June 21, 2004

Two men who didn't want to say two words.

So today Larry Hiibel enters Supreme Court history, aptly taking his place alongside Michael Newdow in the same volume of U.S. Reports: they are two men who cared so much about saying two words and litigated their concern to the hilt and lost. Newdow did not like the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and Hiibel did not want to say his own name to the police. In both cases, it's both a very small thing and a very big thing. It's worth thinking about how we feel about people like this. Are they cranks who make a mountain of a molehill or are they heroes who stand up for the principle of the thing? To answer that question is to learn something about yourself.

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