Graduation Fashion: American Values under Academic Dress

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

It is graduation season again. As a professor, I have gotten used to the ritual of trotting out the elaborate doctoral robes, sitting through hours of ceremonial name reading, and politely applauding while students parade slowly across the stage to receive their diplomas. The speeches and faces at any particular ceremony all blend together after a while, but the air of exuberant pride and accomplishment emanating from the graduates never gets old.

For the graduates, however, who are not so familiar with this tradition, there are some decidedly alien aspects to graduation, which nonetheless symbolize fundamental American principles. Inevitably, some question why they have to wear such seemingly ridiculous costumes. Today, I even read of a high school student who refused to wear the traditional cap and gown in favor of his military uniform, and thus, to the outrage of his community and peers, was barred from participating in the graduation ceremony. 

I sympathize with the unfortunate gentleman. After all, it has been a few centuries since late medieval clerical fashions have been in style, and he clearly wanted to wear a costume that symbolized principles important to him. However, had he known what academic regalia actually means, and how deeply emblematic it is of American virtue, I suspect he would have worn it with the same pride as his military dress blues, as well as understood why military dress would be decidedly inappropriate.

When universities were first founded in the medieval period, they were run primarily by men of the Church. Thus, the academic attire of Europe looked much like the robes of clerics. When the English began to colonize North America, they brought with them that clerical academic tradition—specifically the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge. However, while universities in Europe continued to develop a great profusion and variety of academic dress over the centuries, the U.S. attempted to standardize the medieval look. By the 1895, they had successfully crafted the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume. This has since been updated into the Academic Costume Code of the American Councilon Education, from which we derive most graduation regalia in the U.S. today.  

At first glance, the standardization of U.S. graduation regalia seems arbitrary, perhaps even boring, when compared to the flashy variety exhibited by Europe.  The reasons behind it, though, are decidedly  noble.  We in the U.S. believe in equality of rights, and judging people on their merits. The graduation robes reflect those principles. The black robes of academia cover everyone equally, from those wealthy enough to wear bespoke tailoring and pay full tuition, to those who can barely afford decent clothing and attend university through scholarships. Regardless of the circumstances one comes from, irrespective of the circumstances one graduates into, in academia, at graduation, all are equal in what they have achieved. Indeed, the only distinctions visible are those of merit, for the different robes reflect only the degree earned—not inherited or granted-- by each individual through their own efforts. 

The academic robes then serve to dedicate people, even if for only a day, to a unifying higher purpose. The Christian clerics who originated the robes used them to indicate that they were dying to the world as individuals and dedicating their lives to the will of God. When judges, who have inherited the same tradition, put on a black robe, it serves as a symbolic reminder that they have died to the world as an individual, subsumed beneath the higher purpose of justice they take on while wearing that robe. They even give up their names in favor of becoming avatars of that concept (e.g., Justice Gorsuch). Academics also share in this tradition, and at graduation abandon their personal backgrounds and circumstances which divide them, and don the robes to dedicate themselves to the purpose of scholarship.  They do not snobbishly proclaim pride in their individual institutions, families, or organizations as Europeans do. Indeed, for most U.S. universities, an institution is marked only subtlety in the colors of the hood lining. Rather, U.S. graduates dedicate themselves to the larger and universal idea of the pursuit of knowledge. 

Finally, this American standardization further promotes egalitarianism as it allows the graduation regalia to be mass produced. Thus, it becomes much more affordable than the expensive academic costumes of European universities, which were once primarily havens to the elites and aristocracy. For U.S. graduates, the academic costume truly is a uniform—not aristocratic finery. And so, it further represents the triumph of the American Free Market.

These are the principles woven into the U.S. academic costume. They represent the very essence of American values, but few today remember such symbolism. This also explains why the young man who wanted to wear his military uniform to graduation instead of the academic costume was so wrong. In doing so, he would not be marking an achievement of scholarship earned equitably and on the same scale with his peers, but rather his own subsequent dedication to new and different principles in his military pursuits. More, his uniform would stand out to honor a chosen identity, rather than the achievements he had earned for graduation. Such distinction is not what graduation exists to honor. In truth, though, the principles behind U.S. graduation robes represent some of the very ideas our military serves to defend, and thus they deserve to be honored appropriately in their own right.

