MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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Spring Briefs 2007
As the spring weather heats up, so too do controversies in the world of politics and popular culture. Here are my comments on some current developments:
n Acts of War The militant Islamic thugs who control the government of Iran reached a new low in their lawlessness by seizing 15 British sailors and marines and holding them as hostages for nearly two weeks (March 23 - April 5). Falsely claiming that the British had strayed into their waters, the Iranians used psychological torture (including mock executions) on the young, inexperienced Royal sailors and marines (the oldest was 26), pressuring them to “confess” that they had done wrong by entering Iranian waters, all as part of an elaborate political show put on by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government as a propaganda campaign. Similarly, Ahmadinejad made a show by releasing the hostages just before Easter weekend, calling it a “gift to the British people.” As conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck has observed, Iran is the first nation since the Dark Ages to use hostage-taking as a regular tool in its foreign policy. And, given its ambition to lead a global Islamic fundamentalist jihad, Iran today poses potentially the greatest danger to Western civilization since the time of the Persian empire of Darius and Xerxes in the 6th century B.C.E. The United States made a huge mistake during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when it failed to declare war on the Iranian Islamist thugs after they stormed the American embassy and held over 100 of our citizens as hostages. Post-Vietnam war malaise and Carter’s incompetent leadership help explain U.S. failure to act in the late 1970s; but unfortunately, our apparent appeasement only encouraged the Ayatollah dictators of Iran to continue their lawlessness. Now Iran continues to develop nuclear weapons, which pose a grave threat to our ally, Israel, as well as to the entire Middle East region – and by its obstinacy, Iran has shown a clear willingness to thwart world opinion, the United Nations, and international law. Moreover, Iran also continues to sponsor Shiite militants in Iraq, sending them arms and thus aiding in their insurgency, which has resulted in the deaths of U.S. military personnel as well as Iraqi civilians. All these are acts of war committed by a dangerous government – perhaps the most dangerous government in the world today. As I noted in my previous entry, if Congress were really serious about fighting the war on militant Islamic terrorism, it would exercise its legitimate constitutional power – its sole authority to declare war – and declare war on our real enemy, the Islamic militant government of Iran.
n “The Wolf by the Ears” Writing about the problem of slavery (and trying to explain his ambivalence with regard to the abolitionist movement in the early years of the 19th century), Thomas Jefferson made a famous (or infamous) analogy, maintaining that slavery was like “holding a wolf by the ears” – that one can neither safely hold it nor let it go. The metaphor may be especially apt when we apply it to the current U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Whatever one thinks of the justification for the United States to use its military to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime and then to occupy the nation in a peace-keeping role, it’s clear that the nation faces a real dilemma in Iraq. Should we withdraw U.S. troops if the insurgents’ violence (which many commentators understandably see as a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Moslems in Iraq) cannot be controlled – and thereby allow the nation to plunge into a full-fledged civil war, in effect wasting the lives of all U.S. servicemen and women who have been killed in Iraq as part of the peace-keeping effort? Even if our intervention was mistaken, “cutting our losses” now, by a premature evacuation, could be disastrous for the region, as well as American foreign policy. Yet continued intervention, if no genuine progress is really made, would result in the needless loss of even more lives – not to mention the expenditure of U.S.-taxpayer dollars and depletion of our military force, just as we may need to face a real enemy in Iran. However one sees the policy, one thing is clear, under U.S. constitutional law: although Congress has the authority to cut off funding for U.S. military intervention in Iraq (the “power over the purse strings” is among the legislature’s legitimate powers, even with regard to foreign affairs), Congress does not have the authority to micro-manage the conduct of war, acting in effect as 535 commanders-in-chief. There’s only one commander-in-chief, assigned that power under Article II of the Constitution – the President – and President Bush would quite properly veto any law passed by Congress that interferes with his legitimate constitutional authority.
