Conservatism Is a Racist Ideology

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld "birthright citizenship."

In a case abbreviated as Trump v. Barbara, the Court recognized that it is explicitly guaranteed to anyone born under the legal "jurisdiction" of the U.S. federal government by the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted on July 9, 1868), which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

The vote was narrow as hell, though: 5-4. As expected, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson, liberals appointed by Presidents of the Democratic Party, supported birthright citizenship. But so did Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, both conservative Justices appointed by Presidents of the Republican Party -- including Barrett, appointed by Donald Trump.

The other four Associate Justices, all archconservatives appointed by Republican Presidents, voted against it: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Once again, the Supreme Court matters. Trump -- or, if something happens to him, Vice President JD Vance taking his place -- has two and a half years left in his term. And Thomas is 78 years old, Alito is 76, Sotomayor is 72, and Roberts is 71. There's a huge chance that whoever is President between now and January 20, 2029 will have to replace one of them, and a good chance that he'll have to replace at least two. The President elected on November 7, 2028 and taking office on January 20, 2029 will almost certainly inherit those new Justices, and, if not, have to replace them and the others.

Since taking office for a 2nd term as President on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has demanded that the U.S. Supreme Court ignore this vital part of the Constitution, and declare that only children born to parents who are both citizens of the U.S. shall be recognized as citizens of the U.S.

This is anti-immigration rhetoric, aimed largely at black and Spanish-speaking people. It is racist. It is disgusting. It is immoral. It is un-American. And, while the 1st Amendment means that this shouldn't be an issue, so many people claiming it to be true also lie and say they follow Jesus, so I'm going to add this: It is un-Christian.

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Conservatism is the ideology of racism. From 1837 onward, after the populist Andrew Jackson left office, the Democratic Party was the party of conservatism. Then, after the American Civil War, without Abraham Lincoln to keep an eye on them any longer, the members of the Republican Party saw how much money they'd made on railroads and armaments, and decided they didn't want to pay taxes on that income, and became conservative. This led to the Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction, and thus ended the official move for civil rights in America, for black people and for women. (Hispanics weren't even being considered, although there were moves, even then, to limit immigration from Asia.)

So, at this point, we had two conservative parties, to the point where the Republicans threw former President Theodore Roosevelt out in 1912, when he campaigned to return to the office, on things like universal health coverage and old-age pensions -- essentially, what became Social Security.

Starting in 1932, with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, the Democratic Party returned to liberalism, except for their Southern wing, which, while taking in the money from New Deal's liberal projects, remained racist and conservative.

In 1964, the outside-the-South Democrats joined with reasonable Republicans to pass the Civil Rights Act. The most conservative Republicans appealed to the Southern Democrats, and say, "You don't like it? Join us." And they did. And that's where we are now.

So when Republicans call the Democrats the party of racism and the party of the Ku Klux Klan, it's no more true today than the Republicans being the party of Lincoln. Today's racists are united in their support of the Republicans, and of Donald Trump.

And let's drop this myth of "Conservatism is opposed to big government." Conservatives have always believed in big government when it comes to fighting their enemies. Since World War II, they've never had a problem with expanding the Department of Defense, or the CIA, or the FBI. Because that involves spending taxpayers' money. The only time they want smaller government is when bigger government makes them spend more of their own money.

March 29, 1875: Minor v. Happersett Denies Women the Right to Vote

Virginia Minor

March 29, 1875, 150 years ago: The Supreme Court of the United States issues a ruling in the case of Minor v. Happersett. It states that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not, by itself, confer a right to vote; therefore, State laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid.

On October 15, 1872, in St. Louis County, Missouri (outside the City of St. Louis), Virginia Minor, a leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri, attempted to register to vote. She was refused, on the grounds that she was a woman. Her husband, Francis Minor, was a lawyer, and, together, they sued the registrar who rejected her application, Reese Happersett.

