Tim's analysis is nonsensical.
A government employee loses his job because of his political views. He brings a lawsuit, alleging a violation of the First Amendment, and eventually prevails in the Supreme Court.
A non-government employee who loses his job because of his political views would have no cause of action because the private employer is not bound by the First Amendment.
Therefore there should be far fewer government employees to prevent further erosion of the First Amendment.
This makes sense, do you not see the logic?
Suppose RealBig Corporation fired Umbehr for his views. Would a First Amendment issue have arisen? Of course not. In a free society, RealBig is free to hire whom it wishes, and to refuse to hire niggers, homos, perverts, Jews, whatever. And to fire anyone who wrote opinions the managers at RealBig disliked.
Substitute "fascist society" for "free society" in the paragraph above and the discussion begins to make some sense. Hell, it's even historically accurate.
Wrong, do you dispute the fact that RealBig corp. is free to refuse to hire people for any reason whatsoever? Do you think I should not be allowed to refuse to hire people because of their race or sexual orientation? Should the government be able to take action against me because I fire someone for being jewish/black/homosexual??? Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"