MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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Labor Day 2007 BFDs
For many, Labor Day weekend symbolically marks the end of summer. And “Big Fucking Deal!” nicely sums up my reaction to many of the issues and controversies in politics, public policy, and popular culture that prompted much needless hand-wringing over the past three months. Hence, MayerBlog ends its summer hiatus with another (occasional) annual tradition: my wrap-up of Summer 2007 and its “BFDs”:
n The Labor Day pseudo-holiday Many Americans are unaware of the historical origins of Labor Day. According to the U.S. government’s official account, on the Department of Labor website, the holiday – the first Monday in September – “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” What bullshit! The only part of that description that’s correct is the acknowledgement that Labor Day was created by “the labor movement” – that is, by labor unions. It’s not a tribute to all American “workers” – that is, to all the productive persons in the United States who have really built our country – but rather only to unionized American workers, who arguably have undermined the “strength, prosperity, and well-being” of the USA, by making American manufactured goods less competitive in world markets. Not to mention how Big Labor today has undermined the rights of all Americans – including its own members – through abuse of its monopolistic powers and through its active involvement in politics. (In a future essay, I plan to discuss the many ways in which labor unions have almost ruined America – as well as the ways that Big Labor and its political lackey, the Democratic Party, are trying to maintain its monopolistic powers through manipulation of the law and corrupt politics.) Labor Day is rather unique as a holiday, but not for the reasons stated on the Department’s website. Rather, it was a holiday created by Congress in 1894 in honor of a special interest group – organized labor – in order to appease union workers, in the wake of the violent strike by the American Railway Union at the Pullman Company in Illinois. (President Grover Cleveland signed into law the bill creating the Labor Day holiday – a bill that was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress – just six days after troops had broken the Pullman strike.) Today, after over a century after the turmoil in which it was created, Labor Day is more aptly seen as the last long weekend of summer rather than a day for political organizing, as its sponsors originally had intended. Union membership today is at an all-time low: in 1995, less than 15 percent of all workers and less than 8 percent of private-sector workers belonged to unions, compared with the height of Big Labor’s stranglehold on the labor market in the 1950s, when nearly 35 percent of private-sector workers belonged to unions. It’s little wonder, then, that Big Labor is so desperately trying to hold on to its political power.
n Vick-timless Crimes: In Defense of Michael Vick Michael Vick, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons and one of the NFL’s superstars, has been convicted (on a guilty plea) of federal conspiracy charges, for his role in a Virginia dogfighting operation. Not only is Vick’s multimillion-dollar career shattered, but he also faces a probable prison term of 12-18 months. Moreover, he has been vilified in the press – and by so-called “animal-rights” proponents from groups like PETA, the ASPCA, and the Humane Society – as well as by late-night comedians, who made Vick the punch line of jokes throughout the summer. The criticism of Vick is understandable, given that dogfighting is a cruel, barbarous sport that seems out of place in modern civilization, more suited to a rougher society: like, say, Elizabethan England, where dogfighting, along with “bear-baiting,” fights to the death between vicious dogs and a bear, were popular spectator sports; or ancient Rome, where more animals fought to their death in the arenas than did human gladiators. I’m certainly no fan of dog fights. But neither do I think they should be against the law. Michael Vick pled guilty to an offense that ought not to be regarded as a crime, in a free society. Dogfighting is illegal nationwide and is a felony in all states except Idaho and Wyoming. Merely watching a dog fight is a felony in 22 states and a misdemeanor in 26, according to a Humane Society spokesman cited in a recent USA Today article. And the law under which Vick was prosecuted is a relatively new federal law, signed into law by President Bush in May, which makes it a felony for one to cross state lines to engage in dogfighting, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Dog-lovers and animal-rights nuts might consider the cruel treatment of pit bulls (the breed of dog typically used in dogfighting operations) to be a crime warranting such harsh punishment, but one crucial fact weighs against criminalization: dogfighting harms no human beings; it violates no one’s rights. Animals have no rights, for rights, properly speaking, pertain only to human beings. Many people (perhaps even an overwhelming majority of people in modern American society) have their sensibilities offended by the very act of pitting one animal against another in a fight to the death; but such animal fights – including not only dogfighting but also cockfighting (also against the law in virtually all states) – harm only the animals involved. (Moreover, one might argue that pit bulls, which are a uniquely vicious breed of dog, really have no legitimate purpose in human society but for fighting against one another, to the amusement of those people who find such fights to be entertaining. It’s the people who keep pit bulls as pets – and thus who endanger their neighbors and passers-by, who are potential victims of attack by these vicious animals – who really are engaged in violating human beings’ legitimate rights.) The federal law under which Vick was convicted, moreover, is unconstitutional: it is an abuse of Congress’s authority to “regulate commerce among the states” because it’s a police law – an attempt to use the criminal law to legislate morality – that has nothing to do with genuine commercial activity. However one might dislike Vick’s extracurricular activities, they do not warrant the sanction of the criminal law. The Vick case is yet another example of the over-criminalization (and over-federalization) of the law in America – laws that unjustifiably treat as crimes offenses that ought to have no sanction other than moral revulsion.
