In 2010 the radical right wing tea party Republicans won elections throughout the nation for state legislative seats with a well financed and structured attack on the Obama administration and as a result of the terrible state of the economy due to the Bush-Cheney depression. But these radical right wing tea party Republicans didn’t proceed to do anything about the economy because they couldn’t. Their philosophy on economic matters is to let the market place solve things by waiting - that’s what Hoover did in 1929; he waited until the nation threw him out in 1932. So the radical right wing tea party Republicans turned their attention to social issues and an attempt to re-fight and this time win the culture wars of the 1960's/1970's.
First, to make sure they would be able to stay in power they got as many states as they controlled to pass measures to restrict people’s ability to vote. That’s the reason for the phony Photo ID laws to prevent people from doing what no one was doing, i.e. impersonate someone else when they went to vote. These laws are designed to prevent those without id’s mostly young people, the elderly and African Americans and many urban dwellers from voting. Fact that most of those demographics vote Democrat was an incentive to the radical right wing tea party Republicans to pass the bills. Hopefully the past will hold in the future and those still allowed easy access to the franchise will vote for candidates who will repeal these laws and continue the two hundred year American march to universal adult suffrage.
Finally this year the radical right wing tea party Republicans decided to declare war on women. They couldn’t be sure that the Supreme Court, even though packed with conservatives now, would repeal Roe v. Wade so they first went after Griswold v. Connecticut. That earlier case had struck down a state law against contraception and first enunciated the idea that the 9th Amendment (one of the original Bill of Rights) provided our citizenry with a right to privacy. The right to privacy became the underpinning to Roe v Wade which guaranteed women the right to make their decisions regarding carrying to term or terminating a pregnancy. The radical right wing tea party Republicans have now begun to pass any kind of bill they can think of that will interfere with and restrict access to women’s reproductive health care. They use state budgets to cut funding to the worthwhile programs of Planned Parenthood. In one state they have ordered all doctors to advise women that there is a link between having an abortion and getting breast cancer. Despite the fact that every organization of physicians and medical experts in America have insisted there is no such linkage. Now the radical right wing tea party Republicans will substitute the opinion of legislators for that of doctors (that’s what they incorrectly accused Obamacare of doing.) And most infamously they are passing forced intra-vaginal sonograms for all women contemplating a pregnancy termination. Legislators should not be mandating such invasive procedures which are available if a woman and her doctor see the necessity or choose to do.
The radical right wing tea party Republicans have decided that among their goals for this year will be winning the war against women and turning back the clock in regard to gender equality. “Let women remain in the kitchens” as far as these yahoos are concerned - keep them “barefoot and pregnant”. It is of course frustrating to those of us who lived through the 1960's and the
1970's to witness society undergo again these cultural battles that we thought were resolved by the body politic in our era.
In the 1960's the issue of racial equality was faced head on and the national consensus by the end of that decade was that all persons regardless of race would be treated equally and would be entitled to exercise their right to vote. In the 1970's the battle of gender equality was waged and, while we failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the society accepted and embraced gender equality as women began to be elected to public office in record numbers and as the Supreme Court recognized that the right to privacy from the Ninth Amendment gave women control over decisions about their reproduction, e.g. use of contraception and termination of pregnancies. This past decade has seen a great battle by those in our society who choose an alternative lifestyle to heterosexuality to be free from discriminatory practices and all indications are that LGBT folks are winning that battle.
Political decisions and legislation can always be revisited - but when a society goes back and tries to undo major societal consensuses on cultural matters it risks tearing the society to shreds. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity are not just the slogans of the French revolution. They are the very things that Americans have fought for, that Americans have died for and that Americans today live for. In the 1960's we overcame, in the 1970's we moved forward and now in 2012 we must remember the words of that old spiritual and “like a tree standing in the water -- we shall not be moved”.
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