The Years of the Skull
The Account of Kiang Liu
I once recalled the story of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, after lamenting that he had not spoken-up when the Nazis came to arrest other opponents, concluded with the line "when they came for me, there was no one left to speak." China in the years of Mao Yang-jin, usually called the Lesser Mao outside of China, was the place where Bonhoeffer's reflection became a metaphor for our lives. There are some who speculate that, had the Lesser Mao not mis-ruled in his Great Uncle's name, we might have been a billion by the end of the twentieth century, or close to that number. If, as some say, that around two hundred million died between 1975 and 1982, and we add to those the uncounted millions who died in the period of chaos afterward, and those who as a result of this were never born, then we say that more were either killed by his hand, or in the consequence of it, or were never born to a number somewhere near the total number of Americans and Soviets combined who lived in that period.
Our people, the great mass of peasants and workers - in whose name the Revolution of 1949 had been won and for whom the People's Republic was meant to govern - died of malnutrition, of terror (followed by war and more terror), of disease, of overwork or the deep despair that comes from utter hopelessness. Suicide was common, so common that there was a service to collect these bodies, and they were rarely idle. Rebellion occurred more frequently that most people now realize, but it was usually an isolated act of frustration rather than the work of organized conspiracies, for the conspirators fell to the People's Security Bureau swiftly, betrayed by some informer or another to grisly fate. As an isolated, emotional act, rebellion was quickly crushed, and a punitive example made of the local population as an object lesson. Beheadings in the village common or at the collective farm or in the industrial common were a regular thing - always a lesson of what awaited those who acted against the regime, or those who were imagined to have done so.
And then there were the martyrs of Kwangsi, meaning not just those who died that day, but those who died of radiation sickness for many years afterwards. We will never know for sure, so many died at the time that their deaths went unrecorded, and so many more died afterward, that there can never be an accurate reckoning. All we can say is that in 1973 China and India were well on the way to becoming the most populous nations on Earth. By the year 2000 the former Indian states, though themselves ravaged by war and campaigns at ethnic cleansing, surpassed us in numbers approaching two-to-one. It could be said of the United States that there were some areas of their cities that seemed more crowded when compared with some cities in China.
By the year 2000 the majority of the Chinese population were under twenty or over eighty, with a great gap in between. Most of the people born between these generations had been killed over the two decades of terror and chaos. (A few lucky ones managed to flee). Almost all of our young people were raised in state orphanages. The concept of family has all but been destroyed on the mainland because so few of the young have ever experienced what a family is. If you meet a Han Chinese of middle age, then the odds are highest that the person had been living in Hong Kong, Taiwan or abroad during this period. Fifty years after the Great Helmsman's Revolution the generation of the revolutionaries and the generation of their children were so reduced that the survivors were regarded with awe, as the supermen who had survived a great storm. Those who had not been driven mad by their experiences, were so scarred inside that they were damaged as humans. I am one of those, perhaps not mad, but I wonder what I might have been had I not steeled myself through the madness.
I once asked a friend what we could call this period, meaning what symbol we could use to describe this time of horrors. He drew a skull. It was correct: the Years of the Skull.
I once heard the story of an old man, a veteran, who had endured years of torture at the hands of the Japanese during the Second World War; he had lost his family to them. He hated the Japanese with a great passion, so much so that he once was arrested for spitting on a Japanese diplomat in the early seventies. Only Revolutionary discipline had kept him from doing any real harm to the man. This old man, it is said, one day decided to swim on a wooden raft (really two planks held together by nails and glue) across the South China Sea because he preferred the mercy of the Japanese (as he recalled them from the forties) to life under the Lesser Mao. If it is true, then no doubt he drowned in the attempt. I have heard thousands of variations of this story in the years since, enough to convince me that more than one old man tried it. Japanese and South Korean fisherman still reminisce about "the time of the human catches."
There are stories, much suppressed by the Soviets and North Koreans at the time, of men, women and even children marching like ghosts into the border fortifications, heedless of the bullets flying at them from the Chinese side, or coming at them from the Soviet side trying to scare them away. The Russians were forced to rotate border troops more frequently, because the incidence of madness from shooting so many starving civilians surged among their troops. One V.V. Putin of the KGB has written about this subject in Russian, noting that even the stone-hard Yuri Andropov was moved by what he read.
