Commies Beware…
Chapter 557 of the Texas Government Code is Here!
I recently re-watched the 1984 film Red Dawn in which a group of scrappy Midwestern adolescents led by Patrick Swayze band together in the wilderness to battle it out against invading Russian Communists, hell bent on subduing the land of the free and home of the brave. The film is honestly worth re-watching if for no other reason than to see just how little regard is given to plot or character development. Spoiler alert: within the first five minutes the Commies have boots on the ground and the high school English teacher is dead. Watching Red Dawn today, the film makes hardly any sense, particularly to those who didn’t live through the era of the Cold War.
As a relic of the Cold War and accompanying McCarthyism, the 1951 and 1954 Texas Legislatures unanimously enacted Chapter 557 of the Texas Government Code, entitled “Sedition, Sabotage and Communism.” Subchapter C addresses communism and defines a “communist” as:
A person who commits an act reasonably calculated to further the overthrow of the government:
- By force or violence; or
- By unlawful or unconstitutional means and replace it with a communist government.
Subchapter C prohibits any communist’s name from appearing on a ballot and even bars a person from holding a nonelected office or position with the state if their superior has “reasonable grounds to believe the person is a communist.” To ensure no communist infiltrates the state or the electoral process, the attorney general along with district attorneys, and any law enforcement officer of the state are tasked with enforcement of the Subchapter.
The law remains unchanged today and if you’ve never heard of it, you certainly aren’t alone. An online petition hoping to repeal Chapter 557 only has 25 votes to date.
Depending on who you talk to, some call Bernie Sanders a communist, some call him a bum, and he calls himself a democratic socialist. Whatever you think of him, the success of Bernie’s campaign has outperformed expectations and shocked the cable news networks.
Since Subchapter C is still on the books, could Texans see a Bernie-less ballot if he gets the nomination? The short answer: no way. To start, this law only applies at the State level and is not applicable to a presidential election. Looking to the definition of “communist” under Subchapter C, Bernie certainly doesn’t appear to be attempting to overthrow the government by force or violence. Even if you view his platform as communistic, he hasn’t made any indication that he intends to achieve his goals through unconstitutional or illegal means. Further, law enforcement and the Attorney General had their chance to enforce Subchapter C when Bernie stopped in Texas on the campaign trail, but instead he was greeted with packed venues and Bernie Bros.
At its inception, § 557 served to protect the public from the very real fear of communism; it has since gone the way of the dodo. McCarthy may be rolling in his grave but Subchapter C won’t stand in Bernie’s way, no matter how you categorize his political views.
