There was a time when "law and order" was both one of the firmest foundation blocks of Western civilization and a rallying cry against the internal enemies of the West; now, under the influence of the democratic political process, it is becoming a sick joke.
Every American schoolchild is taught that the Founding Fathers, in their boundless wisdom, ensured that the government of the United States would never become a threat to the freedom of its citizens. They accomplished this miracle by dividing government powers among three independent branches -- legislative, executive, and judicial -- and by instituting a system of "checks and balances" to prevent any of the three branches from misusing its power. High school social-studies textbooks rate this clever scheme on the level with taming fire and the invention of the wheel.
Today, however, it should be clear to any intelligent observer that things are not working in accord with the Founding Fathers' theory. Two recent interactions between the National Alliance (which publishes NATIONAL VANGUARD) and governmental authority serve to illustrate the problem.
One of the interactions, between a National Alliance member and the local bureaucracy in San Jose, California, provides substantiating evidence for the cynical dictum that in America one gets just as much justice as one can afford to pay for. It also illustrates the growing danger posed by quasi-official judiciary bodies, in the form of "Human Rights Councils," "Race Relations Commissions," Fair Housing Boards," and the like, which have sprouted like poisonous toadstools across the nation in recent years.
In the fall of 1981 there was a series of unsolved rapes of White women and girls by one or more Blacks in San Jose. A National Alliance member, 39-year-old junior high school teacher James McDonald, was angered by the scant coverage given to the rapes in the local news media. After the especially vicious rape on October 6, 1981, of a 30-year-old White telephone operator whose automobile had run out of fuel in a Black section of San Jose, he prepared and distributed, at his own expense, several thousand copies of a flyer bearing a police composite drawing and description of the rapist.
The flyer contained the warning: "Protect yourself against sexual attack! When in your automobile, keep your doors locked and your windows rolled up. Keep your gasoline tank at least half full at all times to avoid running out of gas and having to walk, especially at night. Keep out of predominantly minority areas. Your chances of being raped by a Latino/Chicano are four times as great as being raped by a White. Your chances of being raped by a Black are 12 times as great. (1980 Report, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Records)" At the bottom of the flyer was McDonald's local mailing address, a San Jose post office box.
The reaction of the minority/media/liberal element was almost immediate. A staff member of the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, in an interview printed in the San Jose Mercury-News a few days after McDonald began distributing the flyers, said that they came from a "group of sick folks...We want to make sure this is thoroughly investigated."
Representatives of several non-White groups, including the Black Police Officers Association and the Black Concerns Association, visited San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara to add their voices to the demand for an investigation and to obtain an assurance that police officials had not cooperated with the publisher of the flyer by providing him with the composite drawing or the description of the rapist. The San Jose Mercury-News interviewed other minority representatives, among them the vice-president of the Latino Police Officers Association, who declared the flyer "a disgrace. It reeks of racism... It's insane... Those who distribute it are sick."
Chief McNamara, who had been hired a few years earlier specifically for his alleged "sensitivity" in dealing with minority-group members, wasted no time in finding out from local postal officials the name of the person holding the post office box listed on the flyer, and two days after the first news report concerning the flyers the San Jose Mercury-News was able to announce that "police have identified a suspect who printed the leaflets." In order to reassure any of its readers who might wonder about the use of the word "suspect" to describe a person who had committed no crime, the newspaper added that the city attorney's office was "studying whether a criminal offense was committed."
The inability of the city attorney to discover any statute which had been violated did not perceptibly slow down the San Jose Mercury-News or the gathering lynch mob of groups and individuals screaming for McDonald's hide. In it's December 3, 1981, edition the newspaper reported that a "coalition of minority and community groups is calling for the dismissal of an Oak Grove School District teacher who, they say, is a racist...Jo Fields, spokeswoman for the groups, said they will ask that McDonald be fired." By this time the National Association of Colored People, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and various Christian leaders had gotten into the act.