n Out on a Craig: Who Are the Real Hypocrites Here? Another media feeding-frenzy in recent days has focused on “embattled” U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho). (Incidentally, why is a politician who’s about to lose his job because of some scandal typically described with the epithet “embattled”? Wouldn’t “endangered” be more apt?) Senator Craig announced over the weekend that he would resign from the U.S. Senate, effective September 30, ending a 25-year career in Congress – all because of furor over the news that he had pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to an incident at the Minneapolis airport. Craig was arrested June 11 by a plainclothes officer investigating complaints of “lewd conduct” in a men’s restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Apparently Craig had moved his foot and his hand, under the divider between two bathroom stalls, in certain gestures that the policeman interpreted as signals of willingness to engage in homosexual sex acts, although the Senator denies that he’s “gay” and insists that the police officer was entrapping him. Now that’s announced his resignation, Craig may try to overturn the guilty plea he entered on August 8 – when he signed papers in which he pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct, with the court dismissing a charge of gross misdemeanor interference to privacy – which resulted in $575 in fines and fees, plus unsupervised probation for a year. As the USA Today noted in a recent editorial (“Deceit and double standards,” August 31), “[i]n the space of a few days, Larry Craig [had] been transformed from a nearly anonymous small-state senator to the target du jour to late night comics and a pariah among Republican colleagues.” Indeed, it was Craig’s fellow Republicans – led by GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John McCain – who were most vocal in denouncing Craig (“their haste in direct proportion to their zeal for higher office,” as the USA Today editors note). Some conservative commentators, such as Linda Chavez (“Media wouldn’t beat up Craig so badly if he were a Democrat,” August 31), complained about the news media’s double standard. And they have a point, at least in part: Where, for example, was the outrage when House Democrats rallied around Congressman William Jefferson (D.-La.), who’s under investigation for real, serious crimes involving bribery? Ms. Chavez argues that if Senator X, a prominent Democrat, had been caught in the same set of circumstances as Crag, she suspects the media coverage would have been “rather different”: “I can just imagine The Washington Post inveighing against police entrapment and homophobia and demanding that the sex lives of politicians remain private unless their behavior involved an abuse of official duties,” she writes. “Because Craig is a conservative, although not someone who has had a history of gay-bashing, the media have had no qualms about violating his privacy. Indeed, Craig’s home newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, spent five months delving into his sex life.” Many media commentators have tried to justify application of the double standard to Craig because, they say, he’s a “hypocrite” because he’s a conservative and therefore presumed to be opposed to “gay rights.” That charge isn’t valid, however, for several reasons. Among others, it’s based on an erroneous conception of rights (there are no “gay rights,” properly speaking, for only individuals have rights – and homosexuals ought to have the same rights, no more and no less, than heterosexuals); and it takes an overly simplistic view of conservatism – conflating together support for the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or opposition to same-sex marriage (a stand most Democrats also take), with opposition to expansion of federal “hate-crimes” or “civil rights” legislation to include sexual orientation (a principled stand taken by many limited-government conservatives as well as libertarians who believe government has no authority criminalizing bigotry). It also ignores basic principles of federalism (the law under which Craig was convicted was a state law, irrelevant to the federal issues on which he took positions as a U.S. Senator). Assuming that Craig is indeed a closeted homosexual who’s unwilling to accept his sexual orientation, arguably his attempt to engage in anonymous gay sex in a public restroom isn’t inconsistent with “conservative” principles that homosexual sex – or indeed, any kind of sex outside of heterosexual marriage -- is “dirty” and immoral; he was merely falling prey to his “animal” urges, his innate “depraved,” sinful nature, that many social or religious conservatives believe to be inherent in human beings. That makes him someone who holds irrational, inconsistent principles – but not necessarily a hypocrite. The real outrage in this sad story is that Craig was arrested in the first place. Like Michael Vick, he violated no one’s rights – and therefore did not commit anything that ought to be treated as a crime under the law. In a free society, no one should be arrested for “disorderly conduct,” or “importuning” (as various laws in various states label essentially the petty crime of “lewd,” or offensive, sexual conduct) – because the acts on which such so-called “crimes” are predicated do not actually harm anyone. They might be offensive to some people – say, to homophobic heterosexual men, who are afraid to simply say, “No, thanks,” when faced with a homosexual come-on for sex. But being merely offensive to some people’s sensibilities ought not to make such actions criminal. Police officers ought to be investigating real crimes, involving real harms to persons or their property – murder, rape, assault, robbery, vandalism, and the like – instead of wasting their time, and valuable police resources, hanging out in airport bathrooms, looking out for men – even U.S. Senators – tapping their feet or running their hands under toilet stall dividers.
