Christian Nation (30 page)
Dozens of red states quickly followed suit, and by summer hundreds of thousands of men (there were no women) were spending every weekend marching, drilling, training, displaying their weapons, and preparing to defend the Christian Nation and The Blessing from gays, abortion doctors, communists, Muslims, liberals, immigrants, and elites. The militia exercises usually started with a loud pledge to the “Christian flag,” which first became popular after Dan Quayle was reported to have recited it in 1994: “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands. One savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.”
Rallying in Oklahoma City with a ragtag collection of secularists, humanists, lawyers, and other opponents of The Blessing, we asked the media to focus on the fact that “liberty” and “freedom” had been dropped from the names of these militias and all these armed men were now simply “Christians,” sworn not to protect our liberty or even the Constitution but now sworn officially to “defend the Christian Nation and the covenants of The Blessing” and, unofficially, to “eradicate evil.” We asked everyone to listen closely to the pledge to the Christian flag, which substitutes “life and liberty
for all who believe
” for the traditional “liberty and justice for all.” Could it be more clear, we asked, that Jordan and his supporters had now turned their backs on the Constitution they long claimed to venerate? Could it be more clear that they were betraying the conservative and American values of personal freedom and limited government? Could not everyone see the sort of hypocrisy foreshadowed by the Terri Schiavo affair, with the proper scope and role of government depending entirely on who controlled it and on the ends for which it was being deployed? Limited government was all well and good when liberal elites were in control and pursuing a liberal agenda; but look at how quickly the federal government ceased to be a target for disdain once it was firmly in fundamentalist control and dedicated to the implementation of their theocratic vision.
We asked every American of good faith to consider the implications of having an armed national militia outside the control of our professional military and law enforcement, a militia dedicated to ending the freedoms of conscience, worship, speech, and privacy for all who did not embrace their fundamentalist views. Where, we asked, would this be stopped and how and by whom? There was only one answer, we argued. It could be stopped only if each and every American of good will rose up and proclaimed that intolerance would not be tolerated, and defended our constitutional democracy with the same vigor that they would defend their families from physical assault. And yes, if you want to know if by “vigor” we meant necessary violence, yes. This was a large and difficult step for Sanjay, who by nature was entirely nonviolent.
When Sanjay and I returned to New York with the TW team, we received a vivid reminder that martial law was still in effect. All the Oklahoma-based organizers of the rally at which we spoke were arrested by federal troops the next day, without explanation to their families except that they were being detained under martial law powers and that military tribunals would hear their cases. This was a first. During the second Palin administration, the federal military was slow to employ its martial law powers. Initially, troops made some high-profile detentions of illegal immigrants, who were generally deported without hearings or other legal nicety. Then Muslims, including US citizens, began to be arrested on grounds of “national security” and detained in special Guantanamo-like facilities established for domestic terrorism suspects in Alabama and Wyoming. Shamefully, the legacy of 7/22 was such that there was little public outcry against this practice. But, to our knowledge, neither administration had before used its martial law powers against political opponents or outspoken critics of the Christian Nation. And now, when Sanjay and I were safely home in New York, all the dissidents whom we had put in the national spotlight were arrested and, effectively, “disappeared.” Sanjay held another press conference denouncing the arrests, as did the governors of a dozen other states and every remaining independent member of Congress. But these protests had no impact. Shortly after we returned to New York, I said to Sanjay, for the first time, that I feared that the situation might be irreversible. Tonight I remembered exactly what he said in reply.
“Just remember, G, there are battles and there are wars. And even nations that win wars do not stay on top forever. Nothing is irreversible.”
The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
—Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
I
T WAS A
SHORT AND PLEASANT WALK
from TW’s offices near the World Trade Center, up Broadway and through City Hall Park to the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Courthouse on Pearl Street. The sky was that spectacularly clear September blue that New Yorkers who were there in 2001 will forever associate with 9/11. In addition to the sky, what I most remember about our walk is the superficial impression of profound normality. Wall Streeters queued at their favorite coffee carts, and bike messengers weaved in and out of traffic. Female bankers in expensive shoes climbed the steps from the subway with young Indian software engineers and Jamaican secretaries. We watched an angry Russian limo driver scream profanities at a Sikh cabby while the Russian’s passenger sat in the backseat reading the
Times
, unperturbed. Normal. And yet there we were, on our way to hear a federal judge deliver the first decision arising out of our many challenges to a statute whose existence—only ten years before—would have been unimaginable. This unimaginable thing had happened, and yet everyone was acting normally.
Of course, I remember thinking, the unimaginable happens. I in particular knew that. I was a person with two parents and a sister and, suddenly, I was an orphan without siblings. Unimaginable. I thought of those who had walked up this stretch of Broadway before me. Could the Native Americans whose ancestors reaped the riches of Mannahatta for forty generations have imagined the smelly, disease-ridden white men who sailed into the harbor on great floating birds with white wings and put an end to their civilization? Could the Dutch citizens of this island have imagined that overnight, without a shot fired, the burghers of New Amsterdam would become subjects of the British crown? Could the crowd watching George Washington’s inauguration as the republic’s first president have imagined that in a little more than a century, the ragtag collection of colonies would surpass the great historic global empires of England, France, and Spain as the world’s new superpower? Could the commuters in Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 10, 2001, have possibly imagined that a day later the Twin Towers would be gone, three thousand of their neighbors dead, Lower Manhattan in flames, not a plane in the sky, and the world again changed forever? Nothing seems more inevitable than the status quo, and yet nothing is more certain than that it will—eventually—end suddenly and that we will need to make our lives in a new, unfamiliar and unexpected landscape.
