The California State Assembly apparently has no problem with communists working for the state government of that state, considering that a bill (Assembly Bill 22) that eliminates language prohibiting membership in the Communist Party by state employees sailed through the Assembly by a 41-vote margin. Of course, with the leftist tilt of the state government over the past several years, perhaps it is not surprising that they would sympathize with state workers who carry a Communist Party card.
“It’s an old and archaic reference,” said Rob Bonta, a Democratic member of the Assembly from Oakland. Bonta argued that his bill is “really just a technical fix to remove that reference to a label that could be misused or abused, and frankly, has been in the past, in some of the darker chapters of our history in this country.”
The bill would end the references to communism found in a 1953 law. The law warned of “a clear and present danger, which the Legislature of the State of California finds is great and imminent, that in order to advance the program, policies and objectives of the world communist movement, communist organizations in the State of California and their members will engage in a concerted effort to hamper, restrict, interfere with, impede, or nullify the efforts of the State … and their members will infiltrate and seek employment by the State and its public agencies.”
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Assemblyman Travis Allen, a Republican, opposed the effort. “This bill is blatantly offensive to all Californians. Communism stands for everything that the United States stands against.”
Another Republican assemblyman, Randy Voepel, told the Sacramento Bee that he considers communists in North Korea and China an ongoing threat. He said that many military veterans in California fought in wars against communists (such as in Korea and Vietnam), and he considered communism a political ideology that “is still a threat.”
Some assembly members who may have reelection concerns initially voted no, or abstained, and it appeared the bill would fall short. Other lawmakers in districts with large numbers of immigrants that fled communism (such as Vietnam) were hesitant to support the bill. But Assembly leadership held the roll open until they had the votes. Most Democrats wound up voting yes to delete the prohibition on state employees being Communist Party members, while most Republicans voted no.
Despite initial reluctance, Bonta was undeterred, and apparently believed it was important to allow the hiring of card-carrying communists. “Part of having a functioning democracy and a fair and equitable society is to make sure you’re actually basing your decisions to take someone’s job away … based on their actual conduct, their actual behavior and actual proof and evidence, not just some loose label that could be applied overbroadly in a way that is unfair and unjust.”
Proponents of the bill contended that a state employee could still be fired for knowingly advocating the violent overthrow of government. They just wanted to remove the reference to communism.
The Washington Examiner wrote that the original prohibition on party membership by state workers was enacted “during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s when Americans worried Russian spies were trying to take over the country.”
Considering that Russian communists did take over many nations in eastern Europe at the end of World War II, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and eastern Germany, imposing totalitarian regimes, it was certainly a legitimate concern. In Czechoslovakia, for example, popular politician Jan Masaryck, who was the anti-communist foreign minister, fought against communist take-over of his country, until he supposedly “fell” out of a building to his death in 1948. We now know that he was pushed — by agents of the KGB.
There were also mysterious deaths of strong anti-communists inside the United States during the “Red Scare.” Contrary to what is often implied today, there were actual communist spies inside and outside the U.S. government. Alger Hiss, for example, was a spy for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — and an employee for the U.S. government. Hiss “advised” President Franklin Roosevelt at the wartime Yalta conference on how to deal with Soviet dictator Stalin. Hiss and other Soviet spies inside the U.S. government provided a wealth of information for their Kremlin masters.
The American Communist Party was a totally controlled subsidiary of the Soviet Communist Party, and did advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, so as to replace it with a communist dictatorship. While the American Communist Party may not be as important today in the world political situation, the Communist Party philosophy has not changed.
Which brings us to the obvious question: Why should any government in the United States — state, federal, or even local — even consider hiring any person, or keeping any person employed, who favors its violent replacement? The argument that some person who “just happens” to be a member of the Communist Party is no real threat to subvert the government of the United States or any state in the United States, and should therefore have some right to a government job is nonsense. We all know that membership in the American Nazi Party, although there is only a very remote chance that evil totalitarian system will ever come to power in America, would lead to forced termination of a government employee. While a person has a right to express a belief in systems such as communism and national socialism, no such person has any right to a government job.
In fact, there are some opinions and actions that can get you fired from government jobs in California and other states. For example, a teacher in California was fired earlier this year for simply using a Confederate flag (along with a period Union flag) in a lesson about the U.S. Civil War. A Wyoming judge was threatened last year with ouster simply for stating her opinion that she could not perform a same-sex wedding. In Atlanta last year, the fire chief was fired after self-publishing a book to use in his Sunday School class that had a brief mention that homosexual behavior was wrong. In California, however, he could be a Communist Party member, and that would be fine.
The California Assembly wants to protect the government jobs of communists — whose very ideology favors the violent overthrow of the government. One might be perplexed as to why a communist would even want to overthrow California’s left-wing government, considering that it is so leftist already, until we recall that the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, not by overthrowing a limited government, free-enterprise promoting government, but rather a regime that Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky considered insufficiently leftist.
The bill to protect the rights of American Communists to a state job now advances to the California Senate. If it passes there unchanged, it will go to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown.
