Yitzhak Goldstein, Professor Errant

To be a conservative in a high school socialIST studies department is to experience what a whitetail deer does on opening day. Hunted on all sides. Only, the season never ends and there is no bag-limit. I often thought about forming an organization for conservative history teachers. We could meet together in a telephone booth. Alas, I never found a booth or another such teacher for that matter. Once viperous colleagues, dexterous with cutlery, got me “canceled”, this need seemed moot. Maybe. Still, Americans need to realize, the dearth of conservative teachers means only one side takes the field.

U.S. Government and Constitution was my forte. I was in my 17^th year when, on Wednesday 27 January 2010, the principal summoned me to his office. “Close the door” he said, a bad sign. Like an attorney, he scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad during interrogations. Looking up, an angry scowl on his face, he said, “You have a reputation for being a conservative, a problem that has persisted for years. It is the number one topic among staff. They complain to me about what you teach and your bias”. A parent said her special education son never did well with conservative teachers and wanted him transferred from my government class.¹ Stunned, I asked when conservativism became a crime. If simply being a conservative was controversial, it demonstrated who was really biased. He was not amused. His eyes went from blue to purple meaning he was furious. “No, you’re the problem” he yelled at me. “You’re the only one I receive complaints about for bias”!

I explained government courses by nature are political. Controversial issues are bound to arise. Because I was the only Constitutional Originalist among the four teaching it, naturally I stood out. Second, I was not the only one receiving parent complaints (if his claim was even true. He was famous for telling teachers unnamed parents complained about them). Each semester parents confided in me objections to the liberal and anti-Christian bias of their kid’s teachers. I witnessed this including those trashing students out behind their backs because their dad was a pastor. I asked these parents to speak up but they declined. Each worried the district would label them “troublemakers”. Worse, they feared liberal teachers would retaliate against their kids. I told the principal I spoke with another teacher who shared my experiences not revealing it was Tim Latham, fired by the Lawrence, Kansas school district for being a conservative (it made national news).² In addition, liberal colleagues mocked me by name (students told me) in front of their classes. They spread gossip and false stories about me. Nor did I mention the secret journal in which I recorded names, places, and dates of liberal bias and persecution. The principal laughed in my face saying none of what I said was true. I was a liar. I was the problem and cause of controversy in the school. I protested this was not true but he insisted I was making up everything I said. He even claimed there was no liberal bias among colleagues. I was the only one using the classroom to push my views. He could not have been more wrong.³

Because he judged me guilty (of doing what my accusers actually did), from that day forward, I was to turn in weekly lesson plans along with copies of every article, handout, homework assignment, quiz, and test I used so he could scour them for bias. I noted, absent the same requirement for liberal teachers, this amounted to a double standard. He said they did not use biased materials in their classes. “The one’s teaching out of Time, Newsweek, and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth certainly are”, I replied. I added basing his requirement purely on my being a conservative constituted a degree of harassment and even persecution. He was about blow his stack. He claimed many (I believe the term was “parade”) of teachers had come to him wanting to know why he had not disciplined or fired me yet. I demanded to know the names of my accusers. His response was sardonic laughter. He refused to divulge their names adding, with a mocking sneer, “You’d really be surprised if you knew who some of them were”. I insisted it was unfair to demand I answer accusations of anonymous people. He said in a slow drawn out sentence, “You will never know who they are”. Because these teachers did not want their names public, he could not institute formal proceedings however, he was commencing an investigation of me for bias. Dismissed. As I reached the door, he said, “This is not over. We’re not through yet”.⁴

Somehow, word got out I was on the hot seat. Colleagues called me “toxic” and “radioactive”. They refused to sit near me at faculty meetings, (where I had all 11 seats in the row to myself) in-service training, department meetings, and school sponsored lunches and dinners…for the next six years. Teachers were required to stand in hallways during passing periods monitoring student behavior. When the principal and assistant principals walked by, colleagues said it would be a good career move to be seen slamming me into a wall or knocking me down steps. Word of my troubles “spread” to students. Several revealed they had been involved in debates with liberal teachers over the Constitution. When asked the source of their information, they said I was. Oh brother.

In April my liberal socialIST studies department supervisor revealed I was no longer teaching U.S. Government or Advanced Studies American History. I was demoted. I asked why. She repeated the same pabulum; unnamed parents and colleagues complained about my conservative bias. She refused to share what the principal told her. Even though I was the only history teacher in three high and three junior high schools with a Masters’ degree and published thesis in history, they demoted me to the least desirable courses. A week later, a guidance counselor and an art teacher told me they heard rumors I was being fired. Diabetic, stress played havoc with my blood glucose and heart. My students also said they heard the principal was firing me. The stress was almost unbearable. A custodian I knew warned that history teachers in the other building were “flaming liberals” and hated me. He became involved in a political debate with them, mentioned Rush Limbaugh, and they were furious. My supervisor warned they were “evaluating” him. The principal transferred him to another building. Later that day, a socialIST studies colleague said he too heard the principal was firing me. His students knew this as well. By Friday, I was having chest pains and difficulty breathing. A student walking into my class and said, “Mr. G, what are you doing here? I heard you were dead” I laughed my head off.

