By Kary Love
As a civil rights lawyer, I wanted to dedicate my life to preserving and defending the Bill of Rights. I saw that as the highest duty imposed by my oath to “preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.”
I took all kinds of civil rights cases—one of the first I worked with the ACLU of Illinois to defend the American Nazi Party right to march in Skokie, Illinois, a place with a large number of people who survived Hitler’s Death Camps. Unlike Nazis, the ACLU and I agreed even those who’s politics we detest, the Nazis, have rights to freedom of speech. Ironically in that case I was the sole ACLU lawyer who was not Jewish! Amusing, no?
I worked on many other civil rights cases. I represented US Army whistleblowers concerned about waste and fraud in military contracts, Black carpenters denied jobs based on race, the rights of a disabled woman to say grace over her meals in a state run group home, librarians threatened with being fired due to school library book selection. Because the Bill of Rights applies to people, not only citizens, my rule was if a core Bill of Rights right is involved, I am willing to fight for that right even if I personally disagree with the views of my client.
When I first moved to the most Republican county in Michigan, where the people had overwhelmingly for Republicans since Abe Lincoln, I realized that if I wanted to get things done outside of court, the GOP was the way to go. I ended up being “elected” a GOP “Precinct Committeeman” for a number of years. You may have never heard of this “elected” job. Precinct Committeemen don’t get paid, work for free, and mostly do things out of sight and out of the news.
But, in time I was able to get two amendments to the Michigan Constitution passed, fully supported by the GOP: one was Term limits. The GOP supported ending “professional politicians,” which had not worked too well, because they put more and more government regulation on the backs of the people, and replacing them with citizen lawmakers, on the view that “ordinary citizens,” who worked for their neighbors were preferable to pro politicians who worked for re-election and those who had the money to pay for it.
The second was property tax relief. We passed “Prop A” trying to give the people protection against constantly increasing taxes on their homes. Again, the GOP supported lower taxes, tax freedom and constraints on government growth and cost.
Today the GOP has turned its principles on their head. They want a Perpetual President, not term limits. A constant Congress made in their image. Not term limits. They want more taxes for government funding of ICE, TSA, CBP, and DHS among others, to intrude more and more into the lives of neighborhoods.
Rather than cutting spending, the GOP is blowing past all rational restraints. Rather than supporting the right of the people to “get the government off their backs,” the GOP is putting more and more government agents on the backs of the people.
Instead of promoting self-government, by letting states and local governments run according to the will of the local people, the GOP is acting like Moscow and dictating central planning from DC in total disregard of state’s rights, and the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Bill of Rights. Instead of freedom of the people to make their own decisions and run their own neighborhood and businesses, the GOP is imposing more central planning from the nation’s capital, Including increasing the federal police, army, ICE, and other actions against local people often against their will.
Even worse, they are now contrary to the GOP “principle” enunciated by US President Ronald Reagan at a press conference on August 12th, 1986. President Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Reagan is rolling in his grave at the news the GOP is sending masked, unidentified federal cops, national guard and even Marines into neighborhoods often without the consent of the governed! The fact that the “reason” for sending in the US Marshalls, Secret Service, FBI and others is based on “fake news” (i.e., false claims about crime) is hugely concerning.
But when you enable those federal agents to go masked and unidentified, you are deploying the undeniably “secret police” on the streets of America. Already reports emerge of people “kidnapped” off the streets by masked men unidentifiable as police. One anticipates true criminals will soon realize that, if they dress in “camo” and wear a mask and shout, “We are federal agents,” their crimes will be enabled, not deterred.
When you cannot tell the cops from the robbers, you are in deep water without a life vest, wearing cement overshoes. I may be wrong, but to me not being able to tell the cops from the robbers is the antithesis of America.
Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters and many others in court for decades.