n Goodbye, Gonzales – And Good Riddance! “Embattled” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned – much to the delight of President George W. Bush’s political enemies, the Democrats in Congress and their allies in Big Media, who see the departure of Gonzales as another blow to Bush, who’s increasingly looking like a “lame duck” president. (The Bush administration was dealt yet another blow over the weekend with Tony Snow’s announcement that he’d be resigning as White House press secretary, because of personal reasons – namely, financial difficulties and his ongoing battle against cancer. It’s a real blow to the administration because Snow has been the most effective – the smartest, wittiest, and most articulate – press secretary within recent memory.) Gonzales’ departure is welcome – although not for the reasons cited by the Dems and their media allies. To put it bluntly, Gonzales was incompetent – the most unqualified person to serve as Attorney General since Janet Reno in the Clinton administration. In fact, Gonzales can be aptly characterized as a “Janet Reno of the Right”: someone who abused the powers of his office in order advance a political agenda (such as Gonzales’ irrational emphasis on federal pornography prosecutions). The much-publicized stories involving the firing of certain U.S. attorneys and the administration’s surveillance program – the focus of much Senate Democrat criticism of Gonzales – indeed were merely replays of similar issues raised a decade ago by the Clinton-Reno Justice Department: Democrats and their media allies conveniently forget that the Clinton administration began in 1993 with the wholesale firing of all U.S. attorneys, and that the Clinton Justice Department had proposed a domestic surveillance program similar to that under the Patriot Act, not to combat Islamic terrorism, but rather to combat drug-trafficking and “white collar crimes.”
n The Snafu Snafu and That “Fubar” FCC I’ve previously written about the folly – and the blatant unconstitutionality – of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and its attempts to ban so-called “indecent” speech from U.S. airwaves. (See my previous essay, “Abolish the F*CCing FCC,” Feb. 8, 2006.) Perhaps nothing so dramatically illustrates the stupidity of the FCC’s “indecency” ban than the concern expressed by PBS over the upcoming showing of Ken Burn’s new documentary film on World War II. Public TV stations are concerned that four words of profanity in the 14½- hour documentary could subject them to a hefty $325,000 indecency fine if broadcast between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. (The words at issue include the word fuck, spoken by former American soliders as they describe the meaning of the common military euphemisms snafu and fubar – “situation normal, all fucked up” and “fucked up beyond all recognition” – euphemisms that have become part of accepted American speech. Indeed, notwithstanding the view of those prudes at the FCC, the word fuck is a perfectly good, often uniquely expressive Anglo-Saxon word that permeates popular culture, as I noted in my previous essay. In the context of the Ken Burns documentary, the soldiers’ comments were “incredibly appropriate words,” as Burns said in a recent interview; “It’s what soldiers in battle say, and not just during World War II.”) In response to local stations’ concerns, PBS has taken the unprecedented step of distributing two versions of The War for broadcast next month: Burns’ original film and an FCC-friendly version from which the profanity has been removed. Those stations that run the edited version ought to precede it with an appropriate disclaimer, something like: “This film has been edited to satisfy those prudes who insist on abusing the coercive power of the government to censor speech they find offensive, contrary to the First Amendment.” Those prudes, it should be noted, are not limited to certain conservative Republicans, for the recent legislation passed by Congress to increase FCC “indecency” fines had bipartisan support, and many Democrats would expand the FCC’s censorship powers to include bans on violence or depictions of use of tobacco products, as well as “indecency.” As the saying goes, “to each his own”: everyone is entitled to regard certain images or certain words as offensive. What no one is entitled to do, in a free society (one in which the First Amendment protections for freedom of speech would be fully and consistently applied by the courts), is to use the coercive power of government to force their views on everyone else by limiting other people’s free expression.
