Today, November 20th, 2006, I lost a good friend and a true inspiration. I am better for knowing him. These words are his.

- Carl Hose

The American Civil Liberties Union was just diagnosed, by a panel of experts, to be schizophrenic with psychotic features—Multiple Personality Disorder. In the sixties, the A.C.L. were instrumental in banning prayer because it violated somebody's rights and confused the intent behind separation of church and state. Then, of course, they challenged the Pledge of Allegiance because, hell, not everyone feels patriotic. That, too, was a violation of somebody's rights.

And now . . . now they have allowed the Ku Klux Klan, an infamous hate group that promotes a dark, distorted, twisted view of Christianity, to promote themselves by "adopting" a stretch of U.S. Interstate #55 in St. Louis, Missouri. I can see the headlines now: This beautified highway is brought to you by the haters of Jews (they crucified Christ), the rapers of African American women (nigger hussies ain't no good for nothing else) The mutilators and castrators of black men (naggers should know their place and can't be allowed to procreate and contaminate our pure Aryan race), burners of churches, terrifiers of children, and the list goes on.

They hid their faces in the fifties—obscured them in hypocritical white. They took pictures of the men they hung or beat to death in the dark of night. That was in the fifties, and guess what. They still monger hate; they still terrorize; they still rape and kill.

But they also still have their First Amendment Right to Free Speech. I guess they do. I guess they even have the right, assuming they can find a publisher (and they can) devoid of good taste and social conscience, to print their asinine hyperbole.

But for a duly appointed judge to grant them the privilege of flaunting their despicable presence to the general public ("Daddy," asked the seven-year-old, just beginning to read, "what's K.K.K.?"), that is unconscionable. For a judge to have the authority to rule on grave matters, he must be a person of uncommon wisdom and virtue. A person able to discern that the spirit of the First Amendment is to guarantee religious freedom and the people's right to govern. It is meant to be a way to make the government accountable. It was never the intent of the law to allow someone to pass a bucket, stand a crucifix in it upside down, have the public pay for it (National Endowment for the Arts), and then defend it as freedom of speech.

Let me ask you this. If it's okay for the Klan to "adopt a highway", is it okay for NAMBLA to be next in line? NAMBLA stands for the National Alliance for Men and Boy Love Affairs. That group believes it's wonderful for adult men and small boys to have love affairs. And hell, there are probably other "special interest" groups out there that are dying to adopt a highway. It's good advertisement.

Henry Thoreau wrote that the government that governs best is the government that governs least. Well, we have a behemoth governing us now, and it is an oppressive one at that. Thoreau also said that when laws become evil, we have not a right, but a duty to disobey. A duty even, if need be, to overthrow a corrupt government. He called it Civil Disobedience.

I'm not advocating the overthrow of our government. Not yet anyway. But it certainly warmed my heart to learn that one of our citizens engaged in a little civil disobedience last night. Some time after the sun went down, someone put the chop-chop on the sign marking the K.K.K.'s stretch of highway. It was gone this morning, and you know what . . . I hope it was a white man that did it.