All the while, the public pronouncements of San Jose municipal bureaucrats and elected officials, as well as those of the minority and media spokesmen, had been phrased as if McDonald, in alerting White women to the danger of being attacked by a non-White rapist, had done something morally reprehensible. Even if publishing the information that the rapist being sought was Black were not a punishable offense, they implied, it ought to be. And it was unthinkable that a "racist" should be permitted to teach in a public school.
The school board joined the lynch mob on December 9, with a 5:30AM telephone call from an assistant superintendent to McDonald telling him that he had been placed on "administrative leave" and that he should not return to his school until further notice. MacDonald, who holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree as well as a degree in English, decided that enough was enough. He contacted another attorney, and a letter was sent to the school board pointing out that it had not followed state-mandated procedures in suspending him.
That letter elicited no response from the school board, and so on December 23 MacDonald and his attorney filed a Lawsuit. One week later the court ordered McDonald returned to the classroom.
The Human Relations crowd then renewed its agitation to have McDonald fired, and the local officeholders fell all over one another in their efforts to placate the minority leaders and to register public expressions of their disapproval of McDonald. The school board called in the State Department of Education, the Credentials Commission, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, the Justice Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its attempt to find some way to get rid of McDonald. A private investigator was hired to probe the last several years of his private life, in the hope that some evidence which might serve as an excuse to fire him could be found. His grade books were seized and examined, to see whether or not he graded minority students differently from Whites.
Finally, on March 10, 1982, after failing to find any grounds for firing or suspending McDonald, the acting superintendent asked him to resign. When McDonald refused, the superintendent informed him that a letter of reprimand would be placed in his personnel folder forthwith.
Such a letter of reprimand is much more than a slap on the wrist; it is the first step in a mandated firing process, and it places a permanent blot on a teacher's record. Furthermore, the letter placed in McDonald's file specifically threatened him with the loss of his teaching position if he again exercised his right of free speech in a manner which found disfavor in the eyes of the Human Relations Commission.
McDonald then filed a suit, under Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 1983, against the school board in the U.S. District Court, alleging violations of his civil rights. On May 13, 1983, the school board capitulated, agreeing to remove the letter of reprimand from McDonald's file, pay his attorney's fees, and give him a five-figure amount in personal damages.
Was this, then, an example of the System actually working the way the social-studies textbooks say it does, with a bold and independent judiciary restoring the justice denied a citizen by unprincipled bureaucrats eager to curry favor with minority groups?
It would be closer to the truth to regard the relief obtained from the courts in this case as a fluke. If McDonald had not himself been a lawyer, so that he knew what his rights were and how to protect them, and had he not had a lawyer friend willing to accept deferred payment for his services, the story certainly would have had a different outcome. An average citizen in McDonald's predicament probably would have given up and slunk away with his tail between his legs after being suspended from his teaching position. Even if he had not been intimidated by the barrage of hatred from minority-fawning local officials, Human Relations Commission inquisitors, and the controlled media, he would have been thoroughly discouraged by the prospective cost of justice; the expenses involved in civil rights lawsuits typically run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Furthermore, justice has become a very uncertain thing, at any cost, in today's courts. A recent interaction between the National Office of the National Alliance and the Federal judiciary in Washington, D.C., confirms the conclusion of many astute observers of the workings of American courts that what the laws of the land actually say is of very little import in determining the rulings of judges: in the same way that preachers of various persuasions rely on the same Bible to support mutually contradictory doctrines, judges interpret laws to support whatever rulings are convenient or expedient at the moment, with little or no regard for reason or consistency.
Since the National Alliance was founded in February 1974 it has wrestled with the Internal Revenue Service over the question of its tax-exempt status. It was formed as a non-profit educational organization; according to its articles of incorporation its purposes are "the establishment of lines of communication with Americans of all ages; the development in those with whom communication is established of an understanding of and a pride in their racial and cultural heritage and an awareness of the present dangers to that heritage; and the unification of those with such an understanding, pride, and awareness into an effective force for building a new order in American life."