Once Upon a Time: Faery Law and Economics

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

 

What is your favorite fairy tale?  Which character do you relate to most?  Is it a hero, or a villain?  I am quite serious, and the answers might surprise you.  You may scoff, but fairy tales are among our oldest and most venerable stories, many predating recorded history.  Each generation continues to retell them to the next because they encode some fundamental life lessons—important enough that they survive the ages.  However, not all retellings are equal.

According to my students, my own favorite tale and character should be Rumpelstiltskin, as portrayed in the modern retelling of old fairy tales, Once Upon a Time.  They claim he is my doppelgänger in both style and substance.  It is not every day I get compared to a faery imp, so when unrelated people started to make that comparison weekly, I grew alarmed enough to sample the series—and I am glad I did.  Once Upon a Time is an adorable and addictive family show that will delight Disney fans of any age.  Like the original fairy tales it draws upon, the show tries to present moral lessons to its audience.  However, as may be emblematic of our society in general, its portrayal of the heroic and villainous is sometimes confused, if not entirely reversed. 
 

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of seeing it, Once Upon a Time is an ABC television series about classic fairy tale characters (especially those from Disney) whom have been sent into our world via a curse, and are unaware of their fairy tale origins.  Rumpelstiltskin, played by Robert Carlyle, is a powerful sorcerer who, in our world, is a meticulously polite attorney, always impeccably dressed in a suit, sporting long hair, a walking stick, flashy jewelry, and ever willing to offer his considerable services—both legal and magical—with the understanding that everything comes at a price.  After seeing his character, I decided that I quite liked such an apt comparison.
 

What began to disturb me, though, was that the show portrayed him as a villain. Yet, in virtually every episode, he ends up saving whichever hapless characters manage to get themselves into trouble, usually due to their own ineptitude or foolish attempts to hide unpleasant truths from one another.  That would normally warrant heroic laurels.  However, it seems real heroes fly to the rescue with no expectation or thought of reward; they dedicate their power and efforts to the good of others simply because other people need them.  Rumpelstiltskin, on the other hand, has the temerity to demand payment for his aid.  The other characters inevitably run to him at the first sign of difficulty, each claiming that they have such deep needs and he has such enormous power, that it is his moral duty to help them.  He invariably refuses, and offers instead an exchange of value: a favor for a favor.  Although they usually accept, the other characters hate this, and spend most of their time attempting to weasel out of their side of the bargains, and vilifying him for expecting payment in the first place.  Perhaps even more offensive to the other characters is the fact that the few people Rumpelstiltskin does help without demanding payment are those few dear to his own heart—not those deemed most important to the greater good of the community. 

It seems strange that the ideas of individual liberty and free market exchanges, once the very foundations of the United States, would today find themselves representing villainy, whereas utilitarianism and communitarian obligation now stand for heroics.  Is this really the lesson the old fairy tales have to teach us?  I returned to the original source material to find out. 
 

There are many versions of the “Rumpelstiltskin,” story in just as many cultures.  It is widely thought to predate recorded history, with origins back in the oral tradition.  Like all such ancient and enduring cultural stories, it is meant to convey a few fundamental life lessons, as well as a few warnings. 

In most versions of the story, an arrogant miller boasts that his daughter is better than all others, as she can spin straw into gold.  The king or chief, hearing this, calls the miller’s bluff.  He seizes the girl, imprisons her in a room full of straw, and tells her that she shall either spin it into gold by the next day to prove her father’s boasts, or face execution.  Devastated, she falls to weeping at her impending demise.  It is at this point some impish creature out of Faery enters the room and inquires at the cause of such distress.  It then offers to help, and promptly spins all the straw into gold, then leaves before dawn.  The next day, the flummoxed chieftain insists upon another demonstration with yet more straw.  The imp once more returns, and repeats its earlier miraculous performance.  Now thoroughly impressed, the king offers to marry the girl and make her his queen if she can but repeat her feat once more.  Again, the fay appears and, this time, offers a deal: he will gladly repeat his transmutation of straw into gold provided she consents to let him raise her first born child.  Giddy at her imminent status elevation, she quickly agrees.  When the new queen gives birth, though, and the fae creature comes to collect, she balks, and asks to be freed from her contract obligations.  Moved to pity, the imp gives her three days in which to guess its name in order to be freed from the bargain.  Just before the third day, a woodsman overhears the creature boasting of its own strange name, one the queen will never guess, and kindly makes haste to inform the queen.  When the queen thus guesses correctly on the third and final day, the creature disappears, never to be seen again.   
     

