Quagmire vs Malaise: Do We Like Where We are, Where We're Heading?

Separate articles in the morning round-up today acknowledge:

• We are getting schooled by Iran; 
• Iraq is a "quagmire" (old enough to remember Vietnam being a "quagmire"?); and, 
• Americans have lost faith in nearly every identifiable public institution.

In the first article, Alan Dershowitz excoriates the Obama administration for its utter failure to play the role of dominant in reaching terms with the Islamic regime in Iran regarding nuclear proliferation. In the second, we learn that a senior military commander agreed to delete the word "quagmire" from his statement on circumstances in Iraq based on political advice, rather than facts. In the third article, we discover that recent opinion polling shows that institutions of this Nation -- private and public -- are suffering from substantial loss of trust by the public. Those institutions include the police, the press, churches and other religious enterprises, politicians.

What is going on?

Given that last news bite -- our national loss of trust, in Congress, in the President, in the courts, in the news media, in churches, in the police -- shouldn't we be deeply troubled? From the outside looking in, we must seem to be a nation in collapse.

How are we so overthrown by our own witless self-immolation? Is this time our opportunity to watch, to feel, the agonal breaths of a dying nation? I prefer to believe otherwise.

Looking Back

I was but a teen as the American malaise of the 1970s -- the product of a poorly explained war in Vietnam multiplied by the quotient of a paranoid president divided by a dangerously spiteful Democrat Congress -- reached its previous, in-my-life, all-time-high.

LBJ had doubled down on our involvement in Vietnam. Yet, as a child of a military family, as a Catholic student in parochial elementary and junior high school, as an American, I do not recall a pivotal moment when the reasoning for our involvement in Vietnam was put to us in the form of inspiration for which England's Winston Churchill was well renowned.

[In fairness to LBJ, it isn't that he never put the case forward for our involvement; the question is always, with political messages, how well has the message been communicated to the body politic. One example of his justifications for American involvement in Vietnam is the speech he gave to the National Legislative Conference in September, 1967. You can view a video of that speech here, and the full text of the speech is available from the LBJ Library's online sources here.]

In fact, my grasp that there was a deep evil to the communist subjugation of Vietnam came from extracurricular sources. Though just in seventh grade, I had read all three books -- Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Vietnam’s Flight to Freedom (1956), The Edge of Tomorrow (1958), and The Night They Burned the Mountain (1960) -- written by Dr. Thomas Dooley, medical missionary and former Navy officer. Dooley had been a friend of my mom's from her day's as a student and as an instructor at St. Louis University. Had it not been for Dooley's short books, and for the anti-communist Marian publications to which my dad subscribed, I would not have been, even as a young adolescent, ideologically sure that we should stand with the Vietnamese and defeat the Vietcong.

For most of us, though, at best, the Vietnam conflict was vaguely connected with the worldwide threat of communist expansion. It was that expansion that JFK confronted and resisted with the embargo of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. The torture, barbarity and cruelty of it, in the name of ideology, was, in my experience, unspoken in class.

Johnson gave way to Nixon. Doubtless a skilled internationalist, Nixon's paranoia destroyed his administration. The deception he carried out to avoid detection and to insure his re-election after word of the break in at the Watergate Hotel made indefatigable Democratic Party attack dogs unrelenting. Consequently, the Executive Branch of our government was broken under the withering attacks of the Watergate Era. The following period -- the interregnum of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter -- seemed a time when we simply fell back and tried to gasp for collective air.

Then, I was a young adult when Ronald Reagan proclaimed "morning in America." We were still in the grip of Jimmy Carter's pitiful performance and recession when Reagan took office. By the time Reagan's term as President ended, we were awake, vibrant, and, literally, the only "superpower" remaining on the planet.

That flash that was Reagan's optimism and positivity eventually gave way to the more somber ministrations of George HW Bush. The elder Bush did not lie about taxes. Worse, he broke faith with us on taxes when he violated his express pledge, "No new taxes." The decade of the 90s ended with the low class Bill Clinton. Clinton's presidency will forever be symbolized by a black crepe dress, a used cigar, and unseemly images of Oval Office antics. Clinton's decision to take the favor of oral sexual gratifications from a young, impressionable intern, afforded Republicans the opportunity to repeatedly scour the President, at least until the Republican leadership of the House, itself, was discovered to have its own dirty laundry.

