political processes that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect." He extensively explored the history of religion in from the time of the colonies noting that "in our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well" concluding that "today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.'

Thomas is unrestrained as he offers his key opinion about the primacy of his Catholic upbringing over other individual right issues such as the Constitutionality of state laws banning gay marriage:

    The majority appears unmoved by that inevitability. It makes only a weak gesture toward religious liberty in a single paragraph.... And even that gesture indicates a misunderstanding of religious liberty in our Nation’s tradition. Religious liberty is about more than just the protection for “religious organizations and persons . . . as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” ... Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

"Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice." What that literally says is that if a Christian majority in a community voted to start ducking witches (those that practice the Wicca religion), Thomas apparently would struggle with legally condemning the practice as he abhors civil restraints placed on religious practice. And he makes it clear that he thinks America's religious history deserves a place in the law as in his opinion he notes: "Many of the earliest immigrants to America came seeking freedom to practice their religion without restraint. ... When they arrived, they created their own havens for religious practice. ... Many of these havens were initially homogeneous communities with established religions."

Roberts, Alito, and Thomas are three of the four "conservatives" on the Court. Gorsuch, whose words about physician assisted suicide are quoted above, was not on the Court at the time of the Obergefell case.

The Threat of Christian Theonomist Rule

In the map below, the dark grey states are those that adopted certain theonomist laws in the years between 2011-2016, the years leading up to the 2016 elections in which the Republicans won the majority of U.S. House of Representatives, the majority of the U.S. Senate, and the office of  U.S. President, which will lead to a solid Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court:

The issue these maps present isn't whether anyone has the right to believe in words in the Bible or rules of personal behavior pronounced by men based on those words. Rather it is what determines the proper role of a state in regulating the personal lives of its people, most particularly when large numbers of people disagree.

In those dark grey states if the adoption of Islamic Sharia law was proposed, those that backed the adoption of certain theonomist laws in the years between 2011-2016 would threaten revolution. In their minds they see no comparison between implementing laws restricting abortion and Sharia law.

As explained by Canadian professor of comparative religion who from 1964–1973 was director of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions Wilfred Cantwell Smith in his Islam in Modern History: "What theology is for the Christian, law is for the Muslim." The problem is within these United States despite the assurances of separation of church and state, controversial biblical pronouncements have a way of becoming law. Thus when I saw the original of the greyed map, I realized that Smith's statement in 21st Century America would be: "What should be Christian theology has become judicially imposed law within these United States."

My understanding is that the belief structure of the majority of the populous in those ten states resulted in the actions of two houses of each state's legislature and the governor of each state putting into law those restrictions.

For me the best understanding that belief structure can be found in the Kansans for Life: Issues web page (Kansans for Life is the largest anti-abortion group in the state) telling their followers (emphasis added) "Our society now recognizes that past discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity and social status was deeply unjust."

That web page also indicates their immediate political agenda:

    Pro-lifers oppose abortion because it takes the life of a human being before he or she is born....
    We oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide....
    We oppose embryonic stem cell research.... Human embryos are human beings.... And all human beings, regardless of appearance or location (e.g., a petri dish), ought to be treated with respect and not as mere raw material to use for the hypothetical benefit of others.

Notice that their newly discovered unjust discrimination basis does not include "religion" which you might want to argue isn't an indicator of anything. Except you might notice the picture at the top of that issues web page:

And then you might move your cursor over to the "Resources" link at the top of the page and discover this:

Now one might accuse me of making an unfair judgement about people wishing to impose their religious beliefs on others and considering them dangerous to Californians. But I would call the reader's attention to this 2012 article The Koch Brothers and Kansans for Life: The Alliance That Killed the Kansas Moderate or this Topeka rally for life brings thousands to state Capitol.

The first explains how seeking to eliminate government regulations and taxes on business in just one red state the very successful national Koch brothers Neoliberal network (see the post here Worldwide Ascendancy of Neoliberalism) joined with a strong Christian political movement which seeks to expand and tighten state and federal government regulations on the lives of individuals.

The second indicates the deep involvement of Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and the other Kansas bishops in the Kansans for Life political movement even using students from Catholic grade and high schools. Not that Kansans for Life is a Catholic organization which is clear from this:

Still, many have a problem with the abortion and gay marriage issues being used to demonstrate an insidious encroachment on freedom. Why would I think this is dangerous to Californians?

"California does not count." Justice Antonin Scalia 

I was born in California. I went to elementary school in California. My California high school 1962 graduating class was 393±  students.

It included 28 Japanese-American students (7%) who were born in the Internment Camps where Japanese Americans were relocated - well, American citizens who were as little as 1/16 Japanese heritage and orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" were placed in internment camps.

It included 41 Hispanic students (10%). Many of their parents and/or grandparents were impacted by the so-called Mexican Repatriation:

    The Mexican Repatriation was a mass deportation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from the United States between 1929 and 1936. Estimates of how many were repatriated range from 400,000 to 2,000,000. An estimated sixty percent of those deported were birthright citizens of the United States. Because the forced movement was based on race, and ignored citizenship, the process arguably meets modern legal definitions of ethnic cleansing.

If you add in the two Black classmates (issues: slavery and segregation), the two Chinese classmates (issue: the 1892 - 1940 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only U.S. law ever to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race), and the three Native American classmates (issue: genocide, forced relocation, and removal of children), the governments in the Union (with U.S. Supreme Court approval in some cases) committed heinous acts based on racial bigotry against the parents and/or grandparents of about 20% of my classmates.

Am I paranoid about young black men being murdered by cops, by Hispanic deportation outside the norms of our federal court system, the bluster and potential fallout from "Trade War with China" and the anti-Muslim rhetoric? Or are my concerns valid?

I'm a Californian whose high school graduation in 1962 included a non-mandatory separate invocation event held apart from the graduation ceremony. It was jointly led by a Buddhist Priest, a Jewish Rabbi, a Protestant Minister, and a Catholic Priest. If we were holding such an invocation today it would include others, such as Islamic and an Amah Mutsun Tribal Band representation.