The Vietnamese took pity on the desiccated crypto-humans who wandered out of the jungle along their border with China. The Vietnamese had an ethnic hatred of the Chinese going back over a thousand years, yet is said that a hardened revolutionary and Vietnamese nationalist, Pham Van Dong, shed a tear at what he saw.
The Shan United Army in the jungles of Burma at first took refugees as recruits, until the numbers overwhelmed them and, like the Soviets, North Koreans and eventually even the Vietnamese, they were forced to shoot at refugees to discourage the flood. You can reportedly still smell the stench of death in the jungles along the borders with Burma, Laos and Vietnam.
One old man, a simple man, converted to Christianity after President Wallace ordered his attack on Lop Nur. He hoped that if he prayed hard enough to the same God that Wallace prayed to, that this God would command Wallace to do it again and this time strike the leadership compound at Zhongnanhai.
I know, in my bed at night I cursed Wallace and (withheld) after him for not removing the monster from our midst. Even if I died in the conflagration, China might yet survive. It never happened, not that way, and instead one horror gave way to another.
I wandered the empty streets, living in a once teaming capital that was now a ghost town. Where the people had once crowded the streets and the buses there was only a small number of bureaucrats and a larger cadre of PSB left. Peking's cities had once rung with the sound of bicycle bells. Now the empty streets howled with the wind blowing down from Siberia and through the empty canyons of the city. The people, the workers, had been driven out into the country to the collective farms and the new "ruralised" factories. Both were failures, the source of a great famine. We only ate because the few efficient operations sent their product to us, the ghosts in these once great cities, and a daily meal was the reward for our loyalty.
As Kiang Liu I came into the leadership's service during these years mainly because the dearth of qualified people often opened the road to the top for those of modest or little background, or as in my case with an assumed background. Those who filled the jobs before us had fallen to the constant purges, and many of our cadre went the same route. Survival was mostly a matter of luck and blind chance. Slavish loyalty was not enough if the People's Security Bureau set its eye on you, and often that attention came for no reason. I knew of one man who was arrested for contracting the Chicken Pox. Chicken Pox it was said was a foreign, counter revolutionary disease, and this poor soul could only have contracted it though contact with foreigners. No matter that there were no foreigners to be found in Peking even if he was guilty. It was a logic that said that thousands of children must also be spies, since Chicken Pox was common among them. But who had the courage to point that out? Not I. This man's true crime then had been to not contract Chicken Pox as a child, but to get it as an adult from his child. This was the way of the People's Republic in these years: how can one be reasonable when there is no reason to begin with? In this case the reasonable man is asking for his own death.
Kiang Liu was the name of an unfortunate man who died during these years. I took his name and paid an amount of food and liquor to his family for their silence - they were happy to receive those and future gifts for that silence. Kiang Liu was in turn buried under my name, so that the People's Security Bureau could record my death. My crime? I was educated at the University of Southern California and spoke excellent English, and even passable Spanish for that matter. My father had been an anti-Kuomintang leftist who fled to the United States in the years of Chiang's rule. As an idealist schooled in the philosophies of Marx and Mao I returned to the motherland in the early 1970's, committed to playing my part in the future of the dream of the People's Republic. By 1975 my skills and background were a crime, so I went underground as another man, an barely literate ignoramus. His modest background nonetheless made me, very quickly, among the more learned not confined in a prison or in the ground.
I was secretary to a party official named Li Chan, another of the modest men who prospered in these years. In 1975 the Lesser Mao had declared all those who spoke a foreign language as enemies of the Revolution. They quickly disappeared; though some only went after putting up a fight. Then in 1976 the Lesser Mao decided that literacy of any kind was counter revolutionary. Children's education was stopped; illiteracy was enforced as a state policy. A few who were necessary to the functioning of the state mechanism were spared, but we had an instant crime of which the People's Security Bureau (PSB) could charge us at their pleasure. Some wonder why the Lesser Mao, who shut-off China from the world, allowed foreign engineers into the top secret heart of Lop Nur. This was why. He had killed most of our engineers. As I said, in a land without reason there is no point in trying to be reasonable.