Happersett is not the villain of the story: He was just doing his job, upholding the law as it then stood. If he had registered Mrs. Minor, they would both have been arrested and put in jail.

The Minors' argument was that the provision of the Constitution of the State of Missouri that guaranteed the right to vote only to male citizens of the State was in violation of the recently-ratified 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to all people born in the United States, saying that citizenship included voting rights. They did not argue under the grounds of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in Happersett's favor, pointing out that the intent of the 14th Amendment was to give the rights of citizenship to former slaves, and had nothing to do with voting rights or gender. The Minors appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But all 9 Justices upheld the Missouri Supreme Court ruling: Chief Justice Morrison Waite (who wrote the official opinion), Nathan Clifford, Noah Swayne, Samuel F. Miller (who should have known better, as the F stood for "Freeman"), David Davis, Stephen J. Field, William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley and Ward Hunt.

In 1876, just 1 year after the case was decided, Reese Happersett died, only 38 years old. I can find no cause, but, medicine being what it was at the time, it could have been any number of things. Virginia Minor lived until 1894, at the age of 70. Her husband, Francis Minor, had died 2 years previously. The last remaining Justice on the Court who had ruled in Minor was Stephen J. Field, who retired in 1897. The last survivor of those Justices was also Field, who lived until 1899.

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing America's female citizens age 21 and up the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, after all the participants had died. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

January 22, 1973: Roe v. Wade, LBJ Dies, Down Goes Frazier

The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1973. Top row, left to right:

Lewis Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist.

Bottom row, left to right: Potter Stewart, William O. Douglas,

Chief Justice Warren Burger, William J. Brennan, Byron White.

January 22, 1973, 50 years ago: The U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Jane Roe, et al. v. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County -- heretoafter referred as Roe v. Wade for short.

It is the most controversial decision the Court has made since Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857. And it is a story so big that it overshadows 2 other events on the same day: The death of a former President of the United States, and the Heavyweight Championship of the World changing hands on a spectacular knockout.

In 1968, Norma McCorvey, a 21-year-old Dallas resident, became pregnant for the 3rd time. She had given up her 2nd child for adoption willingly, and was tricked into doing the same for her 1st. She was divorced from the father of her 1st child, and had no means to raise a child.

She sought an abortion, but the law of the State of Texas prohibited in nearly all cases. The only exception was if giving birth would endanger the mother's life. She was referred to attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in March 1970, alleging that Texas' abortion laws were unconstitutional.

To keep her identity a secret, McCorvey was listed in court records with the placeholder name Jane Roe. (Legal placeholder names include John Doe, Jane Doe, Richard Roe, and, in this case, Jane Roe.) The defendant was the District Attorney for Dallas County, Henry Wade, previously best known for having successfully prosecuted Jack Ruby, who had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald could be tried for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Three months after filing the suit, on June 2, 1970, Norma McCorvey gave birth to her 3rd child, a girl, and put her up for adoption. A few months later, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case, and ruled in her favor. Crawford Martin, the Attorney General of the State of Texas, appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It took until January 22, 1973 for the High Court to issue a ruling. It was 7-2 in McCorvey's favor. The reasoning was that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.

However, it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and tied the degree of any State's regulation to the trimester of pregnancy which is to be aborted. In other words, the Court provided a loophole which gave anti-abortion activists hope that, one day, the Roe v. Wade decision might be overturned.

The decision was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, who became, to anti-abortion activists, the most hated Justice in the Court's history. He was joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis Powell.

Dissenting were Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist. Both were Catholic -- but so was Brennan, who supported the aforementioned citation of a right to privacy.

Appointed by Democratic Presidents: Douglas by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, White by John F. Kennedy in 1962, and Marshall by Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The Democrats, ever since, have been the Party favoring abortion rights, but White did not vote that way.

Appointed by Republican Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower had appointed Brennan in 1956, and Stewart 1958; while the current President, Richard Nixon, had appointed Burger in 1969, Blackmun in 1970, and Powell and Rehnquist in 1972.