The tale is meant to be cautionary.  It warns against the dire consequences of arrogant boasting.  It also warns that nothing comes free, and that one must be careful and very clever in negotiations—or else dependent upon luck and the kindness of others.  While the faery is certainly the adversary in these tales, it is by no means villainous.  Rather, it is actually rather generous.  First, it offered miraculous help no one else could have provided.  It offered its services for a fair and honest bargain, to which the girl agreed.  Even when she tried to wriggle out of her obligations, rather than simply enforce the contract it had, it generously granted her a new bargain—and it always remained true to its own word.  The warning in this tale is not aimed at the wily fay, but at the arrogance and impulsiveness of humans—an enduring truth that may explain the story’s universalism and longevity.  

Rumpelstiltskin is not the only ancient faery with lessons to teach humanity, but his behavior is emblematic of most faery interactions.  In all the old fairytales, whenever the fae enter, they represent idealized concepts of either good or evil, but always an aspirational step above mortal humans.  Through their divine blessings, curses, and contests, we frame our own struggles for perfection and illustrate important concepts of ethics, morality, and sometimes just practical advice.  This might be clearest in stories from the Celtic tradition, in which the faeries are nothing short of old deities finding new form in a Christian culture—but still teaching important lessons.
 

In Celtic tradition, the fae all seem to follow a few universal rules, to which Rumpelstiltskin, and his more Celtic incarnations of Tom Tit Tot or Whippitie Stourie, are no exceptions.  It is easy to dismiss these rules as mere cultural fantasy.  However, if one keeps in mind that the fae represent an idealized divine aspect to our cultural stories, the rules that govern such divine beings take on new importance: they represent a culturally enshrined vision of the divine.  How we think the gods interact tells us a lot about how we think our own societies should behave—and indeed, there is much to admire.

Perhaps the first, and most easily recited rule of Faery is that faeries never lie.  Given that they are all practically immortal, this makes sense.  In such a society of eternal beings, anyone dealing dishonestly would quickly find themselves permanently distrusted.  This is not to say the fae are completely honest; they are quite selective with how much truth they reveal in order to gain advantage, and thus favor cunning and cleverness.  Certainly, this is borne out in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.  Both the human miller and his daughter lie about her abilities, and she lies again in making her contract for aid—but the fae never lies.  His mistake is one of arrogance, in thinking he would not be overheard in his gloating—another important lesson.

The second rule of Faery is an absolute respect for individual sovereignty.  Despite their incredible power, the fae never use force in their mortal dealing unless directly attacked or trespassed upon.  To fall under fae power, one must either enter into their territory or consent to it in negotiation—either way as a result of one’s own will.  The fae might use glamour and clever language to influence that choice, but it remains free all the same.  As in the case of Rumpelstiltskin, a fae may appear with an offer in a time of desperate need, but as they do not create the circumstances of that need, the bargains they offer remain freely chosen opportunities, not forced impositions.  Even in attempting to regain their own property, such as the seal-skins of a selkie, the comb, mirror, or hat or a merrow, or any number of other enchanted items from an endless variety of fae creatures, despite the clear ability to smite a human with their power, the fae are inclined to negotiate rather than use force.

Even so, the concept of property, and negotiations over it, is integral to all fae interactions and fundamentally connected to their idea of sovereignty.  Indeed, even the monarchs of Faery exercise such authority only within the bounds of their own sidhe or hill.  Go but a little further on and some solitary fae crone in her hut will negotiate as shrewdly and exercise all the same authority as a king in his court. The lands of Faery have no discernable government or overarching authority.  Rather, each exercises sovereignty over his own property and labor.  As a semi-divine and immortal bunch that, in various tales, has the power to transmute gold, create bountiful foods, or spawns any number of other objects out of sheer will, money holds no great value for them.  Rather, their currency is in their property, time, and service.  Hence, the ubiquitous favor for a favor that all fae creatures seem to delight in negotiating.
  