In view of the well-known biases of the entrenched bureaucrats who administer the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, it was anticipated that they would not like the smell of that statement of purpose. Nevertheless, a careful reading of the law left no doubt that the National Alliance satisfied all of the requirements of 26 U.S.C., 501c3, which is the section of the Code providing tax exemption for groups "organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals." In fact, the articles of incorporation of the National Alliance were drawn up exactly in accord with the Internal Revenue Service's specifications for exempt organizations.
All was to no avail, however. The IRS dug in its heels and refused to issue a tax exemption, basing its refusal entirely on the content of the National Alliance's publications. But tax exemptions are routinely granted to organizations which claim an educational or charitable purpose, even though their publications are strongly ideological. More than 200,000 such organizations are listed in IRS Publication 78, Cumulative List of Organizations. Among them are thousands of racially exclusive groups -- page after page of Jewish organizations, for example.
There are perhaps two dozen separate tax-exempt organizations affiliated with the National Association of Colored People. Then there are a National Association of Black Americans, a National Association of Black Social Workers, a National Association of Black Women Attorneys, etc.
Among the tax-exempt Jewish groups are a number directed by non-citizens or affiliated with foreign organizations created to advance Israeli interests: Simon Wiesenthal's Jewish Documentation Center and Jewish Agency-American Section are examples. And there are Jewish groups, such as the Jewish Athletic Club of Brooklyn (JACOB), which preach hatred and violence against non-Jews. JACOB publishes a crude newsletter boasting of physical assaults committed by its members on "anti-Semites," including Soviet diplomats and Palestinians in the New York City area.
All of the above organizations enjoy the advantages of tax-exempt status, not the least of which is being able to mail their publications at greatly reduced postage rates. While the lowest postal rate at which the National Alliance can send a piece of promotional mail is 11 cents, the United Israel Appeal or the Black American Advancement Fund can send an equivalent piece for 4.9 cents. For a typical mailing of 100,000 pieces, the savings in postage for the tax-exempt organization is $6,100, which may be as much as a third of the total cost of the mailing -- often the difference between a mailing which pays for itself and one which does not. Since direct mail is the most powerful means most organizations have for building the circulation of their publications, it is clear that a tax-exempt group has a substantial advantage in reaching the public with its message.
To the officers of the National Alliance, it seemed to be a clear case of governmental regulation of speech, in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union agreed, and they offered to help the Alliance in a court challenge of the IRS.
The first step was to file a fresh request with the IRS for tax-exempt status as an educational organization. That was done on July 28, 1977. An ACLU attorney specializing in tax law, Janet McDavid, then guided the Alliance through the complex and lengthy series of administrative appeals, as one level of bureaucrats after another in the IRS refused to issue the requested exemption. Two years later, shortly after the last administrative appeal was denied, suit was filed (Civil Action No. 79-1885) on July 19, 1979, in the District Court of the District of Columbia against Michael Blumenthal, then Secretary of the Treasury, and Jerome Kurtz, then IRS Commissioner.
There ensued another two years of motions and cross-motions, hearings and rehearings, ad infinitum. Meanwhile, however, on September 15, 1980 a different First Amendment suit was decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That suit, Big Mama Rag, Inc. v. United States (Civil Action No. 77-1649), which had also been denied an educational tax exemption by the IRS. The Appeals Court decision in favor of Big Mama Rag (BMR), Inc., reversed an earlier, unfavorable decision by the district court -- the court in which the Alliance suit then was being heard -- and resulted in tax-exempt status being granted to the lesbian group.
The grounds on which BMR, Inc., had sued were nearly identical to the Alliance's grounds, and the appeals court decision, therefore, left the district court no choice but to rule in favor of the Alliance, although not until after more than another eight months of brief-shuffling by the lawyers. That decision finally came on May 27, 1981, more than seven years after the Alliance had first sought a tax exemption.
