ALEC
A group of conservatives founded the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 1973. They intended
ALEC to be a study group for advancing conservative ideas on the
state level. The original founders included Henry Hyde, Paul Weyrich,
and Lou Barnett. Henry Hyde was a practical politician who was
elected to the House in 1968. Weyrich became a leader of the
religious right and founded the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing
think tank. Weyrich gained the backing of Joseph Coors for the
organizations he founded, including the Free Congress Association.
Barnett had participated in the unsuccessful presidential campaign of
Ronald Reagan. He later started the Conservative Political Action
Committee.
The founders shared an anti-federalist
philosophy that was in line with then-president Nixon, who had
decided on a southern strategy to bring southern Democrats into the
Republican party. One key tenet of the southerners was a strong
commitment to states' rights. Jesse Helms, who had just been elected
to the Senate from North Carolina as a Republican, was an early
member of the group. Helms was an overt racist and former Democrat.
The composition of ALEC mirrored what would later become the
Republican coalition. ALEC was at first nonpartisan but became
solidly Republican as the white southern Democrats deserted their
party.
In 1980 President Reagan formed a
National Task Force on Federalism to seek ways to return power to the
states. ALEC members took lead roles in the Task Force, and ALEC soon
created task forces of its own to study issues and propose
legislative solutions. In 1983 ALEC responded to Reagan's report on
education by making recommendations to “improve” the educational
system. Later statistical analysis (the Sandia report) showed that
the educational system wasn't declining at all, but improving. The
Sandia report was ignored by conservatives, who didn't want facts to
get in the way of their theories—neither the first nor the last
time this happened.
In 1986 ALEC started internal task
forces of its own. By 1987 the Civil Justice Task Force was formed in
response to the nation's “frivolous” litigation explosion. This
explosion was an invention of the American Tort Reform Association
(ATRA) and other front groups for the asbestos and tobacco
industries. The litigation against these companies, far from being
frivolous, was a result of decades of deceit and arrogance on the
part of the executives of these companies, who concealed from their
customers the deadly nature of the products they were selling. This
“frivolous” litigation explosion is an example of an invented
problem (litigation crisis) whose solution (lower awards, more
hurdles and extended delays) coincided exactly with what the
corporations needed to solve their own crisis, one which they had
caused: an enormous number of product liability cases waiting to be
filed.
In 1988, ALEC made the fateful step of
inviting direct participation of the corporate sponsors who had until
then remained in the background. The wording of positions and model
legislation was thenceforward decided, not by the state legislatures
who formed the membership, but by the corporations who provided the
money for lobbying activities. It can be argued that ALEC was
“captured” at that time, that is, it was secretly taken over by
the very companies its model legislation was supposed to regulate.
NRA
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is
much older than ALEC, having been formed after the civil war by
former Union soldiers. The original purpose of the NRA was to
promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis. In
keeping with its purpose, NRA spent over 100 years without becoming
actively involved in politics.
In their 1975 elections, NRA was taken
over by a group of conservatives who envisioned a much more active
role for the organization. NRA and ALEC soon began collaborating on
legislative ideas. ALEC formed a study group that eventually became
the Public Safety and Elections Task Force. ALEC stated that this
group was dedicated to producing model bills to reduce crime and
violence in our cities and neighborhoods. NRA had a permanent seat on
this task force.
Among the model bills developed jointly
by NRA and ALEC are those that change the definition of self defense,
so-called “stand your ground” laws. These laws came into sharp
focus when jurors at the Trayvon Martin murder trial acquitted the
killer because they had no other alternative under the new definition
of self-defense written into Florida law at the suggestion of ALEC.
NRA may support such laws because their
corporate sponsors want to sell more guns. This motive is
indefensible morally because it makes profits more important than
human lives. This is actually what defines an “outlaw corporation”.
People have a low opinion of tobacco companies, not because the
business of selling tobacco is despised, but because tobacco kills
its users. Tobacco companies were not held liable in court for the
deaths of smokers until it was proven that the executives knew their
product was deadly and ignored that fact. The same is true of
asbestos mining companies.
Gun manufacturers are similarly
“outlaws” because their products kill. The public will always
look down on people who make a profit from killing.
Stand-your-ground laws are an example
of laws that solve a problem that didn't exist. Self-defense laws
have been well-accepted for centuries, dating back to English law.
Stand-your-ground, or castle doctrine laws, elevate the personal
prerogative above the societal one. Under castle doctrine, the most
important element is personal honor, so a person has a right to use
deadly force if he believes an attacker intends to kill him. Using
this premise, it would be dishonorable to retreat before such an
attacker.
This conception of personal rights is
part of libertarian theory. The Libertarian Party platform asserts:
“We
affirm the individual right recognized by the Second Amendment to
keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for
exercising their rights of self-defense.”1
This assertion shows that libertarian
thought is just not practical in our society. Civil society cannot
exist if you are allowed to kill someone because you don't like his
face. Stand-your-ground laws make violence justifiable if the
perpetrator believed his life
was in danger. If the perpetrator claims that he believed his life
was in danger, it is extremely difficult to prove otherwise in court
because only he knows the contents of his mind.
The
traditional definition of self-defense deals only with actions. It
considers what the defendant did, not what he thought. It requires
him to avoid violence whenever possible. A person's actions are
easier to prove than his thoughts and make a preferable basis on which to draw a
reasonable conclusion. If a person tries to avoid violence, he should
not be blamed if he is forced by circumstance to use it.
Under
traditional laws governing self-defense Trayvon Martin was murdered,
because he was not the aggressor. His assailant did not try to avoid
violence, he sought it out. Trayvon, on the other hand, did try to
escape from his pursuer. We don't need the services of a mind-reader
to prove those facts.
1Libertarian
Party Platform §1., http://www.lp.org/platform
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