Prosecutor fired for going to "white preservationist" conference

[Frank Cross]

I'm pretty sure it was Marx in "on the Jewish Question" and other writings 
that declared freedom of religion, property, etc. to be "bourgeouis 
freedoms" to be extinguished.

At 06:02 PM 3/4/2006, isomin at gmu.edu wrote:
>Before Lenin, the words communist and socialist were usually used 
>interchangeably (thus Marx and Engels' choice of words). This is no longer 
>usually the case. Indeed, most of the world's communist parties were 
>founded with Soviet support and explicitly supported the Soviet line 
>almost until the fall of the USSR. So associating them with Leninist 
>ideology is not much of a stretch.
>
>As I noted earlier, there may be idiosyncratic people who call themselves 
>communist without actually believing in any significant elements of 
>Lenin's ideology; such people raise very different issues than real 
>communists do. But of course there are also a wide variety of different 
>types of white supremacists, some of whom believe in much harsher 
>discrimination against minorities than others . See, e.g., Carol Swain's 
>book on the subject. To say that communists generally support 
>dictatorship, censorship, repressoin of religion, and forced labor is at 
>least as accurate a generalization  as saying that white supremacists 
>generally want to discriminate against nonwhites.
>
>Finally, I do not believe that firing government officials for ideological 
>reasons is "punishment." Rather, ideological and political values are 
>among the legitimate qualifications for at least some types of government 
>jobs. If voters can choose elected officials on ideological grounds, I see 
>no reason why those officials should not be able to use the same criteria 
>to select their subordinates.
>
>
>
>Lastly,
>
>Ilya Somin
>Assistant Professor of Law
>George Mason University School of Law
>3301 Fairfax Dr.
>Arlington, VA 22201
>ph: 703-993-8069
>fax: 703-993-8202
>e-mail: isomin at gmu.edu
>Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~isomin/
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Janet Alexander <jca at stanford.edu>
>Date: Saturday, March 4, 2006 6:14 pm
>Subject: Re: RE: RE: Prosecutor fired for going to 
>"white  preservationist" conference
>
> > I believe some guys named Marx and Engels came up with an
> > ideological
> > position paper they called The Communist Manifesto -- not the
> > socialist
> > manifesto -- quite some time before Lenin.  And that many
> > varieties of
> > leftists in the US have considered themselves communist.  It is no
> > more
> > correct to label them all Stalinists than to say everyone who
> > believes in
> > capitalism would approve child labor, the Tweed gang or the
> > assassination
> > of Salvador Allende.
> >
> > Making the analogy to "communism" is problematic because -- with
> > respect to
> > American political thought, not particular foreign governments --
> > its
> > meaning is less determinate than "white supremacist."  The
> > relevance to
> > holding a government job is in how predictive listening to
> > particular
> > speech, or holding particular beliefs, is of the actions the
> > person would
> > take in an official capacity.  First Amendment law generally says
> > that
> > punishing people based solely on speech or belief is so dangerous
> > to
> > democracy that it requires awfully careful attention to what
> > exactly is
> > said, which hasn't been evident in the discussion of "communist."
> >         Janet Alexander
> >
> >
> > At 05:16 PM 3/4/2006 -0500, isomin at gmu.edu wrote:
> > >Well, this runs into the problem that there haven't been ANY
> > communist
> > >regimes that weren't characterized by such policies. Some have
> > been less
> > >repressive than others, but even the most moderate (probably
> > Yugoslavia)
> > >still had forced labor, suppression of free speech, dictatorship,
> > >repression of religion and so on. Also, let us remember that
> > communist (as
> > >opposed to socialist) ideology was founded by Lenin, who was also
> > the
> > >founder of the most prominent of the totalitarian regimes to
> > which Yvette
> > >refers. I don't think the two can be meaningfully separated.
> > >
> > >One can imagine individuals who call themselves communists but do
> > not
> > >actually subscribe to any significant portion of Lenin's
> > ideology.
> > >Similarly, I suppose an individual could call himself a white
> > supremacist
> > >but   not actually favor official discrimination against
> > nonwhites.
> > >Obviously, individuals who are not really communists or white
> > >supremacists, but are merely mislabeling themselves as such,
> > raise very
> > >different issues than people who really do subscribe to these
> > ideologies.
> > >The latter are a menace if given official power, while the former
> > are
> > >probably guilty only of ignorance (and whether that ignorance
> > justifies
> > >firing them probably depends on the office in question).
> > >
> > >Ilya Somin
> > >Assistant Professor of Law
> > >George Mason University School of Law
> > >3301 Fairfax Dr.
> > >Arlington, VA 22201
> > >ph: 703-993-8069
> > >fax: 703-993-8202
> > >e-mail: isomin at gmu.edu
> > >Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~isomin/
> >
> > Janet Cooper Alexander
> > Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law
> > Stanford Law School
> > Stanford CA 94301-8610
> > 650.723.2892
> >
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**********************************************************

Frank Cross
McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B6000
Austin, TX 78712-1178