Aware for years Lefty colleagues were spying on and trying to cancel me, my self-defense strategy was to use primary source materials, e.g. the Declaration and Federalist Papers in government classes. I was golden, untouchable. I was wrong. Teaching the Constitution from the perspective of those who wrote and ratified it constituted unacceptable bias and got me booted. Worse, I had developed the nefarious practice of examining self-validating political clichés to test their validity. This sparked interested discussion among students. Chief among them was, because one cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theater First Amendment rights are not absolute. Therefore, it is up to those in power to determine the “limits” to what people may say, write, and publish. If government may “limit” one right, why not others? Can there be any doubt as to where this will lead?

Ongoing Tales of the CSG (Career Suicide Gang)⁵

Nancy Pelosi,⁶ whose visage evokes images of dark cobweb, choked ancient castles where Dracula reposes, recently used the old “fire in a crowded theater” cliché in support of Beijing Biden’s plan to confiscate from Americans various classes of firearms.⁷ In a 2017 interview, Pelosi first repeated the hackneyed cliché that no right was absolute because you cannot yell “wolf in a crowded theater”.⁸ In her dotage, we can forgive a misquotation but not Constitutional ignorance. Pelosi wrote a letter to the ‘National’⁹ (sic) Park Service demanding they not grant a permit to “alt-right” group, Patriot Prayer, to hold a demonstration. A journalist asked Pelosi, whether her request infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights. She answered, “The Constitution does not say that a person can yell wolf in a crowded theater” adding no one has a right to say anything that would endanger others.¹⁰ Unfamiliar with this “alt-right”, I read Michael Malice’s book on the subject. I concluded they are comprised of Leftwing capitalists, Rightwing socialists, and anarchists. I came away more confused than ever.¹¹ I never heard of Patriot’s Prayer. Liberal online sites label them racists and “white nationalists”. However, their webpage denounces racism and violence. It concedes such groups show up at their rallies along with violent goon squads from Communist Pantifa chapters but they have no control over this.

If Pelosi knows anything about the Constitution, she keeps this knowledge a secret. The Constitution recognizes, not grants rights. It is a restraining order against government infringing on the rights of individuals. Because rights are G-d given, they preexist all governments. Those rejecting divine origin nevertheless insist rights are part of one’s humanity. People create and construct government solely to protect these rights. The subordinate cannot modify the supremacy of the superior. Government has no authority to regulate free speech nor may it deny a group access to the public square because it finds its speech objectionable. Police authorities are “required to protect liberty” as much as they are people. Pelosi mangled a phrase uttered by Chief Justice of the United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes at the conclusion of Schenck v. U.S. (1919). In support of the Court’s 9-0 vote to suppress a man’s free speech, Holmes quipped that the First Amendment did not protect anyone who “falsely” shouted “fire in a theater causing panic”. Schenck was such a bad ruling even Holmes came to regret it. The Court overturned it in Bradenburg v. Ohio, 395, U.S. 1969. The Court held that under the First Amendment, an individual could, “advocate violence even in front of an armed crowd” as long as the speech was not intentionally planned to result in immediate acts of violence. Yet Pelosi reprises a quip from a discredited case.¹²

What did Schenck say that was so terrible? It was 1917 and President Wilson had just taken the U.S. into Europe’s Great War. Wilson worked feverishly to suppress criticism of his decision. Schenck, Secretary of the Socialist Party, USA, published and distributed a pamphlet arguing conscription was unconstitutional. Wilson, a ‘Progressive’, arrested and prosecuted Schenck under the Espionage Act of 1917. Schenck appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him. Holmes’ made his comment about shouting fire in a theater after the Court’s decision. It was unrelated to the facts of the case. It was not part of the ruling and had “no binding authority”. Today, those who deny any right is absolute use Holmes’ quip to justify intentions to violate that right.¹³ Denial of a right being absolute of necessity requires someone to determine the limits of that right. Naturally, that “someone” is government. To employ Holmes’ rationale for denial of a right creates an open-ended justification to impose any number of restrictions on the exercise of that right.

