Herzig and Brunson base their argument on the Supreme Court decision in Bob Jones University v. United States which held that the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) could revoke the tax-exempt status of a religious university due to its policy of denying admission to school applicants involved in interracial relationships. Herzig and Brunson now argue for an expansion beyond religious universities to include any organization with tax-exempt status and they cite, as the basis for the expansion, the widespread bipartisan condemnation of the “far right” in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville.
Advocacy of white supremacy and hatred by the K.K.K., neo-Nazis and the far right are not acceptable public viewpoints. Robust denunciations came from politicians across the political spectrum and included leading Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Paul Ryan, the House speaker. The list also included members of the executive branch, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Vice President Mike Pence… The widespread condemnation of racism expressed by both the executive and legislative branches of the government provides convincing evidence that white supremacist actions violate fundamental public policy. Thus, those organizations that advocate white supremacy and organize white supremacist events do not qualify as tax-exempt under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, and the law requires the I.R.S. to revoke their tax exemptions.It appears that all of the virtue signaling by cuckservatives in the wake of Charlottesville forms the basis of the argument for these two leftist professors. But one must ask what exactly is “advocating white supremacy?” The term “white supremacist” itself is ill-defined with liberals constantly using it as a smear against right-wingers with no clear definition of what it actually means. Well, the authors of the Op-Ed put forth what they view as prima facie evidence of advocating white supremacy by quoting from the publisher of Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance, the New Century Foundation:
Though surprising, it is not unheard-of for a group to explicitly state its white supremacist purposes. The New Century Foundation, for example, says in its mission statement, ‘We also believe the European-American majority has legitimate group interests now being ignored.’So there is our firm definition of “white supremacy:” expressing the opinion that white people have legitimate group interests that shouldn’t be ignored. The authors didn’t limit their inquiry to just groups that are open about advocating on behalf of white people and encouraged the I.R.S. to strongly scrutinize any organization which may be suspected of advocating “white supremacy.”
The cuckservatives mentioned above might be fine with this happening to us big, bad old “white supremacists” but they’re being short-sighted if they think that social conservatives aren’t next on the chopping block. As a matter of fact, Herzig and Brunson specifically targeted social conservatives earlier this year in the Indiana Law Journal where the two professors argued that the Treasury Department should create a “blacklist” which “formally list those criteria” which are contrary to "fundamental public policy” in the context of “homophobia and discrimination” against the LGBT community.
Although the Supreme Court’s opinion Obergefell does not mention the fundamental public policy requirement, its holding may represent a shift in fundamental public policy. If its holding—or its embrace of equal dignity—means that discrimination based on sexual orientation violates a fundamental public policy, religious schools and other affiliated organizations face a loss of exemption if they discriminate. Even where that discrimination is based on religious beliefs, the Supreme Court has held that the interest of the government in encouraging fundamental public policies allows revocation or denial of exemption. [A Diachronic Approach to Bob Jones: Religious Tax Exemptions after Obergefell, By David J. Herzig and Samuel D. Brunson, Indiana Law Journal, February 3, 2017][VDARE.com note: Diachronic is Greek for “It’s The Current Year”.]It’s unlikely that the current composition of the Supreme Court would rule this way but we shouldn’t get too comfortable. This is only because we have a Justice Gorsuch, (Thank you, President Trump!) instead of a Justice Garland on the bench. It’s not unforeseeable that we will have another Democrat President appointing new Justices to the Court in our future. Once that happens, I am almost certain that the vision of Professors Herzig and Brunson will become a reality for race-realists and social conservatives alike