H
EADING TO COURT
that morning, we were both exasperated and comforted by the relentless, reckless normality all around us on the street.
“You worried?” I asked Sanjay.
“Not unless you are,” he replied. “You told me that this was one we really could not lose. You told me that Denny Chin was the right judge. You told me that we were fantastically lucky that the first challenge on the merits was Blessing One. So no, I am not worried.”
I was worried. It was true that the best lawyers in the country were responsible for the tsunami of litigation that we had unleashed in the federal and state courts. And we were relieved that most courts promptly issued a “stay”—an order preventing the challenged legislation from coming into effect pending resolution of the challenge on its merits. But the real test would come when the courts addressed the substantive question of whether or not the law should be invalidated due to its conflict with the Constitution, or some other deficiency.
We were on our way that morning to hear the first of those substantive decisions on the “merits.” The case dealt with the first Blessing: “As the fate of the nation depends entirely on unbending obedience to the will of God, it shall be treasonous to deny the existence of God, to question the Word of God, or to advocate disobedience to the will of God.” This first Blessing was, from a constitutional and legal perspective, particularly egregious. Of course making it treasonous to deny the existence of God violated the separation clause, the Bill of Rights, the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, and a raft of other constitutional protections. The Supreme Court’s elimination of the right of privacy in its
Gonzales
decision made the constitutional challenge more complicated but still easy to establish. In addition, as a federal statute, its form was deficient in almost every respect in which a law could be deficient. Although evangelicals believed that the Word of God and will of God were somehow objectively ascertainable, presumably through reference to the Bible, as the basis for criminal treason, the concepts were fatally vague and uncertain. Moreover—putting aside the issues of whether God is a real or an imaginary being, and which “God” is being referred to—a crime consisting of “questioning” God’s “Word” and “advocating disobedience” to His “will” would be impossible to apply and adjudicate consistently and equitably. The US solicitor general obviously had struggled with his defense of the legislation. The government’s brief, among other things, had argued that The Blessing did not specify which “God” was being referred to and therefore could not be viewed as establishing any particular religion.
It was my former partners at RCD&S whom I chose to bring this particular case. There were no smarter, more thorough, or more strategic litigators in the country. I suspected they would come up with a brief that wove together dozens of grounds for objection, virtually ensuring that even if the court rejected some of our arguments, a dozen more would survive, and survive appellate review. I was right. The case they developed was brilliantly tactical—relying not only on the best arguments from a legal perspective but the principles and lines of authority that were most deeply embedded in constitutional jurisprudence, with the result that an appellate judge or a hostile Supreme Court tempted to reject the principle or overturn the line of authority would be forced to undermine dozens of other Supreme Court decisions vital or convenient to the fundamentalist Christian cause.
The street outside the courthouse was packed with media and a large group of protestors bussed in from a Pennsylvania mega-church, who knelt in prayer and held signs with crudely painted messages, including “Judges who reject Christ will Burn in Hell Forever,” “Give us Real Freedom,” “Christians will not be victims anymore,” and “The people have spoken, get out of the way.” As Sanjay approached, the crowd first quieted, and then the pastor rose from his knees, pointed dramatically at Sanjay, and yelled “Antichrist!” The congregation joined in with yells of “Satan.” Sanjay’s bodyguards scanned the crowd nervously, their hands hovering near their hidden holsters. Sanjay stopped and paused for a moment, and then turned to walk directly toward the preacher. The flustered minister lowered his pointing arm and went silent. Surrounded by TV cameras and microphones, Sanjay extended his hand and the man, out of reflex, shook it.
“Pastor,” Sanjay said, “countless Americans have died to defend your right and my right to believe what we wish to believe, to worship in the manner we desire, and to practice our religions freely. Will you join me in a prayer of thanks?” The pastor was speechless. “Thank you, Pastor,” Sanjay continued after the briefest pause. “Let us pray.” Like a deer caught in headlights, the pastor had no choice but to bow his head. His previously rowdy congregation became silent. “Let us remember the dark days when our forefathers in the Old World were forced to conform to the religion and beliefs of their monarch. Let us remember the thirst for freedom that drove them across the ocean. Let us remember and give thanks for the brave men and women who have defended our republic and its freedoms against every assault. Let us give thanks that our fathers and mothers in the last century were prepared to give all they had to defeat fascism and communism, systems that tried to tell us what to believe and what to think and to control every aspect of our behavior and lives. We give thanks for having been delivered from these great evils. And may we meet today and go forward from this place in the spirit of Jesus, whose radical commandments to love our enemies, to love the sinner, and to turn the other cheek have shown us the only path to peace and justice in this world. Amen.”
A smattering of uncertain “Amens” echoed from the congregation. Sanjay gave the pastor his warmest smile, shook his hand again, turned, and walked into the courthouse.