n Speaker Nancy: Violator of the Constitution, Felon, and Traitor The Democrat Speaker of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi, stirred up some controversy with her recent visit to Syria – and with good reason, for her independent diplomacy not only undermines the Bush administration’s foreign policy but also violates federal law as well as the constitutional separation of powers, and potentially amounts to treason. Although it has become common practice for members of Congress, of both major parties, to make overseas trips as supposed “fact-finding” missions, it is an abuse of power – a violation of the separation of powers mandated by the Constitution – for any member of Congress, let alone the Speaker of the House, to engage in diplomacy. When he served as Secretary of State during the first presidential administration of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson advised Washington that “the transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether” and accordingly belongs to the president. Thus, for example, when the government of France sent to the United States, in a letter addressed to “the president of the Congress,” its expression of condolences on the death of Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson instructed his ambassador in Paris, William Short, to inform the French about U.S. constitutional law: “Let it be understood that Congress can only correspond through the Executive, whose organ in the case of foreign nations is the Secretary of State.” And when the provocative French minister to the United States, Edmond Charles Genet, threatened to deal directly with Congress, Jefferson reprimanded him, by writing that the President, “being the only channel of communication between this country and foreign nations, it is from him alone that foreign nations or their agents are to learn what is or has been the will of the nation.” (For more on Jefferson’s understanding of the president’s sole authority over foreign affairs, see Chapter 8 of my book The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (1994).) As The Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial (“Democrats at War,” April 8), Pelosi’s visit to Syria – where she met with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad – was truly an extraordinary development. “Rarely in U.S. history have Congressional leaders sought to conduct their own independent diplomacy, with the Speaker acting as a Prime minister traveling with a Secretary of State” (Congressman Tom Lantos, D.-Calif., Speaker Pelosi’s sidekick, who frankly admitted that the Democrats were engaging in their own diplomacy, independent of President Bush). The Speaker’s shadow diplomacy has the probable effect of undermining U.S. policy in the Middle East, as the Journal explains: “With her trip, Ms. Pelosi has now reassured the Syrian strongman that Mr. Bush lacks the domestic support to impose any further pressure on his country,” which is one of the major sponsors of militant Islamic terrorism in the region. And as University of Virginia law professor Robert F. Turner noted in a recent Journal op-ed (“Illegal Diplomacy,” April 6), Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony: the “Logan Act” makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, “without authority of the United States,” to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government’s behavior on any “disputes or controversies with the United States.” Professor Turner notes that in proposing the law in 1798, Rep. Roger Griswold explained that its object was “to punish a crime which goes to the destruction of the executive power of the government” – namely, the interference by individual citizens in “the negotiations of our executive with foreign governments” – the crime that Ms. Pelosi committed in her sojourn to Damascus. The Hatch Act has rarely, if ever, been enforced in U.S. history; but as Turner adds, with “the U.S. in the midst of two wars authorized by Congress,” perhaps it’s time to dust off and enforce this 200-year-old law. Finally, one might legitimately ask whether by giving reassurances to Assad – whose government aids the Islamic terrorists with whom we’re at war – Nancy Pelosi has also given “aid and comfort” to the enemies of the United States, and thereby committed treason. Perhaps it’s time to apply to the Speaker of the House the laws that apply to all other Americans.
n Subpoena-gate Democrats in Congress have been trying to make an issue over the Bush administration’s firing of some U.S. attorneys. I’m no fan of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – I think he’s an incompetent with mixed-up priorities, wasting precious federal law-enforcement resources on such non-crimes as “obscenity” (and thus, in a sense, being the conservative analogue to Clinton’s incompetent attorney general, Janet Reno, who similarly used the powers of her office to push a social agenda, albeit a left-wing agenda). But I certainly think there’s no reason to demand, as so many Democrats and even some Republicans now do, that Gonzales resign over this flap. If there’s any real political scandal here – any real abuse of governmental power – it’s entirely by Congress, which is overreaching its power, violating constitutional separation of powers, by threatening to abuse its subpoena power and thus to interfere with the independent decision-making authority of the President as head of the executive branch of government. Under the Constitution, the President – together with his deputies, whether the Attorney General or some other Justice Department official – has the authority to fire any U.S. attorney, at any time and for any reason. U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve “at the pleasure of the president” – for good reason, for it’s the President who has the authority (and the duty) under the Constitution to “faithfully” enforce, or execute, the laws. As George Terwilliger III noted in a splendid op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (“The Attorneys Showdown,” March 28), “Congress has the exclusive power to legislate, but the power to execute the laws is entrusted to one person alone – the president. The ability to appoint, retain or fire anybody to carry out these responsibilities is a core executive function, properly left to his unfettered discretion.” Mr. Terwilliger adds, “Congress may ask the president why he fired these officials and its members may disagree or question the rational for removal, and do so in a very public way” (as, one might add, they certainly have). “That is politics. But it does not follow that the president’s aides can be forced to come to Congress and give information under oath.” That sort of public airing of private executive-branch deliberations concerning the removal from office of presidential appointees is clearly an abuse of Congress’s subpoena power. And, he adds, the courts have been pretty clear in recognizing this as well: “Congress has no right to issue subpoenas as part of a fishing expedition.” As several conservative political commentators have noted, the Clinton administration began in 1993 with the wholesale firing of federal prosecutors: Janet Reno’s Justice Department cleaned its slate of all 93 U.A. attorneys, including some who were investigating the crimes of the Clintons and other prominent Democrats. The 1993 firings were virtually a non-story on the “mainstream” news: according to records kept by the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive, ABC and CBS gave the Clinton firings no coverage at all on its evening news, while NBC gave it a mere 20 seconds. But, as the saying goes, “that was then—this is now.” There’s a Republican still in the White House, while Democrats control both houses of Congress. Can you spell “h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y”?