What is remarkable about this is that, unlike human reality, the fae never break their contracts.  Indeed, doing so would amount to dealing in bad currency, a dishonesty that would be ruinous in  such a society.  Neither, though, do they resort to theft or force when they cannot get what they want through negotiation.  They seem to recognize that all value must be exchanged for value.  Even in the occasional story of the fae making off with some household item, unless they are recovering what belongs to them in the first place, they always leave something of equal or greater value in exchange. 

For Rumpelstiltskin, a being able to appear and disappear at will, taking a child to raise would be no great feat.  Yet, rather than force his way, he negotiated a miraculous service for the miller’s daughter in exchange for her parental rights.  When she then met his further terms for dissolution of the contract, he departed in peace.  This reverence to individual sovereignty, property interests, and free negotiation is truly astonishing in an entity portrayed with such terrifying power—and something I fear few humans equally equipped would emulate.

Perhaps the strangest and most foreign idea out of Faery is its treatment of gifts.  In almost all stories, the fae give and accept gifts with great caution.  Unlike a contract, whose terms are well defined and finite, a gift caries unspecified and open obligations to the giver.  It imposes a debt burden that must be repaid similarly.  As a result, simply thanking the fae for a gift is a great insult, which frequently results in their abrupt departure and withdrawal of all favors.  It diminishes and dismisses the effort of the gift with mere words.  Instead, the fae demonstrate gratitude by repaying something of value in kind.  Thus, a gift, far from being free, stands as an invitation to an open and ongoing exchange of debt obligations—the fae expression of a relationship, and perhaps more honestly expressed than our own.

All of this should be encouraging to any lover of liberty.  It means that deep within our cultural psyche is a libertarian (and maybe libertine) paradise called Faery.  Many of these ideas could have as easily come from Immanuel Kant, or Adam Smith.  As we discern the shadows of law and economics the old stories reveal about such a place, we can also perceive the outlines of the free society the Western World has attempted create to since the Enlightenment.  Apparently, we have been planting the seeds of it into the minds of our children for many centuries—through the faeries of fairytales.  

All in all, Faery seems to be a vibrantly free land, full of anarcho-capitalists who all govern themselves according to Kant’s categorical imperative in a state humans have always aspired to but have never quite achieved.  Yet the fae exist in our tales to remind us of that ideal.  Rumpelstiltskin, certainly represents this, both in his fairy tale and in Once Upon a Time, but the show vilifies him for it. 

Contrary to the principles of the old stories, ABC presents the wild freedom represented by the fae as exactly why such beings should be feared.  For the characters of Once Upon a Time, any power and ability exercised for one’s own benefit is evil.  Instead, all such ability should be limited to serving only the needs of others—freely.  Concepts of sovereignty, property, and compensation are selfish obstacles to the greater good of the many—and should be set aside to meet their needs. 
 

To this end, the heroes it casts display an unrelenting and ruthless tendency to break any bargain, take anything they need, violate any sovereignty, and even sacrifice any life--so long as they think it serves the greater good—as defined by them.  After witnessing the callous disregard of all rights practiced by heroes such as Prince Charming and Princess Snow White, one can easily see the dangers of monarchs and dictators of all stripes.  Yet their incessant justifications for such vile deeds do not draw upon royal right, but rather sound remarkably close to the old communist creed: from each according to his ability to each according to his need.  If anyone gets hurt along the way, well, the needs of the many outweigh the injuries to the few.  The intent is good, and for that, sacrifices must be made. 

That particular story was told by the USSR and its satellite states.  Although they lasted for less than a century, they used it to justify mass murder and bloodshed on a scale never before seen in human history.   It is not a tale that should be told again as anything but a dire warning.  For ABC, however, it still seems to hold some appeal.  Consequently, Once Upon a Time frequently suffers from an inability to make any clear principled distinction between good and evil at all.  As the final song warns in another modern retelling of old fairytales, Into the Woods, “Careful the things you say, children will listen.”  Despite my initial aversion to being compared to the fay imp, Rumpelstiltskin, I now take it as a great honor.  It seems these strange creatures of our cultural psyche have been trying to teach us about liberty for millennia.  I would much rather children hear that tale than the one of dreary sacrifice and subjugation to the neediest offered by the modern retellings. 

“Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

—William Butler Yeats

Cakes, Clerks, & the Precarious Rule of Law

By Julian Dunraven, J.D. M.P.A.