The IRS, however, was determined that the National Alliance would not be given tax-exempt status, and so it filed what seemed at the time to be a futile appeal, soley for the sake of further delay. The appeal process consumed more than another two years: it was not until June 28, 1983 that the appeals court issued its ruling. To the surprise of most observers, the ruling was against the National Alliance.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is undoubtedly the most influential court in the United States, after the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the appeals courts for all the Federal circuits are theoretically of equal rank, the one for the District of Columbia is generally regarded much more as a "national" court. Its judges -- selected from throughout the country rather than locally, as is usually the case with the other circuits -- are among the most distinguished jurists in the nation. A detailed comparison of their contradictory rulings in the BMR, Inc., and National Alliance suits, therefore, is more than ordinarily instructive as to the state of America's judicial system.
First, however, the reader needs to become acquainted with Big Mama Rag. (Presumably he already has read NATIONAL VANGUARD to form an opinion concerning the educational activities of the National Alliance.)
Big Mama Rag has offices at 1724 Gaylord St., Denver, CO 80206, and for $1.25 will send a sample copy of the latest issue to any interested person who requests one. The issue examined by NATIONAL VANGUARD is that for July 1983.
An editorial statement, "Where We're At," reminds readers of the need for more articles of interest to "dykes/feminists/political women" and then goes on to comment: "The campaign to save & exalt the nuclear family, & eliminate lesbians & gays is certainly intense these days... It is Important for political lesbians to keep on pushing for an analysis of our oppression & exploitation as lesbians in connection with the ongoing system of White supremacy & imperialism. In a time when fascist politics are gaining support we have to fight the foot that's on our necks... The celebration of Lesbian & Gay Pride Week this year must lead us into continued activism... Political work based on confronting the oppression of all lesbians -- Third World, Chicana/Mexicana, Asian-American, Jewish, differently-abled, & older lesbians & lesbians incarcerated in jails & mental institutions especially -- it is a necessity."
The language in Big Mama Rag, like its vulviform graphics, tends toward cuteness, with the substitution of "herstory" for "history" and, in most places, of "womon" (plural: "womyn") for "woman." It is also stridently Marxist, with articles calling for the overthrow of the "fascist junta" in Chile and for solidarity with the "freedom fighters" in Puerto Rico and El Salvador. An article titled "America Held Hostage" provides a good sample of the "educational" content of the publication:
NanSee was busy polishing the silver cause they had a visitor this month -- Dicktator [sic] Magana from El Salvador came to town. He's the gool ole boy that is making "admirable progress" towards democracy in the face of the red menace. So says RayGunwho's given the OK to build a base in Honduras and has sent 120 Green Beret's [sic] to teach 2,400 El Salvadoran troops guerilla warfare. They are also training Hondurans to guard the 200 acre base. No figures on cost in terms of $ or lives.
But Hey there! It is like Senator Malcolm Wallop from WY said, "The death uf USA soldiers is a risk that is required to assist free countries in remaining free, we got to do it, we got to protect the free interest of Central America." Hey there Mal, who must be the John Wayne of WY, glad to see You're so concerned about free enterprise, but what about the lives of El Salvadore's people?
RayGun's buddy, former Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Coa [sic] Ky, now a resident of CA, said us of A liberals "put many obstacles" in the way of the administration from giving more financial aid the El Salvador. Apparently not enough! But really tootie, those boys really do need aid to rebuild villages they have destroyed in their pacify and reconstruct program. That program had such a blazing affect [sic] in Viet Nam they thought they would give it another go.
SURPRISE, we got a secret base no one told us about, and in Egypt. They will do anything to help American lads see the world. The air base is for use in a Middle East crisis contingency (don't [sic] that word just roll off your tongue?). It has been used for a number of contingencies & training activities but no one told us when and to who [sic]! Rickety RayGun, what else are you doing for the good of the world? We know something is happening in Chile, are you helping that country too?...