n A Victory for Individual Rights The U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on March 9 struck down as unconstitutional the D.C.’s ban on owning firearms. Much hailed as a victory for “gun rights,” the decision really is a victory for individual rights (guns don’t have rights, but gun owners do) – and, at long last, a correct interpretation and application of the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia ban was the nation’s strictest, amounting to a total prohibition on citizens owning operational firearms, of any type, in the District. (The challenged city ordinance prohibits the private possession of all handguns and requires that all long guns – i.e., rifles and shotguns – be disassembled and have trigger locks in place at all times, even if one needed to use the gun in self-defense against a violent criminal in one’s own home. No state in the Union has so draconian a prohibition. Indeed, as Ted Cruz, the solicitor general of Texas, noted in a March 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “the constitutions of 44 states, like the federal Constitution, explicitly protect the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the legislatures of all 50 states are united in their rejection of bans on private handgun ownership. Forty-five states go even further, allowing private citizens to carry concealed handguns for self-defense.”) By declaring the D.C. law to be in violation of the Second Amendment, the court adopted the proper view of the “right to keep and bear arms” guaranteed by the Amendment – and rejected the so-called “collective rights” theory that some federal courts (including the Ninth Circuit) and gun-control advocates have embraced. (That theory, which sees the dependent clause referring to “militia” as limiting the scope of the main clause of the Second Amendment, among other flaws, overlooks the fact that the “militia” referred to in the Amendment was comprised of all free adult males – that is, the mass of individuals who composed political society in early America. The “collective rights” theory, in short, was based on misinterpretations of history used to justify, on so-called “originalist” grounds, the sorts of denials of individual rights that gun-control advocates support.) As Solicitor General Cruz observed, “the `collective rights’ theory is unfaithful to the Constitution and undermines the individual rights of all Americans.” That’s why Texas joined twelve other states in submitting amici briefs in the case, defending the individual right to keep and bear arms.
