You may have heard about our Free People, Free Markets class, you may have even taken the course already. If not, I want to encourage you to learn more about something that is certain to enrich your life. Over the years, Free People, Free Markets: Principles of Liberty has taught hundreds of interested liberty lovers the fundamentals of economics, philosophy, and history regarding our country’s founding and economic foundations. If ever there was a time to deepen your love affair with liberty and freedom, THIS is it.

The class meets for 5 consecutive Saturdays, from 9am to noon, starting with the last Saturday in January, the 28th at Colorado Christian University’s business school, room 103 (8787 Alameda Ave, Lakewood). For more info, please call Andy Anderson at 303-829-9435.

Need more reasons why you should enrich your love of liberty? How about this:

You have a strong love of freedom. It’s a natural part of being human. But too few of today’s adults were taught the fundamentals of a free society. We have a wonderful seminar to offer you. It pulls together the basic principles of liberty and a free market, showing you that these cohesive fundamentals allow society to work well, and to honor the individual. The course material springs from the great thinkers and achievers who shaped America. It is designed for business and community leaders and the general public as well as for college students.

The course makes the moral and philosophic case for free-market capitalism. One of the most important concepts of Western Civilization is the acquisition of property as an unalienable right. The course develops the relationship between economic liberty and political liberty. Participants learn the principles behind wealth-creation. They are introduced to the philosophy of the Austrian School of Economics and its connection to the founding ideas of the American experiment. Participants are awakened to their heritage of economic liberty. It will be more than worth your time.

Classes held on five consecutive Saturdays. The course is designed for business and community leaders, college students, and the general public. If desired, you may obtain three college credits through the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs by paying the usual college per-credit fee.

Come if you love liberty. Come if you love collectivism, but need to understand the libertarian position. Come if you want to receive an inexpensive, thorough, and energetic exposure to the founding principles of economic and political liberty.

For more information about the course itself contact Penn Pfiffner at 303-233-7731 or constecon@hotmail.com. For more information about registering and any other matters contact CRBC at 303-829-9435 or principlescourse@smallbizgop.

Regarding Eugene Volokh’s post below about an NYU L. Rev. article, “The People” of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms. I just scanned the article, and there appears to be only a single footnote which directly cites any state statutes from before 1800. Note 125, accurately cites standard statutory compilations from Massachusetts and Connecticut for laws against selling firearms to Indians. Although the author is apparently unaware that by 1661 (Connecticut) and 1688 (Massachusetts) the laws were changed to allow gun sales (and even gun carrying in towns) by friendly Indians. The article suffers very severely from its near-exclusive reliance on secondary sources for the pre-1800 period, especially since some of those sources are highly tendentious.

To summarize the information from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (Aspen Publishers, available in late Jan. 2012) regarding American law pre-1800:

Women: No restrictions. Of course they did not serve in the militia. Laws requiring “householders” (whether or not they were in the militia) to have arms were common, and these usually included a woman who was the head of the house (e.g., a widow).

Free blacks: Some states had no restrictions, some states had bans on their owning guns. Free blacks served in some state militia, not in some other states, and in some states policies changed depending on military necessity. They were excluded from the federal militia by the Second Militia Act of 1792.

Slaves: Several states banned gun ownership, or allowed ownership only with the master’s permission.

Poor whites: To claim that they were excluded from gun ownership or from militia service is absurd. There were absolutely no property or wealth restrictions on gun ownership, nor on service in the militia. To the contrary, many states had programs to supply poor people with guns (“public arms”) for militia service, if they could not afford their own. Further, the laws requiring householders to be armed often required that the household provide arms to adult male servants. State laws also required that when an indentured servant finished his or her term of service, the master must provide the former servant with “freedom dues” so that the servant could begin independent life. The freedom dues were specified set of goods; in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, freedom dues for male servants included a firearm. In short, the state laws of the 17th and 18th centuries in America were generally prescriptive about gun ownership by poor people, and the prescriptions were to put guns into the hands of the poor.

