Court Opinion

ID: 9449159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:59:34.092166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:44.592138
License: Public Domain

KAUFMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur completely in the opinion of Judge HAYS, which I find to be a model of the “intelligent and complete, more persuasive just because * * * intellectual, nonemotional” form of exposition extolled by the dissenting opinion. Because of the great significance of this case to the appellant, I think' it proper to *325comment upon certain of my dissenting brother’s erroneous characterizations of the position taken by the majority of this Court.
The underlying theme of Judge CLARK’S dissent is its accusation that the majority has failed to evaluate the character of the petitioner as he is today, but has devoted almost its entire opinion to an examination of petitioner’s conduct and beliefs beyond the five-year period rendered crucial by 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a). It is more than clear in the opinion of Judge HAYS that our affirmance does not rest upon proof of past misconduct but rather upon the light which that misconduct sheds upon petitioner’s present devotion to our constitutional principles. Is it unreasonable to expect that one who has participated in some way, however small, in the most shocking exhibition of man’s inhumanity to man would today be able without qualification or hesitation to renounce it? That is the relevance of the past, which we are invited to consider by 8 U.S.C. § 1427(e).
The position of the majority of this Court is unfortunately put in a disparaging light by Judge CLARK’S repeated assertions that all we seek are “short sentences of breast-beating repentance and patriotic affirmation.” He forgets that we sit in review of the decision of a trial judge who — in a thoroughly conscientious manner, as the opinion below reveals — confronted squarely the awesome problem of determining a man’s state of mind. If there were ever a clearer example of a question of fact, rather than law, I can think of none. In doing so, he evaluated certain inconsistencies in the petitioner’s statements as to his conduct and motivations, past and present. He no doubt noted the incongruity between the petitioner’s self-portrait as merely a small cog in the Nazi system and the portrait — which Judge CLARK himself now paints — of petitioner as an “intelligent and well educated individual, given to thinking aloud — perhaps more than he wisely should * Surely Judge CLARK’S facile brushwork does not fairly represent a man who with single-minded, unreflective, and unquestioning adherence to the Nazi command devoted several years of his life as a commentator broadcasting English-language propaganda on a German radio program beamed to the United States. How else can we determine a man’s present ’state of mind if it be not viewed in the perspective of the past? Can the District Judge fairly determine that petitioner is presently and sincerely attached to the principles of our Constitution if his renunciation of its complete antithesis is tepid, qualified, contradictory? To say that the District Judge and this majority would not have been satisfied with anything less than “breast beating” and “groveling” is unfairly to characterize our all too reasonable search for a “direct, uncomplicated repudiation of the Nazi system.”
We are adjured by our dissenting brother to keep our prejudices up to date. But certainly we should not be oblivious to the lessons of history when pertinent to a ease before us.
Judge CLARK seeks to justify the petioner’s tepid renunciation of his past in large measure on the ground that he is a man of academic and unemotional nature. But, rather than excuse petitioner’s intellectual timidity, I should think that his training as a political scientist would make it so much more inexcusable. For, can we not expect that an individual, who is thoroughly acquainted with the comparative virtues and vices of democratic and totalitarian political systems would be more acutely sensitive to the heinous qualities of the latter? Can we not now expect from him a devotion to our constitutional form of government which springs from an appreciation both of its salutary effects upon the body politic in practice and of its undoubted superiority in theory? More specifically, is not petitioner’s condonation of his propaganda activities in behalf of the Nazi war effort made yet more objectionable by the fact that he is characterized as a man of intellect? For it is intellect *326which is the chief source and most-sought prey of the modern propaganda effort.
As much as I might sympathize with Judge CLARK’S assertions that no man should be denied the blessing of citizenship in this country unless “there is something of definite evil in what the petitioner believes,” or unless there “is any secret allegiance on his part to our enemy in the present cold war,” the statutory requisites are somewhat more severe. The petitioner must prove that he is, among other things, “attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a). This does not require proof simply of an absence of affirmative allegiance to an enemy power, as Judge CLARK apparently believes; rather, it requires a demonstration of affirmative allegiance to the principles of this nation and its form of government. The majority of this Court does not find such a demonstration convincing.