n More Good Decisions Two other recent federal district court decisions deserve some applause. A federal judge in Philadelphia struck down the 1998 law that makes it a crime for commercial websites to let children access “harmful” (meaning sexually explicit) material. (The law would have criminalized websites that allow children to access material deemed harmful by “contemporary community standards.” Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison. Sexual health sites and other sites backed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law.) Judge Lowell Reed said parents can protect their children through software filters and other less-restrictive means that do not limit free speech. In other words, he enforced the First Amendment – and put the responsibility for “protecting” children (for those who believe that children need to be shielded from something as good and natural as human sexuality) exactly where it belongs, on their parents. It’s about time that courts start taking seriously the language of the First Amendment, which bars Congress from passing any law that abridges freedom of speech and freedom of the press – without exception. (If only that principle would be recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, which persists in the erroneous view that so-called “obscenity” is exempt from constitutional free-speech protections.) The other recent decision, by a federal judge in Cleveland, Ohio, similarly takes a clear view of freedom of speech and press, including the legitimate limits on its scope. Judge Donald Nugent upheld an Ohio law that limits when and where people may protest at funerals. The law was aimed at a small fundamentalist (and rabidly homophobic) Christian church in Kansas whose members picket burials of U.S. troops killed in combat, arguing that the deaths are “God’s punishment” for homosexuals. The law -- which prohibited protesters from being within 300 feet of a cemetery, funeral home, church or synagogue either one hour before or after a burial service – was challenged by the Ohio chapter of the ACLU, representing the Westboro Baptist Church, in Topeka, Kansas, as plaintiff, seeking a restraining order under the theory that the law restricted constitutionally-protected speech. Judge Nugent’s decision applies the well-established principle that government may impose reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions on free speech, particularly to help safeguard the rights of others (here, the right of mourners to be free from the obnoxious protests of these homophobic bigots). Put another way, the Ohio law regulated not speech per se, but conduct – conduct that amounts to what early American law called “licentiousness,” a violation of other people’s rights, and no part of the true “liberty” of speech that the Constitution protects. As the two cases suggest, the ACLU gets it right only about 50% of the time – a rather dismal record for a so-called “civil liberties” organization, but not unsurprising, given that the typical ACLU member has no real understanding of liberty, properly speaking, and the proper context of persons’ right to liberty.
n A Bad Decision Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court recently (on April 2) announced its decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 5-4 ruling that the EPA has the power to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases supposed to cause “global warming.” The majority opinion, by Justice Stevens (speaking for the Court’s four leftists, joined by the moderate conservative and increasingly “swing-vote” Justice Kennedy), based its decision not on the law but on questionable scientific theory: the notion that man-made carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming and will result in such disasters as “precipitous rise in sea levels,” “severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems,” and “increases in the spread of disease” – the apocalyptic predictions of fear-mongering radical environmentalists, which the majority regarded as “serious and well recognized” fears, despite scientific dissent. By accepting this theory as accepted fact, the majority were in fact engaged in making policy, not expounding the law – and following their own subjective preferences, rather than neutral legal principles, objectively applied. In short, the majority opinion epitomizes the worst sort of left-wing judicial activism. The legal question before the Court was whether the Clean Act Act, which authorizes the EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” from cars that might “endanger public health or welfare,” applies to carbon dioxide. In other words, is carbon dioxide a “pollutant,” under the language of the statute? As Justice Scalia noted in his dissenting opinion (joined by the Court’s three other conservatives, Justices Alito and Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts), the Webster’s definition of pollute is “to make or render impure or unclean” – which might apply to sulfur dioxide or other harmful gases, but not to a natural product of human respiration that resides in the upper atmosphere. By accepting the radical global-warming thesis, the majority usurped the power of Congress by, in effect, making new law – giving the EPA authority over something that Congress, when it passed the Clean Air Act, never intended the agency to regulate and which no fair and objective interpretation of the language of the statute would encompass. And as the Wall Street Journal noted in its editorial criticizing the Court’s activism (“Jolly Green Justices,” April 3), perhaps even more distressing was the way the majority “made a hash of traditional `standing’ doctrine,” by allowing Massachusetts to sue the EPA under the dubious claim that the state’s coastline faces imminent threat from rising seas. Not even [Al] Gore goes that far.”