n The "Illegal Immigration” Non-Problem Looking ahead to the 2008 presidential and Congressional elections – and hoping it will be the hot issue that will help win them victories at the polls – Republican politicians are trying to exploit the controversy over the problem of “illegal immigration.” In doing so, they’re tapping into a popular opinion, held by perhaps a majority of Americans, that there are far too many foreign workers – most of them Mexicans – in the United States, taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, threatening national security, raising crime rates, and overburdening public education and welfare programs. Although the problem is usually described in economic or legal terms (the presence of so many “illegal” immigrants “undermines the rule of law”), those who care passionately about it are arguably motivated more by nativist sentiments, which in turn are rooted in anti-Hispanic (and specifically, anti-Mexican) bigotry. Many Republican politicians have been shameless in exploiting nativism – among them, Tom Tancredo, Congressman from Colorado and a presidential candidate, perhaps the most virulently anti-immigrant demagogue in the race. Rep. Tancredo wasn’t shy about using the murder of three college students in Newark to “further his nativist cause,” as Fox News analyst Kirsten Powers noted in a recent USA Today op-ed (“Immigrants become target for all of society’s ills,” August 29). Tancredo exploited the fact that one of the alleged murderers, Jose Carranza, was an illegal alien, arguing that Carranza – who had been arrested twice in the past year, including once on aggravated sexual assault of a child – should have been deported to his native Peru. But the failure in this case isn’t with U.S. immigration laws, as Ms. Powers notes; it’s with our criminal justice system, which allowed a dangerous criminal like Carranza to be released on bail. “The nativists, energized by their success in derailing immigration reform legislation, will pounce on any anecdote that helps them vilify illegal immigrants,” she astutely observes. Similarly, those who argue that illegal aliens are overburdening U.S. taxpayers because of the costs of schooling or other government benefits are overlooking the real problem – which is not illegal immigration but government-funded education, health care, and other “welfare” payments. (I think it’s just as outrageous for hard-working Americans to be forced to pay, through their taxes, for the education, food, housing, or health care of other people and their kids, when those “other people” are U.S. citizens as well as resident aliens. The injustice is in the welfare state itself.) In one sense it’s not surprising that Republicans are exploiting nativist sentiment; the GOP was founded, in the 1850s, by a coalition of parties that included the “Know-Nothings” and other third-party nativist groups. But, at least in modern decades, the Republican Party is also supposed to be the party of free labor (with its 19th-century “free labor,” or anti-slavery, roots being transformed into, among other things, opposition to Big Labor’s attempts to increase its monopoly powers), as well as the party more favorable to business (which is also consistent with the GOP’s 19th-century roots in the Whig party). And both freedom of labor and the interests of business favor free, or open, immigration – exactly the opposite policy that many Republican politicians now espouse. If this seems a contradiction – and it is – we should keep in mind the admonition of author/philosopher Ayn Rand, who in her great novel Atlas Shrugged reminded us that contradictions cannot exist in nature. If something seems contradictory, one should “check your premises – and you’ll find that they’re wrong.” In this case, the erroneous premise, or assumption, on which anti-immigration arguments rest is the myth that there’s an unprecedented huge influx of Mexican “illegal” workers invading the U.S. labor market. That widely-held perception is indeed a myth, as many thoughtful commentators have noted. In reality, the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, from Mexico today is not any higher (as a percentage of American population) as the number of, say, Irish immigrants in the 19th century or Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. And today’s Mexican immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are working at jobs (especially in agriculture) vital to our national economy. Most importantly, they’re exercising their natural rights to free labor – just as their employers are exercising their natural rights to hire them, rights with which the laws ought not to interfere, in a truly free society. Maybe Republican politicians may win some elections by exploiting the immigration issue, but whatever electoral victories they eke out will be at the expense of what ought to be their party’s governing principles. (Ditto with regard to other “social” issues such as opposition to same-sex marriage or government censorship of “indecent” speech. If these are the issues the modern-day Republicans need to exploit in order to win at the polls, then their party deserves permanent minority status.)