Recently, one of my Constitutional Law students asked me to distinguish between the case of the Christian cake bakers judicially ordered to bake a cake for a gay wedding against their will, and the case of Kim Davis, acounty clerk in Kentucky currently in jail for refusing a judicial order to begin granting gay marriage licenses.  My student already had an inkling that the principles underlying these two cases were quite different, and thus was unsurprised to discover that although I have great sympathy for the bakers, I have none for Ms. Davis, and believe she is exactly where she belongs. 

On first glance, these two cases do appear to be similar.  Both involve deeply pious individuals who belong to particular sects of Christianity which happen to teach that same-sex marriage is sinful.  Due to this belief, both the bakers and the clerk sought to abstain from any type of participation in same-sex marriages through their professional work.  Both were also thwarted by the courts.  However, it is the difference between them that really matters:  while the bakers were private citizens operating their own private business, the clerk is a publicly elected official operating a government office.  

In the case of the bakers, as private citizens, they have a property interest in their labor and products.  While government has a legitimate interest in ensuring they fulfil their contracts without fraud, when the government starts telling them who they must take as clients, even if they do not wish to do so, the government begins to impose a type of slavery, however minor it may be.  The Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses were never intended to prevent private citizens from discriminating as they saw fit; they were designed to ensure government did not do so, and treated all its citizens equally under the law.  The right of expressive association (and disassociation) contained in the jurisprudence of the First Amendment further supports this idea. 

Things changed during the Civil Rights Movement.  Then, the U.S. faced the loathsome problem of racism.  Congress tried to address the issue through the Civil Rights Act and other remedial statutes to forcibly eradicate such discrimination—in both the public and private spheres.  Knowing that this noble endeavor would fail under traditional readings of the Constitution (at least in the private sector), the Court supported the effort by taking an astonishingly expansive view of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.  In short, the Supreme Court declared that, if you were engaged in a business that somewhere, somehow, used a part or ingredient that had been shipped in interstate commerce before it became your final product, then the government could regulate you as engaging in interstate commerce.  In other words, if you bake cakes in Oregon, but use flour from wheat which was grown in Nebraska, then you have engaged in interstate commerce.  That rather all-encompassing rationale allowed the government to carry out a variety of anti-discrimination efforts, not just in the public sector, but in private business as well.  

Of course, with that sort of rationale, one wonders if there is anything the government cannot regulate.  For many years, the answer was that there was nothing the government could not reach.  It is only in the last few years the Supreme Court has recognized that it may have built a bridge too far, and begun to scale back the scope of its Commerce Clause interpretation.  After all, today it may not be needed.  Any business that openly discriminated on the basis of race, gender, or even sexual preference would quickly be boycotted and driven out of business.  The market might have been seen as too slow for the days of the Civil Rights Movement, but our various media forms allow it to act quite swiftly today, and it has shown a distinct distaste for intolerance.

   

Allowing the market to function on its own would be the best way to deal with the bakers.  It would allow them their fundamental freedom of association and expression, as well as protect their interest in their own labor and property.  It would also allow others to freely decide whether to frequent that shop.  If enough people did not like buying cakes from bigots, they would go out of business with no help from the law.  Unfortunately, our legal system has not returned to such a free market solution.  The courts are still largely using the interpretation of the Commerce Clause established during the Civil Rights Movement to navigate anti-discrimination legislation.  As a result, we get a situation in which private bakers find their fundamental freedoms oppressed by the very courts charged with protecting them.  Those courts also find themselves in the untenable position of making absurd balancing tests between someone’s fundamental freedoms on the one hand, and the government’s interest in obliterating invidious discrimination on the other.  It is unsurprising that individual freedoms rarely weigh more on such inappropriately weighted scales. 

So what do we do?  Well, the easiest solution is to appoint more judges who have greater respect for private property and labor, and are willing to restore the Commerce Clause to its original limited purpose of eliminating interstate tariffs and shipping requirements.  Although it would be more difficult, we could also narrow the scope of the Commerce Clause with a constitutional amendment, which would have the advantage of being far more lasting.  Until then, though, under our Constitution, as Justice Marshall stated, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v Madison 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803).  It may take quite a while to overcome the precedents already set.  What we cannot do, though, is discard the Constitution and the Rule of Law itself.  Yet, that is the very approach Kim Davis is advocating

. 

