On Vouchers In General and Particularly the 2014 All-voucher Arizona Push

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Over the past year, I have received three glossy mailouts telling me that I can “enroll my child in private school for free.” The last one included the message, “Time is running out!” and added, “Is your child stuck in a failing school? Send them to a private school for FREE.”

Nothing is “for free.” Someone must pay.

I live in Louisiana, so this advertisement is tailored to my state:

Thanks to the Louisiana Scholarship Program, students attending a C, D, or F school– or entering Kindergarten– whose family meets income requirements, can get a scholarship to a private school of your choice– for FREE! 

Ahh, but TIME IS RUNNING OUT, my friends!

As an additional lure, I am told that if I visit the Louisiana Scholarship Program website, I can “enter to win a $500 back-to-school shopping spree!”

It sure sounds like someone really wants to make it appear that vouchers (the undressed term for these “scholarships”) are more popular than they really are.

So, who is pushing this effort?

The card includes the following small print:

Paid for by the Alliance for School Choice

It should come as no surprise that Carrie (Walton) Penner sits on the board of the Alliance for School Choice (ASC), a group co-founded by the late John T. Walton.

As in Walmart Waltons.

The irony behind telling Louisiana residents that vouchers can save children from C, D, or F schools is that the Waltons are also huge supporters of charter schools (just look at the donations/ revolving credit they offer to charters based on their 2012 990). In Louisiana, the Waltons funded the OneApp open-application fiasco for the state-run Recovery School District (RSD)– a district of over 80% charter schools– most of which are rated C, D and F, even by the 2013 letter grade inflated manipulation (otherwise, there would not be so many C’s).

So, the Waltons are paying for advertisements to push vouchers that can “save” RSD children from the “failing” schools that the Waltons also push.

It’s just too rich.

ASC wields its influence nationwide, even offering model voucher legislation. (Sure sounds like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC}, doesn’t it?)

For Legislators

The Alliance for School Choice supports several pieces of model legislation. Download these bills to see how school choice can work in your state.

One such “piece” is the Education Savings Account Act:

Education Savings Account Act
This bill creates an education savings account program that allows parents to use the funds that would have been allocated to their child at their resident school district for an education program of the parents’ choosing. Download the Smart Start Scholarship Program (PDF).

The ESA is a sneaky piece of legislation known as a “backdoor voucher”– if a state’s constitution prohibits use of public funds for directly paying for private schools, ESA “backdoors” it by circumventing direct payment of public funding to private schools and instead uses the parent as the middleman.

Such is occurring in Arizona via the “Arizona ALEC,” the Goldwater Institute.  As Arizona reporter David Safir notes,

The Goldwater Institute came up with the idea for ESAs as a second workaround (the first is our tuition tax credit law) to make vouchers legal in a state where the constitution prohibits the use of public money for religious instruction. (Did you know over 70% of Arizona’s private schools are religious?) The term of art for this kind of legislation is “backdoor vouchers.” In 2011, Arizona’s Republican-dominated legislature passed the ESAs into law for a limited number of students. In 2013, more students were added, and if a new bill passes this session, half of Arizona’s school aged children will be eligible for the taxpayer-funded private school vouchers. The conservative’s ultimate goal is vouchers for all.

Of course, ASC is available to promote vouchers in Arizona– with the help of none other than Arizona State Superintendent John Huppenthal:

The Alliance for School Choice, a Washington, D.C., agent of the vast privatization/corporate complex, put together a script for a [February 2014] robocall to go out to Arizona parents whose children qualify for the ESAs. Huppenthal lent his voice to the robocall. Actually, he lent more than his voice. He lent the power and authority of his office to the message, making it sound like an official public service announcement. Huppenthal’s call sent interested parents to a website about ESAs created and funded by — get ready for it — the Goldwater Institute. And so the private-to-public-to-private-to-public-to-private cycle that begins and ends with the Goldwater folks comes full circle. [Emphasis added.]

