“Are you insane?” (AKA What would Ghandi do?)
When ASUO Programs Finance Committee member Dan Kieffer called the First Amendment an “unjust law” and declared his willingness to defy the Supreme Court of the United States in following his conscience, he unwittingly placed himself in the ranks of a small, sorry cadre on the wrong side of history. Read on and compare.
1832
“John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”
-President Andrew Jackson, allegedly reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, holding state policies of Indian removal from tribal lands unconstitutional. Although the quote is likely apocryphal, Jackson made no effort to enforce the court’s ruling against state persecution of Indian tribes — unsurprising, given Old Hickory’s reputation as an Indian killer.
1954
“A clear abuse of judicial power” that “will bring implications and dangers of the greatest consequence.”
-US Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ordering the desegregation of public schools. Byrd called for “Massive Resistance” to the Court’s decision in his home state of Virginia, orchestrating legislative efforts to thwart and elude the legal obligations established by the Supreme Court.
1957
“Blood would run in the streets.”
-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, explaining his decision to deploy the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in a white high school, in defiance of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
2005
“I’m unable to say anything viewpoint-neutral at this point . . . If I’m disobeying an unjust law, then I feel justified in doing so, and the Executive can fire me for doing it.”
-PFC member Dan Kieffer, declaring his defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Board of Regents v. Southworth, holding that the First Amendment required a viewpoint-neutral mechanism for the allocation of state funding within a designated public forum.
