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Brush-Fire Wars
Gary North - May 19, 2016
The
escalation of Federal and state pressure against the Christian school
movement is reaching a crisis stage. Day after day, some pastor or headmaster
is put under new bureaucratic regulations. No longer is the battle against
the independent schools being left to amateur state attorneys. The big guns
are being aimed at the schools, and even at the churches. Today, under
27% of the school children in the Los Angeles schools are white; four years
ago, the proportion was about 40%. The busing of children across the city
(and Los Angeles, geographically, is second in size only to Jacksonville,
Florida, and has a huge population) has created an exodus from the public
schools. Within a decade, the public schools of urban
America will be overwhelmingly composed of minority students, whose academic
talents will not be developed to maximum potential by the disintegrating
academic standards of the humanists' educational philosophies. To stem the
bloodletting, the cities are desperate. Who will continue to vote for more
bond issues, higher teacher salaries, and higher costs per pupil, when the
majority of the taxpayers are sending their children to private schools? The
tax revolt against the schools is predictable. Therefore, the independent
schools are threatening the whole structure of modern humanism, and the
Christian schools, because of the strong commitment by parents, and because
of their more consistent anti-humanist programs, represent the greatest
threat of all.
To stop
the spread of these schools, the state officials will do almost anything. The
most important tactic is legal harassment. It is expensive for tiny,
struggling schools to hire top-flight legal talent. The state, on the other
hand, is using the public's tax dollars to hire skilled lawyers who are doing
their best to tie the independent schools in endless red tape and
restrictions. How can a Christian school hope to win? How many trained,
effective lawyers are there, especially those who are thoroughly familiar
with the case-law precedents of the battle for the Christian school movement?
Not many.
Decentralization
What we need, as always, is a
program of decentralized schools and churches that are ready to fight. National
organizations are too easy to infiltrate, or buy off, or sidetrack. The local
church and local school are driving the bureaucrats crazy, precisely because
they are like hornets. There are too many of them to fight effectively. The
problem facing us is this: How can we gain the benefits of a centralized,
well-paid organization, but without the concomitant bureaucratization? How
can we mobilize the fight, yet keep the troops in the field, constantly
sniping at the state bureaucrats? How can we train local men to carry the
battle to the local state officials, yet make sure that the local people are
ready and able to fight a successful battle? We don't want precedents going
against us in the courts. That's why there are so many cases being prosecuted
by the state agencies: they are trying to get precedents.
Obviously, few churches can afford to hire a lawyer at
$543+ per hour. Besides, lawyers face the problems of specialization, just
like the rest of us. They have to become familiar with so many precedents,
and the arguments used by both sides, in case after case, state after state.
There is no doubt today that a coordinated effort by Federal and state
prosecutors is being established. The prosecutors know who the defending
witnesses are, who the defense attorneys are, and which lines of reasoning
the defense will take. There are no more easy cases, where the defense
attorney can overcome an unprepared prosecuting attorney. The enemy has been
well-armed in this battle. Our men are poorly armed, except when the very
best, most prominent defense attorneys have been hired. There are only so many
of them to go around.
Yet the enemy has problems,
too. First, the religious
traditions of this country stand against them. So do the legal traditions.
Second, there are only so many top-flight prosecuting attorneys. The state's
men, especially at the lower levels, are not usually the brightest, most
effective graduates of the best law schools. If they were really good, they
would be in private practice making three times the pay. Third, the states
still face the threat of jury trials, and juries are composed of people who
are being threatened by busing and other bureaucratic horrors. They are often
ready to fight back by scuttling the state's bureaucrats. So the war is not
over. The Christians and independent school supporters have the law and
the principles on their side, but the statists have the organization and the
money.
The court system is vulnerable. Courts are clogged up
today. It is becoming very expensive to prosecute successfully these days,
which is why plea-bargaining has become the way of life in criminal
prosecutions. But the Christian pastors and headmasters are less willing to
play this game. Therefore, we can tie up state
resources by standing firm and not capitulating. If we can find a way to
reduce our costs of self-defense, we can force the state to spend millions to
shut us down. How, then, can we do it?
The Profit Motive
The best way to get something done is to convince a
skilled worker that both principle and money are on his side. If you can show
him how to do exceedingly well by doing right, you have probably enlisted a
supporter.
Lawyers need good incomes to lure them away from the more
lucrative ways to practice law. We Christians and independent school
supporters have to ante up the cash, but we also want to get our money's
worth. What do we need, and what should we be willing to pay for it?