n Governor Strychnine Ohio’s new Democrat governor, Ted Strickland, who campaigned as a different (more moderate) kind of Democrat, thus far has proven himself and his administration to be all-too-typical of the Jackass Party. Although recognizing Ohio’s stagnant economy as one of the state’s biggest problems, Strickland plans to do nothing about the real cause of economic stagnation: the enormous tax and regulatory burden that Ohio government imposes on businesses in the state. Siding with two of the special-interest groups that comprise the “core constituency” of his party, labor unions and trial lawyers, he will do nothing to ease the costs government imposes on business and, in fact, will exacerbate them. (Strickland’s main idea about how to revive the state’s economy is to pump even more taxpayer dollars – which means, inevitably, further tax increases – in the state’s failed government-schools system, including higher education.) I call him “Governor Strychnine” because he’s, literally, poison to a good business climate in Ohio. “Governor Strychnine” is also poisonous to school choice. As part of his first budget, the governor has proposed to abolish a two-year-old voucher program that provides a $5000 tuition scholarship for up to 14,000 children who attend schools certified by the state to be in “academic emergency.” (As many as one in three schools in some parts of the state – nearly one in two, in the city of Columbus – can be so designated.) The program followed up on the successful Cleveland voucher program, but it has been a major political target of the teacher’s unions and government-schools establishment that helped elect “Strychnine” as the first Democratic governor in Ohio in 16 years. As the Wall Street Journal explained in a March 29 editorial (“Job One in Ohio”), “Mr. Strickland decided that the Cleveland program had too much local political support to take on, so instead he’s trying to kill the statewide voucher plan before it can develop its own constituency.” The Governor also has proposed a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools in the state, maintaining that charters have been a “dismal failure.” As the Journal editors also explain, “In Ohio, some 80,000 students are served by 305 charters, which are public schools freed from bureaucratic and union rules. Unions and charter opponents have used the failure of about two dozen charter schools in Ohio to tarnish the entire concept. But unlike public schools, charters that don’t perform can be put out of business. Failing public schools live on and one, trapping students year after year.” For the most part, however, charter schools have thrived in Ohio, and many have waiting lists for admission. A recent study by the Buckeye Institute found that students in Ohio charter schools performed better in math and reading than children in traditional public schools, even though charter schools spent less money per pupil and had less-experienced teachers. The study calls into question one of the myths on which teachers’ unions and the government-school establishment base their claim on tax dollars: the erroneous notion that spending more money on schools provides better education. Between 2001 and 2006, per-pupil spending in Columbus city schools rose from $9078 to $11,918, with no improvement in what the Journal editors aptly call “the status quo of union-enforced mediocrity.” As the editorial concludes, “We’d have thought that with Ohio’s many other problems, a new Governor would have better things to do than deny opportunity for poor kids to escape the worst schools in the state.”
n Phony Courage Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards, the trial lawyer from North Carolina who was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004, apparently has gained support in the polls after announcing his decision to stay in the presidential race even though his wife, Elizabeth, has been diagnosed with a recurrence of incurable breast cancer. Interviewed by Katie Couric on CBS’s 60 Minutes, both Elizabeth and John Edwards spoke frankly about the decision, with Elizabeth saying she couldn’t bear to deny her husband the chance to be president: “That would be my legacy, wouldn’t it Katie? That I’d taken out this fine man from – from the possibility of – of giving a great service. I mean, I don’t want that to be my legacy.” Commentators fell all over themselves to praise the couple for their strength and “courage.” What “courage”? Real courage would involve foregoing political ambition – the desire to wield governmental power, to use force to control how other people live their lives – and instead to mind one’s own business. There’s nothing noble about Edwards’ decision; rather, it’s despicable, for there’s nothing admirable about anyone’s desire to become President of the United States, unless it’s to restore that political office to its proper limits under the Constitution. (So far, only one candidate among the many who’ve announced for the Demopublican/Replicrat parties’ nominations – libertarian Ron Paul, a Republican Congressman from Texas – gives a damn about respecting constitutional limits on the powers of government. All the other candidates, like Edwards himself, are merely hungry for power.) As for Mrs. Edwards’ claim that her husband would give “a great service” to the country, what exactly does he offer? Edwards offers nothing new or different in the presidential field. Behind his rhetoric about the supposed “two Americas” is nothing more but the same old, intellectually bankrupt and morally evil, policies typical of left-wing Democrats: using the coercive powers of government to seize wealth earned by productive Americans and redistribute it to non-productive, “needy” Americans (in other words, cashing in on negative emotions – poor Americans’ envy and resentment against achievement, wealthy Americans’ guilt over what they’ve produced – to justify an even more pervasive, redistributionist government). “Courage”? No – bullshit!
