Free Republic

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing."
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Republican congressman of Connecticut, on the Schiavo case.
[from NY Times article below]
G.O.P. Right Is Splintered on Schiavo Intervention
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

ASHINGTON, March 22 - The vote by Congress to allow the federal courts to take over the Terri Schiavo case has created distress among some conservatives who say that lawmakers violated a cornerstone of conservative philosophy by intervening in the ruling of a state court.

The emerging debate, carried out against a rush of court decisions and Congressional action, has highlighted a conflict of priorities among conservatives and signals tensions that Republicans are likely to face as Congressional leaders and President Bush push social issues over the next two years, party leaders say.

"This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."

Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: "I don't normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states' rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case."

Some more moderate Republicans are also uneasy. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, said: "This senator has learned from many years you've got to separate your own emotions from the duty to support the Constitution of this country. These are fundamental principles of federalism."

"It looks as if it's a wholly Republican exercise," Mr. Warner said, "but in the ranks of the Republican Party, there is not a unanimous view that Congress should be taking this step."

In interviews over the past two days, conservatives who expressed concern about the turn of events in Congress stopped short of condemning the vote in which overwhelming majorities supported the Schiavo bill, and they generally applauded the goal of trying to keep Ms. Schiavo alive. But they said they were concerned about what precedent had been set and said the vote went against Republicans who were libertarian, advocates of states' rights or supporters of individual rights.

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. "This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."

While the intensity of the dissent appears to be rising - Mr. Warner made a point Tuesday of calling attention to his little-noticed opposition in a nearly empty Senate chamber over the weekend - support for the measure among Republican and conservative leaders still appears strong. In interviews, some conservatives either dismissed the argument that the vote was a federal intrusion on states' rights or argued that their opposition to euthanasia as part of their support of the right-to-life movement trumped any aversion they might have to a dominant federal government.

"There's a larger issue in play," and Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, "and that is the whole issue of the definition of life. The issue of when is it a life is a broader issue than just a state defining that. I don't think we can have 50 different definitions of life."

Other Republicans who supported the Schiavo bill said they were wrestling conflicting beliefs. Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, a former governor and a strong advocate of states' rights, decided to support the bill after determining that his opposition to euthanasia outweighed his views on federalism, an aide said.

Senator Tom Coburn, a newly elected conservative Republican from Oklahoma, said: "This isn't a states' rights issue. What we're saying is they are going to review it. The states are not given the right to take away somebody's constitutional rights."

Representative Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who is the House majority leader, bristled on Sunday when he was asked about how to square the bill with federalist precepts.

"I really think it is interesting that the media is defining what conservatism is," Mr. DeLay said. "The conservative doctrine here is the Constitution of the United States."

The Republican Party has long associated itself with limiting the power of the federal government over the states, though this is not the only time that party leaders have veered from that position. Most famously, in 2000, it persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a Florida court ruling ordering a recount of the vote in the presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush.

But now the Schiavo case is illustrating splinters in the conservative movement that Mr. Bush managed to bridge in his last campaign, and the challenges Mr. Bush and Republicans face in trying to govern over the next two years, even though they control Congress as well as the White House.

"The libertarian streak in me says, you know, people should have the right to die," Mr. Moore, of the Free Enterprise Fund, said. "But as so many conservatives, I'm also very pro-life. Those two philosophies are conflicting with each other."

Bob Levy, a fellow with the Cato Institute, argued that Democrats and Republicans alike were being "incredibly hypocritical" in this case: Democrats by suddenly embracing states' rights and Republicans by asserting the power of the federal government.

