Mr. Dees Comes To Town

 by James Ostrowski

Civil rights lawyer Morris Dees, self-appointed one-man political thought police force, spoke at Buffalo’s Canisius College the other day, and Strike The Root sent a civil liberties lawyer there to monitor his thoughts.  The lecture was held at the College’s cultural center in the former St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, a rare and beautiful example of the Byzantine-Lombardic style of architecture.  Security was tight, the crowd large, and the balcony beckoned.  No chance for your reporter to ask any questions.  The small balcony crowd was closely observed by two security officers throughout. 

Dees was introduced by an employee of the Jesuit school who emphasized that his work as a civil rights attorney was in the tradition of non-violence championed by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in whose honor the lecture was held.  Dees received a partial standing ovation from the crowd. 

Dees talked for exactly 30 minutes, in a Southern accent, using no notes and delivering a speech he had given many times.  He spoke of how the heroes of the doomed United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, made us proud to be Americans.  He mentioned two heroic passengers as symbolic of the diversity of America, a Jewish karate expert (judo, actually) and a gay rugby player.  Dees did not mention their partner Todd Beamer, a Christian who recited the 23d Psalm and said “Let’s roll!” before the three men headed for the cockpit.  All people are diverse, but some people are more diverse than others. 

Dees warned us about those who would divide us, such as Pat Buchanan and his followers, apparently not realizing that he himself was thereby dividing us.  He boasted of winning a court case against Tom Metzger of the White Aryan Resistance.  Metzger had apparently urged his followers to use force against “mud people.”  Dees alleged that Metzger’s exhortations led to the death of an Ethiopian student in Oregon.  A jury sided with Dees and awarded a large judgment against Metzger.            

Dees wondered aloud why “we can’t all get along”; why there is an increase in “hate crimes.”  Perhaps because, contrary to popular belief, the civil rights movement did not use “non-violence”, but the violence of the state to achieve its goals.  The use of force to improve human life generally backfires because people resent being coerced.  The law of unintended consequences also applies to civil rights legislation.  Laws intended to improve race relations have in many ways harmed them.  “A corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”  Dees is clueless about that.  He will continue to put his finger in the dike by suing racist crackpots.  The truth will forever elude him: The only way people will ever get along is when they are not forced to do so. 

Dees, born in 1934, defended “affirmative action” without defining the term.  He glibly spoke of how he had taken advantage of his own affirmative action “card” all his life: his white skin.  Your much younger reporter scratched his head, having lived during times when being white and male never produced any tangible benefits in terms of slots in law school or legal jobs.  Quite the opposite. 

I had thought that Dees was supportive of the principle of a color-blind society, a society in which race and skin color did not matter.  That being the case, I was shocked that he was so skin-color conscious that he complained that even the color of band-aids discriminated against non-whites.  What’s more, Dees was so race-obsessed that he calculated the date at which America would become predominantly non-white—2050.  His final message was oblique and requires that we try to read between the lines.  He said, speaking to and noting the fact that the majority of the audience was white, “unless you treat people fairly, your country will be taken from you” around about 2050.  To dramatize his point, he mentioned the biblical story of Amos telling off an arrogant Israel.  Reading the chapter cited by Dees later at home, I found the following passage: 

“For behold, I will raise up against you a nation,

O house of Israel,” says the Lord,

The God of hosts;

“and they shall oppress you . . .” 

(Amos, 6-14)

That is a mouthful to chew on.  The demographic trend Dees delights in, is the result of the white majority’s gracious immigration and welfare policies and the perception of third world non-whites that white America is the place to be.  They are willing to die trying to get in here and out of their non-white homelands.  Does Dees mean that, in spite of such white benevolence, when and if there is an equal balance between the races in the United States, there will be a civil war?  Does he mean that if non-whites take over the reins of our democracy, they will “oppress” the new minority?  Talk about speech that provokes racial tensions, and seems to condone the use of force against racial minorities--it is difficult to think of a more racially provocative message.  I will leave it to Dees to clarify what he meant.  What cannot be denied, however, is that Dees, the apostle of a colorblind society, thinks the future will be anything but colorblind, especially when and if non-whites become a demographic majority.  

All in all, Dees is a man of contradictions.  He supports diversity, but can’t wait till whites are a minority when they will get theirs.  His diversity apparently does not include Republicans (he bashes Reagan), Christians (he forgets Todd Beamer) or businessmen (they put profits over people—didn’t the Bolsheviks say that?).  He is a man who supports King’s vision of a color blind society, but is obsessed with chromatic trivialities like the color of bandages.  He is a man who claims to be for non-violence but who is more than willing to use the violence of the state to impose his ideals on unwilling others. 

Perhaps, though, I am being too kind to my brother of the bar.  Perhaps, instead of being merely confused, Dees is simply a big phony.  Perhaps he is a man who preaches peace, brotherhood and non-violence, but is in fact merely a run-of-the-mill, left-liberal committed to using massive centralized state violence to achieve his utopian dream of making everyone “equal”, forcing everyone to like each other, and preventing anyone from thinking any thoughts except those lodged in his own brain.  Watching him closely, however, I see a man who thinks he, himself, is anything but equal.  I see an elitist, a man who is purely positive he knows how the rest of us should live, and is willing to force his vision of the good down our throats at gunpoint once we are disarmed. 

Dees and your reporter do have one thing in common.  We both supported George McGovern in 1972.  I have an excuse though.  I was only 14 years old.

March 21, 2002