As noted in the chart above and similar to all the current "conservative" Justices, Justice "California-does-not-count" Scalia was raised a Catholic in New York City, attended Xavier High School, a Jesuit (Catholic) military school in Manhattan. He earned his bachelor of arts degree at Georgetown University, also a Jesuit school, and attended  Harvard Law School. Classmate and future New York State official William Stern remembered Scalia in his high school days: "This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old. An archconservative Catholic. He could have been a member of the Curia. He was the top student in the class. He was brilliant, way above everybody else."

Scalia died in February 2016. But that comment "he could have been a member of the Curia" is troubling on many levels as I believe that it reflects a level of truth about the four "Conservative Justices" listed on the chart above who will remain after the retirement of Justice Kennedy.

Am I paranoid to think there is a real threat of Christian theonomist rule through the Court? Or are my concerns valid?

California now finds itself under a Union government based on minority rule, but it is more like Scalia said: "California does not count."

One of the more misleading 2016 election facts is frequently repeated in the press. And now with the resignation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy it is being repeated again. For instance, New York Magazine tells us:

    Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent.
    The House has a massive Republican tilt, requiring Democrats to win the national vote by six or seven points in order to secure a likely majority. The Senate has an even more pronounced tilt, overrepresenting residents of small states, which tend to be white and rural.

Factually the Union (see the post here Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state) has never been a democracy so it shouldn't surprise anyone that:

• Donald Trump won the Presidency by winning the Electoral College even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial margin;
• Republicans won a substantial majority in the House of Representatives even though Democrats received the majority of the popular vote cast for House candidates; and
• U.S. Senators were not even elected until the 20th Century and the Senate was never intended to reflect the will of the voters nationally.

But there is also another set of facts.

• Without counting California votes, Donald Trump won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election.
• Without counting California votes, the Republicans won the popular vote cast in the 2016 House elections.

It is no small irony that Justice Kennedy, a Californian appointed to the Court by President and Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, while on the Supreme Court usually voted far more conservatively than would be accepted in California.

Only about a third of California voters vote Republican. That reflects California's substantive cultural differences with the red states. We need to consider the following maps:

The map above indicates which political party controls the state legislature, with the blue states controlled by Democrats. This map would seem to belie the quote above when it says: "Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections." These United States, after all, is not a country, nation, or state, but a Union of diverse states as explained here in Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state.

But diversity is one thing. This was the map of the Union that immediately preceded Obergefell v. Hodges:

Is there anything about this map that looks similar to the maps above? Considering all of the maps above, would this map surprise anyone:

While I have no problem with these folks trying to alter the behavior of individuals through persuasion (free speech), what they have accomplished within those states is imposing their beliefs about individual behavior on everyone through the law. And what now seems possible is that they could succeed in altering the Wilfred Cantwell Smith phrase "what theology is for the Christian, law is for the Muslim" to "what should be Christian theology has become judicially imposed law within these United States."

Lest you think I'm overstating the situation, consider this. Chief Justice Roberts stated: "Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority—actually spelled out in the Constitution." Justice Thomas wrote: "The First Amendment enshrined protection for the free exercise of religion in the U. S. Constitution."

Those statements are simply a lie. The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The key word there is "Congress." At the time of the adoption of the First Amendment, several states had state "established" religions and had laws the favored one religion over another. Other states had laws protecting religious practices ...well, Christian religious practices.

The difficulty in challenging the belief structure of the Court's majority has its foundation in cat videos. Odds are the people today who in the future might find themselves in the same disadvantaged position others did before Roe or Obergefell likely can tell you about YouTube videos in great detail. They just couldn't provide any hint of understanding regarding the fact that Abrahamic religions are one of the major divisions in comparative religion, along with Indian religions, Iranian religions, East Asian religions, African religions, American religions, Oceanic religions,  and classical Hellenistic religions.

The fact is the majority of Americans upon seeing the man pictured to the left would absolutely assume he is a Muslim. In fact, his "freedom to exercise religion" initially was prohibited by the U.S. Postal Service (see news release).

Despite the fact that turban wearing bearded members of the Sikh faith have been a significant element in the British and Indian armies - by the beginning of World War I Sikhs in the British Indian Army totaled 20 percent of the force and by 1945 fourteen Victoria Crosses were awarded to Sikhs, a per-capita regimental record - the good Christian United States military defending our "free exercise" of religion until 2017 would not permit them to serve wearing the turban and beard offering up all sorts of reasons belied by the obvious British/Indian history. And then consider this news story:

    Sikhism was founded in the 16th century by Guru Nanak in Punjab, an area that is now divided between India and Pakistan. Nanak rejected the rituals involved with other South Asian religions and stressed the importance of good deeds such as serving others and treating all people equally.
    The monotheistic religion has more than 25 million followers worldwide and about 500,000 in the United States. Yet a majority of Americans -- 60% -- admitted in a 2015 survey that they knew nothing at all about Sikhs.
    Lawyer and activist Valarie Kaur says the threat of violence seems to have become mainstreamed.
    Her grandfather settled in California a century ago, and she knows firsthand from her family that discrimination against Sikhs existed long before 2001. But 9/11, she says, was a paradigm shift, a turning point.
    She used to talk about living in the "shadow of 9/11." Then the shadow turned out to be long, and what seemed temporary became permanent.

There are between 500,000 and 700,000 Sikhs in the United States, roughly half of them in California. Of course, the beloved Conservative Catholic Justice Scalia made it clear - California does not count.

I must now digress a bit. Being a Northern Californian I did work with a Sikh I considered a friend who was of my generation. Of course, he was a Californian, so his father was Sikh, his mother of Mexican descent, and he was married to a white woman. He was born and raised in the southern-most part of California where he attended a segregated public school (yes, like the rest of the country California has a past bloated with bigotry) and was a beneficiary of Mendez v. Westminster which is part of Scalia's California does not count.

In 1947 a federal circuit court in California ruled that segregation of school children was unconstitutional—except this case involved the segregation of Mexican American school children years before the U.S. Supreme Court ended racial segregation in U.S. schools with Brown v. Board of Education.

The infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached this historic decision. The Ninth Circuit is generally hated by the right in the United States for its far reaching consistent view that the most important right of all Americans is to be treated equally by other Americans in "the town square."

Historic in its own right, Mendez was critical to the strategic choices and legal analysis used in arguing Brown and in shaping the ideas of a young NAACP attorney, Thurgood Marshall. Moreover, the Mendez case—which originated with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) but benefited from the participation of the NAACP—also symbolized the important crossover between different ethnic and racial groups who came together to argue in favor of desegregation.

But then again, California does not count, so the Mendez case is not taught in Kansas schools so let's return to the subject at hand.

Sikhism is one of the largest organized religions in the world, with 20 million members living in India and 27 million worldwide. But it is not among the Abrahamic religions that claim descent from the practices of the ancient Israelites and the worship of the God of Abraham, the largest of which are (in alphabetical order) Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. These religions have a long history of violence, so much so that the Wikipedia entry has a section headed Violent conflicts with subsection headings Between Abrahamic religions, Between branches of the same Abrahamic religion, and Between Abrahamic religions and non-adherents. This is religion as embraced in American history and law.
 

I may be paranoid, but...

Some may want to accuse me of paranoia and/or, as they did to Diane Feinstein, accuse me of religious bigotry. But I'm an old Californian whose high school graduation included a non-mandatory separate invocation event where a Buddhist priest led part of the ceremony. I'm an old Californian who had a Sikh friend. I am an old Californian who had friends in high school who because of their racial heritage were born in American concentration camps. I am an old Californian who had friends in high school whose American-born parents and grandparents were subjected to the so-called Mexican Repatriation and whose grand-children are now subjected to an out-of-control Trump immigration policy. I'm an old Californian who does not accept what the Union has become in the 21st Century.

Perhaps I'm paranoid, but just maybe I have a reason to fear the rise of "A Handmaid's Tale" theonomist judiciary regardless of which of the possible nominees for replacement of Justice Kennedy is selected. And that is because of the majority of the people living in the states on the map below do not even know that the "Star Spangled Banner" was written by an avid advocate of slavery and has a verse attacking escaped slaves:

Scroll up to compare this map with maps indicating the related facts - not that facts matter. And God forbid in this country, which according to a sitting Supreme Court Justice "enshrined protection for the free exercise of religion," we would have a mandatory 8th Grade course on comparative religions so we know what religion is and that it includes Islam and Zoroastrianism (one of the world's oldest extant monotheistic religions which enters recorded history in the 5th-century BCE and is practiced by about 11,000 people in the United States and many facets of which are incorporated into Christianity and Islam).

Or does the makeup of the Court itself and the map above together tell us which religions were actually enshrined and which are just tolerated. And which American citizens are deserving of legal protections?
 

7/10/2018 Update: Nominee Brett Kavanaugh

Somewhat to my surprise President Trump nominated Bret Kavanaugh to replace Justice Kennedy.

As explained above in the original post, some of us think that which religion one was raised in can influence what one believes is right and wrong, one's values are influenced by grade school and high school experiences, adults make judgements based upon their associations with their college professors and fellow university students, as much as they do based on which books they read.

It is very troubling that Kavanaugh's life as can be seen on the chart above adding to the chart in the original post, reads like five of the eight current Supreme Court Justices who were raised Roman Catholic, four of the eight who attended parochial schools, and eight of eight none of whom attended a state institution of higher learning at any time in their college education.

It isn't comforting that Kavanaugh is a regular lector (reader) at his Washington, D.C. church, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

 
According to The Lector at Mass - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops this carefully constrained role is:

    In the procession to the altar, in the absence of a Deacon, the reader, wearing approved attire [see GIRM, no. 339], may carry the Book of the Gospels, slightly elevated. In that case, the reader walks in front of the Priest but otherwise walks along with the other ministers.
    Upon reaching the altar, the reader makes a profound bow with the others [see also GIRM, no. 274]. If he is carrying the Book of the Gospels, he approaches the altar and places the Book of the Gospels upon it. Then the reader takes his own place in the sanctuary with the other ministers. (GIRM, nos. 194-195)
    The reader reads from the ambo the readings that precede the Gospel. In the absence of a psalmist, the reader may also proclaim the Responsorial Psalm after the First Reading.
    In the absence of a Deacon, the reader, after the introduction by the Priest, may announce the intentions of the Universal Prayer from the ambo.
    If there is no singing at the Entrance or at Communion and the antiphons given in the Missal are not recited by the faithful, the reader may read them at an appropriate time (cf. nos. 48, 87). (GIRM, nos. 196-198)
    At the conclusion of the Mass, the lector does not process with the Book of the Gospels. The Lectionary is never carried in procession. The lector may join in the procession at the end of Mass in the same order as in the procession to the altar.

Nor is it comforting that Kavanaugh has tutored at the Washington Jesuit Academy, a Catholic private school in the District of Columbia.

In stark contrast, outgoing Justice Kennedy who Kavanaugh clerked for and would replace has been active off the bench as well, calling for reform of overcrowded American prisons in a speech before the American Bar Association. He spends his summers in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches international and American law at the University of Salzburg for the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific (founded in 1851 with a Methodist affiliation) and often attends the large yearly international judges conference held there.

Defending his use of international law, in 2005 Kennedy told The New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, "Why should world opinion care that the American Administration wants to bring freedom to oppressed peoples? Is that not because there's some underlying common mutual interest, some underlying common shared idea, some underlying common shared aspiration, underlying unified concept of what human dignity means? I think that's what we're trying to tell the rest of the world, anyway."

Not since Episcopalian David Souter has anyone been on the Court who was not raised in Catholicism or Judaism.

Besides the heavy dose of Catholic upbringing represented on the Court, I have one other problem with this Court. Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, 113 persons have served on the Court. Of the first 100, 40 had no prior judicial experience. A complete list is below, but the 40 include Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis, just to name a few whose name some Americans might recognize.

No one appearing on this list has been seated on the Supreme Court since 1972 even though the role of the Supreme Court is radically different than that of a judge.

Supreme Court Justices with No Prior Judicial Experience

Democrats, about that tax reform bill The unseen Republican political strategy as Ryan says minds are going to change

Here's everything you need to know about the Republican tax bill (aka the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017), the most significant tax reform in 30 years.