"These questions are not the business of Congress," Mr. Levy said of the Schiavo dispute. "The Constitution does not give Congress the power to define life or death. The only role for the court is once the state legislature establishes what the rules are, the court can decide if the rules have been properly applied."

uncomfortable issues raised for limited-government, states'-rights advocates:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-schiavo21mar21,0,2140071.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

EDITORIAL
The Midnight Coup

March 21, 2005

Republican leaders, eyeing an opportunity to appease their radical right-wing constituents, convened Congress over the weekend to shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute. They brushed aside our federalist system of government, which assigns the resolution of such disputes to state law, and state judges. Even President Bush flew back from his ranch to Washington on Sunday to be in on what amounts to a constitutional coup d'etat.

Conservatives are the historical defenders of states' rights, and the supposed proponents of keeping big government out of people's lives, but this case once again shows that some social conservatives are happy to see the federal government acquire Stalinist proportions when imposing their morality on the rest of the country. So breathtaking was this attempted usurpation of power, wresting jurisdiction over a right-to-die case away from Florida's judiciary, that Republican leaders in the end had to agree to limit this legislation's applicability to the Schiavo case.

In other words, according to the bill passed by the Senate Sunday afternoon, and which the House passed after midnight, among all the cases of patients in a persistent vegetative state nationwide, Terri Schiavo's case is the only one in which parents are able to have a federal court review state court rulings on the fate of their loved one.

Last Friday, after years of litigation and medical evaluations, the Florida judge presiding over the case ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, pursuant to her husband's wishes.

House and Senate committees outrageously tried to intervene then by issuing subpoenas to the Schiavos and Terri's doctors, and by asking federal courts to order the feeding tube reinstated. But since this was not a case within federal jurisdiction, their efforts failed. Hence the effort to wrest jurisdiction the old-fashioned way, by passing a law.

Congress does act in other extraordinary cases on behalf of a specific individual, such as when it grants someone U.S. citizenship. But here, Congress is breaking new ground, trying to overturn a judicial decision by altering the Constitution's federalist scheme. This is the family law equivalent of the constitutionally banned "bill of attainder," legislation that seeks to convict someone of a crime.

Lost in all the political and legal maneuvering is the gut-wrenching conundrum of removing life support from a patient like Schiavo.

Bedridden for 15 years since she was resuscitated after she stopped breathing, Schiavo now breathes but is incapable of communicating or eating or drinking on her own. Her persistent vegetative state puts one in mind of the final stages of Alzheimer's disease, except that it can last for decades. Whether she can experience the simplest emotion is now the purview of politics, not medicine.

Schiavo's parents stand on one side of the gulf, demanding that she be kept alive by a tube that puts nourishment directly into her stomach. Her husband, whose motives the parents question constantly, says she would not have wanted to live in this dark twilight between physical life and humanity.

In law, a spouse's decisions about care of a mentally incompetent patient have long trumped parents'.

The praying, chanting protesters outside the Florida hospital where this drama plays out are a hint that this is the new front in what began as the abortion war, an effort to translate religious dogma into law under the right-to-life banner.

The feeding tube removed Friday at the order of a Florida state judge is not high medical technology. There are some people, children and adults alike, who may live nearly ordinary lives despite being forced to feed themselves or be fed through a tube because of other medical conditions. The line on removing such a tube is not as bright as removing a patient clearly at the end of life from artificial breathing or a heart machine. Ethical questions surrounding a case like Schiavo's are blurry and difficult, evidenced by the years of waiting and hoping for a miracle that have passed since she collapsed.

This case, headed like a bullet to the Supreme Court, must have most of the justices wishing for a Kevlar vest. The case is a marker for other battles — about medical assistance in ending a terminally ill life, as in the much-fought Oregon law and a similar proposal working its way through the California Legislature. About the rights of gay couples to assume spousal rights in medical decisions. Most painfully, about abortion.