And The Republic adds,

State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal caught some heat last month for recording a series of robo-calls promoting the ESA program and suggesting parents can use it to send their children to private schools for free.

Huppenthal’s staff worked with school choice lobbyist Sydney Hay to develop the wording for the calls, according to e-mails ProgressNow obtained. Huppenthal went ahead with some wording despite concern from his staff, including over referring families to a Goldwater Institute website for more information.

The calls went out to 48,000 qualifying families, according to the e-mail correspondence.

Pro-privatizing superintendents love vouchers. Louisiana Superintendent John White and his boss, Governor Bobby Jindal, have been pushing them hard in Louisiana– despite a record  of embarrassingly low test-score yield and miserable oversight.

One issue is clear: A goal to fund an “all voucher” system would seriously cripple or kill public education.

In the case of Arizona, where voucher money is debited to parents via voucher bank accounts, there’s the question of the bloated bureaucracy necessary to adequately monitor proper spending of the voucher disbursements.

Whereas Arizona voucher proponents assert that vouchers save money because of a lower voucher disbursement as compared to the cost of having the student attend public schools, not all costs appear to be accounted for– not the least of which is the bureaucracy noted above.

Yet Arizona– already home to a charter school bonanza that nourishes corporate greed– is fast-tracking public school destruction in the form of an expanded voucher program during the 2014 legislative session:

[Arizona’s] Empowerment Scholarship Account program was, at the start of this school year, scheduled to disperse $10.2 million to 761 students. If expanded as proposed, the 3-year-old program could within the next five years apply to more than 28,000 students and strip more than $374 million a year from public and charter schools, based on the current average cost.

The goal is to eventually expand the program to the state’s more than 1 million public and charter schoolchildren. …

The [Arizona] Legislature started the session with six bills proposing to expand ESAs in various ways. Three are still advancing.

House Bill 2150, which passed the House and moves to the Senate, would allow the children of military personnel killed in the line of duty to participate. The bill is scheduled for a public hearing Thursday before the Senate Education Committee.

Senate Bill 1236 and House Bill 2291 are identical bills, which puts them on a fast-track. They each need a committee of the whole and a final vote in their respective chambers and then would be combined and sent directly to Gov. Jan Brewer.

The bills propose to gradually expand who is allowed to participate in the program.

Next school year, the children of police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians could participate, as could siblings of children who already use ESAs.Starting with the 2016-17 school year, children whose family income qualifies them for the federal free or reduced lunch program could participate. Each year after, it raises the qualifying family income by an additional 15 percent until all families qualify.

While the proposed expansion could cost public and charter schools hundreds of millions of dollars each year as parents move children into private schools, it also carries an increased cost to the state due to the funding formula for certain students.

According to legislative staff, expanding the program under HB 2291 or SB 1236 would cost the state an additional $46,100 in fiscal 2016, $3.5 million in fiscal 2017, $7.6 million in fiscal 2018 and $12.5 million in fiscal 2019. [Emphasis added.]

It amazes me how privatizers push for complete privatization– unbridled market force– without conducting any kind of small-scale run-through to see where major problems might arise.

And major problems will arise.

Did we learn nothing from the economic crisis of 2008 regarding the vulnerability of the so-called “free market” to the ever-lurking forces of unbridled greed and high-powered excess?

As to the push for a full-voucher education system in Arizona: What of that disbursement and accountability bureaucracy necessary to adequately handle an all-voucher system? Is there enough money for an all-voucher system– for both vouchers and bureaucracy? Will the Arizona education system bankrupt itself on voucher “choice”? Is it even possible to monitor the quality of education for individual students for such a large-scale voucher program? Who will ensure that students are actually receiving an education? Has no one considered the possibility that some parents might submit beautiful quarterly receipts yet not be educating their children?

And what of the parents who reject vouchers– who actually want a community public school?

Are we to pretend that such individuals do not exist?

Have they no choice?

