De-Citizenship Trials in Practice: Tolerating Fred Phelps

Vox Populi, a regular commentator on this blog, has just started a blog of his own where I have been going back and forth with him on the issue of tolerating Muslims. As I have argued here in the past, in addition to the usual restrictions on free speech such as the inability to "shout fire," incite to violence or be a public nuisance, one is also limited by inability to make statements, or even to hold beliefs, that challenge the legitimacy of the system. This disqualifies the beliefs of most extremists, whether from the left or the right, secular or religious, Christian, Muslim or Jewish. Such people would be outside the protection of the First Amendment and could be targeted by the government. In fact, it may be necessary for the government to not allow such people the protection of the First Amendment.

To be clear, this does not limit normative disagreement, even very strong disagreement. I am allowed to believe that President Barack Obama's health care plan and stimulus package are mistakes that will bring disaster to this country and even cost lives. I can believe that both Christianity and Islam are not "True" religions and do not help their believers "get right" with God. I can believe these things as long as I accept that both Obama and my Christian and Muslims neighbors are basically decent people and patriotic citizens, who came by their mistaken beliefs honestly. This allows me to accept Obama as my legitimate president, as called for by the Constitution, and Christians and Muslims as fellow citizens.

What I would like to discuss here are the practical matters involved. How would we, in practice, go about stripping such people of their citizenship and avoid turning this into a tool of legitimate free speech suppression. Take the example of Fred Phelps, the minister of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps believes that "God hates fags" and that American tolerance of homosexuality has caused the death of our soldiers in Iraq. To make his point, he and his followers have even taken to picketing the funerals of American soldiers.




To put this in context, this is the sort of anti-gay hate speech that even Ann Coulter denounces.

I do not care if Phelps is "intolerant" or engaging in "hate" speech. What is of concern is the fact that Phelps not only does not agree with American policy but no longer accepts the legitimacy of the United State government. For example, the Hebrew prophets, whom I presume Phelps looks to as his models, could denounce the individual sins of the people of Israel without ever questioning that they were people of God. In fact, it was precisely because they were the people of God that the children of Israel had need of being rebuked. Elijah may have denounced King Ahab as an idolater and murder, whom God would punish, but he never challenged the fact that Ahab was a legitimate king. Phelps makes no such distinction. His world is one in which his small group is righteous and everyone else is wicked beyond redemption.

I see nothing objectionable with having the government sue Phelps, drag him into court and put to him some very simple questions: considering what he believes about the United States, does he consider himself an American citizen bound by American law, and if so how does he justify, not the belief in the iniquity of the United States, but his part in it as an American citizen? This exercise would be worth it just to make Phelps squirm, trying to answer these questions with a straight face. He would not have to convince any judge or jury to sympathize with his world view or even agree with how he rectifies this dilemma. All we are asking him to do is to convince a judge or jury that he believes his own answers and that, in his own mind, he is not trying to put one over them, secretly laughing at their gullibility. Failure to do this would result in his being stripped of his citizenship. He would still be allowed to live in this country; he would not be put in jail or even fined. All this would mean is that he would lose his ability to vote, access to government services and the ability to take part in public discourse.

It is important to understand that we would not be coming after Phelps for any of his beliefs per se. Our only objection to him is his breach of contract. In civil law, if one signed a contract only to find out that the other person did not believe himself bound by this contract, one would be justified in suing for breach of contract and demand to be released by the court from this contract. In this case, it would be irrelevant that the contract has yet to actually be broken. It is enough that the contract was not entered in good faith. Government is a contract signed between government and citizens. Before we can begin to talk about the parties fulfilling their parts of the contract (like the government protecting the free speech of citizens) all parties need to be acting in good faith and accept the legitimacy of the contract. If one of the parties, say Citizen Fred Phelps, is not acting in good faith then the contract is off. I am not about to lift a finger to protect his First Amendment rights unless I am convinced that he is willing to do the same for me. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

The course of action I am outlying is not one of "I will only tolerate tolerant people." Such notions of tolerance are meaningless and can be dismissed as cover only people one agrees with as all beliefs imply some form of intolerance. I would be perfectly willing to accept Phelps as a citizen despite him being an "intolerant" person who believes in making homosexuality a crime. He can even believe that we are a sinful nation for tolerating homosexuality and that God is going to punish us as long as he believed that the United States had the "right" to make laws tolerating homosexuality and the United States government was still rightfully his government. To convince me that he holds this I would have to see him saying things like "Oh Lord! As Isaiah said: 'Behold I am a man of unclean lips dwelling amongst a people of unclean lips.' This is a nation of homosexuality tolerating sinners, but I pray that you forgive them for they have come to these sins in good faith seeking to follow a just Constitution. These are my people and as Moses prayed that if the burden of their sin is too heavy 'remove me from your book' and let me be punished with them." Phelps would still be a bigot, but I could still accept him as a fellow citizen. Whatever else he might believe, I would know that he was on my side as an American.