Federal judges, regarded with contempt by moral conservatives on other issues, are being dragged into another swamp. No decision they make in the Schiavo case and those certain to follow can be the right one.

looks like you're just not getting the point, my confused would-be patriot friend. The Constitution does not grant ANY RIGHTS to ANYONE and in fact CANNOT DO SO under the moral and philosophical rules to which our Founders subscribed: namely, that all rights are God-given (or "natural") and that the purpose of government is to defend these ALREADY EXISTING rights, not create or distribute them. This is a very basic premise of our republican system of governance, but one which is unfortunately forgotten or deliberately disregarded by too many in a position to know better. The point the previous poster makes is that the Constitution does not NEED to specifically give the official OK to ANY activity of the citizens... its purpose (certainly in the "Bill of Rights" portion or the first 10 ammendments) is to LIMIT the sphere of potential tyrrany by government by limiting the power and reach of government. Any power not SPECIFICALLY granted to government is assumed to belong to the people or to no one at all. One does not need to look for positive references to an activity in the writings of the founders or in the document itself to understand that point.

just a quick thought:

it seems the overwhelming response here at Free Republic is pretty much the all-American libertarian response to more government intrusion: shock, disgust and a healthy dose of skepticism about government intentions. That's good. Oddly enough, most "left"-leaning sites seem to be full of a similar response on this particular issue. If the vocal conservatives are opposed to this and the vocal (civil-liberties oriented) liberals are as well... who the hell is supporting it?

Someone already pointed out the irony of two of our more "liberal" SC Justices being the voice of sanity on this issue... Maybe it really isn't an irony at all; maybe it's simply our long-held delusional fixation on the "left-right" shell game finally becoming too obvious to ignore anymore.

Isn't it time to start re-assessing our out-dated, intentionally divisive concepts of "left" and "right"? Maybe we could simplify the question: are you FOR government intrusion into the lives and business of peaceful people or AGAINST it? That's what matters. "Left" and "right" are meaningless... who cares which side of the aisle some French member of parliament sat on, anyway? It's time to get on with the business of freedom, across the board, on EVERY issue.

very nicely put, "x".

You are correct on the chronology of the name "Republican" and most likely correct about the changing of opinion (Jefferson, Madison) as the new nation found its moorings. Just more reason not to mindlessly venerate everything the Founders did at every stage of the nation's development. Mistakes are made, inevitably, when attempting what has never existed before. The Alien and Sedition Act(s?): prime example. Perhaps the Civil War itself is another. We are STILL involved in an ongoing political experiment, with maximal individual freedom and minimal government intrusion as the goal, and mistakes will be made - indeed, MUST be made - in order to define the limits of our ability to manage others. I know it's counter-intuitive to see the various (nefarious) expansions this way, but as they fail (as is inevitable with any wrongly-constructed governmental over-reaching) we learn - and our children learn - a valuable lesson about the scope and power of government.

call it laziness, but I am hereby officially plagiarizing myself to comment on your Marriage Ammendment position, from another post on this site:

"I would ask that our fellow proponents of less government, especially the 'paleo conservatives', consider the notion that perhaps it is time to get government OUT of the institution of marriage entirely. Religious entities (ie churches)could and would still marry people, according to their beliefs, and the two people could and would still enter into a legally recognized contract re: property etc. but the government (whether State or Federal) would have no say over what is "sanctified". I mean, regardless of what a given majority wishes at any given period in history, do we really want to equate the blessing of God with the blessing of the state? Blasphemy and bad policy are a heady mix for some. Remember: the separation of church and state is a good idea from BOTH angles... I don't want government involved in my worship anymore than I want YOUR (generically) religious beliefs influencing MY government."

I realize this is a fringey idea, but constantly ammending our Constitution every time someone's idea of freedom clashes with your own is worse than bad policy; it's a recipe for disaster and the ultimate failure of this political experiment in tolerance and freedom that we call the United States of America.

