Southern Poverty Law Center Pushes Twisted Definition of 'Hate'

Human Events, Dec 11, 2006 by Vadum, Matthew

In February of this year, at Fayetteville State University in Arkansas. Bond warned that Republicans' "idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side," the Fayetteville Observer reported. When his comments provoked a firestorm of criticism. Bond lied, denying he likened the GOP to the Nazi Party. He accused "right-wing blogs" of mischaracterizing his statement: "I didn't say these things I'm alleged to have said. There is no one in the audience who can say I said them." How wrong he was: The Observer posted a 45-minute recording of Bond's speech online. In the same speech. Bond implied that Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were token black appointees in the Bush Administration, which was using them as "human shields against any criticism of their record on civil rights."

For Bond. America is hopelessly racist. "Everywhere we see clear racial fault lines, which divide American society as much now as at any time in our past," he said in 1999. One might expect Americans to push someone with Bond's views to the margins of public life, alongside such racial provocateurs as Al Sharpton, yet Bond is an in-demand public speaker. He holds 23 honorary degrees and is now distinguished professor at American University and professor of history at the University of Virginia.

But Bond is strictly B-list compared to Morris Dees.

Dees's Obsession

Dees is admired by left-wing and not-so-left-wing lawyers from coast to coast. A prestigious legal award has been named after him. and on November 16, the high-powered law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates and the University of Alabama School of Law awarded the first annual "Morris Dees Justice Award" to U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice of the Eastern District of Texas. The award will be given annually to "a lawyer who has devoted his or her career to serving the public interest and pursuing justice and whose work has brought about positive change in the community, state or nation." One of the rulings for which Judge Justice is honored would puzzle many strict constructionist legal scholars and limited-government supporters. Justice's ruling in a 1982 case, Plyler v. Doe, opened the doors for children of illegal aliens to attend public schools through grade 12 at public expense.

Dees is a consummate salesman and a champion fundraiser. "I learned everything I know about hustling from the Baptist Church. Spending Sundays sitting on those hard benches, listening to the preacher pitch salvation ... why it was like getting a Ph.D. in selling," he said. Dees was finance director for Democrat George McGovern's failed 1972 presidential bid and for other Democratic candidates. He raised more than $24 million from 600.000 small donors, marking the first time a presidential campaign was financed with small gifts by mail, according to Dees's official biography on SPLC's website.

Years before co-founding the SPLC, Dees launched a successful direct-mail sales company specializing in book publishing. However, he experienced an epiphany in 1967 and decided to take his life in a new direction and "speak out for my black friends who were still 'disenfranchised* even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965," Dees wrote in his autobiographical A Season for Justice. "Little had changed in the South. Whites held the power and had no intention of voluntarily sharing it."