Worthy Cause Doesn’T Justify Ruinous Remedy Court Misused Lawsuit’S Real Purpose Is Political Suppression.

It’s possible to applaud the intent but regret the method by which civil rights attorney Morris Dees intends to put the Aryan Nations out of business.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which Dees co-founded, filed suit Monday in Kootenai County over an incident involving three Aryan security guards last summer. A Coeur d’Alene woman and her son, a Seattle resident, say the guards chased them, firing gunshots, for more than two miles along a public road near the Aryans’ compound in North Idaho.

This adds up to a valid civil case, not to mention a criminal one, though authorities have charged only one Aryan with a crime so far.

Avenging the victims and securing justice for them is a meritorious intent, but that’s only incidental to the current lawsuit. Its foremost purpose is to do what Dees’ Alabama-based center has accomplished against other hate groups: bankrupt the Aryans into silence. That’s why the Southern Poverty Law Center took the case, rather than a local trial lawyer working for a standard contingency fee.

Thus, the justice system is being used not so much to make the plaintiffs whole but to stifle objectionable beliefs.

Objectionable the Aryans’ beliefs are, without question, and how easy it would be to cheer Dees’ strategy. After all, if the legal system can somehow make the racists go away, that makes life a lot more comfortable for the rest of society, whose duty it really is to eradicate bigotry, not with the force of law but with the force of morality.

The justification for free speech, after all, is faith that a fully informed public will ultimately reach sound and just decisions.

Dees’ strategy lacks that faith. And if it works on behalf of Dees’ worthy ideals, it can just as easily be turned against them.

Well-intended plans sometimes get out of control. The time to be alert to that risk is now, not after it’s too late.

If Dees obtains a judgment that takes every last cent and square foot of real estate from Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, there will be no weeping here for the racist himself. But there will be a seed of anxiety that some other lawyer with a different agenda, one backed by a different warchest, will someday apply Dees’ tactics - but not his high principles.