What's up at the Community College of Southern Nevada
Inside Liberty Watch Today - Feb. 20, 2006

George Clooney's movie "Good Night and Good Luck" has reminded us of the early 1950's, when the threat of Communism created an air of paranoia in the United States. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin played on those fears and gained tremendous power herding suspected Communists before his committee for interrogations under the bright lights. CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow and his producer Fred Friendly challenged McCarthy and exposed him for the fear monger he was. 

It's hard to imagine that more than 50 years later, the same sort of bullying and coercion that McCarthy employed is still in practice; and by the Nevada System of Higher Education no less. 

The Community College of Southern Nevada (CCSN) requires that instructors sign a loyalty oath, which reads as follows: "I, [instructors name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States, and the Constitution and Government of the State of Nevada, against all enemies, whether domestic or foreign, and that I will bear true faith, allegiance and loyalty to the same, any ordinance, resolution or law of any State notwithstanding, and that I will well and faithfully perform all duties of the office of [blank] on which I am about to enter; (if anoath) so help me God; (in an affirmation) under the pains and penalties of perjury." Not only is a signature required but the signature must be notarized. 

It's unclear whether this oath taking is a new requirement or not. But, in the case of at least one instructor who has taught at CCSN for more than a decade, it's brand new. And despite this instructor's faithful service teaching multiple courses for an amount of pay less than the typical illiterate working the register at Burger King brings home, the CCSN brass is requiring the oath be signed pronto. 

The oath requirement has the instructor in question upset because in this case, teaching is done out of passion, not monetary need. But, to compromise one's core beliefs of what freedom stands for is not an easy decision even when the zeal to teach is intense. 

Karen De Coster makes the point succinctly: "Patriotism will not be raised, for such a value is subjectively unique to each individual, and thus, only in an oppressive state does a discretionary value become mandated through statutory and coerced acceptance." 

"Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses," wrote Henry David Thoreau in his book Civil Disobedience. "It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I."

The great 19th Century lawyer, abolitionist, and political theorist Lysander Spooner wrote in his 1870 essay No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, "The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago."

As we celebrate President's Day, it is hard to imagine the founding fathers had in mind for Community College instructors to be swearing oaths of allegiance as a requirement to teach young people. College classrooms are supposed to be areas where free thought and the exchange of ideas is encouraged. Oaths of allegiance do not serve that purpose.

Doug French, Liberty Watch Columnist