The author of the NYU article asserts that “arms bearing was considered congruent to voting, holding public office, or serving on juries.” That’s incorrect for “bearing” in the sense of carrying a gun for personal use, since there were no wealth, sex, age, or citizenship restrictions on carrying. And the claim is even more incorrect if “bearing” is meant in the restrictive sense of “bearing for militia service.” Militia laws always mandated service by all males (except, sometimes Blacks or Indians) in a certain age range. Period. The only exemptions were for specified professions (e.g., clergy). Militia duty was generally required starting at age 16 or 18 (which was before voting eligibility). Indeed, during the end of the 18th century and the early 19th century, one of the standard,successful, arguments for broadening the franchise by eliminating the property requirement for voting was that anyone who served in the militia deserved to vote. E.g., “Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.” Thomas Jefferson letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816.

Catholics: In Maryland, temporarily barred from gun ownership during the French & Indian War.

Dissenters: During the Revolution, there were plenty of instances of confiscating guns (sometimes with compensation) for militia use from people who would not take a loyalty oath to the new nation, or who would not serve in the militia (this included plenty of religious pacifists in Pennsylvania). During the early theocratic days in Massachusetts, 75 supporters of the religious dissident Anne Hutchinson were disarmed.

The author’s thesis is that illegal aliens and legal non-resident aliens should be allowed to own guns. Part of his argument is to construct and then criticize the supposedly historical “gendered,and class-stratified understanding of persons permitted to own guns.” The author could have made a stronger historical argument for his position if he had accurately described the gun laws of 17th and 18th century America.

Over at Balkinization, Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern) has an interesting and thoughtful post on the state of originalism. Synthesizing analysis by Jamal Greene and Jack Balkin, Koppelman writes, “Originalism is fundamentally about a narrative of rhetorical self-identification with the achievements of a founding historical moment. That is the real basis of its power. An originalist argument will be powerful to the extent that can persuade its audience that it can keep faith with that identification.”

Thus, “Originalist argument is an artifact designed to recall the Constitution’s origin and connect what we are doing now with that origin. Once this functional definition of originalism is understood, it follows that the range of possible original arguments is quite broad. It is not, however, infinite.” So, argues Koppelman, the fact that originalists differ among themselves in many important details about what “originalism” really is, is not a fatal flaw. Simiilarly, there are many different things called “aspirin” (e.g., Excedrin, generic products, St. Joseph’s children’s aspirin, etc.), but they all contain acetylsalicylic acid, and they all have a generally similar function. Which particular one you use at a given time will depend on the particular purposes for which it is needed.

I do want to quibble, though, with one particular legal history claim that Koppelman makes: “Thus originalists struggle with the problem whether the general purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, to mandate the legal equality of blacks, should trump the framers’ specific intention to permit school segregation and miscegenation laws.”  Michael McConnell and Randy Barnett have written on the school segregation issue, but I’d like to add something on miscegenation. I don’t think that the historical record unambiguously supports the claim of a specific intent in the 14th Amendment to allow the continuation of laws against interracial marriage.

We do know for certain that one very specific intention of the 14th Amendment framers was to provide a solid constitutional foundation for the Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to the Act: “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens. . .”

Early exposition by courts is one source of original public meaning. (Although this source is not always guaranteed to be reliable. See, e.g., the Slaughter-House majority’s dicta). In 1872, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the state’s 1866 constitutional ban on miscegenation  violated the “cardinal principle” of the Civil Rights Act and of the Equal Protection clause. Burns v. State, 48 Ala. 195 (1872). According to the unanimous Burns court, the idea that contracts could be limited to members of the same race was absurd: “Marriage is a civil contract, and in that character alone is dealt with by the municipal law. The same right to make a contract as is enjoyed by white citizens, means the right to make any contract which a white citizen may make. The law intended to destroy the distinctions of race and color in respect to the rights secured by it. It did not aim to create merely an equality of the races in reference to each other. If so, laws prohibiting the races from suing each other, giving evidence for or against, or dealing with one another, would be permissible. The very excess to which such a construction would lead is conclusive against it.”