The first decade of the 21st Century provided us with 8 straight years of constant attack by committed progressives against the Republican President, George W. Bush. It also provided us with the terrible body blows of a coordinated terror attack on our home turf, and the loss of sons and daughters at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. By the time 2008 rolled around, the "anybody but Bush" sentiment resulted in us not only getting "anybody but Bush," it got us, as his world apology tour proved, "everybody's butt."

Now for six years running, our Nation has been helmed by a man whose easily expresses esteem for other Nations, other ways of life, other forms of government, but who is hard-pressed to extol the virtues of this land, her generous heart, and her loving sons and daughters. Obama has, like Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz did, behaved as though his purpose is to crash the American enterprise on the mountain of his disdain for us.

Looking Around

The constant attacks -- on our Nation, on its contributions, on its value in our world-- has, I think, worn us down. We seem to be in a state of cultural battle fatigue.

The forgotten sacrifices of WWII -- by which our dead secured the remaining lives of concentration camp inmates, the borders and political integrity of European nations, and the peace of the world -- play no seeming role in temporizing the flagellation of the Nation by masochists within and sadists without.

The good of America, the opened arms of it, to the poor, to the oppressed, to the downtrodden, seemingly counts for naught. Just last week, we observed the anniversary of 130th anniversary of the arrival of the Statue of Liberty, that iconic gift of the French people which sprang then from their ready recognition of the welcoming greatness of our People and our Nation.

The rich soil of our land, both literally and economically, in which has sprung up the world's breadbasket and the world's technologies, is disregarded, and we are told that it is evidence of our shameful selfishness, as though a starving world has not suckled on the American teat of charity.

In fact, while a new son of our nation finds it in his heart to render appreciation, as Dinesh D'Souza did with his documentary, "America: Imagine the World Without Her," the sad reality is that so much of the good of the people of this land, the kindness of them, the strength of them, seems to be forgot.

Looking Forward

We are, without question, in a quagmire, we are being "schooled" by a listless economy, and we have, in fact, found that institutions on which we have reliably counted in the past, such as news media, the courts, the police, and most particularly, our houses of worship, have broken faith with us.

The question remains: Quo Tendimus? Where are we going?

Well, we are, at least for now, going into the undiscovered country, the future. I say undiscovered for the obvious reason, that we do not yet have a commercially available time machine. Yet, that future can be discovered, to some extent, by considering the past. The old saw, "he that does not learn from the past is condemned to repeat it," counsels us to the wisdom of understanding how the cycles of life and human interaction really do, with new casts, new sets, and sometimes new reasons for urgency, repeat themselves. For those that study, as the carved inscription at the National Archives advises, "Past is Prologue."

As Americans, we are accustomed to the quadrennial presidential election serving as a substitute for a stout episode of reflection and correction. Bush's election after the juvenile bacchanalia of the Clinton era reflected that pause and reconsideration. Obama's election after eight numbing years of war and loss did too. Neither Bush's election twice nor Obama's election twice accomplished for us, as a People, what Reagan's did, in lifting us up and moving us forward as did Reagan's terms in office. Instead, matters seem only more bogged down than ever.

I suppose at this point, I could begin to list the candidates, their virtues, their strengths, their weaknesses, as I see them currently. From that catalog, I could begin to build a case for another morning in America, another Ronald Reagan moment. But, frankly, none of the candidates to date, declared or undeclared, Republican or Democrat, have demonstrated the combined gifts and skills of Reagan or one like a Reagan. And we may not benefit from another Reagan as we did once.

As a longtime resident of Northern Virginia, I watched, with pain, as the Redskins sought to recapture the greatness of an earlier era by bringing Coach Joe Gibbs back to coach the team. Painful hardly describes the experience. Everyone I knew hoped the plan would work. Everyone I knew felt each body blow of disappointment as the plan failed. The times, the teams, and the game were different when Gibbs II sought to recapture the Redskins that had performed for Gibbs I.