Consider Milwaukee– a city that has been trying to succeed at vouchers for decades. The Walton-funded University of Arkansas Department of Educational Reform has promoted Milwaukee as evidence of voucher success, but that label only works when viewed through a certain Walton-funded lens.

Milwaukee’s voucher program demonstrates that when offered voucher choice, at least half chose to forego the “scholarship” and leave the voucher school.

Where did they choose to go?

The Milwaukee study in question did not detail exactly where students went once they left the voucher school.

I’m guessing that many returned to their neighborhood public schools.

A neighborhood public school– now there’s a novel idea.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

Malmo, Sweden: “L’enlevement d’Europe” – The Rape of Europa

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Sweden is the seventh richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita and its high standard of living.  It is famous for supporting the Norwegian resistance during World War II; for helping to rescue Danish Jews from deportation to concentration camps; and for its native son, Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

We recognize Sweden as the country that gave us  the incomparable Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, writers Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg,  IKEA furniture, high-quality steel production, the Volvo, the pop group ABBA, and Pippi Longstocking. 

But Sweden’s latest source of prominence, its third largest city, Malmo, founded c. 1275, is now known as the City to Leave.  Its Jewish population is fleeing, as Malmo has become home to Muslim immigrants, antisemitism and violence, which has earned for Sweden the dubious distinction of Rape Capital of the World.  How is it possible for the Muslims to comprise a mere 6% of Sweden’s population, yet be responsible for 77% of the rapes committed?  According to the Counter Jihad report, one in four Swedish women will be raped, some killed, as sexual assaults increase by 500%.

Now, since President Obama invited 80,000 Muslims into the United States, with a promise of 100,000 per year over the next five years, and studies show that Islamic immigration brings a rise in rates of rape and molestation, there can be no doubt that we will see a corresponding increase in rape crime in America accordingly.

Is rape a fundamental part of Muslim culture?  Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish, in her book,  And Now They Call Me Infidel, explains the Muslim mentality that is formed by their family dynamics and  interaction and by constant dissatisfaction.

Youths may not date, fall in love, or even communicate with the opposite sex.  Women are severely oppressed from childhood, and not allowed to form friendships. A woman is the source of a man’s pride or shame. She is made to suffer ritual female genital mutilation; her physical appearance must be concealed; she is prohibited from living as freely as men; and she must obey strict Shari’a law – to either suffer in a polygamous marriage that encourages jealousy and diminishes her importance, or to become an Islamic slave in a brief marriage – as brief as a few hours. Divorce is the male’s option, as easy as saying “I divorce you.”  Since there is no common property between husband and wife, and his property does not automatically go to the wife after his death, the “one-night stand” is legal under Shari’a law.

There are also a number of taboos and laws that not only undermine a woman’s security and self-respect, but also dominate her relationship to her children and others.  The result is an environment that sets women up against each other, poisoned with distrust, grief, isolation, and financial insecurity.

What better way of defining the exploitation of sexual favors, forced labor or services, slavery or similar practices of servitude of one person (an underage female) by her parent to another adult (called a husband), than by human trafficking – particularly when deception and coercion are used by the parent who transfers parental custody to the stranger, and there is an exchange of payment in return.

Men are also impacted by Shari’a law.  Because his honor is determined by the female’s behavior, he becomes despotic, and may even kill his wife and children to endorse  his dignity.  The men are first raised by their unhappy, demoralized mothers  in a sexually oppressive society, where he is also economically unable to keep up with the older men who can buy any number of liaisons and support as many as four wives. The first-born son is also needed as protection of his mother against her husband’s unjust treatment.  All this leads to interlocking loyalties, fears, and unusual bonding, if any.

Polygamy deprives everyone of the intimacy and security found in a monogamous or faithful marriage. Although the man governs his women, in all other circumstances, he endures indignity, humility, and degradation from all who live within a brutal regime.   With abuse in every part of his life, including the workplace, he is disaffected, angry, ripe for fundamentalism – even eager to give up his life for the promise of heaven and the elusive sexual satisfaction.

