www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006Women as reasonFor freedom, we must stop Alitoby Terry Moon Samuel Alito, George W. Bush's latest nominee to the Supreme Court, is the perfect right-wing ideologue for Bush's reign and this stage of capitalism's development. His record shows that he cares nothing for human rights, and has made a career based on finding ways to use the law to thwart and/or destroy what rights do exist, and to block realization of the human urge to self-development and freedom. This man found that the law allows the strip search of a ten-year-old girl who committed no crime; that the murder of a 15-year-old boy, shot in the back by a cop while running from a $10 robbery, was justified, and the child's age and crime "essentially irrelevant"; who states he is "proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." CAPITALISM UNBOUND Alito worships the state, especially its repressive powers, including the police. His--and Bush's--agenda is to drastically reinterpret the Constitution so that federal regulatory agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will have no power to protect workers; ban discrimination against women, Blacks, minorities, and immigrants; stop pollution; or keep the food and drug supply safe. Alito's Constitutional interpretation lets loose capitalism to exploit and expand, while denying any and all avenues for redress for those who get in the way of that inhuman juggernaut. IF the craven Democrats fight Alito's confirmation (as we go to press, the vote is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee), it won't be over women's right to control our own bodies. The opportunist Hillary Clinton made this clear last January as she "reached out" to anti-abortion fanatics, ingratiatingly saying, "I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that there are NO circumstances under which ANY abortion should EVER be available." (My emphasis.) Clinton never explained why she would "respect" those who would cause the death, maiming and misery of countless women. IF the pusillanimous Democrats fight, it will be because they were pushed to do so by civil rights groups, workers and unions, older people, immigrants' rights groups, the disabled, lesbians and gays, almost all mainstream environmental groups, and the poor, as well as women. By no accident, these are the same groups that came together in the largest march in history, the 2004 March for Women's Lives. By pretending to ignore that outpouring, whose rank and file expressed much more than the narrow aspirations of the leadership to put a pathetic John Kerry in office (see May 2004 N&L, "Women make history in massive rally"), the Bush administration tried to convince the movement that it was powerless to impact the future. The answer to that drive to control the minds of humanity cannot be retreat or quiescence. IDEA OF FREEDOM IN CONTENTION The nomination of Alito is an ideological act, a furthering of Bush's drive to control our minds and destroy any vision of the future other than capitalism's deadly development and this society's deepening sexism, racism, homophobia, and retrogression. As countless demonstrations have shown, it will take more than millions in the street or a gutless Democratic Party to change what Bush set in motion with control of Congress and now the Supreme Court within his grasp. What will aid in our struggle for the minds of humanity, for a way to move towards the kind of society that so many long for--one based on truly NEW, truly HUMAN relations--is Marxist-Humanism's re-creation of Marx's Marxism. That makes explicit that Marx's philosophy recognizes the full potential of what it means to be human, and never separates the self-development of every woman, man, and child from the self-development of the idea of freedom. It is, after all, the idea of what freedom is that is in contention with Alito's nomination. To Bush and Alito, freedom is the right of capitalism to expand and exploit all in its path--all barriers to its inhuman development. To women, Blacks, workers, immigrants, and the poor, freedom is expressed in our quest for wholeness, for self-development and new, truly human relations. For that, a revolution in thought and in life is indispensable. The fight to stop Alito can't be separated from the fight for freedom. That starts with fighting Alito, now! |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