More is at play, too, than just my frank acknowledgment that Clinton, Sanders, Biden, and Warren could never get my vote, because of their progressive policies, with statist inclinations, and their strident advocacy for unfettered abortion legalization. In fact, more is at play than my equally frank concession that Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Perry, Walker, Kasich, Carson, Fiorina, Trump, Jindal, Pataki, and Paul have not yet managed to state, in bold and clarifying terms, a reason that COMPELS my vote and support for them. Instead, a lifetime in the law has, I suspect, jaded me on the notion that real and enduring solutions come from, or survive well, in Washington, DC.

If you take me to mean that I will not be voting in November 2016, you have mistaken my meaning. I will address the candidates and issues as we move toward the election. I will cast a ballot, though I certainly pray that I have the opportunity to vote with both hands, rather than having to vote with one hand while holding my nose with the other.

On the other hand, if you take my meaning to be that the American malaise will not find real healing because of the outcome of the 2016 election, then you understand my mind.

Eight Centuries And Counting: Thoughts on Magna Carta

This Monday, June 15, marks the 800th anniversary of the signing, by England's King John, of the Magna Carta.  For most of us, the usual method of celebrating this anniversary consists of waking up, having breakfast, spending the day at work, coming home, cooking and eating dinner, watching a bit of television, and going to bed. Well, at least, that's my routine. Perhaps you are planning something more in keeping with the momentous occasion.

This Nation won its independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. It would be a gross error of history, however, to assert that, by our Revolution, we not only severed our political ties with England, but that we repudiated every part and parcel of the history and tradition that we received as colonies of the Crown, and as descendants of the colonists. Remember that colonists chiefly complained that they were being subjected to taxation by Parliament without being permitted representatives in Parliament. Had Crown and Parliament responded to American colonists' pleas, the situation might have turned out rather differently. Instead, as Jefferson remonstrated in the Declaration of Independence:

Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Perhaps independence was inevitable. The Empire of Great Britain, upon which, at its height, "the sun never set," has contracted substantially. Yet, it would be unseemly to accuse Jefferson of alleging, disingenuously, that it was the failure of Crown and Parliament to respond to our complaints that forced the independence card.

Of course, some, including Thomas Paine, had concluded, by the time we declared independence from Britain, that the arrangement between homeland and colonies could not continue. In Common Sense, Paine put the case plainly:  "The authority of Great Britain over this continent, is a form of government, which sooner or later must have an end...." In Paine's geopolitical economy, America was destined to be a free trading port, and would best keep to that status if it dissolved bounds -- other than trade -- with all the kingdoms of Europe. Paine continued: "Europe is too thickly planted with Kingdoms to be long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, BECAUSE OF HER CONNECTION WITH BRITAIN. "

Yet, with the exception of Louisiana, every State in the Union undertook a stunning act ratifying the bonds of our English connection upon admission to the Union. Each of them, and the original 13 upon independence, expressly adopted as the law the English Common Law. In almost every case, that adoption was accomplished by enacting a law, called a "Reception Statute," by which the common law of England, as it existed on a selected date (our independence, for example), was made the rule of law for the State until altered or amended by the legislature.

So, beyond our once intense fancy for Diana, the Princess of Wales, our enduring connection to England, is found in law. And, in English law, the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter" is, as it were, the great-grand daddy of charters establishing the rights of those that do not wear the crown as against the power of those that do. Down in the weeds, the details of the Magna Carta, are many provisions not terribly important to our current circumstances. Its overarching principles -- due process, rule of law, and the like -- are key components of our constitutional order. So Magna Carta is worth remembering, worth celebrating.

In fact, it is notable that Congress (at least temporarily) just rejected aspects of fast track trade authorization for Barack Obama on the eve of Magna Carta's anniversary. As with King John's habits of aggrandizing power to the Crown, Barack Obama's term in office has been marked by executive overreach and abuse, the most recent and stunning example of which was the demand that Congress vote on legislation that included a trade deal sealed from public knowledge, so that our elected representatives could not even answer our demands for information about the proposed trade deal.

As Barack has done with us, so King John had grated greatly on the English landed barons and princes. His habit of imposing confiscatory taxes and taking property and other wealth without asking, and without compensation, and without trial, would surely grate on us. (We recoil, after all, at two government processes that are hard to distinguish from King John's greedy grasping. Those two processes are eminent domain, whereby private property is taken by government for public purposes (although these days, "public purposes" often means "taken to give to a property development company that will turn the property into a facility that will generate a high tax flow") and civil asset forfeiture, a form of legalized government theft in which property and money are taken without trial, based on the possibility that the property is used in, or the product of, criminal conduct.)