However, Brennan was a Democrat, whom Eisenhower had appointed as a gesture of bipartisanship. Of the other 5, only Rehnquist ruled against the right to an abortion. In 1986, when Burger retired as Chief Justice, President Ronald Reagan rewarded Rehnquist by promoting him to the Chief's chair.

Control of the Supreme Court has been seen as the anti-abortion movement's way of getting Roe overturned. Which is why, in 2016, when hard-core anti-abortion Justice Antonin Scalia died, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented President Barack Obama's appointee to the seat, Merrick Garland, from even getting a hearing in the Senate.

It was also why evangelical "Christian" Republicans, so often hypocritical, were willing to accept Donald Trump, a pathological liar, a man married 3 times and divorced twice, a serial adulterer, a confessor to serial sexual assault, and a man whose words and actions compare very poorly with those of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Republican nominee for President, because they knew he would appoint Justices to the Court that would be acceptable to McConnell, and thus acceptable to them. This allowed the Scalia seat to remain vacant until Trump took office, enabling him to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the seat.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the "swing vote" on cases, including the biggest challenge to Roe to that point, Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, surprisingly retired in 2018, and Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement, an alcoholic with, like Trump himself, a record of sexual assault and hatred of women.

And when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in office in 2020, before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could do anything about it, McConnell rushed the confirmation of Trump's appointee, Amy Comey Barrett, through the Senate, giving the Court a 6-3 conservative majority that, Court-watchers believed, would overturn Roe when they reached a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. 

Sure enough, that decision came on June 24, and it did overturn Roe. This angered American women so much that the predicted "Red Wave" of votes that was going to give the Republicans overwhelming control of both houses of Congress was counteracted by "Roevember." The result was that the Republicans did regain control of the House of Representatives, but with a majority of only 4 votes; and the Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate.

After Roe v. Wade, Henry Wade did not see his reputation take a hit. Liberals didn't blame him for a law in place well before he ever took office, and conservatives did not hold it against him that he lost the case. He retired as District Attorney in 1987, after 36 years, and died in 2001.

Despite having slept around with men, Norma McCorvey more often identified as a lesbian, having spent most of her adult life with a single life-partner, Connie Gonzales, but constantly cheating on her. In 1989, she came forward as Jane Roe, and participated in abortion-rights rallies.

Then, in 1995, she switched sides, becoming an evangelical Catholic -- at least, officially -- and attending anti-abortion rallies. She wrote 2 books, 1 while on each side of the debate, and both of which were exposed for containing lies. She was never really an asset to either side. Apparently, the only thing she truly believed in was publicity.

In 2021, the baby that "Jane Roe" didn't want came forward for an article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and a subsequent book by Joshua Prager, The Family Roe. (Prager had gained the cooperation of McCorvey's 1st 2 children and her ex-partner.) 

Shelley Lynn Thornton grew up in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas, and later in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, knowing that she was adopted and that she had 2 half-sisters living elsewhere. Shortly before her 19th birthday, she was told -- by a "reporter" for the National Enquirer -- who her birth mother was.

She freaked out. Not because she now knew that her birth mother wanted to end her life. But because, even at her age, she knew that both the Enquirer and the right-to-life movement would want to use her. In one of the few decent things the Enquirer has ever done, it kept Shelley's name out of the printed story.

In 1991, Shelley herself became pregnant. She was opposed to abortion, but, to her, "pro-life" meant the fanatics who terrorized women seeking a choice, and blew up clinics, killing people and making themselves hypocrites, and she wanted nothing to do with that label. She didn't want the "Right to Life" movement to use her in any way.

Unlike her mother, she had a supportive boyfriend, and they got married before their son was born. They moved to Tucson, Arizona, and added 2 daughters. She met both of her half-sisters, and got along well with them. But, despite 2 difficult phone calls, years apart, Shelley Thornton never met Norma McCorvey face-to-face.