Izgad and the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic classic, dealing with a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It was endorsed by that great American hero Henry Ford, who helped publish a translation of the book in this country. More recently there was an excellent documentary, Protocols of Zion, by Marc Levin on the book and its continued influence, particularly in the Arab world. Levin was inspired to make this documentary after having an Egyptian taxi driver explain to him that the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.

I was perusing the Wheaton Public Library this evening through their Judaic section when, to my surprise, I came across a copy of the Protocols. Naturally I was greatly offended to see this compendium of falsehoods. Long ago I appointed myself, with unanimous approval, as High Comrade of the Young Elders of Zion and I can assure you that we are absolutely nothing like what you read about in the Protocols (and if we once were then we have certainly reformed our ways and eliminated all Protocol Jews.)

As you can see I do not have a bulbous hooked nose. Our organization offers nose jobs, as part of our health package, to all our Jewish employees. We are also far better dressed. Taking over the world, like mathematics, is a young man's game, no one older than thirty. We are not an exclusively Jewish organization; we have a proud gentile faction, the Shabbos Goys, for the gentiles who run around and do stuff for us in an unstoogelike fashion. It should be noted for the record that the Protocols is a Czarist forgery, plagiarized from several earlier anti-Semitic works.

All joking aside, the proposition of a public library openly having a copy of the Protocols on its shelves posed an interesting challenge to my liberalism. As a good old fashioned fighting nineteenth liberal, the notion of censorship is completely odious to me. I recognize the sort of Pandora's Box one opens with censorship. If I exercise my liberal indignation against the Protocols, other liberals might choose to come after Ann Coulter's books (not that I would consider this a bad thing). Next on the chopping block could be the Bell Curve, which argues that blacks really do have a problem when it comes to performing in standardized tests, and before long the mobs might be coming for this humble blog. As a historian, I see the Protocols as one of the most important primary source documents relating to modern anti-Semitism and the perfect history 101 lesson on how to turn texts against their authors. I wish for young aspiring historians to be able to easily be able to get a hold of this book. (Internet editions are also in abundance.)

That being said I recognize the danger of having this book on display as if it were just a regular book. By allowing this book on the shelf, the government of Montgomery County is saying that this is a book of opinions alongside other opinions. You can be pro health care or against it, pro the war in Iraq or against or believe that there is a secret cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind all of this. If I am to engage in the public discourse of free citizens then I need you to give me the benefit of the doubt about my beliefs and intentions. I may be wrong in my beliefs (As I tell my students, much of history is the story of very smart people with really bad ideas.) and it may be that what I propose will lead to utter disaster. You must still assume that, despite my wrong ideas, I came by them honestly and that I mean them for the best. I cannot prove that I am not part of some sort of dark conspiracy. You just have to give me the benefit of the doubt and let my ideas stand or fall in the free marketplace of ideas. At the very least hate literature like the Protocols should not be treated any better than pornography. If the library is not going to leave pornographic material out where the young and impressionable can easily find it and form their own opinions about it then they should not be leaving hate literature out on the open shelves.

I took this copy of the Protocols over to the two librarians at the side desk to show them what they had. The two ladies were very kind to me. To my shock, neither of them had ever heard of the Protocols. (I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing.) I politely explained to them that I was opposed to censorship and did not want the book removed. I suggested a number of possibilities. The book could be put on some sort of reserved section for anyone who specifically asks for it. (Much the same way that stores keep their pornography behind counters and people have to ask for it. No, I have never tried to ask for some.) Another idea would be to create a separate section for hate literature and put the Protocols there. (Whether this entire section should be behind lock and key is another issue.) It turns out that the book was cataloged under the Dewey decimal system under anti-Semitism and therefore ended up right next to Judaics.