For my Christian friends, there are biblical injunctions to bear in mind here:

“You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, established at the start in the inheritance you will receive in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess."

Deutonomy 19:14

‘The one who moves his neighbor’s boundary marker is cursed.’ And all the people will say, ‘Amen!’

Deuteronomy 27:17

"Don’t move an ancient boundary marker that your fathers set up."

Proverbs 22:28

The "ancient landmarks" rules of the Old Testament served to insure that the rights of private property were respected by God's people. The principle of observing the ancient landmarks, however, serve larger purposes too.

Just as one should not remove the property boundaries, and thereby steal a neighbor's land, the biblical command against theft serves to protect the ownership of personal property. The command to do no murder protects the individual bodily integrity of each person. So while the "ancient landmarks" literal purpose was to prevent land fraud, but it has a subtextual injunction to recognize, respect, and abide by those things that fall within the notion of "the ancient landmarks."

Here in the USA, we are a republic of republics. That is, we are a single, representative, general government, created by 50 separate representative governments.

We have, during all our collective history, borne a rather consistent distrust of concentrated power. So the governments -- State and federal -- that we have set up via State Constitutions and the US Constitution are ones of separated powers. We have -- at both State and federal levels -- divided the essential powers of government into kinds, that is, legislative powers, executive powers, and judicial powers; we have assigned all responsibility for the powers of each kind to separated entities, either the State Legislature, the Governor, and the State Courts, or the Congress, the President, the Supreme Court.

George Will's commentary does a good job of explaining the role of Magna Carta, the "Great Charter," as one of our "ancient landmarks." It is worth the read, the history told in it worth recalling, and the principles of separated powers and distrust of concentrated power just as vital today to liberty as ever they were. But Will uses the opportunity to lay out his claim that a decision of the US Supreme Court -- in a 200 year old case called Marbury v. Madison -- perfected the work begun in Magna Carta by securing the "rights of minorities" against majoritarian rule.

Will's incomprehensible claim arises from his decision to celebrate the arrogation to itself by the Supreme Court of the power of judicial review, and by that power, to declare laws enacted by the Congress unconstitutional. Will apparently fails to comprehend that a power he finds worth celebrating -- the power of the Supreme Court to state with final authority against contrary views of the Congress or of the President -- is as dangerous to liberty as any power can be.

To clarify, Will correctly notes that it was only by subsequent interpretations of the Constitution, not its direct language, that the Judiciary came to possess ultimate authority to construe the meaning of the Constitution. That candor is appreciated. But what I question, what I do not appreciate, is the arrogation of that power by the Court, or the suspect history that is offered to support it. Will relies on Randy Burnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law School, for this selective history:

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Madison acknowledged that states would “accomplish their injurious objects” but they could be “set aside by the National Tribunals.” A law violating any constitution “would be considered by the Judges as null & void.” In Virginia’s ratification convention, Marshall said that if the government “were to make a law not warranted by any of the [congressional] powers enumerated, it would be considered by the judges as an infringement of the Constitution which they are to guard. . . . They would declare it void.”

There is, however, something of a problem with both Randy Barnett's reflections on discussions had about the judiciary in the Constitutional Convention and Will's reliance on them.

The problem is that, the question is never, in the first instance, what might have been discussed, thought, or said by the delegates to the Convention. Asking such questions, seeking such answers, derails the discussion from the key question: What does the Constitution provide regarding the power of judicial review?

Article III of the Constitution is a quick read.

You will see that nothing in the Article proposed by the Convention, propounded by the Congress to the States, or ratified by the States expressly grants a power of judicial review of the constitutionality of federal or State legislation. The language does not appear in the Article.

There are rules for reading and construing legal documents. These reflect ancient and seasoned considerations about how we come to an agreement on some question, how we embody that agreement in a written document, and how we address subsequent disputes over the document or over disputes where the document provides guidance in resolution of those dispute. For example, one such rule is that where the writers of a document use a particular formula of language and make some rule by doing so, the omission of such a parallel provision as to other rules is evidence that the document's authors intended to omit that parallel provision. Again, let me clarify.