n The "Health-Care Crisis” Non-Problem Just as Republican politicians are hoping to exploit the immigration issue for victory at the polls in 2008, Democrats (and, sadly, even some Republicans, like presidential candidate Mitt Romney) are hoping to exploit the issue of health care, proposing “universal” health insurance – that is, government-mandated collectivization of the American health care system. That issue, too, is based on erroneous assumptions about what’s wrong with health care in America. If the system is in crisis – and certainly the rising costs of health care and the impending bankruptcy of both Medicaid and Medicare programs suggest there’s a real crisis – the root cause of the problem isn’t the lack of insurance, for the millions of Americans who don’t have insurance (“45 million” is the number most frequently cited by health-collectivization advocates). Rather, the root cause is exactly the opposite – the fact that Americans are over-insured – which itself is the result of bad government policies. Those bad policies go all the way back to the World War II era, when federal wage and price controls first prompted private employers to give their employees generous health insurance and other “fringe” benefits except from the wage regulations. In recent decades, the bad policies include government financing of health care costs through programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which drive up the costs of health care for all persons, insured and non-insured alike – a problem that’s been exacerbated by Congress, which when it was under Republican control, added prescription-drug coverage to the already-spiraling costs of Medicare. The kind of real reform that’s desperately needed to save the U.S. health care system – to help ensure that it remains the best, most technologically advanced in the world – is reform that will bring free-market economic principles back into the health care market. That means less government financing and control, not more. It means reform of the income tax laws, to remove the incentives that prompt employers to overinsure their workers. (Health insurance ought to be limited to hospitalization and other catastrophic costs; ordinary visits to doctor offices and most prescription drugs ought not to be covered by health insurance – just as gasoline as well as ordinary maintenance and repair costs are not covered by auto insurance.) The tax code also should be reformed to allow deductions for health-savings accounts and other programs that encourage Americans to save and spend their own money for ordinary health costs. Giving individuals greater control over their own health care not only enhances individual freedom and responsibility, but it also helps curb rising costs. (When people spend their own money, rather than some third party’s money, they tend to spend it more wisely.) Because this is the kind of reform that’s the right prescription for what ails the U.S. health-care system, don’t expect any “mainstream” politicians, from either party, to fully support it. Rather, what we can expect is more of the same old, tired “welfare state” rhetoric – and proposals for more government programs – which will make the problem even worse.
n A Plague on Both Their Houses As I’ve argued before here – and as the preceding blurbs suggest – there’s very little to get excited about with the 2008 presidential candidates of either major political party, the “Demopublicans” or the “Replicrats,” as I like to call them. It’s about as dismal a field of mediocrities as I can recall in the over forty years (since Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964) that I’ve followed American party politics. The best of the Republican candidates currently running for president is Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican (and former presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party), who is (not surprisingly) the only GOP candidate with consistent limited-government principles and fidelity to the U.S. Constitution (and the limits it puts on the powers of the federal government). But even Congressman Paul is far from perfect: he’s so strident in his opposition to the U.S. military intervention in Iraq that he’s blind to the real national security dangers that militant Islamic terrorists pose to the United States. And Paul joins other Republican candidates in being stridently anti-abortion and anti-immigration, as Wendy McElroy noted in a provocative recent entry to the “Liberty & Power” group blog on August 27. I’ve decided to root for Fred Thompson, former GOP U.S. Senator from Tennessee and actor in many films and NBC’s “Law & Order” TV series, to win not only the Republican presidential nomination but also the 2008 presidential election – for one main reason: so there’ll be a “Mr. Thompson” in the White House, just as in Ayn Rand’s magnificent novel, Atlas Shrugged. (What a nice way to commemorate Atlas just after the 50th anniversary of its publication than to realize yet another one of Rand’s prophetic warnings about the modern world?) Besides, although Thompson is an actor, just like fellow actor-politician Ronald Reagan (the best president since Calvin Coolidge – see my previous blog essay on “Rating the U.S. Presidents” (Feb. 6, 2007)) – Thompson, unlike Reagan, has had prior acting experience playing the President of the United States. That makes him more qualified than any of the other contenders in this mediocre field: at least he looks like a president and thus can credibly play the part.
n Diana’s Death, Ten Years Later Labor Day weekend (Friday, August 31, to be exact) also marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Britain’s Princess Diana, who still seems as controversial today, a decade after her death in a tragic car accident, as she was in life. The tenth anniversary memorial service, held in London last Friday and organized by Diana’s devoted sons, Princes William and Harry, was marred by controversy over the guest list. (Off the list, at the last minute, was Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Diana’s vilified rival and successor, first as Prince Charles’ lover and now his wife. Camilla bowed out after facing criticism from Diana’s friends for accepting an invitation from the princes to attend as a “guest of honor.”) And by the continuing controversy stirred up by conspiracy theorists who believe all sorts of nutty theories about Diana’s death (including, most notably, Mohamed al Fayed, the father of Diana’s lover, Dodi Fayed, who also died in the fatal car crash on August 31, 1997. Fayad maintains, with absolutely no supporting evidence, that the British royal family had Diana murdered because she was carrying Dodi’s child.) To all those still obsessed with the cult of Diana, I say: Di is dead. Get over it!
| Link to this Entry | Posted Monday, September 3, 2007 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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