Li Chan rose quickly in part because he was skilful at denouncing those whose positions he coveted. He was a master of playing the new game, where one's loyalty was measured against the number of counter-revolutionaries exposed, and I rose with him. Once, when Li Chan had become a candidate member of the Politburo, I encountered a man named Ho Dong who had known Kiang Liu. He did not denounce me, instead he took his own life. Seeing me using Kiang Liu's identity he could not know if I was an imposter posted by the PSB to watch Li Chan or a real criminal using a false identity, or worse from his perspective, a PSB provocateur sent to test his loyalty. If he denounced me and I was with the PSB, he would be dooming himself. On the other hand, if I was there to test him, then he could not be sure that if he didn't denounce me as fraud, he would be exposed as a traitor. Either way, it was likely that he could die unless he guessed correctly. Fortunately, for me, the pressure of the decision got to Ho Dong and he took the common way out. There are many times I wonder that I did not make that choice too.
By the Fall of 1979 we had been told many times that the repeated bombings were the actions of the accursed Americans who were waging an air war against the Revolution. At the center one could discern that there was a hole in this explanation since the targets of the American air war were known well in advance and arrangements were made to move people in or out of the target zone according to their importance to the State. Artillery was always moved into the targeted area as well, though I suspect it was used to simulate the bombings rather than to shoot at phantom bombers. It served the purpose of keeping the population nervous, and providing the regime a foreign enemy on which it could blame all of the shortages and other problems it was causing.
There was a great silence after the attack on Lop Nur, in part because the Lesser Mao and his associates had so deluded themselves about the nature of nuclear weapons and the capabilities of the United States that they were stunned by Wallace's reaction. After shadow boxing with their own invented bogey-man for nearly five years, they were caught unawares when their punching bag developed real teeth and struck back with a will they could not shape.
State propaganda blamed the Americans for the Kwangsi bombing, though of course such an assertion was ridiculous (except to the ignorant who nothing of the world of course, and by 1979 there were far more of those than there was of the more informed). Li Chan himself boasted that the regime had acted to put down a counter revolutionary insurgency by the Southern Army, which had risen after being infected by CIA agents in Laos and Vietnam.
"Traitors and thieves," Li Chan would declare. "How could they have stood against the Revolution and the Great Chairman's messenger? Who were they to strike against the very State that nurtured them? Scum! May they fry forever!"
I of course agreed - with zeal. I expressed my fervent hope that their families would be punished as well. Not that I was cruel; I was certain that had already come to pass.
Many who glimpsed the reality understood that they had risen out of frustration with the regime itself which sent them to fight better equipped enemies while denying the People's Liberation Army food and ammunition. After a time caution gave way to desperation and the Southern Army marched north. To everyone's surprise they defeated a better equipped PSB security force - largely because the PSB Generals, who were appointed on political merit were incompetent soldiers. Panic had set in at the center and the nuclear strike was ordered. No one at the time apparently thought to look at the calendar, because it occurred on October 1st, the thirtieth anniversary of the Revolution. How fitting an epitaph to the Great Helmsman's Revolution - mass murder to preserve the rule of his successor from a rebellion by his own army.
If the bomb at Kwangsi was meant to drive home the point that the regime was to be feared most of all, then they undercut themselves by blaming the Americans for the act. As I have said, there were some among us who hoped the Americans would do it again and take the regime out.
The truth was that the strike at Lop Nur so stunned the top leadership that they could not react. The Lesser Mao who, as I came to appreciate from the stories I heard in Peking, lived in a fantasy realm surrounded by his Terra Cotta soldiers (it is said that he fancied himself the first Emperor Chin Shi Huang re-born, and as Chin had been known for his excessive cruelties so the Lesser Mao had to do the same, but in a more spectacular fashion) and visions of a Chinese Empire. It was also whispered that he had succumbed to using his own special export product, as many of his ignoramuses had, and this may well have further effected his mind.
I cannot say for certain as I had no exposure to the man myself, but I think that in the end he believed - or convinced himself - that the Americans and Soviets were so in awe of him that they would not dare attack. He was surrounded by a coterie of supplicant lackeys who were more ignorant than a cow about the world beyond our borders, and it is said that as a man of limited intelligence himself, he gloried in being the smartest in a room full of ignoramuses (all of whom praised his wisdom like a Greek chorus at every step, of course). Like many of us, he probably genuinely believed that the U.S. underwater nuclear force was so much propaganda - until that day when Wallace proved otherwise. China had no such capability at the time, so this would have been a profound embarrassment of the first order. Even his pet ignoramuses must have questioned what happened - but probably not aloud and to his face.