What purveyors of the yelling fire cliché miss is the real standard established by Holmes. He declared government could suppress free speech if it determined that speech posed a “clear and present danger” to the government’s effort to prosecute the war.¹⁴ His standard assigns government the power to create its own test for what constitutes a clear and present danger. If governments, at all levels couple this “authority” with declarations of states of emergency, from tornadoes to a virus, the threat to the Bill of Rights becomes particularly dangerous. Liberals use Pelosi’s adaptation, “one cannot yell rats on a Black Friday sale in Saks Fifth Avenue”, and Holmes’ clear and present danger test to promote a political agenda having nothing to do with the First Amendment. They use it as a rationale to suppress Second Amendment rights.

If enemies of individual liberty convince Americans Holmes’ comment carries the weight of law, “proving” no right is absolute, what follows? They will use it to restrict targeted rights, incrementally, e.g. Second and First Amendment rights to bear arms, religious expression, and free speech, respectively, ultimately to extinguish them.

A union worker approached Joe “Boss Tweed” Obiden who was touring an automotive plant in Detroit, Michigan accusing him of wanting to take away people’s guns. OBiden flared up in anger and told the worker he was full of s#*t, that he supported the Second Amendment, but he would take away “AR14s (sic). OBiden declared no right was absolute. No one can yell fire in a crowded theater. He also threatened to slap the worker.¹⁵ To prove he supports the Second Amendment, OBiden stated he and his sons own “shotguns” and “hunt”.¹⁶ OBiden evinces little knowledge of firearms. Growing up in Maryland, I heard his campaign ads, including on gun control, from nearby Delaware. The words, ‘blithering idiot’ come to mind. This is how OBiden and other Liberals read the Second Amendment:

“The people, following submission to an extensive and expensive federal

background check, training, and testing, proving a need to own a firearm

may purchase one from a government approved list for hunting and target

shooting at approved ranges. They must register it with the government

and reapply for approval on an annual basis. All semiautomatic rifles and

handguns are military weapons, the property of the U.S. government and

must be surrendered to the nearest arsenal”.

Nick Leghorn notes gun control advocates “invariably” recite the Holmes’ cliché to “prove” no right is absolute therefore they can limit the types of firearms citizens may possess. Holmes based his free speech exception on an emergency; government does not have to tolerate as much free speech in wartime as in peace.¹⁷ Holmes was wrong on every count. The Constitution is over and above the government. The subordinate cannot alter this relationship. The Constitution provides no exceptions or escape clause for government to violate the Bill of Rights. Those who argue to the contrary are setting the stage for intended violation of rights based on some conjured up exigency. Leghorn follows this argument to its logical conclusion.

Yelling fire in a theater when there was none would be illegal. However, if there was a fire, or a pack of Pelosi’s wolves running loose, it would not. If mere possession of a human voice does not constitute a clear and present danger, neither does mere possession of a firearm. Government may not regulate the ability to speak prior to criminal misuse. The same holds true for firearms. Mere possession of an AR15 poses no greater potential threat of criminal misuse than OBiden’s shotgun. For the government to apply the Schenck standard to restrict gun ownership, it would have to prove all people purchasing guns do so with the immediate intention to harm someone. This standard is even more problematic considering most purchases are for self-defense. Buying a firearm does not automatically cause harm to anyone. Arguments based on the potential for future harm are hypocritical otherwise gun-Confiscationists would ban the more lethal automobile. At best, banning an AR15 would do nothing with respect to reducing crime (their misuse being miniscule), and, at worst, would infringe on an individual’s ability to protect himself. According to the Declaration, the right to life is, absolute. For an individual to illegally shoot an innocent person violates the latter’s absolute right to life. Sanctions should be on individuals, not the means.¹⁸ Nevertheless, the Pelosi’s and Schumer’s of the world stamp their feet insisting no right is absolute so the state has the power to restrict rights.

Thomas Jefferson described rights as “unalienable” meaning under no circumstances could government or anyone else separate people from them. Because rights are endowed by G-d, they exist prior to and apart from government. They are inherent in one’s humanity.¹⁹ Because of their inherency, if one person has a right, all do. For a right to be a right, the “exercise of the identical right at the same time” by more than one individual does nothing to compromise its exercise by anyone else. If government can alter or rescind a right, it never was a right. It was a privilege.²⁰ The Constitution contains no ‘Bill of Privileges’. An individual’s exercise of free speech, religion, and association does nothing to limit the same exercise by others. If someone is giving a speech or preaching a sermon, no one is compelled to visit that venue and listen. The same holds true for firearms. Individual possession of a firearm does not deny the same right or pose a threat to anyone else.²¹ How can proponents of using the yelling fire standard to limit rights define where limitations would end? They cannot. Instead, they would establish an arbitrary standard. Because their plan is to limit targeted rights, that standard is already contaminated. It is beholden to an agenda seeking to abolish that right. Thus, we can see, the yelling fire position is invalid. Perhaps we should prohibit yelling liberal in a crowded fire as it might provoke a search for more gasoline.