About

Attend, all you who make law or hold in court:

let your ears hear what must be said. O noble

law of noble land, Constitution whose articles

stand guard against injustice like the mountains

of God’s own country, may the words I speak

be found worthy by your canons. Oh let me tell

of that day when the red men came to court,

all gleaming in their business suits, leathern

briefcases shined and polished for the fray,

and how Alexander scattered them from the land.

Footmen of the ACLU, they clambered up

the marble steps to make unlawful case before

the judge, in whose hands indifferent fate had

vested power. One, their captain, whose name

was Rosenblum, made straight before the bench

and filled his mouth with lies. “The state,” he said,

“is omnipotent and her rage is all the law. We

will hear no longer false words regarding liberty,

nor rule of law, nor holy fear. Let seizure

of property be the order of the day, let glory

be to Marx, great founder of right thinking. All

foolish men who cling to greed, to freedom,

and to God be cut down beneath the sickle-sharp

sweep of the sovereign state.” And the judge

sat and nodded gravely, for in him there was

no fear of God nor of the law. And all assembled

peoples quaked and wept, for they saw in

the words of the red man the seed of their demise.

And on the freemen’s side, no fit soldier could be

found, a man mighty in the law. The commies mocked

and shouted down, but all quailed before their gibes.

Hope died within American breasts, and all seemed

destined for the pit. But, lo, like one born to the

courtroom fight, behold him, Alexander and his

briefs! The light of freedom on his brow, he set his

face against the reds, and wheeled upon the judge.

“Not today will justice die,” he cried, and held aloft the Law,

“Not today will men be bound to labor unto death.

Behold the highest law of this storied land, the

Pride of All Good Founders! The Constitution of this place,

where good men sweat and bled for the rightness of the law.

No allowance will you find, no provision writ in ink,

for the strong-arm theft of honest goods, nor permission to coerce.”

And then the red captain, Rosenblum in pomp, did

smile wide and laugh with haughty scorn. “Come now,

fascist retrograde, away with your stupid words!

All know that the law entire is the working people’s

will. Words you have on paper: the whole media

is mine. The zeitgeist of the rising youth, and the

warriors for equality—against these things, how can

you stand, some dust and ink your only help?”

But brave Alexander was not awed by his boasting.

Crying out once more, he shouted his defiance:
“Though nightly news and Tumblr may stand

in your support, we will not bow to commie nonsense.

The rule of law is written here, not in the wind of

foolish words. The state stands here delimited,

given no power to hem in choice. Against the

tide of social fads, the law remains the same.”

And Rosenblum’s mien was angry and darkly red.

“Know you not,” said he, “that time is a force

for progress? Know you not the fearsome dialectic?

Had you the eye for oracles, boy, you would have

seen in the flames a horde of workers on the wing,

these ancient shores o’errun with reds, and industry

under stately thumb. All time progresses to a point

through thesis and its counterpart. The classless

future is mother to what we men call History.”

“Nay,” cried Alexander, his arm aloft in a gesture

of rejection, of warding ‘gainst the night, “Your

dumb idols made of Hegel and of Marx speak not,

nor move, nor know. Tell me, did not your Marx

proclaim that the European worker would band

together, man to man, a fraternity of labor? And

did not Hegel name grim Prussia the endpoint of

all procession and return? Time is not composed

of point and counter, point and counter, nor History

a history of truth. The future does not make the past,

no less than past the present, by native power of

determination. Time entire takes it shape from the

shaping hand of God, from whom all breath is drawn.”

“Obscurantist and miscreant!” came the cry from

Marxist mouths. Fell Rosenblum raised a pompous

finger, and quiet were the reds. He turned his curly

head and bore upon the judge. “Hear ye?” he called,

“Hear ye not how this bumbler calls upon a God?

Hold ye not, dear Judge, that the name of God

has no place within these walls? Theocracy,

dread word, lurks whenever men dare to speak

of wizards in the sky—and in the sacred hall of

state, no less! You must set him in the prison.”

The weighty judge, all garbed in black, he pondered

at these words, deliberating over right and wrong

as seemed to him, in his eyes. For, lo, he was

Arminian, with never a thought for the Law of God,

and wicked were his ways. He closed his eyes and

muttered in his aged throat, and the day seemed

lost to the hopes of true Americans.

But bold Alexander, with a manful courage, stood

before the judge and took up the challenge: opening

his sturdy case, all chestnut-brown and leather-shined,

he held aloft the Constitution and waved its pages

in the judicial air. “Behold the pages, and read therein

the law of free men! ‘Congress shall make no law’!

Well, see ye here any congressmen? ‘No law respecting

an establishment of religion’! See ye here an established

church? No law ‘prohibiting the free expression thereof’!

See ye here any man without the right to practice his service

to God? No, indeed, unless it be me, as you appeal to

the arm of coercive law to shut my mouth and ban

the name of God Almighty, from whom and to all

is all that is. Shut thy foolish mouth, O red man of Marx!”

And the red men recoiled, aghast at the sight of the

true law of the land, whose visage is set against all

forced interpretation and wily wrangling, but Rosenblum,

their grim captain, was not cowed, and he smiled darkly.

“Lordly Judge, by whose interpretation the law stands

and falls, as is the right of the almighty judiciary,

fear not the empty words of these so-called literalists,

who would kill the spirit of the law even as they keep

its letter. For the Constitution is a living thing, made

to warp and change with the need of the times, and

at the hands of skillful judges. The founders of this

nation were wiser than they knew, for when they

wrote the law, they made it open to those who would

make it better, more just, and more liberating. Whatever

may be the intent of the law as written, better still

is the will of the working people, and the working people

desire nothing whatsoever of any wizard in the sky.”

And the dread judge inclined his ear to hear what

the Marxist said, for in him was a great fear of men,

and the world, and the prevailing winds of culture,

but little fear of God. And so he heard with favor

the poisoned words that dripped from the lips of

Rosenblum. And the hearts of the true Americans

quailed within them, and slim seemed their hope.

But again did Alexander rise and issue challenge to

the speaker of false words, and he strode before the

judge. “A law which is living is not a law,” said he,

and the judge was shocked to hear it, “A law which

must needs change with the whim and the howl

of time and the world is not a law but a fashion.

Wouldst change the law? Then change it, and pretend

not that the law is what thou wouldst. The law is

written on tablets with a purpose, and not out of

concession to some whimsy. Let the law be struck

if you can strike it; until then, the law is the law, and

law is inviolable. A plague upon this nation and a

plague upon your heads if ye will not stand under

the law as written; which is all the law which is law.”

And the hearts of true Americans were filled with

joy, for Rosenblum was trod underfoot, all crushed

and mangled ‘neath the boot of Alexander. And

the wicked judge was filled with the fear of the

people and the voices they raised, and he struck

his gavel and found in favor of what is right.

And Alexander laughed with scorn and triumph,

and the red men were routed and fled, and Rosenblum

left his briefcase in the general panic among

the Marxist men, and Alexander seized it as

trophy. And in all lands where men prize liberty

and the rightness of the law, there was rejoicing,

for the commies had been smote, and in all lands

where the cold hand of dead Marx holds sway,

the commies wept and wailed, and mourned,

and they held the disbarment rites of Rosenblum,

lawyer of the ACLU. And in the camp of the

conservatives, they gave thanks to God and

lifted with one another wine and bread, and

they laughed and talked in the light of the sun.