Here is my list of needed
services in order to successfully defend the independent school movement: 1)
a lawyer who is a master of the field of education law; 2) a man who can
communicate this knowledge in usable forms; 3) a series of publications that
enable us to defend our own cause; 4) a strategy geared to the mobilization
of thousands of independent schools; 5) a tactical program that will work at
the local level. We need a motivator doing the research, and men at the local
level willing to fight.
What
if some bright lawyer could offer the following publication package?
First, an introductory paperback book which offers some case
histories of "horror stories" about the Christian school movement.
It would also point to some successful defenses in order to motivate the
reader. The inexpensive book would contain a tear-out page that would enable
the reader to get information about a local defense program.
Second,
the lawyer would publish a manual for self-defense. It would be a
three-ring binder filled with reproductions of key precedents. It would
provide a basic nuts-and-bolts strategy for the local headmaster and/or his
lawyer: how to file protests, where to get procedural help, where to locate
defense witnesses, which law firms specialize in this battle, which forms to
fill out, where to get them, etc. It would be a layman's introduction, but it
would also provide meat for a local lawyer who was getting his first
introduction to the battlefield. Instead of paying a lawyer $50 per hour to
research the whole field, slowly and painfully, the local church or local
school could put the manual in his hands and pay him to read it, not reinvent
the wheel.
Third,
the outfit would publish updates for the manual. New precedents,
new approaches used by the prosecutors and defense lawyers, and so forth
would keep the local lawyer up to date. The manual would be an on-going
source of income, year by year, for the enterprising writer. Everyone in the
trenches would want to get a subscription if it could be kept cheap enough.
If it would save the local lawyer three hours' time, at $50 per hour, the
school could easily afford to pay $100 a year for the updates.
Fourth, a
monthly newsletter showing new horror stories. This could be sent
out by subscription, or even as a non-profit educational device. It would
give the readers lots of motivation to buy the whole package.
Think
of the possibilities. The local school could pay $100 or $200 per year to get
the original manual plus the updates. I can assure you, when the bureaucrats
start pressuring the pastor or headmaster, he will spend the money. The
enterprising writer could sell the manual for $100 and the monthly updates
for $100 per year. Would that be a bargain for an independent school? I think
so. It would be an insurance policy. In any case, schools could buy the
package any time the pressure went on. The newsletter could be sent out by
subscription--enough to break even on printing and postage--in order to
remind readers of the existence of the higher priced services sold by the
publisher. The headmasters would know where to go in a crisis. The book, of
course, would introduce the newsletter and other services to the headmasters.
Our tactic would be simple: clog
the courts. We would have every challenge by the state or local
governments met instantly by counter suits. We would make it impossibly
expensive for the state to begin to prosecute a church or school. We could
train a dozen pastors or headmasters in a region to come to the defense of
any given school. We could teach them to demand our prosecution on the same
grounds being used to single out the weakest school or church. The
state is looking for precedents. If they can force a weak link to
capitulate, it will make it far more difficult for the stronger links to defend
themselves later on. We have to be able to keep those weak links from
snapping. Force them to break all of us, but in a dozen expensive
separate cases.
I have a dream, as another professional court-clogger once said. I
have a dream of Christian school headmasters walking arm-in-arm with fearless
laymen, whose training has been sufficient to equal $1,400 worth of legal
talent. I have a dream of avoiding the use of lawyers in 60% of the cases. I
have a dream of being able to hold out until the last minute before having to
hire any lawyer, and then paying him as little as possible to do his
preliminary homework. I have a dream of making it so expensive for the
humanists to take on a Christian school that they will spend more of their
time prosecuting murderers, if only because they will spend less time, and
have more success, in prosecuting murderers. I have a dream of desperate
attorney generals, bogged down in a mountain of paper, trying to figure out
how all these evils came upon them. I have a dream of judges wearily reading
defense motions to dismiss, and being driven to distraction by defense
lawyers who offer endless objections to everything the prosecution says. And
I have a dream of being able to buy the tools to do all this for $100, plus
an annual subscription fee of $100.
My dream would be the states'
nightmare.
Conclusion
I hope you see the
possibilities here. I am now in contact with several legal firms that
specialize in defending the independent school movement. I will provide them
with the names and addresses of individuals, churches, and schools that are
interested in subscribing to such a legal defense service, if it could be
produced for $100 a year, plus the initial $100 manual (one-time only),
please send a card to this effect to:
Legal Defense Program
I.C.E. P.O. Box 25 Sterling,VA 22170
**Any footnotes in original have been omitted here. They
can be found in the PDF link at the bottom of this page.
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Christian Reconstruction Vol. 4, No. 2
(March/April 1980)
For a PDF of the original publication, click here:
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