Ann Coulter Versus Historians

Ann Coulter takes a swipe at historians with her latest piece, “Why We Don’t Celebrate ‘Historians Day.” Her complaint is that a recent poll of historians ranked George W. Bush the seventh worst president in American history. According to Coulter:

Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job.

Coulter goes on to note that this is shocking as “most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents.”

I know many very liberal historians and yes they can name more than seven U.S. presidents. Speaking as a historian who has never been a member of the Weather Underground and has never used a cushy university job to engage in left wing political activism, if historians really wanted to go after Bush they would have placed him last. Regardless of what one thinks of his policies, and I am probably more sympathetic to them than most in my profession, it is very difficult to give Bush high marks as a president. Was he effective in rallying his party and a clear cut majority of the electorate around his policies? With the exception of the weeks after September 11, no. Was he a masterful orator? No. Maybe he was like Eisenhower and subtly controlled his advisors without anyone knowing? Time will tell, but as far we could see, this was a president controlled by his staff as few in history have been. I cannot think of one positive way that Bush affected the office of the presidency. While none of this means that Bush was a completely horrible president, he should be viewed as mediocre to well below average. Seventh worst may be a bit tough, but it is not unreasonable. If I were voting I would probably have Bush ranked somewhere between twenty-five and thirty spots from the top. But then again I am biased, I voted for the man.

Personally I do not think whe can properly evaluate and rank recent presidents. One needs some distance for that. I would say fifty years. So we are just about ready to evaluate and rank Kennedy.

A Blog to Take Over the World (Part I)

In the novel Ender’s Game, while Ender Wiggin is away at Battle School, his siblings back on earth, Peter and Valentine Wiggin, become, in essence, bloggers as part of Peter’s plan to become a world leader. The idea being that on the net he can assume an identity of his own choosing and not be bound by the fact that he is only twelve years old. Through the net, his ideas can reach anyone in the world. Thus he can become a person of influence, someone whom people across the world would willingly listen to. Orson Scott Card published Ender’s Game in 1985, before the rise of the internet so it truly was clairvoyant of him to appreciate how something like the internet could change how information is exchanged and how this could affect the discourse of power. The internet allows a person to reach everyone without any mediation, thus bypassing the traditional guardians of public discourse. The moment I have the internet to reach people with then I do not have to work for a major newspaper, hold public office or even hold an advanced degree and a tenured post at a prestigious university to be a major player in the public discourse. This makes me, a lone individual, powerful in ways that I could never have been before the internet.


Peter takes on the identity of Locke (a reference to the seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke) and Valentine take on the identity of Demosthenes (the famous fifth century BCE Athenian orator). While one might expect someone with designs on taking over the world to become a rabble-rouser, playing to the prejudices of the masses, Peter’s Locke does nothing of the sort. It is Valentine’s Demosthenes who is the rabble-rouser. She plays a populist conservative, who whips up popular hysteria, particularly against Russia. In this role, she serves as a foil for Locke, who is a voice of moderation and tolerance. In this capacity, Demosthenes is someone whom Locke can argue against, which is why Peter brought her into this project in the first place. Peter chooses not to play the role of the rabble-rouser because he recognizes that, while such a position can easily lead to widespread popular support, it will close off any chance of gaining the respect of the intellectual and political elites, which is what Peter craves. (This is Card making fun of what he sees as the elitist liberal establishment. In reality, they are just as prejudiced and open to manipulation as the populace they heap scorn upon; it just requires a different and more subtle lever to push them.)


Initially, Demosthenes is much more successful than Locke at gaining popularity. This makes perfect sense considering the nature of their styles and whom they are trying to attract. Peter understood this going in, yet it still frustrates him. He perseveres, though, and eventually succeeds. Over the course of the events narrated in the Shadow series, Peter rises to become the Hegemon and leads a united planet into a golden age of expansion into space.

Peter Wiggin is a model for me. Not that I really have any plans on taking over the world, though I do like to joke about that. I do wish to be Locke though. The internet is full of Demostheneses of both the liberal and conservative variety, spewing invective and playing to people’s passion. This goes to the very nature of the medium itself. In such a crowded marketplace the one who shouts the loudest gets heard. People like a spectacle and take a certain pleasure in beholding people saying extreme things. This is the secret to Ann Coulter’s success. I want to have a positive effect on the world. I believe that my background and my Asperger syndrome allow me to have a different perspective on things from most people and a message to give them. I do not see myself as trying to convince people to become more religious, less religious, liberal or secular. I see this blog as giving people an alternative vision of the world; one that transcends the categories that people are used to.