In early 2018 the federal withholding tables will be scaled downward (see IRS notice). By March 2018 almost all middle class folks who draw a paycheck will see an increase in their take home pay resulting from that reduction in federal tax withholding. Let me repeat this for the Democrats and cocktail party liberals out there. By March 2018 almost all middle class folks who draw a paycheck will see an increase in their take home pay.

DEMOCRATS, QUIT TALKING ABOUT THAT TAX REFORM BILL!

Democrats are, and apparently will continue to be, telling those folks their extra take home pay will be reduced to nothing by 2027, or in some cases 2023, or 2025 or.... Well, it's complicated and it will be different strokes for different middle class folks.

And they'll be telling those folks, the majority of whom are personally in a-bit-to-deep debt, that the federal government's debt is going to rise, by some number which no one knows.

And maybe those liberals will publish for each other to read some long working papers and brilliant magazine articles on the inequities of the tax bill.

In any event, the "pointed-headed intellectuals" will be telling each other how bad the tax bill is/was.

And they'll share that discussion with the middle class workers who will be puzzling how what they are being told relates to their reality - extra bucks in the paycheck. (Yeah, ok, their electronic payroll deposit.)

If asked about the possible disappearance of that extra take home pay, the Republicans will explain that if the Democrats in 2017 had just joined them in cutting taxes they could make the middle class tax cuts permanent - all it would require is a one time rule change. And they will explain that the voters could replace the Democrats with Republicans and that will get the job done.

And the middle class folks who might just vote for Democrats in 2018 because of morality issues will be asking those very same Democrats in 2020 if they're going make permanent the Republican tax cuts for the working folks. Because they know that almost every year income tax rule adjustments are approved and that sometimes, such as in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 when a bunch of extra tax rebates were sent out, the deficit issue is ignored by Democrats.

After all, the tax cuts for the rich and corporations (who donate to the Democrats as well as the Republicans) are permanent. Why would the Democrats in 2020 oppose that for the working folks?

So to summarize, all you need to know is that in 2018 most folks will take home more income because of the Republican tax cuts. By 2020 they will understand that it was the Democrats who made their tax cuts temporary - Donald Trump will tell them it is true. And it might be the simple truth.

(Note, the 2017 tax return most people will file in April 2018 - as well as January 2018 payments for those who pay taxes quarterly - will continue to follow the 2017 current tax code.)

Some will argue that it's not going to be that simple as various deductions change in the bill. Right? The LA Times offers this information for some real Californians:

The first thing you notice that the only loser in the the new tax bill lottery was the couple that owns a house. As explained by the Times:

    Maya Bader, 39, and her husband Matthew Pratt, 41, bought a new house last year. Between mortgage interest, property taxes and California income taxes, they took more than $58,000 in deductions....
    The plan allows taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 in combined property and state income taxes....
    But Bader and Pratt, like many Californians who own homes and have good incomes, will still lose. They deducted more than $26,000 in state income and property taxes last year....
    They’ll also lose out on a deduction for interest paid on a home equity loan....
    Richer child tax credits will shave $4,000 off their tax bill.

With this explanation we can see the reality of who loses. Let's begin with income:

To begin with, to be a loser among these four examples, your household income must be in the top 14%. And to be a loser you apparently have to be unaware of the 2008 housing market bubble crash and go deeply into debt to buy a very expensive house.

The couple that rents itemized less deductions and, because the tax plan almost doubles the standard deduction and puts them in a lower tax rate, they will do better seeing their net income rise about $500 per month (compared to the $125 decrease on the homeowner couple). But that means that their federal tax will drop from almost $41,000 per year to almost $35,000 per year.

What is obvious to many Californians is that the federal government tax policy will stop subsidizing unjustified housing price inflation harming lower income folks in California urban areas.

Both higher earning couples in the Times story itemized. In the first part of 2019, as tax filing season gets underway, those taxpayers will be figuring out on their tax returns whether to take the standard deduction or to itemize. The losers will continue to itemize, but the couple with the highest income will probably stop itemizing.

Based on past statistics indicated in the chart below, just consider how few voters will be interested in all the BS in the press about various deductions. But then the press has to fill either space (print media) or time (video news):

Again, the new plan nearly doubles the standard deduction and alters the available itemized deductions (though it does away with the exemption system). So that percentage of taxpayers who itemize likely will go down making tax filing simpler for more people.

And for the Millennials who likely will have to live with much of this tax bill for 30 years, it may be a winner for those working and/or trying to get an education or training as explained by CNN Money.

Regarding all the other stuff in the tax bill, the average American knows that most of the rich and some corporations will do better. As they always do, along with their accountants and tax attorneys.

Really old people with memories know that it was a Democratic Congress that passed the Revenue Act of 1964 when the top tax rate on the relatively few rich folks that liberals carry on about was dropped by 20%, and that the Democrats controlled the House in 1982 when it was dropped by another 20%  and that the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in 1988 when it was dropped by another 22%. Thus despite the warnings of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, the Democrats dropped the top marginal individual income tax rate from 91% in 1960 to 28% in 1988.

Since then it has gone back up -1991 to 31% and 1993 to 39.6% -  so now this big tax cut drops it all the way down to 37% from 39.6%.

What exactly again is the problem with this again, Democrats?

If anyone thinks the general public will understand and remember the intricacies of this tax bill in 2020, they are deluded. Let me offer a recent article on the bill from one of my sources of information on matters related to municipal issues which discusses complex special provisions in the Bill almost nobody in the general public knows about like "the brand new Base Erosion Anti-abuse Tax" (BEAT), the fact that "engineers and architects won a special exemption in the tax bill", and other matters.

Finally, while some corporations are big winners, some policy surprises lurk in this bill, maybe even for Donald Trump supporters, maybe even for Donald Trump who is never going read it. Consider this article The GOP tax bill is a massive victory for globalization. The possibilities when considered over the long term could mean economic opportunities for struggling California corporations such as Apple and those opportunities could accrue to California with the right incentives.