Apparently, this sort of thing was too much even for the folks at the Internal Revenue Service. But not for the distinguished judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals; they took the IRS to task for its narrow-mindedness in failing to recognize Big Mama Rag as an educational publication and for infringing on the publisher's free speech by denying tax-exempt status. Writing for the court, Judge Abner J. Mikva, formerly a congressman from Illinois' Second District (and himself a member of several tax-exempt Jewish organizations), ruled:
...[A]lthough First Amendment activities need not be subsidized by the state, the discriminatory denial of tax exemptions can impermissibly infringe free speech... Similarly, regulations authorizing tax exemptions may not be so unclear as to afford latitude for subjective application by IRS officials. We find that the definition of "educational" [in the regulations], and in particular its "full and fair exposition" requirement, is so vague as to violate the First Amendment and to defy our attempts to review its application in this case...
The language of the regulation gives no aid in interpreting the meaning of the test: "An organization may be educational even though it advocates a particular position or viewpoint so long as it presents a sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts as to permit an individual or the public to form an independent opinion or conclusion. On the other hand an organization is not educational if its principle function is the mere presentation of unsupported opinion." {Treas. Reg1.501 (c)3-1(d)(3)(1959)]
What makes an exposition "full and fair"? Can it be "fair" without being "full"? Which facts are "pertinent?" How does one tell whether an exposition of the pertinent facts id "sufficient...to permit an individual or the public to form and independent opinion or conclusion"? And who is to make all these determinations?
The regulation's vagueness is especially apparent in the last clause quoted above. That portion of the test is expressly based on an individualistic -- and therefore necessarily varying and unascertainable standard: the reactions of members of the public. The Supreme Court has recognized that statutes phrased in terms of individual sensitivities are suspect and susceptible to attack on vagueness grounds...
The futility of attempting to draw lines between fact and unsupported opinion is further illustrated by the district court's application of that test. The court did not analyze the contents of BMR under its proposed test but merely stated, without further explication, that the publication was not entitled to tax-exempt status because it had "adopted a stance so doctrinaire that it cannot satisfy the standard"...We can conceive of no value-free measurement of the extent to which material is doctrinaire, and the district court's reliance on that evaluative concept corroborates for us the impossibility of principled and objective application of the fact/opinion distinction.
Appellees [i.e., the IRS] suggest that the Treasury regulation at issue here embodies a related distinction -- between appeals to the emotions and appeals to the mind. (16) Material is educational, they argue, if it appeals to the mind, that is, if it reasons to a conclusion from stated facts. Again, the required linedrawing is difficult, a problem which is compounded if the difference between the two relies on the aforementioned fact/opinion distinction.
(16) The court below also seemed to endorse this distinction: it read the Treasury regulation as requiring that a publication be "sufficiently dispassionate as to provide its readers with the factual basis from which they may draw independent conclusions."...(emphasis supplied). One can only speculate how a poetry publication would be classified under such a dichotomy.
Moreover, the Treasury regulation does not support such a narrow concept of "educational" and we cannot approve it. Nowhere does the regulation hint that the definition of "educational" is to turn on the fervor of the organization or the strength of its language. As the Supreme Court has recognized in another context, the emotional content of a word is a component of its message...
Even if one could in fact differentiate fact from unsupported opinion, or emotional appeals from appeals to the mind, these proposed distinctions would be inadequate definitions of "educational" because material often combines elements of each...
Applications for tax exemptions must be evaluated...on the basis of criteria capable of neutral application. The standards may not be so imprecise that they afford latitude to individual IRS officials to pass judgment on the content and quality of an applicant's views and goals and therefore to discriminate against those engaged in protected First Amendment activities... Objective standards are especially essential in cases such as this involving those espousing nonmajoritarian philosophies. In this area the First Amendment cannot countenance a subjective "I know it when I see it" standard. And neither can we.
What a broadminded man Judge Mikva is! Such a champion of free speech! Even semi-literate, Marxist dykes are entitled to disseminate their homosexual ravings at subsidized postage rates. Can the officers of the National Alliance and their attorney be blamed, after this decision, for assuming that the long-denied tax exemption they sought would soon be in their hands?