n Another Big-Government Conservative Well-publicized media stories reported recently that the 2008 presidential candidates of the Demopublican/Replicrat parties have raised a total of roughly $127 million during the first three months of 2007 – more than four times the amounts raised for primary campaigns (about $31 million) at this point in the presidential race four years ago, in 2003. Not surprising, that power-hungry bitch, Hillary Clinton, lead the Democrat candidates, with $26 million, followed closely by Barack Obama, with $25 million. The fundraising leader among the Republicans was former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who’s Hillary’s counterpart in more than just raising big bucks. It seems that Governor Romney, like President Bush, is another so-called “big government conservative,” the kind of politician who has virtually ruined the Republican party by transforming it into a pale imitation, with its watered-down socialism, of the Democrats. (For more on this, see the splendid articles in the March 2007 issue of The New Individualist, “Up from Conservatism.”) Romney, like Ms. Clinton, puts “health care” near the top of his social agenda, offering among his credentials the socialized health system that he helped create in the Bay State. “RomneyCare” made Massachusetts the first state in the nation to require all residents to carry health insurance – the mandate that lies behind the euphemism of “universal coverage” – which was, essentially, just another version of the national mandate that Hillary and her husband Slick Willy proposed in 1994. As the Wall Street Journal noted in its April 12, 2006 editorial on RomneyCare, “By making a fetish of `universal coverage,’ Governor Romney has bought into a bidding war that Democrats and advocates of socialized medicine are bound to win in the end.” He’s certainly not the kind of candidate whom the GOP ought to choose as an alternative to Clinton or Obama.
n The Forever Monopoly? Beginning May 14, Americans will pay two cents more – 41 cents instead of 39 cents – to mail a first-class letter. That’s the latest in a series of rate increases, over the past quarter-century, that the Postal Rate Commission has authorized for the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS, trying to make this latest postage increase more palatable to Americans, plans to begin selling on April 12 a new “forever” stamp, with (ironically) a Liberty Bell design, that can continue to be used even after future rate increases. (As USA Today colorfully put it in a March 27 editorial, “Psst. Want a hot investment tip? Buy stamps – and hoard them. . . . If your great-grandchildren find one in an attic 60 years from now, it can still be used to mail a standard 1-ounce letter, no matter how many times prices have jumped over the generations.”) What’s scary about the Forever Stamp is that assumes many more future price increases. And just like the E-ZPass, used on many interstate toll roads today, it diminishes our awareness of how much we’re actually paying. As Robby Schrum, a research fellow at the Lexington Institute, argued in a recent op-ed (USA Today, March 7), the “dark side” of the Forever Stamp is the way it makes it easier for the Postal Service to foist price increases on unwitting consumers. As Mr. Schrum also notes, consumers ought to be asking why stamp prices continue to go up, while other prices – like telephone prices, for example – go down, as volume increases. He notes, “Modern sorters can process more than 30,000 pieces of mail per hour, which theoretically should make it cheaper to send a letter.” And a 2004 study by leading experts of the Postal Rate Commission came to that conclusion: “The doubling of overall volume coupled with scale economies should have resulted in the average price of the stamp dropping in real terms.” Yet prices continue to rise. Why? The answer is obvious: the Postal Service has no incentive to be efficient because it has no competition; it holds, under U.S. law, a monopoly on first-class mail. That’s why it’s so ironic that the new stamp has a picture of the Liberty Bell: liberty, in the form of free competition, truly is anathema to the Postal Service. It’s high time that Congress ends its monopoly and so give Americans the benefits – including lower prices – that the free market provides.
n Three Cheers for Godless Currency Coin collectors got an unexpected bonus from the new presidential dollar coins that the U.S. Mint began putting into circulation in February: it seems that some of the coins are missing the words E Pluribus Unum and In God We Trust, which were supposed to be engraved on the edges of the coins but failed to be because of a missed step in the Mint’s factory. The mistake caused some misinformed conservatives to complain about the new “godless” dollar coins, which lack the motto In God We Trust. I think that by making this mistake, the Mint stumbled upon a great idea: let’s truly have “godless” currency, by removing this silly motto from all U.S. coins and bills. In God We Trust was mandated by short-sighted federal legislation in the 1950s – at about the same time that the words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance – in order to demonstrate that America, unlike the communist Soviet Union, was not a “godless” nation. But by adopting such an overtly religious national motto, we merely showed our hypocrisy, in showing we were just as willing as the Soviet communists to impose an orthodoxy on our citizens. The motto clearly has religious roots, in radical Protestant Christianity, dating back to the English Puritan revolution of the 1640s (it was a motto used by the Parliamentary armies that fought against King Charles I), and so has some remote historical association relevant to American history (or at least the English background to American history). But, first and foremost, the United States is not a “Christian” nation at all; rather, it is a nation dedicated to the principle of the freedom of the individual mind, in matters of religion as well as other aspects of thought. In God We Trust has no legitimate place in American law or government. If we must have a motto on our currency, other than the appropriate E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”), let it instead be something like, “In freedom we trust.”