This is why we see the headline Speaker Paul Ryan: 'Minds are going to change' on Republican tax bill.

Of course, we all know that for any number of reasons before November 2020 the world's economy could be hit by a recession/depression or the U.S. could be hit with runaway inflation or...not. But one of the lesser-known aspect of the plan could create major economic growth: the provision that lets companies fully deduct their investments in plant and equipment in one year. When accelerated depreciation was introduced in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, according to Tax Foundation modeling the long term impact was an increase in the GDP by 2.69%.

The thing is, that tax bill is a winner for the Republicans and particularly the Koch Neoliberals who already dominate politics in America.

And the bill is a winner because it represents a dozen compromises, where Republicans have had to compromise with each other which resulted in such things as tuition waivers continued, employer tuition assistance remains non-taxable, some state and local taxes remain deductible, etc. No Democrats were involved in the compromises.

Right now the Koch Neoliberals are cheering the current liberal media/politicians sexual morality campaign because they understand that the very-repugnant-to-them Roy Moore received the following vote:

Nonetheless, in 2017 it's the Democrats who are putting at risk the most Congressional and legislative seats in the sexual morality campaign.

The Republicans understand that for American voters in 2020 it will be all about "the economy, stupid" meaning how much money the folks take home. And they will be taking home more money because of the Republicans.

That's because Republicans understand if you don't win, you have no power. For Democrats, it's about some complicated discussion among the indignant, not winning.

Slowing the 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life Emperical Egalitarian Progressives act to rebuild California infrastructure and jobs

Disruption, of course, is just change at a higher speed. Humans have always had disruption - the death of someone important to you is an instant disruption. We had rituals, better than those we have today, to deal with a death of someone you love and the process of moving forward in time.

But a way-of-life means "the typical pattern of behavior of a person or group." The above definition of "disruption" in the context of a way-of-life creates psychological trauma which is defined as follows:

    Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. A traumatic event involves one's experience, or repeating events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.

The thing is, somewhere around 2012-13 researchers began to notice a change in death age patterns among Americans. The media began to catch on to it in 2016 and The Washington Post did an extensive set of stories beginning with this:

    White women have been dying prematurely at higher rates since the turn of this century, passing away in their 30s, 40s and 50s in a slow-motion crisis driven by decaying health in small-town America, according to an analysis of national health and mortality statistics by The Washington Post.
    Among African Americans, Hispanics and even the oldest white Americans, death rates have continued to fall. But for white women in what should be the prime of their lives, death rates have spiked upward. In one of the hardest-hit groups — rural white women in their late 40s — the death rate has risen by 30 percent.
    The Post’s analysis, which builds on academic research published last year, shows a clear divide in the health of urban and rural Americans, with the gap widening most dramatically among whites. The statistics reveal two Americas diverging, neither as healthy as it should be but one much sicker than the other.

California is not an exception as made clear in this Fresno Bee article:

    Young and middle-aged whites in the Southern Central Valley are dying at an increasing rate, researchers said Wednesday at the release of a preliminary report that they said reveals a “health crisis of white death.”
    The report for the California Endowment found that in four counties – Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern – the death rate for whites was almost 40 percent higher than the overall white death rate in California from 2010-14.
    “The deaths are occurring among a population struggling with unemployment, wage stagnation and poverty rates,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, lead author of the study and director of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The economy is literally costing lives.”

That confirms the opinion Laudy Aron, a Senior Fellow at Urban Institute who co-authored a 2013, a sweeping study, “Shorter Lives, Poorer Health,” from the National Research Council and the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, who noted for the Washington Post article:

    I think we are undergoing a change that’s comparable to the Industrial Revolution - those of us who are lucky enough to have jobs are sort of clinging to them for dear life.

For California it is has been easier to deal with disruptive Climate Change, a subject which lends itself to advancing adaptive cool new technology for power generation and cars and trucks, plus despite bickering ending municipal treated water wasting in urban areas. In fact, these are part of the California tradition of economic discontinuity and displacement as explained in the previous post.

When you see this, though, you know...

1. the images below represent the women who are our "canaries in the coal mine" warning as the impacts of economic disruption are not limited to rural white women, and 
2. therefore California must mitigate the impacts the inevitable economic disruption brought about by the Digital Revolution

...which despite the comparison, is moving much faster than the 200 years of the Industrial Revolution:



Sure, increasing the awareness of the problem will help those canaries. So would better physical and mental health care.

But creating "blue collar" jobs and modernizing agricultural jobs must be a serious goal for the rest of the 21st Century in California. We must lean heavily on our tradition of California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism.

In fact, these active disruptors will have to get over their Neoliberal tendencies....

...and be happy that a Gas-tax increase to pay for road repair clears California Legislature:

    The legislation will raise the money to pay for the plan over 10 years. It raises the base gasoline excise tax by 12 cents, creates a transportation improvement fee based on the value of a vehicle and raises diesel excise and sales taxes.
    “This bill will provide hundreds of thousands of jobs for poor people who need work and it will stimulate the economy,” said Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who introduced Senate Bill 1. “For me, this is a wise plan that’s a modest plan.”
    Republican lawmakers criticized the deal for putting a burden on ordinary Californians to pick up the bill for the Legislature’s failure to prioritize spending on roads without raising taxes.

In addition to the fee based on value, electric car owners will pay their share through a $100 vehicle fee for zero emission vehicles as outlined in What Californians need to know about the state’s $52-billion transportation plan.

Senator Beall is correct about the plan. In addition to fixing our roads which are a mess, the taxes and fees will be putting people to work in construction over a decade, mostly in blue collar jobs. If Donald Trump can get Congress to spend some money on an infrastructure program, that would create blue collar jobs.

We need to become job creators in a creative way. Many ways to give people blue collar jobs in California exist.