That same year, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled that  the “the law prohibiting such a [common law] marriage [between a white and a black] had been abrogated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Bonds v. Foster, 36 Tex. 68 (1872) (inheritance case). As detailed in Peggy Pascoe’s book, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (2010), in the years after the Civil War, eleven states repealed their bans on interracial marriage.

It was the Indiana Supreme Court  that figured out the way to evade the clear statutory language about the equal right of contract. According to the court, marriage is  ”more than a mere civil contract”; it is an institution fundamental to society. The Indiana court insisted at length that the 14th Amendment had not limited the traditional police power of the states. If Congress could ban states from imposing a racial  mandate on the right to enter a marriage contract, then Congress would (supposedly) have the power to legislate on all aspects of marriage. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389 (1871).

I don’t find the Indiana court’s 1871 reasoning persuasive, and, apparently, neither did the Alabama and Texas Supreme Courts in 1872. But courts cannot stand forever against the sustained will of the electorate. After four losses, the proponents of anti-miscegenation won on their fifth try in the Alabama Supreme Court. When the courts in the various states finally acquiesced to anti-miscegenation laws, Gibson was the essential citation, because it came from a state where slavery had never legally existed. The Texas intermediate Court of Appeals provided the legal reformulation that marriage was “status” and not “contract,” and was therefore not covered by the Civil Rights Act: “Marriage is not a contract protected by the Constitution of the United States, or within the meaning of the Civil Rights Bill. Marriage is more than a contract within the meaning of the act. It is a civil status, left solely by the Federal Constitution and the laws to the discretion of the states, under their general power to regulate their domestic affairs.” Frasher v. State, 3 Tex. App. 263 (Tex. Ct. App. 1877). (The regressive Frasher decision is one more data point in support of the observation in Henry Sumner Maine’s great 1861 book Ancient Law: “we may say that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.” Maine’s book elaborates in great detail why marriage law fits this paradigm.)

By the time that Plessy v. Ferguson was decided in 1896, the Supreme Court majority, which was willfully oblivious to contemporary social reality (e.g., if blacks consider a segregation mandate to be a “a badge of inferiority,” that is “solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it”) , was also lazily ignorant of legal history: “Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contact, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state.” The sole citation for this allegedly “universal” recognition was State v. Gibson. The Court was right that as of 1895, miscegenation laws were constitutionally safe, but the Court seemed quite unaware that during the first years when the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were the law of the land, the issue was in dispute.

Although the late Professor Pascoe’s book is suffused with critical race/gender theory, readers who find such theories useless will still find Pascoe’s book enormously useful. It is an excellent legal history of anti-miscegenation laws and cases, and not just during Reconstruction. You will learn about the national panic to spread such laws during the early 20th century because the black boxer Jack Johnson (who defeated a string of opponents who were billed as “the Great White Hope”) notoriously consorted with white women; how courts struggled with interpreting miscegenation laws in the West (which were mainly aimed at Asians, and which raised questions such as whether a ban on white marriage to “the Mongolian or Malay races” applied to Filipinos); the NAACP’s political opposition to new miscegenation laws coupled with its great reluctance to mount legal challenges to existing ones; and the extremely risky litigation (not endorsed by NAACP) which led to the landmark 1948 California Supreme Court Perez v. Lippold decision (won mainly on void for vagueness, the fundamental unenumerated right to marry, and First Amendment  free exercise of religion, rather than a categorical attack on all racial discrimination).

Justice Carter’s concurrence in Perez is a good illustration of the main thesis of Koppelman’s post, and of the point made by the second Justice Harlan (and also by Jack Balkin) that our “tradition is a living thing,” in which our national understanding of the original meaning can be deepened by new experiences. Rebutting respondent’s collection of social scientists who contended that race-mixing was destructive to the health of the white race, Justice Carter quoted some essentially similar claims from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Justice Carter continued: “To bring into issue the correctness of the writings of a madman, a rabble-rouser, a mass-murderer, would be to clothe his utterances with an undeserved aura of respectability and authoritativeness. Let us not forget that this was the man who plunged the world into a war in which, for the third time, Americans fought, bled, and died for the truth of the proposition that all men are created equal.” And so, “In my opinion, the statutes here involved violate the very premise on which this country and its Constitution were built, the very ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the very issue over which the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Second World War were fought, and the spirit in which the Constitution must be interpreted in order that the interpretations will appear as ‘Reason in any part of the World besides.’”