The subsequent 18-page decision of the appeals court against the National Alliance makes especially interesting reading when compared with the decision in favor of Big Mama Rag., excerpted above. The reader should remind himself while reading the following excerpts that both decisions were issued by the same court; he should also compare the "educational" tone of Big Mama Rag with that of NATIONAL VANGUARD. In National Alliance v. United States the court ruled:
Even under the most minimal requirement of a rational development of a point of view, National Alliance's materials fall short. The publications before us purport to state demonstrable facts -- such as the occurrence of violent acts, perpetuated by black persons, the presence of Jews in important positions, and other events consistent with National Alliance themes... It is the fact that that there is no reasoned development of the conclusions which removes it from any definition of "educational" conceivably intended by Congress. The material may express the emotions felt by a number of people, but it cannot be reasonably considered intellectual exposition.
Significantly, National Alliance has not suggested before the IRS or the district court or here any definition of "educational" which would arguably be met by its material.
The exposition of propositions the correctness of which is readily demonstrable is doubtless educational. As the truth of the view asserted becomes less and less demonstrable, however, "instruction" or "education" must, we think, require more than assertion and repetition.
We recognize the inherently general nature of the term "educational" and the wide range of meanings Congress may have intended to convey. In attempting a definition suitable for all comers, IRS, or any legislator, court, or other administrator is beset with difficulties which are obvious. We do not attempt a definition, but we are convinced that the National Alliance material is far outside the range Congress could have intended to subsidize in the public interest by granting tax exemption.
In other words, "We can't define it, but we know it when we see it." It would be interesting to know whether the ruling judge blushed when he wrote that, or whether he and his colleagues giggled mischievously. But that's not the worst of it; the ruling continues:
Aside from vagueness, it is clear that in formulating its regulation, IRS was attempting to include as educational some types of advocacy of views not generally accepted. But in order to be deemed educational and enjoy tax exemption some degree of intellectually appealing development of or foundation for the views advocated would be required. Hence the portion of the Regulation which requires that the organization "present a sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts as to permit an individual or the public to form an independent opinion or conclusion. On the other hand, an organization is not educational if its principal function is the mere presentation of unsupported opinion." It is clear that the National Alliance material is not educational under that test...
Nothing in this court's decision in Big Mama Rag, Inc. v. United States... compels our reaching a different conclusion. The plaintiff in this case... was a nonprofit organization formed for the purpose of creating "a channel of communication for women that would educate and inform them on general issues of concern to them."...
We assume that the court in Big Mama viewed the activity of BMR, Inc. as falling within the range of reasonable interpretation of "educational" as used in the statute, or at least not clearly outside such range. Thus the vague test posed a real risk that BMR, Inc. might have been denied exemption under the test while others not distinguishable on any principled objective basis might be granted exemption.
In the present case we see no possibility that the National Alliance publication can be found educational within any reasonable interpretation of the term...
Well, there it is: the reasoning of some of the top legal minds in the American judicial system. It is certainly clear to them, as it should be to any village idiot, that Big Mama Rag and NATIONAL VANGUARD are distinguishable on a "principled objective basis." That basis, in Judge Mikva's case, at least, has nothing to do with an interpretation of "educational," however; it has everything to do with his judgment that Big Mama Rag poses no threat to the Jews and no impediment to their plans for America -- quite to the contrary, in fact -- while NATIONAL VANGUARD holds at least the potential for posing a threat, if it is permitted, by being granted tax-exempt status, to increase its circulation sufficiently.
To blame the destruction of America's judicial system entirely on the Jews who have infiltrated it is a great oversimplification of what has happened to it, however. For example, the judge who wrote the decision against the National Alliance quoted above is Thomas E. Fairchild, an Anglo-Saxon of the Congregationalist persuasion. Judge Mikva did not even participate in the decision.
Does Judge Fairchild have a secret "hot line" between his chambers and the Israeli Embassy, so that he can receive instructions as to which way he should rule on sensitive cases? Was he slipped a fat envelope of $100 bills by the American Jewish Congress, which entered National Alliance v. United States as an amicus curiae?