Suppose that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention concluded that only the President should appoint judges to the Courts created under Article III of the Constitution, and that the President's nomination of those judges was subject to the approval of the Senate, but not the House of Representatives. In fact, that is, precisely what the delegates agreed upon.

So we have Presidential nominations subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. If, tomorrow, the House of Representatives decided that its authority to enact laws on taxes, postal services, interstate commerce, etc., was ineffective without a voice in selecting judges that might, after all, eventually exercise judicial authority to strike down the laws they thought necessary and proper to the execution of their authority, why not conclude that the Necessary and Proper Clause gave them an equal voice in the selection and approval of judges?

The Constitution's language clearly and directly limits involvement in the process to appointment by the President subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. That other approaches were discussed in the Convention are interesting. They are, perhaps, even relevant and informative. But the Constitution omits all those other approaches and adopts just the one. The silence of the Constitution on the House's role in the process is not countenance thereof.

Well, that rule of construction of written documents tells us how to treat such a claim by the House. Applying that rule, we should reject the claim of power by the House. The express written rule providing power to the President and the Senate as to judicial appointments proves that those that wrote the Constitution, those that propounded it to the States, and those that ratified it, knew how to write a provision of law giving power to make judicial appointments. Because they did, and because they did not use that skill to create a role for the House in the Constitution, that rule requires the conclusion that the Constitution does not give the House such a power.

On top of that rule, there is another important and overarching consideration: our federal government is different than our State governments. When States come into existence, they possess all the powers and authorities of any independent sovereign. From that vast residual body of powers, the States have donated a set of limited, expressly stated, powers for the federal government.

Taken together, these rules help us to understand that our Constitution does not re-write itself according to the whims of interest groups, according to the preferences of political factions. It is fixed and determinate in meaning. That it is so, in part, is because we are heirs to the meaning and consequences of Magna Carta.

So for Will and Barnette, the problem is that there is an express provision of the Constitution on the Judiciary.

What Barnett leaves unstated is that the Constitutional Convention, on three separate occasions, considered, discussed, and rejected a proposal to include representatives of the Judiciary in a commission of review that would pass on the constitutionality of federal legislation before it became effective. So, while there were, certainly, delegates that contemplated such a role for the judiciary, the Convention taken as a whole declined to extend such a role by express terms in the Constitution. In other words, this arrogation of judicial power is not quite the same issue as if the House decided to assume a role in the nomination and confirmation of judicial nominees, because the Convention expressly considered, and expressly rejected, provisions for the Constitution affording to the Judiciary such a role in reviewing the legislation enacted by Congress.

If such a power was extended to the federal judiciary, that power must be derived from something other than an express provision of that power in the Constitution. Perhaps that power is an inherent affect of the "judicial power" ceded to the federal government by the States. Perhaps. Indeed, the argument is made by others that such power was understood to be included within the English concept of judicial power, and therefore those delegates were simply expressing a view of judicial power that was already acceptable to Englishmen. The only argument to make sensibly against such an approach is that, in fact, agreeing to adopt that aspect of English judicial power is directly contrary to the decision of the Convention on three separate occasions to grant the Judiciary such a role.

So, here we are, on the eve of the eight hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta, by which, in certain respects, the divine right of King John was brought to its knees before the demands of the English barons, and by which, rights of due process came to be recognized as important, integral rights of Englishmen. Yet we face now, as the Barons and the people of England did then, an extending, grasping and self-aggrandizing power, there the monarch, here the Judiciary.

For us the question remains, who will come to Runnymede?

Rush Limbaugh Just Called My Former Boss "Stupid" and "Ignorant"

Well, sort of. Allow me to explain.

When I can, I take lunch at home, that way I check in on the family, and get to see Terri (my wife), even if briefly. On the run back and forth, I usually have Rush on. It is the only time I get to listen these days.

He caught my attention because he was touching on the teapot tempest over a bus advertisement in Pennsylvania that I had read about last night. It seems that a display ad on a bus, included the words, "Ziggin, Zaggin!" Don't read those words backwards or you may find yourself offended. And that was the story I had caught on the web the night before, that an offense, or a pretense of offense, had arisen when someone noticed that backwards, the message was, well, the backwards of "Ziggin, Zaggin!"