Targeting Lop Nur had been wise in the sense that it severely damaged our nuclear capability -mainly by killing so many of the Libyans and Pakistanis who were doing the engineering work out there. But as a target, it was difficult - even in the most shrill propaganda - to explain why it had taken the aggressive Americans four years to get around to going after so crucial a target. Their ability was clearly demonstrated, and the Soviet complicity shattered any illusion that the Americans and Soviets were so antagonist toward each other that they could not mount a joint action if they had the will to do so. Even the dumbest of the dumb began to smell a rat in the official story.
The first reaction, when it came (we waited for it in dread, as if sitting atop a volcano waiting for it to explode) was a purge of the People's Liberation Army leadership, perhaps the tenth since the Lesser Mao had taken the reigns. In his limited view he could only see the success of the American rocket in hitting a precise target so far from the sea as a sign that someone had given them targeting information. He suspected a traitor, so his PSB killed hundreds of senior officers looking for that phantom. The capabilities of modern satellites were beyond his grasp. I had heard that among his lectures to the faithful the Lesser Mao often opined that the American and Soviet space programs were propaganda. The moon landings, he said, were filmed in a Hollywood studio. Gagarin, he asserted, had been assassinated in 1968 to keep him from admitting that he had never really been into space. Sputnik was a fraud meant to scare little children and Americans. The ignoramuses swallowed it whole and repeated it as if it was divine knowledge revealed.
I had hidden away a small shortwave receiver with headphones. There were times when I could steal away to a private space and listen to the distant voices of the BBC, Voice of America or Radio Moscow, as well as Hong Kong radio - it depended on how effective the regime's jamming was at any given time. The penalty for what I did was death, and I would never dare to listen without headphones to block the noise, but in those other worldly voices I could experience a few moments of sanity and keep a tenuous connection with a world somewhere beyond the walls of our asylum. Much of the foreign speculation about our China was amusing: they didn't understand what kind of madhouse it had really become. Nor did they understand that if they had invaded, it would have crumpled like an old straw hut after too many seasons in the blasting sun. If Wallace had followed-up with an army up the Yangtze, and the British had done in the past, it could have ended there. But they waited, and analysed, and got most of their facts out of same thin vapour from which the Lesser Mao spun his fantasies.
From BBC I learned that the Lesser Mao did react several days after the Lop Nur attack by sending two jet fighters to sink an American naval vessel, an aircraft carrier, off the coast of Hong Kong. To everyone's astonishment one of our pilots shot the other one from the sky and landed his plane in Hong Kong. The American carrier went unmolested. This, I am sure, added to the ferocity behind the new purge of the PLA. Our air force was effectively grounded, and many of our pilots shot. I could only laugh in disgust as I heard the bewildered western commentators report on a debate that had broken out in Hong Kong about whether the defecting pilot should be treated as a hero or tried for the murder of his comrade. How foolish!
So we fell into a paralysis, as butchery continued around us.
Among the ghosts were a few victims of the great equalizer who dwelt in the nooks and crevices of our once great cities. Like the Lesser Mao they had taken a liking to our special export, the one thing which gave meaning to our economy. Hiding from the PSB as much as they did from life itself, these walking skeletons prowled for food and drugs, barely more than rats in human form. Li Chan, who acquired the unwelcome responsibility of ridding Peking of them called them "parasites" and "lazy, counter-revolutionary scum." When I looked at the addicts, I couldn't help but see what China had really become, a hollow skeleton driven by demons. Perhaps it was better that they should survive and we should perish.
At this time, as I have mentioned, the Politburo was stocked with ignoramuses such as Li Chan. The purge of the Party had begun in earnest with the beheading of Hua Goufeng on the floor of the People's Congress in 1975 - a grisly act meant to inspire terror, and perhaps to signal that the new Emperor Chin had arrived. Others such as Chao Chiang, Deng Shiao Peng, Chen Yu, Li Zinan, Bo Yibao - and even Wang Chen and his aunt Chaing Ching followed soon thereafter, if in less spectacular fashion. Each had a charge of treason levelled against them by some opportunist, and as each fell some mediocrity was lifted into their place. Then the cycles continued of mediocrities denouncing each other and in their turn being marched off to the camps. Who knows what future leaders perished among the faceless hordes. Returning to Bonhoeffer, soon there was no one left to speak, because between them they could barely form one intelligible sentence, let alone speak-up against this evil: the dumb cannot speak, after all.