The populace is taught to stay in the tribe, to never befriend the outsiders, and to fervently focus on hating Israel and the West, even if they know nothing about those countries or people.  The hate becomes their identity, blaming the West for their culture’s failure.  If their military leadership fails, if life is difficult, the economy bad, they feel less victimized if they can place the blame elsewhere. It’s a simple fact that no one takes responsibility for anything in Islam and everyone blames everyone else.

A polygamous society lacks cohesion and fellowship and is based on distrust, with hatred being at the surface, boiling and ready to explode against the most vulnerable. This is nihilism* – the man’s harming the woman, stealing her humanity and security.  It is what the jihadist hopes to do to the civilization that he has invaded.

And this all leads to an article that came to my attention – students in a biology class at the University of Iowa are being taught that rape is “human nature.”  Regarding criminalsexual assaults as human nature is obviously offensive and dismissive, a way of allowing or even encouraging the behavior to continue.  While certain university professors suggested rape “has an evolutionary origin … genetically developed strategy sustained over generations of human life…a successful reproductive strategy,” it is entirely unacceptable in a civilized society, an act for which the perpetrator must be severely punished.

The sanctioning of rape is being insinuated into our culture through our youth as yet another tentacle of Islamization.  We will not accept cruelty and criminal behavior as human nature.  We have evolved considerably since a code of high morality, ethics, compassion and justice was put into place by the Hebrews during the Bronze/Iron age.  We will not sink to the depths of degradation offered by a culture that, centuries later, brought the antithesis of our society to the world.

What the students should be learning is that not all cultures are civilized, that it is important to realize and nurture our own exceptionalism compared to those that are bent on humanity’s destruction, and that an ideal civilization controls, contains, and rejects the elements of human nature that harm and devalue others – women, for example.  This is one of many of the proverbial slippery slopes, where the liberal thinker accommodates the Islamist, and rejects morality,  the American Constitution, and the future designed for us by our Founding Fathers.

*Ni·hil·ism

1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.

2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.

3. total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Willy von Beckerath titled -“L’enlevement d’Europe” – The Rape of Europa.

Against Libertarian Brutalism by Jeffrey A. Tucker

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Will libertarianism be brutalist or humanitarian? Everyone needs to decide.

Why should we favor human liberty over a social order ruled by power? In providing the answer, I would suggest that libertarians can generally be divided into two camps: humanitarians and brutalists.

The humanitarians are drawn to reasons such as the following. Liberty allows peaceful human cooperation. It inspires the creative service of others. It keeps violence at bay. It allows for capital formation and prosperity. It protects human rights of all against invasion. It allows human associations of all sorts to flourish on their own terms. It socializes people with rewards toward getting along rather than tearing each other apart, and leads to a world in which people are valued as ends in themselves rather than fodder in the central plan.

We know all of this from history and experience. These are all great reasons to love liberty.

But they are not the only reasons that people support liberty. There is a segment of the population of self-described libertarians—described here as brutalists—who find all the above rather boring, broad, and excessively humanitarian. To them, what’s impressive about liberty is that it allows people to assert their individual preferences, to form homogeneous tribes, to work out their biases in action, to ostracize people based on “politically incorrect” standards, to hate to their heart’s content so long as no violence is used as a means, to shout down people based on their demographics or political opinions, to be openly racist and sexist, to exclude and isolate and be generally malcontented with modernity, and to reject civil standards of values and etiquette in favor of antisocial norms.

These two impulses are radically different. The first values the social peace that emerges from freedom, while the second values the freedom to reject cooperation in favor of gut-level prejudice. The first wants to reduce the role of power and privilege in the world, while the second wants the freedom to assert power and privilege within the strict confines of private property rights and the freedom to disassociate.