So Rush was on a tear over the pretense of offense, or the ease of injury, or whatever you would call the willingness to be offended by words that aren't even being used.

During his jeremiad, he mentioned a story about government employees let go because of the use of the word, niggardly, in some context or other. Not a fan of Wikipedia (after all, how can I trust an "encyclopedia" that has me as an editor?), I note that even Wikipedia realizes that confusion and ignorance reigns supreme in this nation over the perfectly fine, non-racial, Scandinavian word.

Rush was quite amused over the "Ziggin, Zaggin," story and the knee jerk response of a transit agency pulling down the display ad rather than challenging the silly objection. At that point, he recalled the story of the employment woes of the government employee whose vocabulary was broad enough to include "niggardly" and too broad for his or her own good. Rush described the firing supervisor as "Stupid" and as "Ignorant" for failing to realize that "niggardly" had no racial or racist component to it all.

And that's when I laughed. And that's when I realized that Rush Limbaugh just called Jay Sekulow, the Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, "stupid" and "ignorant."

Oh true enough, he was talking about a different "stupid" and "ignorant" supervisor at another place of employment.

But Jay Sekulow fit the bill on this one to a T.

Years ago, I wrote all of Jay's press releases, in a period running from about December 1989 until he and I joined the American Center for Law and Justice. After that, and until the ACLJ terminated my employment in September, 2012, I wrote many of Jay's Supreme Court briefs and petitions and many of his appellate court briefs (those not written by Walter Weber, our colleague) (like many attorneys on the top end of legal enterprises, Sekulow had discontinued the drafting of such documents as soon as about 1992 or 1993, taking the role of editor on the work of others). I seldom got feedback from Jay. I assumed then, and do now, that his light touch reflected complete satisfaction with my research, and my legal reasoning.

But there was that one occasion. And when he called me, I actually expected him to do it. I knew he would react to my use of the word "niggardly" because I knew that Jay often seemed more concerned about how matters appeared than how they actually were. In the case of the word "niggardly," as I reminded him then, there is absolutely NO RACIAL IMPORT to the word. NONE. But I knew that he would conclude that others would perceive it so and that we would surrender the linguistic field before the battle began.

Ignorant.

Stupid.

Well, Rush, if you insist.

Compelled Speech: Using Government Force to Spread Partisan Messaging

Suppose you and a group of like-minded folk -- sympathetic to the plight of the long-termed unemployed -- develop a plan to assist willing job seekers.

So you organize a non-profit organization. You collect donations of clean, good quality apparel and shoes. You also collect used computers and printers, a copier, a fax machine, a cash register. You also collect donation of personal grooming products included new used razors, soaps, shampoos, conditioners, toothbrushes, toothpastes. You solicit volunteers to teach about office practices, counter sales, and work ethics. You find a small group of volunteer mentors that can assist with things like the process of getting a job and the things that allow an employee to stay employed and gain advancement.

The plan?

Your group raises sufficient funds to open a small set of offices, the mock up of a sales counter, and a mock up of an office setting including workstations and a copy room. You create a one-stop, volunteer-manned, source for assistance to those in employment crises. Once ready, you place advertisements on buses, commuter trains, a billboard or two, and in the yellow pages under employment services. Your ads invite those with critical unemployment or underemployment issues to receive counseling and assistance on alternatives to unemployment.

Your program offers free resume preparation, free basic office training, including computer use, and operation of office machines, and free retail sales training. Participants receive free training on job interview techniques, as well as assistance applying for work. Successful completion of the voluntary program is rewarded with two work appropriate outfits of clothing and shoes, and necessary personal toiletries.

True, neither you nor your fellow volunteers is a licensed human resources trainer, a licensed social worker, a licensed teacher. But the lack of such participating volunteers is not a reflection on your desire to have these types of folks working with your project. Rather, folks with those kinds of qualifications either are too busy with other activities, or, for some, they may consider programs like yours ineffective, or worse, harmful because they distract the unemployed from pursuing assistance through licensed, even state-operated, facilities.

The truth is, some of those folks are rather goaded by your program and its persistence. Their agitation only increases as small successes result in others borrowing your idea and spreading it to other cities in your State.