For instance, At the end of the drought, the Sierra Nevada contained 102 million dead trees. We could, a probably will, let them burn in catastrophic fires. Catastrophic fires don’t stimulate regrowth, as lesser fires do: The hotter temperatures they generate scorch the landscape and destroy the seeds needed for plant regeneration. That leads to severe soil erosion, landslides and devastated wildlife. Megafires also blanket large areas of the state with sooty black carbon, which is toxic to humans and a notorious climate pollutant, with a global warming potential 3,200 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

As the Los Angeles Times points out some clever folks have thought of A beneficial way to dispose of the Sierra's lost trees: Use them for energy. But the political and bureaucratic stumbling blocks will probably blanket large areas of the state with sooty black carbon, sort of a metaphor for 21st Century political bickering.

I hate to say this, but even Trump's wall will create blue collar jobs if it actually gets built. And just maybe it isn't quite as awful as the media and politicians on the left tell us.

First we need to rename it as the California Border Barrier Replacement Program. As I said in a prior post, "Regarding 'The Wall' we might want to look at a picture or two before we get all hot and bothered by that publicity." If you look at that pictures in that post you might discover we have a wall, an ugly wall, built by the Bush and Obama administrations which Trump's Deplorables may not have known about.

And now we learn from Trump's border wall will get its start in San Diego County:

    President Trump’s proposed wall with Mexico will kick off in the San Diego border community of Otay Mesa, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Monday.
    The community is home to one of two border crossings in San Diego and will be the site where 20 chosen bidders will erect prototypes of the envisioned wall. Winners will be selected around June 1, the agency said.
    Of the possible border locations in the region, building the prototypes near the Otay Mesa crossing makes the most sense because it allows companies to test out designs in a heavily trafficked area that still has room and flexibility, according to Eric Frost, director of San Diego State University’s graduate program in homeland security.
    Frost added the wall could be a benefit to both nations if, for example, it helps alleviate notoriously slow wait times for trucks crossing through Otay Mesa. He envisions an “intelligent wall” with sensors and wireless technology that can start tracking trucks before they reach a border guard, speeding up the process to move goods between the two nations.
    “There’s a positive in here, if you can design a wall that works way better,” Frost said.

"If you can design a wall that works way better" in this context means not buiildng a new wall but replacing the following mess at Otay Mesa where where volumes reach over 55,000 vehicles daily and annually more than 700,000 trucks carrying more than $20 billion in goods pass through the northbound border crossing after being inspected:




Whether Trump gets any other element of his own infrastructure plan approved, it strikes me that sometimes California's Democratic politicians and media need to become a little more cynically self-serving on behalf of the state. That Border Barrier Replacement Program could put a lot of blue collar Californians to work.

Of course, as I've noted before self-driving vehicles such as the tractor-trailer rigs shown in the pictures will start to eliminate positions for drivers in the next decade. And that "'intelligent wall' with sensors and wireless technology that can start tracking trucks before they reach a border guard, speeding up the process to move goods between the two nations" will reduce employee hours at the borders.

California, the home of Silicon Valley distributive technology, must continue to work to slow the 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life enough to soften the blue collar disruption trauma. Creating road maintenance jobs over the next 10 years is a good start, but it is just a start.

Manifest Destiny versus those babies The culture war threat to California's history, folklore, identity and people

Click on image to see a larger version!

The Neoliberal war with multiculturalists in the U.S. gained headlines this week when Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) supported extreme nationalist Dutch politician Geert Wilder with this not so eloquent tweet:

King set off a firestorm of simplistic accusations about his racism from the left while other Republicans tripped over themselves to disassociate with King. But King says he is not a racist and he was tweeting on behalf of policies supported by all Republicans.

In response to the firestorm he started, Representative King defended himself on CNN. King argued:

It’s the culture, not the blood.

And if you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby with as much patriotism and as much love of country as any other baby.

“It’s not about race,” he added. “It’s never been about race, and in fact, the struggles across this planet, we describe them as race. They’re not race — they’re culture-based. It’s the clash of cultures, not the race.”

King is almost right. In the United States it has become a dispute between those who embrace the American Cultural Melting Pot concept versus those who would prefer the American Cultural Salad Bowl concept. The Wikipedia entry outlines the origins and history of the American Cultural Melting Pot concept, but all we need to know is:

The first use in American literature of the concept of immigrants "melting" into the receiving culture are found in the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. In his Letters from an American Farmer (1782) Crevecoeur writes, in response to his own question, "What then is the American, this new man?" that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world."

"…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes... What, then, is the American, this new man? He is either an European or the descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared."
    — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

What the son of  the Comte and Comtesse de Crèvecœur and former French Army Lieutenant who fought the British in the  French and Indian War doesn't include in his description are Native Americans or Moors or Asians, just Northern Europeans. Nonetheless, seven years before 1789 and the adoption of the Constitution, we see the term "melted into" to refer to the term "American."

Arguing in 1789 for the adoption of the Constitution, Founding Father John Jay - descended from Protestant Huguenots who had come to New York to escape religious persecution in France - notes in Federalist Papers No. 2:

It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division....

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.

In this argument intended to create support for one united country, Jay notes the similarity among Americans in ancestry, language, religion, manners and customs as evidence of the strongest ties to avoid splitting our society. But then he notes similar attitudes "among all orders and denominations" among Americans, maybe because he is of French  Huguenot descent not English.

What exactly did he mean? For honest multicultural advocates, it's impossible to bury the reality that the Founding Fathers greatly feared a split within the former colonies. The first Congress of the United States of America in its Second Session, wanting to make the intent very clear, passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 which said (emphasis added):

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled,

That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.

Gradually, this fear of a split because of a lack of common heritage was overcome by those teaching about the American Cultural Melting Pot effect. But that was to be undone by the end of the 20th Century by militant advocates for the American Cultural Salad Bowl concept who argue that only their view represents the affirmative moral value of "toleration."

As usual, it is far more complicated. When one fast forwards through 200 years, from 1789 to 1989, we find this eloquent Republican President from California explaining how he saw an America:

As you can hear in the video above, in his "Farewell Address" given from the White House, President Ronald Reagan said (emphasis added):

The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind­swept, God-­blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

Was Reagan referring to a Melting Pot or a multicultural America? There is no doubt...

So there is some irony in this statement from the Democratic President from Georgia he unseated...

Carter used the term "mosaic" used in Canada instead of "salad."  I would ask Carter what do you do when within the salad that looks like this...