I like the Ghost's tagline. That and the beautifully dangerous notion of "nullification" made me think of the Fully Informed Jury Act and its adherents. Click the link and check them out for yourselves (if you haven't already)

http://www.fija.org/

(or cut and paste the link if it's not in hypertext)
Here's another article on the subject:

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/DoigPls.htm

and one from our Lone Star friends:

http://www.juryduty.org/

contains the following thumbnail description:
"Jurors in criminal trials have the power to vote "not guilty" if enforcing the law would violate their conscience because juries cannot be punished for any verdict and jury acquittals cannot be overturned. An accused party's rights to trial by jury, where government is an opposing party, includes the right to inform the jurors of their power to judge the law as well as the evidence, and to vote on the verdict according to conscience."

Not exactly the subject of this thread, but definitely related... the natural, logical conclusion to the general move away from centralized judiciary power.

just had to quickly comment on this line from the original article:
"Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 [...] which authorized the president to deport resident aliens who had "treasonable" leanings, was a source of concern to Jefferson and other Republicans..."

Boy, the modern equivalent of this act certainly doesn't seem to be much of a problem for our MODERN "Republicans", does it? Don't portions of the Patriot Act seem kinda familiar?

"After watching the Palestinians follow a person who led them in the wildreness for fifty years, when there was an oasis to be had right under their feet, I'm just not convinced the subjects would come to the only conclusion you and I might."

Didn't the Jews follow Moses into the wilderness for forty years or so, according to the oft-transcribed oral tradition that would become the Old Testament? I mean, if you're going to point the finger of "duh" at an entire people...

In my humble opinion...
The obvious moral repugnance of enslaving another human based on ethnicity (or any other factor, at that) is forced to balance against the equally obvious self-serving corruption of Northern business interests and Federal collectivist (i.e.: tyrranical) tendencies when we look back at the American Civil War (or the War Between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression, or the War Between Union Goons and Dixie Thugs, if you will). Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but if I had been President and could persuade a sizable majority of my colleagues in Washington to agree, I would have let the South secede... good riddance to backward blowhards. Then the United States of America would suspend all trade with the Confederate States of Dixie or whatever they would call themselves, and declare that any slave who made it into the North was automatically free and any white (or other) person caught entering the North with the purpose of kidnapping and returning said slave would be jailed. A loud declaration to the rest of the world that the "peculiar institution" is abhorrent and contrary to the principles of freewill and natural law, constantly updated with intense economic and idealogical pressure, would put a fairly decisive crimp in the viability of such antiquated racist institutions and do irreparable damage to the emerging nation... perhaps enough to change the minds of the average Southerner, if not the slave-owning elite. I'm guessing this would go on for about 20 years - maybe less - before the South would be begging to rejoin the United States, rescinding slavery as a matter of course to do so.

I could be wrong, of course. And I'm sure there are those who take exception with my characterizations of intention, especially our friends in the "New South". Confederate flag-waving Freepers... FLAME ON!

Wolfie wrote:
"States' Rights are nice in theory. But then some State comes along and legalizes medical marijuana or assisted suicide, and we can clearly see the folly in the idea."
So the tenth Ammendment, in your estimation, would only cover those decisions with which you agree? How are your views on this fundamentally different from the nanny-state liberal's view? In both cases you mention, the good folks in D.C. who know better than their subjects in the individual states take upon themselves the burden of "correcting" the decisions of the state legislature and/or the voters of that state, ostensibly for their own good, one presumes. Is this really part of the "conservative" idealogy nowadays?
I take exception with the idea that "we" see the same thing at all on this subject. The collectivist "we" is the source of more grief and tyrrany than any other concept in the human lexicon.

Lekker1:
"Strangely enough, I believe these two issues do actually fall under the stewardship of the State. They represent, for the most part, victimless crimes."
I don't see how this sentiment is "strange" at all; it is perfectly consistent with the principle of individual liberty and self-ownership. Too many people who call themselves "conservative" have forgotten what limited government and individual responsibility mean; I suppose this is the reason for having a Libertarian party.
Tyrranical government... it's not just for Democrats anymore.