(To be continued ...)

On the Dangers of Having Unprotected Conversations with Guests You Meet at Your Aunt’s Sabbath Table: A Review of Unprotected

During my recent trip to Los Angeles, I stayed at my aunt and uncle. For the Sabbath meals, my aunt had a friend of her's over, Dr. Miriam Grossman. Dr. Grossman is a psychiatrist at UCLA. She and I got into a discussion about university life and political correctness and I mentioned a book that I had heard about called Unprotected, which attacked university health departments for allowing the cause of political correctness to get in the way of protecting the physical and mental health of their students. I had not read the book, but I had heard about it, as this book had become a hit in conservative circles. As it turns out Dr. Grossman happens to be the author of this book. I later got to see the Clare Booth Luce calendar, which featured her two spots away from Ann Coulter. A dubious honor I admit, but all the same not bad.

After the Sabbath was over, I ordered the book on Amazon and I got it soon after I got back from Los Angeles. It is a short book, at only 151 pages plus footnotes, and an easy read. The book is built around cases that Dr. Grossman has dealt with, working at UCLA, of students, who found themselves in various difficult situations, which Dr. Grossman believes came about as the result of less than medically sound advice given to these students from UCLA’s Student Health Services. For example, there is the case of Stacey, who got a Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) even though her boyfriend used a condom. There is also Heather, who shows symptoms of depression and had recently gotten into a “friends with benefits” relationship with a boy. Grossman argues that the people running Student Health Services purposely played down the potential physical and mental health risks to students such as these as part of their advocacy of “Safe-Sex.”

Besides for campus Student Health Services, Dr. Grossman lashes out against campus websites that dispense advice about sex. Her main target in this is Columbia University’s Go Ask Alice. I had actually been shown this site before, by a friend. Believe me, this is not a site for the prudish or squeamish. Ask Alice seems designed to be hauled out by conservatives in front of a congressional committee discussing whether or not to cut funding for public education. I do wish to point out that Ohio State’s sex-education website is, considering the world in which we live in, relatively responsible. It does a good job at keeping itself within the realm of medicine and out of our culture war.

There seem to be two parts to Dr. Grossman’s argument. The first is that Student Health Services are failing to properly educate students about the risks of sexual intercourse. In essence, Dr. Grossman is rehashing the abstinence movement’s case. I do not have a degree in modern medicine; I deal with people who lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and their ideas about the natural world. I, therefore, am not in a position to comment as to the level of risk involved in protected sex.

The second part to Dr. Grossman’s argument, and probably the most important, is that the Student Health Services across the country are being run by radical leftists who use their position, not to help students, but to refashion society according to their own agenda. If we do not accept this second part then there is little point to the book. If this was merely a matter of bad medical advice being distributed to students then one could simply deal with it as an internal professional matter, without going public and denouncing one’s own profession. In essence, for this book to work, one would have to prove there was a conspiracy at hand. The book comes up short on this front; there is no real damning evidence unearthed. The closest Dr. Grossman comes to this with a case in which the campus Student Health Services refused to give a Mormon woman, wishing to get pregnant for the sixth time, an appointment, in the near future, so she could get a prescription for the fertility drugs she wanted. This woman though was able to get an appointment by claiming that she wanted birth control pills. In defense of Dr. Grossman, I would point out that trying to make a case for a conspiracy would have taken this book down a far more polemical path. She clearly has tried to moderate her rhetoric and keep from sounding too shrill, i.e. like Ann Coulter.

There is a certain irony in this whole matter. If my understanding of the Health Services establishment is correct, their counter-argument against Dr. Grossman and the entire abstinence movement is that they, the Health Services establishment, are being forced to face down a conspiracy to promote a religious agenda. One of the main complaints against abstinence sex-education curriculums is that they contain faulty information. Recently there was a study finding serious flaws in two-thirds of the abstinence curriculums. Now, from the perspective of the opponents of the teaching of abstinence, these are not simply flaws. If they were they could simply be addressed as an internal matter. The real issue at hand is whether abstinence programs deliberately engage in misinformation in order to promote their religious agenda. In essence, their concerns mirror Dr. Grossman’s.

