There is no question but that the NAACP, ACLU and other busing advocates sincerely believe that court-ordered racial assignment is a proper method of continuously achieving “desegregation” in those schools where neighborhood school assignments would otherwise create racial identities they claim are indicative of “segregation.” But their sincere effort to achieve this goal by autocratic means under the circumstances in places like Oklahoma City and DeKalb County, runs afoul of Justice Brandeis' famous Olmstead admonition to the effect that the fact that the purpose of “desegregation” is beneficent does not justify such means. In fact, Justice Brandeis indicated that the zeal of a good purpose diminishes understanding as to other effects of such governmental action. He put it this way in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928), 277 U.S. 438 at 479:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.

The zeal of busing advocates like the NAACP and the ACLU is understandable when one is aware of the part of their attorneys, led by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, in the past in opposing, in behalf of black students, the segregation of the nature condemned by Brown. This opposition was based upon our Constitution and its amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment, and is detailed in Chapter 5, “Busing