n Daylight Saving Bust The annual switch to Daylight Saving Time, which always inconveniences Americans, was especially inconvenient this year, because Congress mandated that this gimmick start even earlier – three weeks early, in fact (on March 11 rather than the usual date in early April). That caused additional havoc to computer programs, but the social doctors who prescribed it claimed that early start of D.S.T. would bring added savings in energy consumption. It turns out that theory was mistaken: there’s been no measurable impact on power usage, and in fact has resulted in increased gasoline usage (and with it, a rise in gas prices) because that “extra” hour of daylight has led people to drive to places, such as golf courses, parks, and shopping malls, that they wouldn’t otherwise visit after work this time of year. “Daylight savings time simply pushes us our of our houses,” explains Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, and a critic of D.S.T. It’s time for Congress to stop tinkering with Americans’ daily lives, particularly with something so fundamental as time. Some people erroneously believe that government needs to regulate time, in order to bring uniformity; but history tells us that it wasn’t Congress but business – specifically, the railroad industry (which had a strong incentive in uniformity in its time schedules) – that brought us Standard Time in the late 19th century, and with it, the time zones into which the United States are divided. Let’s repeal D.S.T. in its entirety, and stay on good old Standard Time, that marvelous invention of the free market.
n The Global Warming Myth The Great Global Warming Swindle, a superb documentary that recently aired in Great Britain, refutes many of the myths propagated by Al Gore, in his absurd An Inconvenient Truth, and other radical environmentalists. One of the scientists interviewed in Swindle is S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, and a research fellow at the Independent Institute. In his recent op-ed for the Institute, also entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” Professor Singer argues that increases in water vapor (probably arising from regular variations in solar activity) better explain the temperature record (including the observed cooling from 1940-75) than do climate models that attribute temperature rises to increases in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Furthermore, he argues, even if CO2 is the culprit, every nation would need to cut fuel use by 80 percent for emissions reduction to have an effect on temperatures. Finally, Singer argues that a warmer climate may be more beneficial than today’s. “But the main message of ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ is much broader,” writes Singer. “Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to toy with and devote our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real ones.” The real agenda of the Al Gores of the world has nothing to do with the Earth’s environment. Rather, it’s to undermine capitalism and free markets – to expand even more the regulatory powers of government and thus to further limit individuals’ freedom to live their lives as they please. Radical environmentalism is the new strategy for the pushers of socialism.
n Colder Than Hillary’s Tit An especially intense cold snap – with temperatures ranging twenty or more degrees Fahrenheit below normal early-April temps – recently hit most of the eastern United States. Snow in northeast Ohio has forced the Cleveland Indians to cancel their opening home baseball games. Tourists in Washington, D.C. saw the nation’s capital and its famed cherry blossoms covered in snow. And weather forecasters in Nashville, Tennessee predicted a low of 22 degrees F., beating the former record of 24 degrees, set in 1940. So much for “global warming”! Many years ago, a custodian in my college dorm expressed the opinion that cold weather came into two varieties: cold temperatures coupled with damp, humid air, which he called by the colorful phrase, “colder than a well-digger’s ass”; and bitterly cold temperatures but with dry air, which he called “colder than a witch’s tit.” This spring’s cold spell has definitely been of the latter variety.