Only the People's Security Bureau functioned, like an all consuming dragon that never tired, never satiated its appetite for terror and fresh blood. The Lesser Mao fed them with money and narcotics, he unleashed brutes who in a normal society would have been thrown into prison until they died. By the time of the Lop Nur strike there was little beyond the PSB and the Lesser Mao. Nothing held the state together but fear and inertia, the latter a by-product of fear. Wallace's strike should have knocked it over, but most of us were so terrorized and numbed that we missed the opportunity.
I recall a story about the English director, Roland Joffe, who set out many years later to make a film of this period, which he called The Killing Fields. It drove him to being confined for six months in a hospital due to the deep depression caused by reviewing the materials of the period. The Killing Fields was never made because no one who had not lived through it could grasp the reality of China under the Lesser Mao. The American historian Newt Gingrich failed completely in conveying the madness of these years. Pope Ecclesiastes called it the "doorway to Hell itself," but even the Christian damned had it better. Even the Jews of Israel had to acknowledge that a second Holocaust had occurred.
I point this out because we lived in this asylum in a state of comparative numbness. It is easy now for me to put his on paper; at the time I knew much of what I write, and I suspected what I did not know. But to live, to rise in the morning and to function at all, you had to detach yourself from the reality, to walk in feigned ignorance so you could not feel; if you felt you might betray yourself. Perhaps that is why the ignoramuses prospered so well, they had no feelings for the absurd madness about them, so it went unnoticed in their small minds. Oh, how I could envy them in their simplicity.
How I curse Wallace for not finishing what he started. They say he was sane, but I would have preferred him as mad as the Lesser Mao that year.
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Ballot Initiatives to limit third parties - 1979
Arizona = Banning of parties which cannot collect supporting signatures representing at least ten percent of the registered voters in the state. Court challenge likely.
Arkansas = Introduction of run-off elections between the top two finishers where one candidate does not receive fifty percent of the popular vote in the first round.
California = Ballot proposition which would allow the Secretary of State to exclude from the general ballot any political parties which do not have uniform support across the state. To prove uniform support a party must obtain qualifying signatures in at least two-thirds of the counties of the State of California, in excess of a specified percentage of the registered voters in that county, to prove that his has uniform support. No legal challenge until the proposition is enacted.
Connecticut = The Ballot will include Instant run-off voting until one candidate achieves a majority of votes cast.
District of Columbia = Instant run-off voting until one candidate receives forty percent of the vote tally, and no other candidate receives over thirty-five percent of the vote tally. If this criteria cannot be met, then a second round of balloting will be called between the top two candidates.
Hawaii = The Ballot will include Instant run-off voting until one candidate achieves a majority of votes cast.
Florida = Introduction of run-off elections between the top two finishers where one candidate does not receive fifty percent of the popular vote in the first round.
Idaho = Local electoral districts are to organize polling as they see fit and administer ballots accordingly. The process is to be overseen by a management firm (i.e. Arthur Andersen) which is contracted by the State of Idaho. (The office of Secretary of State has been abolished, and most of its functioned outsourced or returned to local authorities).
Louisiana = Legislature passes a law requiring that if the top two candidates in the first round do not achieve forty-percent of the vote, a second round primary will be held among the top four candidates to select the two who will go into the final round. Also a separate initiative will require all candidates to formally attest to their belief in “one divine creator, a God of the Bible or Torah.” Likely will not stand-up to an establishment clause challenge.
Mississippi = Non partisan ballot being considered with a run-off election if no candidate receives fifty percent of the vote in the first round.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia also looking at variations of the Instant Run Off ballot.
New York = A legislative initiative similar to the California ballot proposition. The New York law specifically grandfathers in the Conservative, Democratic, Liberal and Republican parties of New York as “historic political parties of electoral significance.” Anticipated challenge in court under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Oregon = Modified California-New York plan with a provision that third parties must register new voters as well as sign-up existing voters to a specified percentage for their parties in order to qualify to be on the ballot. (Seen as encouraging wider electoral participation by signing-up new voters as a criteria).