McCorvey died on February 18, 2017, in the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, of heart failure, at age 69. In what turned out to be a final interview, what abortion rights activists have called a "deathbed confession," she said she was paid to switch to the anti-abortion side: "I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That's what I’d say." Making her, I suppose, the Anakin Skywalker of abortion politics.

However unreliable a narrator she may have been, I'll let her have the last word: "If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that's no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it 'choice.'"

Of the 9 Justices on the Court for Roe v. Wade, Rehnquist was the last one on the Court, dying in office in 2005. The last one who voted for reproductive rights was Harry Blackmun, who retired in 1994.

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January 22, 1973 was a Monday. And Norma McCorvey was not the only Texas resident in the news that day. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson suffered a heart attack at his LBJ Ranch outside Johnson City. (The city was named for his grandfather, and the closest big city is Austin.) He had a private plane on the Ranch, and Secret Service agents loaded him onto it. He was flown to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, outside San Antonio, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The last known photo

He was 64, and had spent the last 4 years watching Nixon pick apart at his legacy. Actually, while Nixon did dismantle some "Great Society" programs, he kept some, and strengthened others.

That night, at the National Stadium (now named Independence Park) in Kingston, Jamaica, Joe Frazier defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World. His opponent was George Foreman, from Houston. Both men were Olympic Gold Medalists: Frazier in Tokyo in 1964, Foreman in Mexico City in 1968. Both men were undefeated as professionals: Frazier was 29-0, and Foreman, despite being 5 years younger, was 37-0.

In what was known as the Sunshine Showdown (despite taking place at night), Foreman dominated from the opening bell. The rule mandating the fight be ended in the event of 3 knockdowns in 1 round was waived for this fight. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who had also worked with Foreman, was seated at ringside, and, halfway through the 1st round, could be heard on ABC Sports' broadcast yelling, "Frazier's hurt!"

Sitting next to Dundee, Howard Cosell tried to tell the ABC audience what Dundee had said, but couldn't finish it, because Foreman delivered a knockdown blow: "Angie Dundee, Ali's trainer, right next to me, is saying it. You may hear it... Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! The Heavyweight Champion is taking the mandatory 8-count, and Foreman is as poised as can be in a neutral corner!"

Frazier got up at the count of 2, but took the 8-count, and resumed. With 16 seconds left in the 1st round, Foreman knocked Frazier down again. He got up. Just before the bell rang to end the round, Foreman knocked Frazier down for a 3rd time. There was no "saving by the bell": Had Frazier not gotten up, it would have been over then.

It should have been over then. Instead, referee Arthur Mercante, who had refereed the 1st Ali-Frazier fight in 1971, let the 2nd round begin. Frazier was knocked down a 4th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 5th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 6th time. Only then did Mercante stop it. Foreman was the Champion.

In his next fight, on September 1 at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, Foreman knocked Puerto Rican fighter José "King" Roman out in the 1st round. Next up, on March 26, 1974 in Caracas, Venezuela, Foreman knocked Ken Norton out in the 2nd round.

Roman had never fought Ali. But, now, Foreman had destroyed the only 2 men to defeat Ali as professionals. Yet Ali wanted to fight him to regain the title. People were afraid that Foreman would badly hurt Ali, maybe even kill him. Instead, Ali knocked Foreman out in the 8th round, and proved that he was, indeed, what he had been saying he was: "The Greatest of All Tiiiiiiiime!"

Foreman retired in 1977, became a minister, and, in 1987, returned to boxing to raise money for his church. Discovering that he still had some punching power, he kept at it. He fought Evander Holyfield for the title in 1991, and while he didn't come close to winning, he went the distance and didn't get hurt.

Lots of people, myself included, thought he had proven his point, and that he should stop before he did get hurt. He didn't. In 1994, with the title now in the hands of Michael Moorer, Foreman knocked Moorer out, and, at 45, became the oldest Heavyweight Champion of the World ever.