To be sure, liberty does allow both the humanitarian and the brutalist perspective, as implausible as that might seem. Liberty is large and expansive and asserts no particular social end as the one and only way. Within the framework of liberty, there is the freedom to love and to hate. At the same time, they constitute very different ways of looking at the world—one liberal in the classical sense and one illiberal in every sense—and it is good to consider that before you, as a libertarian, find yourself allied with people who are missing the main point of the liberal idea.

Humanitarianism we understand. It seeks the well-being of the human person and the flourishing of society in all its complexity. Libertarian humanitarianism sees the best means to achieve this as the self-ordering social system itself, unimpeded by external controls through the violent means of the State. The goal here is essentially benevolent, and the means by which it is achieved put a premium on social peace, free association, mutually beneficial exchange, the organic development of institutions, and the beauty of life itself.

What is brutalism? The term is mostly associated with an architectural style of the 1950s through the 1970s, one that emphasized large concrete structures unrefined by concerns over style and grace. Inelegance is its main thrust and its primary source of pride. Brutalism heralded the lack of pretense and the raw practicality of the building’s use. The building was supposed to be strong not pretty, aggressive not fussy, imposing and not subtle.

Brutalism in architecture was an affectation, one that emerged from a theory robbed of context. It was a style adopted with conscious precision. It believed it was forcing us to look at unadorned realities, an apparatus barren of distractions, in order to make a didactic point. This point was not only aesthetic but also ethical: It rejected beauty on principle. To beautify is to compromise, distract, and ruin the purity of the cause. It follows that brutalism rejected the need for commercial appeal and discarded issues of presentation and marketing; these issues, in the brutalist framework, shield our eyes from the radical core.

Brutalism asserted that a building should be no more and no less than what it is supposed to be in order to fulfill its function. It asserted the right to be ugly, which is precisely why the style was most popular among governments around the world, and why brutalist forms are today seen as eyesores all over the world.

We look back and wonder where these monstrosities came from, and we are amazed to discover that they were born of a theory that rejected beauty, presentation, and adornment as a matter of principle. The architects imagined that they were showing us something we would otherwise be reluctant to face. You can only really appreciate the results of brutalism, however, if you have already bought into the theory and believe in it. Otherwise, absent the extremist and fundamentalist ideology, the building comes across as terrifying and threatening.

By analogy, what is ideological brutalism? It strips down the theory to its rawest and most fundamental parts and pushes the application of those parts to the foreground. It tests the limits of the idea by tossing out the finesse, the refinements, the grace, the decency, the accoutrements. It cares nothing for the larger cause of civility and the beauty of results. It is only interested in the pure functionality of the parts. It dares anyone to question the overall look and feel of the ideological apparatus, and shouts down people who do so as being insufficiently devoted to the core of the theory, which itself is asserted without context or regard for aesthetics.

Not every argument for raw principle and stripped-down analytics is inherently brutalist; the core truth of brutalism is that we need to reduce in order to see the roots, we need sometimes to face difficult truth, and we need to be shocked and sometimes to shock with seemingly implausible or uncomfortable implications of an idea. Brutalism goes much further: the idea that the argument should stop there and go no further, and to elaborate, qualify, adorn, nuance, admit uncertainty, or broaden beyond gritty assertion amounts to a sell out or a corruption of purity. Brutalism is relentless and unabashed in its refusal to get beyond the most primitive postulates.

Brutalism can appear in many ideological guises. Bolshevism and Nazism are both obvious examples: Class and race become the only metric driving politics to the exclusion of every other consideration. In modern democracy, partisan politics tends toward brutalism insofar as it asserts party control as the only relevant concern. Religious fundamentalism is yet another obvious form.

In the libertarian world, however, brutalism is rooted in the pure theory of the rights of individuals to live their values whatever they may be. The core truth is there and indisputable, but the application is made raw to push a point. Thus do the brutalists assert the right to be racist, the right to be a misogynist, the right to hate Jews or foreigners, the right to ignore civil standards of social engagement, the right to be uncivilized, to be rude and crude. It is all permissible and even meritorious because embracing what is awful can constitute a kind of test. After all, what is liberty if not the right to be a boor?