n Imus Be Wrong Radio personality Don Imus, host of the syndicated radio show “Imus in the Morning,” has been suspended by CBS Radio and MSNBC (which televises his show) for two weeks, beginning April 16, in the wake of the furor over Imus’s recent comment, describing the mostly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Imus joins several other celebrities who have put themselves in hot water recently for making “insensitive” remarks, including actor-director Mel Gibson (for his allegedly anti-Semitic comments made during a DUI arrest), comedian Michael Richards (for his allegedly racist comments, including use of the “n-word,” during a comedy-club performance), and Grey’s Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington (for his allegedly homophobic remark, calling his gay co-star T.S. Knight the “f-word”). I’m no fan of Imus – I think of him as an old fart who typically makes a lot of idiotic comments – but I credit him for forthrightly apologizing for these particularly stupid (and hurtful) remarks, rather than follow other celebrities in giving the substance-abuse excuse and attempting to rehabilitate themselves (or their reputation) by, symbolically, “going into rehab.” His two-week suspension strikes me as an appropriate sanction. Far more offensive than Imus’s remark is the hypocrisy of such notorious racists as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, for their sitting in moral judgment of Mr. Imus. Sharpton, who called Imus’s comments “abominable” and “racist” (and who, despite Imus’s mea culpa on Sharpton’s own radio show, has continued to call for his firing), has become famous for exploiting issues of race, beginning with his role in the Tawana Brawley hoax in 1987. And Jackson, who led a protest against Imus outside NBC in Chicago, is guilty of vile racist comments of his own, most famously his reference to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown” in a 1984 interview. Like Sharpton, he has built a career exploiting issues of race (and cashing in on white left-liberal guilt) – not just making isolated racist remarks, but actively promoting racism throughout his life. These guys, who have the audacity to sit in judgment of someone like Imus, are the real villains in this story. Whatever happened to the truth in the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? American society has become overly sensitive over “insensitive” words; and persons who deviate from the politically-correct orthodoxy, in their language about race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation, far too easily become the victims of the modern McCarthyist witch hunt. Perhaps it ultimately proves the truth of Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation, in his Democracy in America (1835), that there is “[no] country in which there is so little independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.”
n Amazing Movie Amidst all the mediocre films currently playing in U.S. movie theaters, there’s one that all Americans ought to see: Amazing Grace, starring Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower) as William Wilberforce, the British antislavery activist who, as a member of Parliament in the late 18th and early 19th century, successful led the campaign that culminated in the end of the slave trade in the British Empire (and eventually, in 1833 – the same year as Wilberforce’s death – abolition of slavery itself throughout the Empire). The film accurately depicts the world of 18th-century Parliamentary politics, with a superb supporting cast including Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as the wily politician Charles Fox and the great Albert Finney (Tom Jones, Scrooge, etc.) as Wilberforce’s mentor, the clergyman who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace (hence the film’s title). What makes the movie so noteworthy is that it depicts a genuine hero – a man of principle, of deep moral convictions (inspired by his religious faith), who triumphs in fighting for a noble cause. When I saw the film for the first time, during the climactic scene in which the House of Commons votes overwhelmingly to end the slave trade and a fellow M.P. gives Wilberforce much-deserved credit for the victory, there weren’t any dry eyes in the house (including my own). It’s rare these days for moviegoers to be so moved by a true story of human courage and perseverance.
n Idol Speculations This year’s American Idol finalists are generally a fairly talented bunch, but – looking at the contest as purely a “singing competition,” as judge Simon Cowell frequently reminds us it is – there’s little doubt about who should win: Melinda Doolittle clearly outshines the others, in terms of sheer vocal talent and consummate professionalism. (She also seems a remarkably nice person, free of the arrogance and narcissism that many of the far-less-talented contestants display.) LaKisha Jones comes in as a close second – folks in our mutual home town of Flint, Michigan are justifiably proud of LaKisha’s vocals – but as divas go, she still falls short compared to the superlative Ms. Doolittle. The only remaining drama on the show has come from the continued presence in the competition of Sanjaya Malakar, the much-maligned 17-year-old Idol “who doesn’t seem to go away,” as USA Today aptly put it in a recent story. Indeed, USA Today recently printed a near-hysterical story (“`Idol’ stakes are high if Sanjaya wins,” March 28) hypothesizing that if Sanjaya should win, it could ruin the show. Apparently, a diverse group of Americans – ranging from the adolescent girls who apparently truly adore Sanjaya, to troublemakers like radio host Howard Stern and the creators of the Web site, votefortheworst.com – so far have been giving Sanjaya the millions of votes he needs each week to stay on the show. Sanjaya-mania, however, will not last (or so I predict): like other personable but less-talented singers (the “Chicken Littles” and John Stevens of past seasons), he will eventually be voted off, as integrity will eventually win out over novelty (even with the fickle and often-idiotic American public).
| Link to this Entry | Posted Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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