The question has bothered me for decades. We sang “Yankee Doodle” plenty of times at school, but nobody seemed to wonder why he would say that “a feather in his cap” was “macaroni.”

At last, I found the answer, in Thomas Wright’s book “Caricature History of the Georges” (1860), which examines political and social satire drawings during the reigns of England’s King Georges I, II, and III. A very interesting book, if you’re interested in English history. Despite what the title might suggest, most of the book is text, not pictures. The author notes that for a while in the late 18th century, magazines often did 3-word book reviews. So let’s call this book “clever, erudite, tory.”

On pages 258-61, we learn that during the reign of George II, “men of fashion” were called “beaux.” In 1749, “fribble” became the new term, and this persisted into the reign of George III. In 1772, things changed. Rich young men who had made the tour of the continent came back with new fashions of all kinds; thanks to the wealth pouring in from India, the time was one of extravagant frivolity. The young men formed a club which soon took the name of the unusual Italian dish which it served. For the gentlemen of the Macaroni Club, “it was their pride to carry to the utmost excess every description of dissipation, effeminacy of manners, and modish novelty of dress.” The Macaronis of 1772 “were distinguished especially by an immense knot of artificial hair behind, by a very small cocked-hat, by an enormous walking stick, with long tassels, and by jacket, waistcoat, and breeches, of every close cut.”

Then in 1773 the Macaroni fashion changed to “the elevation of the hair, and the adoption of immense nosegays in the bosom.”

So the mystery of Yankee Doodle is solved. He is an American rube and rustic. He naively thinks that a mere feather in his cap makes him an ultra-fashionable “macaroni.”

It turns out that I could have learned the truth by just looking up “Yankee Doodle” and “Macaroni” in Wikipedia. But at least I finally understand.

Next semester I will teaching the Constitutional Law I class at Denver University. It’s the standard class that almost all 2d or 3d semester law students must take at all law schools:

This required introductory course examines the role of the United States Supreme Court and, in particular, the Court’s power in exercising judicial review in cases interpreting the U.S. Constitution. The course focuses primarily on two topics. First is the doctrine of Separation of Powers: examining the structure and interrelationship of the three branches of the federal government, Congress, the Executive Branch, and the federal judiciary. Second is the doctrine of Federalism: the relationship and power distribution between the federal government and state governments. In addition, all sections will devote part of the course to an introduction to at least one aspect of the large field of individual constitutional rights. The specific rights covered will vary by instructor. . . .  Students who wish to gain a deeper understanding of these topics are strongly encouraged to take Constitutional Law (Advanced): Individual Rights.

My particular class will pay special attention to some topics of great modern relevance: the interstate commerce power and the N&P clause, since the Supreme Court will be hearing the most important case in decades on those topics. We will also get into some depth on the President’s war powers under Article II, since those were the subject of much debate under Bush, and remain so under the current administration–including the war with Libya.

I’ll be using Randy Barnett’s textbook, which is mostly chronological. One of the main purposes of the class is for students to learn how to practice constitutional law using originalism AND using living constitutionalism. The latter necessitates a chronological approach, since to counsel clients on how the Constitution might change in the future (or might change now), one must understand how the application of the Constitution has varied during different periods in American history.

In the class, I will explain some key facts in American history, for the benefit of students who may not have much history background. Some students, though, might want to do some additional reading to deepen their knowledge. So what American history survey book would commenters recommend for such students? I’d strongly prefer that the book be available in paperback, and not tremendously long, since first-year students have plenty of reading to do already.