Kim Davis is an elected clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  Like the bakers, she is religiously opposed to the idea of same-sex marriage.  Thus, as County Clerk, she has refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.   She was sued, and asked the courts to allow her an exemption from the duty to issue such licenses because of her religious beliefs.  She lost: at the district level, on appeal, and before the U.S. Supreme Court (which refused her request without comment).  Now, a federal judge has jailed her for continually refusing to comply with his order to issue the licenses.  She remains in a cell.

One of my most honorable friends recently described Ms. Davis as a hero of conscience and integrity, a crusader for religious freedom.  This is an easy mistake to make.  Americans love an underdog, and staying true to one’s conscious while facing the entire weight of the American Judicial system is a hard image to resist.  However, it is a false image.  

Ms. Davis is not a private citizen.  She is a publicly elected executive charged with carrying out the functions of government.  Unlike private business, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution were aimed squarely at governmental officials.  The government does not get to choose which citizens it will represent and serve, and which it will ignore and deny; the government must treat everyone equally under the Law.  

According to her attorney, Ms. Davis has proposed severalalternatives.  These include having the chief executive of the county, or perhaps a state official issue the licenses.  Alternatively, she has proposed removing her name from licenses issued to same-sex couples.  These, solutions, however, are untenable.  Having some other office grant same-sex marriage licenses amounts to abdicating her duties as a county clerk, as well as imposing an additional hardship on same-sex couples which different-sex couples do not have to endure.  It also adds a disdainful stigma to same-sex licenses, which would be massively amplified by also removing the county clerk’s name from the documents.  This sort of treatment is reminiscent of the separate and not-so-equal practices of the reconstruction era, and stand as flagrant violations of the Equal Protection Clause.

Ms. Davis claims to understand all this, but maintains that, because of her deeply held religious beliefs, she should be granted an exception to compliance.  Were she a private citizen, I would be happy to agree with her.  She is not a private citizen, though; she is a government official.  The First Amendment does not just grant individuals the free exercise of religion; it also prevents government from establishing any particular religion in law.  Yet, that is precisely what Ms. Davis is attempting to do.  

Ms. Davis did at least one thing correctly in making her argument in court, though.  As an elected official, she certainly had an interest in ensuring that her principles, which she was presumably elected for, were at least zealously defended.  But she lost.  Now, if Ms. Davis believes that the law her position operates under has become so onerous that she can no longer perform her required duties without violating her conscious, then she should resign.  Honorable resignation in the face of unethical behavior is, in fact, a recognized duty for many professions, including law.  As a private citizen, she would then be free to work to change the law or amend the Constitution.  Instead, she took the dishonorable approach and rebelled against it.

Unhappy that the courts ruled against her, Ms. Davis decided she did not need to perform the duties required by her executive position.  She went on to appoint herself a legislature of one, and demand legal changes to how marriage licenses are issued that the state has not seen fit to alter.  She has also placed her own interpretations of the law above that of the entire U.S. judiciary by blatantly refusing to comply with the judgement of the courts.  In doing all this, she has not only violated the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, she is rebelling against the very framework of the Constitution itself and declaring her own whim to be above the Law.

The U.S. is a nation of Laws and not of Men.  We are governed through our rules and procedures, and not ruled by the arbitrary whim of individuals.  That is a precarious system, though, and requires constant vigilance to maintain.  None of us get everything we want out of it.  Elections and laws pass with winners and losers on both sides.  Yet, even in loss we believe in our Republic and its Constitutional system.  That is, in fact, what defines being an ‘American,’ for we are a people united, not by ethnic, cultural, or even national background—but by principles—specifically those principles embodied in our Constitution.  We expect an election, a legislative vote, or a court decision to go badly from time to time, and we work toward changing the next one.  Such disputes are not huge threats, but part of our democratic way of life.  When one of our own officials, however, chooses to rebel against the Rule of Law itself, they represent a much bigger threat than a single court decision with which we disagree.  They threaten the very heart of the Republic.

For this reason, I cannot applaud Kim Davis in any way.  Her audacious sense of entitlement to her position baffles me.  Perhaps it is because she took over from her mother and, over some decades, began to regard it as an inherited peerage rather as a civil service.  I cannot know her thoughts.  I do know, however, that she has set herself up, not as a defender of our Constitution and Rule of Law, but as its enemy in open rebellion.  For such traitors to the soul of our Republic, I can have nothing but utter contempt.