...and some of these different vegetables believe that their community on the American plate should implement Sharia Law, and others believe our laws should be based on the Christian Old Testament, and both are proposing to stone to death any jalapeño chili peppers that might appear on the plate?

That is, of course, the inherent problem with uninhibited multiculturalism. It is one thing to advocate offering equal respect to people from various ethnic and racial cultures. It is quite another thing to embrace policies

1. in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group to which they belong and
2. that promote maintaining the distinctiveness of multiple cultures rather than policies such as social integration and cultural assimilation.

In other words, American history expects social integration and cultural assimilation, though the act of recognizing America's multicultural history is also expected. Consider this BBC News article:

Americans take pride in their "melting pot" society (a term coined by an immigrant, Israel Zangwill) that encourages newcomers to assimilate into the American culture.

But the melting pot imagery has been contested by the idea of multiculturalism, the "salad bowl theory", or as it is known in Canada, the "cultural mosaic", whereby the immigrants retain their own national characteristics while integrating into a new society.

Some go further. Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington says that large-scale Latino immigration poses a threat to American identity.

He sees the gravest threat to American identity in Mexican immigration which, according to him, is splitting America in two.

Apparently the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington - who lived in the former British Colonies of Massachusetts and New York with their "Little Italy" neighborhoods - was unaware of California when he wrote that Latino immigration would "divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages" Because he also wrote:

Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.

Or perhaps it would be California! In fact using the criteria of before the 19th century, here is the truth about the portion of America settled (or stolen from Native Americans) by Huntington's British Protestants versus the portion of America settled by Spanish Catholics:

The fact is if you believe Professor Huntington, only the states indicated above in blue have any serious claim to a 17th and 18th Centuries historical British Protestant cultural heritage.

While some are careful to make the "English-only" language as a legal argument there are those who, apparently ignorant of American history, offer a cultural argument without any historical foundation whatsoever.

For instance, while ICE Agents and bigots are attacking the Hispanic neighborhoods in California, no one is attacking the many "Little Italy" communities in the United States as indicated in Wikipedia:

• Several Little Italies exist in New York City, including:
  • Little Italy, Manhattan
  • Italian Harlem
    • Pleasant Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
  • Little Italy, The Bronx
  • Morris Park, Bronx
  • Country Club, Bronx
  • Pelham Bay, Bronx
  • Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
  • South Brooklyn
    • Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
    • Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
  • Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
  • Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Brooklyn;
  • Howard Beach, Queens
  • Ozone Park, Queens
  • Astoria, Queens
  • Middle Village, Queens
  • Rosebank, Staten Island
  • Many Staten Island neighborhoods (44% of Borough Residents claim Italian ancestry)
• Little Italy, Chicago, in Illinois
  • Elmwood Park, Illinois
  • Melrose Park, Illinois
  • Norridge, Illinois
  • Berwyn, Illinois
  • Grand Ave, Chicago
• Little Italy, Altoona, in Pennsylvania
• Little Italy, Baltimore, in Maryland
• North End, Boston, in Massachusetts
• Little Italy, Bridgeport, in Connecticut
• Franklin Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut
• Little Italy, Buffalo, in New York
• Little Italy, Rochester - Gates Ny - Lyell Ave & Spencerport Rd
• Little Italy, Cleveland, in Ohio
• Little Italy, Connellsville, in Pennsylvania
• Little Italy in Erie, Pennsylvania, an area centered on West 18th Street between Sassafras and Liberty Streets.
• Little Italy, Kansas City, Missouri – Now defunct and mainly inhabited by South East Asian migrants.
• Little Italy, Los Angeles – a defunct neighborhood now part of New Chinatown
• Wooster Square, in New Haven, Connecticut
• East Haven, Connecticut (40% of residents claim Italian ancestry)
• Little Italy, Omaha, in Nebraska
• Little Italy, Paterson, in New Jersey
• South Trenton, New Jersey
• South Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island
• North Providence, Rhode Island (small town with high number of Italians; about the size of most Little Italies in big cities).
• The Hill Little Italy in St. Louis, Missouri
• Little Italy, San Diego, California
• North Beach, San Francisco, in California
• Little Italy, Schenectady, in New York
• South End, Springfield, in Massachusetts
• Little Italy, Syracuse, in New York
• Little Italy, Waterbury, in Connecticut
• Little Italy, Clay County, West Virginia
• Little Italy, Randolph County, West Virginia
• Little Italy, Wilmington, in Delaware
• Brier Hill in Youngstown, Ohio

Those who believe as Huntington should be wondering why ICE agents are not deporting American citizens of Italian descent back to Italy. Of course, on the map above there are no Italian 17th-18th Century settlements Huntington could worry about.

Which brings us back to Representative King. Despite the fact that his tweet makes him sound like an Alt-Right idiot, when you look back at a 2002 column written by someone who opposed King's first run for Congress, you get a fair picture of King's views (you should really read the whole article to get a good idea of Congressman King):

The large number of Southeast Asian and Latino people who came to Denison and Storm Lake, first as refugees and then later to work in meat packing plants, came after King was out of school, in business and living on a farm between Kiron and Odebolt.

Is he aware that he is often labeled as being “anti-immigrant” now?

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I know that.”

But he said that’s inaccurate and unfair.

I reminded him of his “Official English” bill, the “God and Country Bill” and his harsh comment in a letter to western Iowa editors after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: “Preferential treatment and the obsession with the elevation of every third world culture to the status of our American Civilization are silenced for now and hopefully forever.”

So, how does he feel about immigrants?

“Anybody who comes to this country legally, I’m all for,” he said, “and I think we should all support legal immigration. But I do think we need to secure our borders. I think we need to take a serious look at our immigration policy.”

How does he view those from other cultures and countries, if they are here legally?

“I have a very strong, profound belief that we are all God’s children,” King said. “And I believe that God doesn’t draw distinctions between us to favor one race over another, or to favor men or favor women. We are all equal in God’s eyes.

“That has led me to advocate equal rights for everybody, and by virtue of that, no special rights for anybody.”