Boxer the cart-horse, from George Orwell's "Animal Farm"... not the smartest four-legged in the bunch, but a strong and loyal friend indeed.

[there have been two film versions; one animated, one live-action, both British, i believe... so I guess that means neither was "Hollywood" but, whatever.]

"Barbara Streisand
Rode hard and put up wet."

now maybe I'm a bit of a pervert, but I think I'd actually pay to see that, especially with a "red-blooded American" in the saddle.

sorry, didn't quite cover everything in that last message.
from your recent post:
"Why do we have laws concerning murder and stealing? Do you think it [was] because from the birth of this nation they wanted to hold onto libertarian philosophies or rather could it be that murder and stealing and the like go against God's will and commands."

I don't see why these two propositions are at odds with each other. Libertarians believe we are free to live as we choose PROVIDED WE DON'T HARM THE PERSON, PROPERTY OR LIBERTY of anyone else. Murder and stealing obviously fall into this proscribed category. Does "remember[ing] the Sabbath Day and keep[ing] it holy"? This sort of religious commandment does NOT extend beyond the personal realm and can NOT - in a free society - be the jurisdiction of government.

Agree or disagree: Even if the Bible had never been written, or had been lost in the ensuing generations of Middle-Eastern upheavals, humans would know instinctively that murdering and stealing from each other are WRONG. One does not have to be a proponent of any particular religious philosophy or of religion at all to recognize the basic, fundamental need to prohibit aggression.

"You would like to reduce the government's role and reduce it to legalities and properties and such-- making us even more secular than we already are. As though acknowledging God is a bad thing."

Yes, I would reduce the government's role the way you describe and see absolutely no conflict between that and my own religious beliefs. Acknowledging God is not a "bad thing"; it is - for those who believe, as i do - the greatest thing there is. But true acknowledgment of the supreme creator can only come from individual persons, not the political institutions that represent them, and must be given freely... when the institutions of coercion (ie government) become involved, that acknowledgment rings hollow... even to the point of blasphemy.

I don't know if this is a subject worth discussing even, important as it is, because most people already know where they stand on it and will not be moved by any logical or emotional appeal. Suffice to say (and I reiterate from another post on another topic) that the separation of church and state is a good and necessary thing, from BOTH sides of that coin, ESPECIALLY from the "church" side... Secularists and sophists point out the dangers of religion creeping into politics (with the Taliban as an extreme example) but not enough people recognize the corollary dangers of politics creeping into religion... Politics are the principles upon which the individual interacts with other individuals and with society in aggregate. Religion is the method thru which the individual interacts with God.

"...making us even more secular than we already are."
I don't believe that our laws and our government define WHO WE ARE as a people, and certainly not WHO I AM as a person. They are simply the basic necessities of civilized society, for the believer and non-believer alike; the rational, mutually agreed-upon MEANS for achieving a free, non-aggressing society within which each individual member is likewise free to worship and manifest the Divine as (s)he sees fit. A secular political system means greater religious freedom, without which religious belief becomes pointless.

If by BEAST you mean the "beast" of Revelation... do you really think that the real-world incarnation of "Nicolae Carpathian" (or "Damien Thorn" for our horror-movie fans) will be kept out of office due to political unpopularity? That doesn't jibe with Scripture, if Scripture carries any weight with you (and I won't ASSume that it does).

"...And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months." This is the entity (whether a person or perhaps even an Institution of some sort) who "deceive[s] many through peace" in a sea of unrest.

Does the description fit anyone in the current political sphere? I'm not asking rhetorically in order to then provide MY answer... I don't know the answer. But it seems pretty unlikely that Billary Clinton or John Kerry or any other limping Democrat carries the kind of world-wide social credibility that the "Beast" is alleged to have. Mayhap we should reserve accusations of such import for more plausible targets.