What to do? What to do? The answer for such naysayers is obvious. Bully you. Bully those that work with you. Bully you out of existence if they can do so.

In the early days of their opposition, they contact yellow pages publishers. Here their goal is to harangue them until, despite the income you provide by purchasing advertisements, the publisher complies with their demands. Initially, of course, they just assert that your ads are fraudulent misrepresentations because they are not actually employment service agencies. Ultimately, your opponents threaten the yellow pages publishers with consumer fraud litigation and prosecution until the yellow pages decides that its financial interests require it to move your ads to some other heading apart from where employment service agencies typically appear.

Still, your determination holds. You and your fellow volunteer redouble your efforts, and continue to enjoy the small successes of those who rejoin the work force.

Unhappy that your efforts have not been sufficiently stymied by their first line of attack, your opponents decide that they should enlist the State legislature to drive you out of existence. A notorious legislative friend of theirs conducts a "study" of your organization's work. The "study" challenges your techniques. They criticize the teaching methods, drawing, for example, as you do, a connection between employee reliability and employment longevity, and between employee drug-dependence and job loss. Offended that your gallant and dedicated group of volunteers engage in something they like to call "moralizing," your opponents cheer the "study" and get it noised about in news media.

As a onerous next straw, the state legislature adopts a law requiring unlicensed, voluntary employment assistance agencies to post a sign in the entrances to their offices and to include include in their advertisements a warning that "This Agency Does Not Employ Any Licensed Employment Counselors, Any Licensed Social Workers, Any Licensed Teachers."

Not that you ever claimed otherwise. Nor that you would refuse such volunteers if they supported your goals and would volunteer to provide services. Still, the Legislature believes that forcing you to say such things will result in some participants turning away at the door, keep others from even showing up, and p, eventually lead to programs such as yours withering on the vine.

You think that the foregoing is not a likely scenario?

If that's what you think, then you are, apparently, unfamiliar with previous efforts by Montgomery County and Baltimore, Maryland, and the City of New York, or the current effort of the California General Assembly to suppress the work of pregnancy resource centers. Just about everything in my proposed factual scenario matches the work of such centers. Volunteer organized, volunteer run. Volunteer participants. Free help. Free supplies. Free. Free. Free. All offered because these centers are being offered by folks who believe that there are, there have to be, humane and caring alternatives to abortion. More than just believing that such alternatives must exist, they have acted to create such alternatives and to reinforce them.

Well, the fact scenario I offer is different. It involves volunteers working with the unemployed. But Montgomery County, Baltimore, New York City, all decided that it is perfectly appropriate to target volunteer organizations that provide resources to pregnant women. Now California is preparing to follow in those ill-advised and Statist footsteps. And, California takes these steps knowing that the existing regulations in Montgomery County, Baltimore, and New York City have already been found to implicate fundamental rights of speech and association protected by the First Amendment.

Yet, the California General Assembly is on track to adopt such a law. Assembly Bill 775, if enacted, will require pregnancy resource services -- entirely voluntary, entirely free, and quite often organized around concepts of religious duty -- to post signs in their lobbies and to include messages in their advertising selected for them, imposed on them, by the State. Those signs and messages would warn potential users of their services that there is no doctor or other licensed medical personnel on the premises.

"Tapping out."

You might be familiar with this concept from the martial arts. When you are being pinned down and cannot free yourself, you can indicate surrender by rapidly slapping the mat, or your thigh, etc. many of us remember having to, or requiring others to cry, "uncle" as part of childhood rough-housing. For Statist pro-abortion types, the equivalent here is for pregnancy resource centers to close.

Oddly, such Statists are often the same ones that freak at the notion of American coins bearing the legend "In God We Trust," or at the use of the Bible in administering courtroom oaths. They are the same folks that salute attacks on such license plate mottoes as "Live Free or Die."

But Statists have no problem prying open the mouths of persons who hold deeply held religious beliefs about abortion and shoving government messages inside them with the knowledge that when they vomit the government message, those that they would assist on a voluntary, no-cost basis will flee. More than hubris. More than disregard for constitutional rights. These Statists are Luddite Speech Nazis, and should be shamed publicly as such.