South Dakota = Also looking a the non-partisan ballot.
Texas = Every party must file a platform with the Secretary of State of Texas. The Secretary of State reserves the right to “fuse” third parties into single candidate slates where platforms bear a marked similarity. Parties are to be disqualified if they are thought to be “niche” in terms of representing only one or two congressional districts with no participation elsewhere in the state. Texas will also ban all Socialist, Communist and Maoist parties as they “represent a foreign influence.”
Vermont = Considering a ballot that does away with party affiliation. Candidates run for office based on their program and resume, without overt party affiliation (the non-partisan ballot).
Utah = The State Legislature must ratify the choice of voters. Likely to face a Civil Rights Act challenge.
Washington = Requires each party (including the Democrats and Republicans) to post a pre-campaign budget showing how much they expect to collect in donations, from where, and how much they expect to spend. The Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Governor, can exclude from the ballot any candidate who does not present a realistic budget or voting target. Court challenge likely.
Note: With the exception of Arkansas and Florida, where the state Constitution already makes provision for run-off elections, all of these measures are expected to be challenged in the Federal Courts, and thus they are unlikely to come into effect for the 1980 Presidential election. In the case of California, the matter must be decided at the ballot box before legal challenges can begin.
Proposed U.S. Constitutional Amendments Pending in 1979
I: Modifying the Electoral College to add 1/3 of an Electoral Vote for each State + the District of Columbia (17 EV); These 17 Electoral Votes to be assigned as a block to the winner of the popular vote in a Presidential election. This is meant to reward the winner of the popular vote and eliminate ties in the Electoral College.
II: Modify the Electoral College to the Maine model; where two Electoral Votes are assigned to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the State, and one Electoral Vote per congressional district is assigned to the candidate who wins the popular vote in each individual congressional district. (This would not affect DC and States with only one at-large Congressional district). (Proposed Amendments I and II also being discussed as a combined amendment).
III: Requiring that the United States of America be re-named “The United States of America under God’s Sovereignty.”
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ): “I’m not a citizen of a country called U-SAUGS!”
IV: Repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. (Popular election of Senators). (a.k.a. The Rumsfeld Amendment)
V: Give each State Three Senators so that there would be a uniform national Senate election every two years. (And create fifty extra Electoral Votes for President and Vice President).
VI: Election of the Vice President by the Electoral College after an election held in the off-year to the Presidential election (i.e. eliminating Presidential-Vice Presidential tickets by having Vice Presidents elected to four year terms during the off-year elections between Presidential elections in what would be a Vice Presidential election). The Electoral College created for this off-year election would remain on call to confirm by majority vote a replacement nominated by the President within twenty days should the office fall vacant. (Modifies the 25th Amendment, section 2 accordingly).
VII: Requiring the election of the Attorney-General of the United States in the same manner and at the same time as the President and Vice President, but separately and not on the same ticket (as is done in most states). The elected Attorney-General would then be inserted after the Vice President in the line of Presidential succession.
VIII: The Equal Rights amendment.
IX: Limiting Supreme Court Justices and Federal Judges to a non-renewable term of twelve years. Ends lifetime tenure on the federal bench. Non-renewability does not apply to elevation of Judges from one level to the next, nor to the elevation of a sitting Supreme Court Justice to the post of Chief Justice. In these cases they would begin a new twelve year term with each elevation. Limits career elevations to two after a first appointment.
X: Repeal of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). Requiring the several States to regulate inter-state commerce separate from the Federal Government.
XI: Repeal the Philadelphia Constitution of 1787 and return to the Articles of Confederation. The Federal Congress, without executive, would be appointed by the State legislatures which would control its funding and authority. Argued that this will return sovereignty to the states. Proponents suggest that the State governments collaborate as a Continental Alliance for the national defense. Some go so far as to suggest the fifty states would each have their own foreign relations.
XII: Would ban foreign relations with governments where Communists are in government or have a significant influence in the political process.