FOLLOW-UP: Things are worse than I had feared. Several commenters mentioned some great books (e.g., Gordon Wood), but I want a survey that goes from no later than 1776 through most of American history. No textbooks for AP or college US History, although I wish my students had the time and the money for the Schlesinger textbook. No books that focus on a particular issue, even if it’s a broad one (e.g., Eric Foner’s book). I’m certainly not going to inflict Howard Zinn on my students. I read the 1st edition of People’s History almost as soon as it came out, and enjoyed it. But that’s definitely not the starting point for someone to learn the actual history of the United States; it’s a book for someone who already knows a lot of American history, and can discern the difference between some neglected stories that Zinn tells, and the incredible amount of chaff. Bill Bennett did so much damage to the Constitution during the Bush administration that I recoil from using his book in a constitutional law class. So in the realm of affordable survey paperbacks, we’re down to Brogan’s Penguin History and Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People. Based on Amazon reviews, each book is way too didactic for my purposes. Not that the distinguished authors are not entitled to their points of view; I just want something without such a heavy hand. At this point, I’m leaning towards telling students to buy Samuel Eliot Morrison’s Oxford History, which ends in 1963, but is available used for almost nothing, plus shipping. Or his more recent Concise History of the American Republic, also available used for very good prices.

The President also said that he did not believe “in the literal truth of the creed as it is recited in the orthodox evangelical churches.” He did, however, believe that Jesus had set forth an outstanding system of moral precepts.

Although the general views above were shared by Thomas Jefferson, the President quoted above was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909-13, and later as a very good Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Americans today tend to congratulate themselves for being more tolerant and open-minded than their ancestors of a century or two ago. Yet those earlier Americans elected the great Jefferson twice, and elected Taft once. Taft is not today remembered as a great President, but he at least he did much less harm to the United States than the man who succeeded him, Woodrow Wilson.

I find it disgusting that a Gallup Poll found 22% of Americans (18% of Republicans, 19% of Independents, and 27% of Democrats) say that they would not vote for a well-qualified candidate of their party who happened to be a Mormon. That’s actually an increase compared to 17% who gave the same answer in 1967.

If some Christians want to take the theological view that Unitarians, or Mormons, or, for that matter, Catholics are not true Christians, that’s their privilege, and it’s very legitimate source of religious debate. I don’t think that whether a candidate fits a voter’s definition of orthodox Christianity is a legitimate basis for voting for a public official.

Kudos to Mitt Romney, in his speech today at the Values Voters summit, for denouncing the “poisonous language” of Bryan Fischer, another invited speaker at the event, who makes the idiotic claim that the First Amendment was not intended to protect non-Christians.

Governor Hickenlooper and Attorney General John Suthers have teamed up to challenge the lawsuit against our Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR). I’ve discussed earlier why this lawsuit isn’t just about bringing down TABOR. It’s about trying to bring down the whole citizen initiative process. To help the cause, the Independence Institute filed an amicus brief (friend of the court) opposing the lawsuit and encouraging dismissal. Much of the content of the amicus comes from Rob Natelson’s research into what the Founders meant when they used the words “republican form of government.” Rob discusses the brief in a blog post he wrote on constitution.i2i.org. Additionally, Rob sat down with one of my minions to record a podcast on the subject. You can find the podcast over on iVoices.org. Editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, Wayne Laugesen, read our amicus brief and described it as masterful. Thanks Wayne!

Today South Carolina Republican Senator Jim Demint hosted a forum at which five Republican presidential candidates spoke. The transcript is here.  Each candidate appeared one at a time, and the format allowed for in-depth questions and answers. Among the questioners was Princeton University’s Robert George. Prof. George asked each candidate if he or she would support congressional legislation, under section 5 of the 14th Amendment, to ban abortion. To state the obvious, such legislation would be contrary not only to Roe v. Wade and Penn. v. Casey (abortion rights are protected by section 1 of the 14th Amendment), but also to Boerne v. Flores (Congress cannot use section 5 to protect a right in defiance of direct Supreme Court holding about the particular aspect of the right).  The question explicitly presumed that Roe v. Wade had not been overturned, and that a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution had not been adopted.

The candidates’ answers were as follows:

Bachmann: Yes.

Cain: Yes.