I don't really buy that the "MSM" polls were cooked... Bush taking 23% - a fact which has been repeatedly pointed to in this thread - does not suggest a "liberal" leaning. I know it's an uncomfortable concept, but Hillary Clinton actually IS very - some might say "inordinately" - popular across the country, and not just in the so-called "blue states". There really is no accounting for popular tastes.

The suggestion that Condoleeza Rice run as the Republican is interesting and an indication that we are truly evolving as a society. What if these two women really were the D and R candidates? I'm reminded of the recent Illinois (US Senate) race, wherein both the D and the R candidates were African-American; a first, I believe, in American history (could be wrong, correct me if so). I wasn't totally sold on either Obama or Keyes but they were both head-and-shoulders above their respective D and R competitors, and both bring a certain outsider edge to the discussion, an edge that's healthy and necessary. Maybe it's time for a high-profile political "girlfight"! heh. sorry, ladies. that was probably uncalled for.

"Something is terribly wrong with the female poll. Media must be trying to set Hill up and asked only rats. I don't believe it."

Uh... I'm assuming by "rats" you mean DEMOC-rats, right? if that were the case, how do you explain these entries:

3.Laura Bush
4.Condoleezza Rice

5.Margaret Thatcher
6.Barbara Bush

8.Nancy Reagan
9.Martha Stewart

Maybe someone else has already brought this to your attention; I haven't read the rest of the thread, I don't know. (and maybe Martha Stewart is some kind of comsimp, after all!)

"There is no real difference between statists of the left & right. That's why frustrated voters keep alternating their turns at power. -- And why nobody is "winning"."

Thank you so much for stating this truth, jonestown. It's an untenable position for either major party, but it is nevertheless the truth. Those who call libertarian ideals "wacko" - or whatever cutely status-quo-embracing perjorative makes it past the censors - are indeed the same folks who would have sided with the Loyalist Tories in the 1770s. But that's all right. The just cause is always under fire from those who fear that it may very well be just.

you wrote:
"Some do, some don't. Big deal."
ah, and here lies the problem. The 'some do' and the 'some don't' camp......in fact it is a big deal but that's for another discussion.

[regarding, if memory serves, the homosexual marriage issue and the Libertarian Party's ambivalence on the subject]

There is difference of opinion on this subject between Democrats within the Democratic Party, even though the party proper has hesitantly supported it. There is also difference of opinion, believe it or not, within the Republican Party... you are familiar I assume with the Log Cabin Republicans? [see PS below] They are not alone in feeling a bit uncomfortable with their fellow minimal-government conservatives embracing the notion of more government involvement in this sacred and personal sphere of decision-making.

The Libertarian Party therefore is not the sole repository of the "Some do, some don't" demographic, but there's no denying that, with a party whose idealogical base is all about individuality, Libertarians are probably more prone to disagreement amongst themselves than any other political party on the map, and God bless em for it. Just look at the party proper's position on abortion: officially the party is "pro-choice" (but does not in any way support the public funding of abortions) yet every official declaration I've ever seen comes with a caveat that there are significant numbers of LPers who do NOT recognize this "right", and for clearly delineated "libertarian" reasons. There will always be impassioned, animated difference of opinion between thinking people... at least I hope so.


PS: Now, granted, not all Log Cabiners support legally recognized same-sex marriage, but clearly it is an issue of some import to those conservative Americans whose life partners are of the same gender, just as it is to the more visible rainbow-flag-waving "liberal" Americans in the same predicament. I have trouble seeing why it's such a pulse-pounding potboiler on either side... I mean, MY heterosexual marriage is in no way threatened by Mick and Mike tying the knot, nor by Sue and Sally. On the other hand, why someone would put so much stock in having their life-commitment recognized by the gub'mint is kind of beyond me as well. It strikes me as a deliberately polarizing subject that once again serves the Powers That Be by keeping otherwise like-minded freedom lovers focused on their minor differences instead of concentrating their energy on real reform. The old "divide and conquer" campaign... somehow we keep falling for it.