But in 1965, the government began to fund legal-aid offices, and by 1970, it was dispensing $42 million a year to 300 organizations. By 1994, the government entity that doled out these funds had become known as the Legal Services Corporation, and its budget had grown 10-fold.
Predictably, when government money became involved, the game changed. Radical liberal lawyers hijacked the noble agenda of legal aid and began to push for their own objectives ? a "right" to abortion, the cleansing of God from the public square, the unjust taking of property in the name of protecting the environment and racial preferences in schools, contracting and other areas.
When radical lawyers, using literally millions of our tax dollars, began winning victories in court they never could have won at the ballot box, good men such as then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese and others realized that someone had to go to work serving the people in a new way ? by stepping up to this challenge.
These Davids have done a brilliant job against an implacable and versatile Goliath. They have won the right for parents to choose their children's schools or to choose to educate them at home. They have won the right for Christian youth groups to use school facilities to meet just as the chess clubs and Key Clubs and others do. They've leavened and humbled government's approach to takings and eminent domain, and forced unions to quit using their members' dues to back candidates those members don't support. They've rolled back speech codes, unfair college admissions practices and affirmative-action programs.
What saddens me is that a good idea ? ensuring immigrants got a fair shake from our legal system ? morphed into such a terrible idea that these men had to devote their careers to fighting it. All because radical liberals saw a way to beat the system and weak judges began to see themselves as legislators and the Constitution not as a statement of principles but as a malleable document ever in need of their "updating."
Thank God we have Lee Edwards to tell their story. Thank God for these men. And may the day arrive soon when their work is finished, their services no longer needed.