XIII: Adding the following text to the First Amendment: “Freedom of exercise of religion shall not be interpreted to mean that there is a freedom from religion which can be regarded as legitimate. This amendment shall not be construed so as to create a freedom to disbelieve. Religion, under the terms of this amendment, shall refer only to such religion as derived from the God of Moses, Abraham and Jesus and as attested in the Torah and the Bible. All other beliefs not of these traditions, or post-Jesus modifications thereof beyond established scripture, shall be deemed non-scriptural faith. Congress shall be free to regulate non-scriptural faith in the interests of order and the general welfare of society and the people, and to the betterment of their eternal souls.”
XIV: Requiring the Federal government to provide an income subsidy that guarantees that all persons receive a minimum annual wage that exceeds the level of poverty. Also requires the Federal government to subsidize one level of post-secondary education after high school (4 year College, trade school etc.).
XV: As a matter of national security requiring the annexation of Canada, by force if required.
XVI: Prohibits the deportation of economic migrants who enter the country illegally in search of work.
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November 1979
Secretary of State Henry Jackson resigns in order to declare his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President.
Deputy National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is nominated by President Wallace to replace Jackson.
Reporter: “Will you run again (for President)?”
George Carlin: “No, that’s too much work. I think I’ll just enjoy the clown show this time.”
Sandy Koufax (former MLB Star): “I’m going to run for President as an independent.”
Reporter: “Why?”
SK: “Two reasons. One there’s never been a Jewish candidate, at least not one who was as high profile as me, so I’m going to be the first. Second, I’m not a politician. If you look around, the politicians, they’ve made a real mess of this country. My campaign isn’t going to be based on the parties, it’s going to be based on the people. I’m asking people in every community across the country to help me. I’m going to talk with people, and I’m going to say what they say, not what the parties want the politicians to say. We need to get the voice of the people back into this, so that’s why I’m running – for everyone who isn’t a politician. And when I’m elected, I’m going to have a real citizen’s government, like the founders wanted, not this political mishegoss we got now.”
Bernie Madoff: “Let’s raise some money for Sandy, and find him a pro to run the campaign, - and tell him, no more Yiddish.”
Elvis Presley: “I’m not one for politics, I’ve been concentrating on the Lord’s work since he brought me back from death a couple of years ago. But I have to say, Sandy Koufax makes sense. We need to bring government back to the people, man. So, yes, I’m endorsing Sandy Koufax for President.”
Elvis Presley (to his manager): “Let’s raise some money for Sandy, and find him some good people to work with him.”
Ross Perot: “An independent candidate? That’ll never work. But, it might shake-up the system a little. Raise some money for him.”
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November 3, 1979
On November 3, 1979, five protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in the Greensboro massacre in Greensboro, North Carolina. This incident was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party to organize the unemployed, both white and black, in the area, into so-called “employment action groups.” The CWP had been planning to lead a march of the unemployed on the Greensboro city government to demand housing and food.
An otherwise obscure Klan figure, Virgil Lee Griffin, as a pre-text for declaring his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President. To the embarrassment of the Republican National Committee Griffin’s Klan affiliation was not officially discovered until after he had already qualified for the ballot in Iowa, New Hampshire and a number of other primary and caucus states. This “discovery” was to become the subject of controversy during the 1980 Election campaign due to the fact that Griffin never hid his Klan affiliation and was quite open about his extremist views.
Democratic Party Candidates for President:
Hugh Carey, Governor of New York
Henry Jackson, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State
Edward M. Kennedy, U.S. Senator (D-MA)
Pat Robertson, Television evangelist
Charles J. Wright, Mayor of Davenport, Iowa and former Police Chief
Republican Party Candidates for President:
Howard Baker, U.S. Senator (R-TN)
Virgil Lee Griffin, Ku Klux Klan figure
Trent Lott, Speaker of the House of Representatives (R-MS) [exploratory committee – undeclared]
Ronald Reagan, former Governor of California and 1976 Republican nominee
Donald Rumsfeld, Governor of Illinois
Harold Stassen, Former Governor of Minnesota
Strom Thurmond, former U.S. Senator and Governor of South Carolina
Jack Richard Williams, former Governor of Arizona
Libertarian Party Candidates for President:
Ronald T. Galtieri, U.S. Senator (Lib.-MT)
We The People Party Candidates for President:
Ron Dellums – President
Ralph Nader – Vice President
Independent Candidates for President:
Sandy Koufax
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