Almost certainly not.
Did he even think to himself, "If I rule in favor of the National Alliance, I'll catch hell from the Washington Post. My Jewish friends at the country club won't speak to me. My name might be dropped from the Social Register. On the other hand, if I rule against the National Alliance, the Jews will owe me a favor"?
Probably not. And he probably neither blushed in shame nor giggled mischievously when he made a fool of himself by writing such patently self-contradictory nonsense as his attempt to reconcile the court's decision for Big Mama Rag with its decision against the National Alliance.
Washington, of course, is full of cynical crooks: coldly calculating, self-centered men without scruple or principle, who understand the consequences of their actions and don't give a damn, except as their own welfare is affected; Gentiles who think like Jews. The late Lyndon Johnson was the archetype of such men.
But there are even more men of another sort in Washington, men for whose archetype one may best turn to the pages of George Orwell's 1984. Judge Fairchild is probably not a crook; rather, he is more likely to be what Orwell called a goodthinker: that is, a person whose mind runs in ways acceptable to the thought-arbiters of the Washington Post and the New York Times; someone who thinks in tune with Dan Rather and Bill Moyers; a man who has voluntarily subjected himself to the discipline of crimestop and doublethink:
...A Party member is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly stated, and they could not be stated without laying bare the contradictions inherent in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally orthodox (in Newspeak, a goodthinker), he will in all circumstances know, without taking thought, what is the true belief or the desirable emotion...
Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest areguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity...
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt... to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary. (George Orwell, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949, pp. 174-177 of the New American Library edition.)
Judge Fairchild and his Gentile colleagues on the bench have not only the right opinions but also the right instincts. They know without taking thought, that lesbianism is in and racism (White racism, that is) is out.
They read the facts, the arguments, and the conclusions in National Alliance publications without grasping them -- without permitting such heresy to register on their consciousness -- so that they are able to write, without blushing, that "there is no reasoned development of the conclusions" in NATIONAL VANGUARD.
They are able to rule in one case that they cannot countenance a subjective "I know it when I see it" standard and then explicitly to apply that very standard in the next case, when it is necessary to do so in order to reach the "right" verdict.
What else but doublethink could have led Judge Fairchild to the conclusion that Big Mama Rag is educational, but not?
It is good to realize that, fiction though 1984 is, Orwell was writing about real, not imaginary, human traits and social phenomena. He was describing people who, in their character and their thinking, are not basically different from Chief of Police Joseph McNamara and the school board members in San Jose, California. He was describing, in the great majority of the Outer Party workers at the Ministry of Truth, people who are capable of exactly the sort of mental gymnastics evidenced in the decisions of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge Thomas Fairchild is an intellectual version of Winston Smith's orthodox neighbor Parsons.
The world of Orwell's 1984 is a world pervaded by fear, and the characters in it are people who have adapted to that pervasive fear by in the way that ordinary people always adapt to it. The Party members of 1984 are survivors, and they survive by identifying completely with the thing they fear -- not just by obeying Big Brother's commands, but by actually loving Big Brother. There is no more conscious deception or pretense in Parson's enthusiastic preparations for Hate Week than there is in Judge Fairchild's claim that NATIONAL VANGUARD cannot be considered an educational publication, while Big Mama Rag can.
In 1984 the protagonist writes off his goodthinking fellow Party members and looks to the proles -- the laboring masses, kept content with a steady diet of beer, pornography, and lottery tickets -- for any possibility of a revolt against Big Brother. That possibility is slim indeed. Orwell's proles are no more likely to revolt against Big Brother than America's masses of television watchers are to rise up against the men who provide their steady diet of situation comedies and game shows.
Even slimmer, however, is the possibility that the members of America's lawyer-politician-bureaucrat class -- the analogue of Orwell's Outer Party -- will break their chains of orthodoxy and speak out against the dark force which has already enslaved nearly all of their own minds, and which has made of the law the thing of contempt which it is in America today.
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