These kinds of arguments make the libertarian humanitarians deeply uncomfortable since they are narrowly true as regards pure theory but miss the bigger point of human liberty, which is not to make the world more divided and miserable but to enable human flourishing in peace and prosperity. Just as we want architecture to please the eye and reflect the drama and elegance of the human ideal, so too a theory of the social order should provide a framework for a life well lived and communities of association that permit its members to flourish.

The brutalists are technically correct that liberty also protects the right to be a complete jerk and the right to hate, but such impulses do not flow from the long history of the liberal idea. As regards race and sex, for example, the liberation of women and minority populations from arbitrary rule has been a great achievement of this tradition. To continue to assert the right to turn back the clock in your private and commercial life gives an impression of the ideology that is uprooted from this history, as if these victories for human dignity have nothing whatever to do with the ideological needs of today.

Brutalism is more than a stripped-down, antimodern, and gutted version of the original libertarianism. It is also a style of argumentation and an approach to rhetorical engagement. As with architecture, it rejects marketing, the commercial ethos, and the idea of “selling” a worldview. Liberty must be accepted or rejected based entirely on its most reduced form. Thus is it quick to pounce, denounce, and declare victory. It detects compromise everywhere. It loves nothing more than to ferret it out. It has no patience for subtlety of exposition much less the nuances of the circumstances of time and place. It sees only raw truth and clings to it as the one and only truth to the exclusion of all other truth.

Brutalism rejects subtlety and finds no exceptions of circumstance to its universal theory. The theory applies regardless of time, place, or culture. There can be no room for modification or even discovery of new information that might change the way the theory is applied. Brutalism is a closed system of thought in which all relevant information is already known, and the manner in which the theory is applied is presumed to be a given part of the theoretical apparatus. Even difficult areas such as family law, criminal restitution, rights in ideas, liability for trespass, and other areas subject to case-by-case juridical tradition become part of an a priori apparatus that admits no exceptions or emendations.

And because brutalism is the outlying impulse in the libertarian world—young people are no longer interested in this whole approach—it behaves the way we’ve come to expect from seriously marginal groups. Asserting the rights and even the merits of racism and hate, it is already excluded from mainstream conversation about public life. The only people who truly listen to brutalist arguments, which are uncompelling by design, are other libertarians. For that reason, brutalism is driven ever more toward extreme factionalism; attacking the humanitarians for attempting to beautify the message becomes a full-time occupation.

In the course of this factionalism, the brutalists of course assert that they are the only true believers in liberty because only they have the stomach and the brass necessary to take libertarian logic to its most extreme end and deal with the results. But it is not bravery or intellectual rigor at work here. Their idea of libertarianism is reductionist, truncated, unthoughtful, uncolored and uncorrected by the unfolding of human experience, and forgets the larger historical and social context in which liberty lives.

So let’s say you have a town that is taken over by a fundamentalist sect that excludes all peoples not of the faith, forces women into burka-like clothing, imposes a theocratic legal code, and ostracizes gays and lesbians. You might say that everyone is there voluntarily, but, even so, there is no liberalism present in this social arrangement at all. The brutalists will be on the front lines to defend such a microtyranny on grounds of decentralization, rights of property, and the right to discriminate and exclude—completely dismissing the larger picture here that, after all, people’s core aspirations to live a full and free life are being denied on a daily basis.

Further, the brutalist believes that he already knows the results of human liberty, and they often conform to the throne-and-altar impulses of times past. After all, in their view, liberty means the unleashing of all the basest impulses of human nature that they believe the modern state has suppressed: the desire to abide in racial and religious homogeneity, the moral permanency of patriarchy, the revulsion against homosexuality, and so on. What most people regard as modernity’s advances against prejudice, the brutalists regard as imposed exceptions from the long history of humanity’s tribalist and religiously based instincts.

