Will, thanks for your article today on “compelling state interests.” I’ve long been intrigued with such “interests”: I’d like to learn where they originate. In other words, we know that every human being is “endowed by [the] Creator with certain inalienable rights,” – but who “endows” government with anything? Some might say, “The people,” but this is of course a logical fallacy. Even if some people here and there consider it a “compelling state interest” to force entrepreneurs to cater to sodomites, all people don’t.

This is more than an academic question. Many of the Feds’ usurpations rely on an argument of “compelling state interests.” To choose one example from hundreds, the TSA bases its sexual assaults at airports on the “compelling state interest” of safe travel: the Gowned Clowns decided as far back as the 1960s that our right to move freely, despite its inalienability, pales to nothingness beside the State’s “compelling interest” in protecting airlines. So where did this “interest” come from? Why and how is it superior to an inalienable right?

I’d like to suggest that Korematsu did not establish this theory; it merely added the gerund compelling to it. The idea that government can claim some sort of inviolable “interest” appears in embryonic form in a decision from 1889 on immigration. And the Clowns drew that particular “interest” from a treaty! Which makes the idea that this invention trumps our God-given rights even more ludicrous!

It’s possible that an earlier or even a contemporary decision also advanced this heinous idea; if so, I haven’t found it. Ergo, I’m appealing to all you legal scholars out there for help. Where does “State’s interest” originate [N.B. I mean the State qua government, not the states, i.e., Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, etc.]? Who or what lends government’s “interests” greater moral authority than the inalienable rights the Almighty grants each human being? Yes, the question answers itself, but I’d like to hear the State’s excuses and nonsense on this one.

Thanks so much.

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