He said he enjoys “all the different cultures we have here now. Just look at it in terms of food alone, if you want to. I was raised pretty much on plain meat and potatoes. The variety of all the different kinds of food that other cultures have brought here is great.

“The cultural differences we have add to the richness of our life, and we should study them and celebrate them. But I come into this thing from the viewpoint that there are a lot of things that divide us as Americans, and a lot of multi-cultural efforts seem to divide us rather than unite us.

“When we first started to see multi-culturalism, I was in favor of it. But I now see it often being used as a political tool to divide us, and that concerns me. I like diversity of cultures and peoples, but we also need to recognize there is a greater American culture that unites us. It’s fine to celebrate the individual cultures we come from, but it can’t hinder the greater American culture.”

King said much of his understanding of immigration today, and the way Americans are reacting to it, has come from the writings of Thomas Sowell.

Sowell is a senior fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He is African American, was born in the South and grew up in Harlem. He is a graduate in economics from Harvard, earned his master’s in that field at Columbia University and his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago.

He is a widely known and quoted conservative whose books include a 1996 work, “Migration and Cultures: A World View.”

Congressman King's views curiously bring us back to California. The Hoover Institution, in which the source of King's opinions Thomas Sowell is currently Senior Fellow, is one of California's 13 organizations which are members of the Neoliberal Atlas Network as I explained here in the post 21st Century California vulnerabilities to active Neoliberal political opportunists.

If King and other Neoliberals are concerned that the American Cultural Salad Bowl concept is "being used as a political tool to divide us" and a danger to "a greater American culture that unites us" and specifically are targeting Hispanic and Asian immigration through government policy, then Congressman King and friends are engaging in a culture war against California's history, folklore, identity, and people.

California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism, which has the goal of assuring the long term survival and success of California and Californians, includes a social compact recognizing the common needs of a disparate peoples. As I explained in #Calexit. Perhaps 170 years of invidious doubtful scorn is enough we Californians live in a state of migrants. California has been called the land of sunshine and opportunity in the context of migrants. In fact people have been migrating here for 10,000 years, and still are today from East of the Sierras, West of the Pacific, and South of the Border. That's fine with us.

You see California was part of Spain, then part of Mexico. It never was part of the British Empire, never, never. It became part of the United States through a war of occupation by the United States and a treaty imposed on Mexico. California's heritage is Hispanic. Let me make sure this is clear, the heritage of the State of California is Hispanic, not like Massachusetts or New York with their "Little Italy" neighborhoods. Want to visit California from your home state of Iowa....

 ... you should see the Spanish Missions established by Catholic priests of the Franciscan order between 1769 and 1833. You can travel the El Camino Real.

After touring the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, in Carmel, California, you should visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the City of Monterey, which was the capital of Alta California under both Spain and Mexico. That's the Alta California shown on this map:

Since Monterey was the only port of entry for taxable goods in California you should visit the Custom House State Park.

You won't see any sites associated with the Founding Fathers because they were in English colonies thousands of  miles away when the fastest travel was by horseback.

I won't repeat all the history of California covered in prior posts. But American California history begins with a war of occupation as indicated on this map....

...which ended on  February 2, 1848, with the signing in Mexico of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

The Treaty has no direct impact on Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

But it clearly does apply to California. Among many other things to be settled after the Mexican-American War, the Treaty provides:

ARTICLE VIII

Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican Republic, retaining the property which they possess in the said territories, or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever.

Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States.

In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States.

ARTICLE IX

The Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States. and be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the principles of the Constitution; and in the mean time, shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction.

There are a lot of words in those two Articles, but from my point of view the United States did agree to respect the culture and heritage of the Mexican-Americans (and presumably their heirs) then remaining in that 525,000 square miles within which California is wholly located.

Further, when California's first constitution was drafted in 1849, despite the fact that the state's Spanish-speaking population was already a minority, delegates to the constitutional convention without opposition approved recognition of Spanish language rights: "All laws, decrees, regulations, and provisions emanating from any of the three supreme powers of this State, which from their nature require publication, shall be published in English and Spanish."

You see, even the Nazi's after they occupied France recognized the language of the natives living there. In fact in 2010 in English invasion 'threatens French language more than Nazis did' we are told: "The invasion of English words poses more of a "grave threat" to French national identity than the imposition of German under the Nazi occupation, according to a group of self-styled guardians of the French language."

Anyway, one might think this treaty-based legal history should ameliorate the tension between the Melting Pot traditionalists and the multicultural advocates when it comes to the issue of Hispanic people in the Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, but it does not.

What I want to say to both the Neoliberals nationalists like King and the rabid  multiculturalists who are still debating  is "get over it." But what I will say is keep your nose out of California's business. We don't do Cultural Melting Pots or Cultural Salad Bowls. We do stews where you can taste everything...

We don't find this insidious and if Carlos O'Brien wants to put potatoes and carrots in, fine.

Yes, Carlos O'Brien. For more on relevant history read about the Saint Patrick's Battalion, highly revered in Mexico. You see in the mid-1840's Irish and other Catholic immigrants had the impression that the those now revered descendants of English immigrants shouldn't be forcing members of the Army to worship in Protestant services and those Irish had the impression that there was little difference between

• British colonial bigotry as they had experienced it in the Ireland they were escaping and 
• the American Manifest Destiny movement bigotry as it affected Mexicans and Native Americans.

Embracing their English Protestant heritage must have seemed to the Irish immigrants like an odd choice for people living in the home of the first revolution against British colonialism. But like all things American, it was confusing. Some of the folks in the 13 Colonies did not like some British taxes and military policies.

But the United States is still fighting wars in places like Iraq, in the process standing in for the British colonial bigots whose descendants just voted for Brexit mostly to keep out war refugees from places like the Iraq they created from whole cloth bigotry.

It is exactly the attitude the Irish encounted in the America of the 1840's that has resulted in Neoliberalism controlling the United States government. It is good that Twitter exists because without the bumbling tweets, we might not know just how much the Republicans have embraced the tradition of Manifest Destiny bigotry at the core of Neoliberalism.

And we might not understand just how dangerous this is to California's history, folklore, identity and people. But we need to, and then fortify our defenses.