Of course the brutalist as I’ve described him is an ideal type, probably not fully personified in any particular thinker. But the brutalist impulse is everywhere in evidence, especially on social media. It is a tendency of thought with predictable positions and biases. It is a main source for racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic strains within the libertarian world—at once denying that this sentence is true while asserting with equal passion the rights of individuals to hold and act on such views. After all, say the brutalists, what is human liberty without the right to behave in ways that put our most precious sensibilities, and even civilization itself, to the test?

It all comes down to the fundamental motivation behind the support of liberty itself. What is its overarching purpose? What is its dominant historical contribution? What is its future? Here the humanitarians are fundamentally at odds with brutalism.

Truly, we should never neglect the core, never shrink from the difficult implications of the pure theory of liberty. At the same time, the story of liberty and its future is not only about the raw assertion of rights but also about grace, aesthetics, beauty, complexity, service to others, community, the gradual emergence of cultural norms, and the spontaneous development of extended orders of commercial and private relationships. Freedom is what gives life to the human imagination and enables the working out of love as it extends from our most benevolent and highest longings.

An ideology robbed of its accoutrements, on the other hand, can become an eyesore, just as with a large concrete monstrosity built decades ago, imposed on an urban landscape, embarrassing to everyone, now only awaiting demolition. Will libertarianism be brutalist or humanitarian? Everyone needs to decide.

20121129_JeffreyTuckeravatar (1)ABOUT JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Jeffrey Tucker is a distinguished fellow at FEE, CEO of the startup Liberty.me, and publisher at Laissez Faire Books. He will be speaking at the FEE summer seminar “Making Innovation Possible: The Role of Economics in Scientific Progress.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

WARNING: Food Fetish on Campus

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Colleges and universities are embracing “food studies” primarily as another way of pushing leftist beliefs.

In the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes one of the characters at the Custom House who is well suited to government work. He is the Inspector, an epicurean so devoid of imagination, feeling, and soul that he is likened to “the beasts of the field.” His mental capacities are limited to the ability to “recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat.”

I was reminded of that passage as I learned about the latest “studies” endeavor being cooked up on American college campuses: “food studies.”

These days, even in their required classes, students are not likely to get exposure to philosophical concepts like Epicureanism, or to classical authors such as Hawthorne. They’re more apt to take courses that focus on food itself, that tell them essentially, “You are what you eat.”  Food, in other words, carries moral meanings. What you eat and how you eat define you as a moral person, with the new standards of morality aligning with the other lessons of the contemporary campus on race, class, sustainability, animal rights, and gender.

The latest additions have little to do with legitimate intellectual endeavors like agriculture or nutrition science. Instead, food becomes another lens through which to examine oppression, sustainability, and multiculturalism.

A surprising number of universities have gone in this direction. The New School has an undergraduate program in food studies, while several offer master’s level programs: Chatham University, New York University, Boston University (a graduate certificate); and New Mexico State University (a graduate-level minor). The Graduate Center of the City University of New York offers an interdisciplinary concentration, and Indiana University even a Ph.D. concentration in Anthropology of Food.

Anthropology is one source of this focus on food, and a legitimate one.  At Emory University the Anthropology Department supervises graduates from the School of Public Health and the Department of Nutrition, and offers a specialization in “Food, Nutrition, and Anthropology.”

At Spelman College, anthropology professor Daryl White has taught a course called “Food and Culture” for twenty years.  It’s particularly popular among International Studies students, says White, because “Food is the universal solvent. You can talk about it when you can’t talk about anything else.”

Undoubtedly, food plays a role in cross-cultural communication. But the sociologist authors of Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape (the textbook White uses in his current course) present food as significant in a way that goes well beyond cross-cultural communication, as indicated bysuch chapters as “Eating Authentically” and “The Culinary Other.” They state that “foodies” can appreciate the “peasant cook,” the street vendor, and the master chef. Food studies have become part of the agenda of social justice and multiculturalism, which have come to infiltrate much of the humanities.