I would like to conclude with some questions for Dr. Grossman.

1) Do casual sexual encounters lead to depression or is it simply that people struggling with depression are more likely to seek out casual sexual encounters in order to relieve their symptoms? What evidence do you have for the former?

2) Is it possible that the reason why casual sexual encounters lead to depression in some people is that these people came from religious backgrounds, which taught them to believe that such actions are sinful and that these people still hold onto these beliefs or that these beliefs are still active within their subconsciouses? Could it be that it is guilt and not sex that is responsible for their depression? What evidence do you have to refute this argument?

3) If homosexuals really are at a much greater risk of being infected with HIV then why, if you look at the global spread of HIV, does it appear to “not discriminate” between heterosexuals and homosexuals?

What I am interested in is not a claim or a sound bite, but in some hard arguments and evidence that make sense to my academic, though not particularly scientific, frame of mind.

Who is Afraid of Ann Coulter

The news world in general and the Jewish community specifically have been abuzz over the fact that Ann Coulter, a right-wing Christian political commentator, said, on CNBC, to Donny Deutsch that Jews should convert to Christianity. (See here.)
For some strange reason, I fail to see why anyone is concerned. As someone, who studies medieval and early modern Christianity, I will tell you that what Coulter said was positively Philo-Semitic. If any of you are bothered by what Coulter said I would suggest that you read some John Chrysostom, Martin Luther or simply open up the Gospel of John. Coulter did not accuse us of murdering her Savior, little innocent Christian children or of worshiping Satan. She did not even accuse us of being big nosed greedy bankers out to control the world. Coulter was nice enough to invite Deutsche to come to church with her without even the barest hint of threatening violence. She repeatedly described Christianity as the fast track to heaven. Notice that she did not say that Christianity was the only way to get into heaven. So if we are to take her at her word it would seem that she believes us Jews can still, in theory, get into heaven despite the fact that we have not accepted Jesus as our personal savior. Another thing that seems to have gone unnoticed is that Coulter said that “you can be a practicing Jew.” When Deutsch replied that he was, she said: “no you are not.” Again, to take her at her word, it would seem that she believes that Orthodox Jews are completely in the clear. This is positively, dare I say it, liberal of her. I practically agree with her on this. I greatly prefer religious Christians to secular Jews. Religious Christians, for the most part, believe that the State of Israel is allowed to defend itself.
Ann Coulter is a practicing Christian so it should be taken as a given that she thinks that Christianity is better than Judaism. One assumes that the reason why someone practices a religion is because they believe it is better than the alternatives out there. If you are a Christian who does not think that Christianity is better than Judaism then why are you not converting? As an Orthodox Jew, I certainly believe that Judaism is better than Christianity and that the world would be at least a slightly better place if all Christians would convert to Judaism or at least simply be Noachides.
While I am not in the least bit concerned with Ann Coulter, I am very concerned about the popular reaction to this whole affair. It would seem that the new line for bigotry is anyone who thinks that their way of living is better than other people’s. This is as much a threat to Orthodox Judaism as it is to Christianity. If Christians are being bigoted for believing that their religion is better than other people’s then certainly Orthodox Jews are bigoted for believing that their religion is better. So you have to wonder, who is being Anti-Semitic here.
I would even argue that this is a bigger threat to Orthodox Judaism because we do not have the excuse of saying that we are simply practicing traditional American values. The fact that we, as Orthodox Jews, live in America and do not practice good traditional American Protestant Christianity is a snub against general society as we are actively choosing not to practice like everyone else. When a Christian puts up a Christmas tree he is not actively making a decision to not put up a menorah. When a Jew puts up his menorah and does not put up a Christmas tree he is actively choosing to not put up that tree. To be a Jew in America, and particularly to be an Orthodox Jew, means that you have actively made a choice to turn your back on many of the practices of the culture around you because you believe that what you do is better.
Ann Coulter may be a far right-wing nut, who has said her share of inappropriate things. This here is one of her saner moments. She should be congratulated here for helping edify the public discourse, for once. We need to distinguish between the crazy people who want to use nuclear weapons against us and the crazy people who simply want to take us to church. Maybe Columbia University could invite Ann Coulter to speak. At least she believes that there are homosexuals in this country.