Gingrich: Yes. Cooper v. Aaron‘s assertion of judicial supremacy was wrong. Following the precedent of the first Jefferson administration, I would abolish some federal judgeships. But I am not as bold as Jefferson. “I would do no more than eliminate Judge Barry in San Antonio and the ninth circuit. That’s the most I would go for. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE). But let me say this. That’s part of the national debate. That’s not a rhetorical comment. I believe the legislative and executive branches have an obligation to defend the constitution against judges who are tyrannical and who seek to impose un-American values on the people of the United States.”

Paul: No. Violence and murder should be dealt with by the states. The federal police are already too numerous. I support a bill to deprive lower federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion cases, so that state restrictions on abortion would be immune from judicial review.

Romney: No. I would focus on appointing judges who would return abortion regulation to the states. The George proposal “would create obviously a constitutional crisis. Could that happen in this country? Could there be circumstances where that might occur? I think it’s reasonable that something of that nature might happen someday. That’s not something I would precipitate.”

Personally, I agree with the Romney approach. Moreover, the next President is going to have to address a fiscal crisis that will devastate the United States economy soon if it is not solved. Dealing with the fiscal crisis is going to be quite difficult politically, in part because there are many millions of people who benefit from the current, and unsustainable, levels of federal spending. The tax consumers may be very highly resistant to any reduction in the amount of money that flows to them. So there will be no shortage of national division and acrimony. Thus, 2013 would be an especially bad time to precipitate a constitutional crisis over a social issue. The answers of Romney and Paul displayed prudence, which I think is a very important characteristic for a President, and the answers of Bachmann, Cain, and Gingrich did not.

As for the Ninth Circuit, Gingrich has been saying the same thing since March, according to Politico. I have not found anywhere where he has provided details on this plan, but perhaps it would involve merging the 9th circuit states into the 8th and 10th circuits, since they border the 9th. The Politico article is not entirely clear, but it appears that Gingrich has claimed that he could get rid of the 9th circuit by signing an executive order. This would be plainly unconstitutional, a usurpation of power worthy of impeachment. Article III gives Congress, not the President, the power to “ordain and establish” the inferior federal courts. During the Jefferson administration, the Judiciary Act of 1802 repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, in which the lame duck Federalist Congress had created many new federal judgeships, to which President John Adams had appointed Federalists in the waning days of his administration. As President Jefferson recognized, the choice to eliminate federal judgeships belongs to Congress, not the President acting by himself. [Update: a commenter says the video (for which a link was not provided) shows that Gingrich was not claiming that he could abolish the 9th Cir. by executive order. I looked on the Internet, and did not find a video of the March 25 Iowa speech by Gingrich. There's a video of a speech earlier that month in Iowa, in which he criticizes the 9th cir. but does not call for its abolition.]

My recent article for America’s 1st Freedom traces the rise and fall of the theory that the Second Amendment is not an individual right, but instead is a “collective right,” which, like “collective property” in a communist country, supposedly belongs to everyone collectively, but in fact belongs to no-one. The theory was created by a federal district judge in 1935, formally named by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1968, and became popular among lower federal courts during the next quarter-century.

Historical and textual analysis made it increasingly clear that the theory was completely implausible, and it was unanimously rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller. In that case, all nine justices agreed that the Second Amendment right was individual, while they disagreed about its scope.

This essay, which I wrote in 2000, celebrates the brave men and women of the Colorado labor movement, who in the coal fields of southern Colorado early in the 20th century, stood up against murderous company goons and against the soldiers of the Colorado National Guard who perverted their organization. 

Labor Day is a day to remember that labor rights are human rights, and that the right of Americans to come together in voluntary organizations, including labor unions, is part of the core of American freedom. On Veterans Day or Memorial Day, we remember that the freedoms we enjoy today are the fruit of the sacrifices made by our armed forces. We remember this even if we disagree with some military actions, or even if we know that some past or present military leaders were bad people. Likewise, on Labor Day, even if we recognize the harmfulness of much of the current agenda of SEIU, NEA, and so on, we should remember the historic debt that all Americans owe to the Labor movement. One part of that debt is the essential role that labor leaders such as Walter Reuther and Lane Kirkland played in providing bipartisan support for resistance to the evil Soviet empire, an empire whose ultimate objective was to reduce all the workers of the world to slavery.