Food studies concerns do go beyond food, Professor White acknowledged in an interview in an Atlanta alternative weekly newspaper that ranged into the areas of Southern culture, racism, and Paula Deen. The study of popular culture figures and racism, of course, have long been edging out the traditional subjects on our campuses.

Food studies will now become a minor at Spelman.  It’s an effort White has been spearheading with Kimberley Jackson, who teaches a course on food chemistry, an elective that can fulfill a science requirement for the non-science major.

The effort for a food studies minor began with nine faculty members applying for and receiving a Mellon grant, White told me. After expected approval at the April curriculum committee meeting, courses should be available in the fall semester in several departments, including economics. A biologist and Chinese language expert will jointly offer a course that explores the development of Chinese cuisine, and the role of lactose intolerance. In the English department a course will investigate food imagery in Toni Morrison’s novels.

You can find the mania over food studies in many states, including North Carolina. At UNC-Chapel Hill, students in the Department of Geography can take “Critical Food Studies,” and others can develop interdisciplinary programs that incorporate courses such as “Food in American Culture” provided through the department of American Studies.

Food studies is also a focus of graduate research in Chapel Hill’s English and Comparative Literature Department. Rachel Norman describes her dissertation on Arab-American literature as “focusing on representations of language and food as practices of oral identity.”  Inger S.B. Brodey, associate professor, lists as among the courses she teaches Asian Food Rituals, cross-listed with Asian Studies.  And Jessica Martel’s dissertation is on “Modernist Form and Imperial Food Politics, 1890-1922.”

Food studies has made its way even down to freshman composition.  Apparently responding to market demand, the textbook publisher Bedford is offering Food Matters with a sample syllabus and recommended “resources” for an entire semester devoted to food studies.  Among the resources are the “documentaries” Forks Over Knives (which advocates a low-fat whole-food, plant-based diet) and Super Size Me (about the evils of the fast food industry), and the books, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser, Barbara Kingsolver’s memoir of her year eating locally, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the 1971 bestseller about the environmental impact of meat production, Diet for a Small Planet.

Perhaps for the freshman who did not realize he was signing up for a “food studies” composition class, the model syllabus begins by asking, “Do you eat breakfast?  Is it from a box, your garden, or the university cafeteria?” with more questions until: “Have you ever thought about where your food comes from?” Disarming the critic who might think these critiques are “overblown,” Holly Bauer, the author, who teaches English at UC San Diego, tells the student that the issue is “contested terrain” to explore and write about.

There is not much “contesting” among the essays in the book, however.  All seem to harp on  political themes relating to food: “Doberge Cake after Katrina,” by Amy Cyrex Sins, and “Equality for Animals,” by Peter Singer, Princeton bioethics professor. Bedford also includes an excerpt from Michelle Obama’s book, American Grown: The Story of One White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Pyramid and Food Plate Nutrition Guidelines.

The prompts for essays convey the idea that eating is fraught with ideological choices. Prompt #1 asks, “What is food?  What is the purpose of food?  What determines what we eat?”  Prompt #2 asks, “What does it mean to eat ethically?” and #3 asks, “What is the future of food?” as it notes the contributors’ concerns with climate change, global hunger, and labor injustice.

Thus, rather than reading examples of exemplary prose and being asked to write about important issues, students are fed a steady stream of polemics and are given loaded topic questions.

To put the primary focus on food, rather than ideas and writing, is to act in the manner of Hawthorne’s Inspector, I think.  A similar mistake in emphasis is evidenced in “Immanuel Kant, Cuisine, Fine Art,”  a paper to be presented at an upcoming conference by Texas Tech University history student David C. Simpson, who describes himself as “. . . researching my Master’s Thesis on the history of cuisine as fine art.”  Shouldn’t the primary focus be on Kant?

To be sure, many of the papers at the Food Studies Association conference in Prato, Italy, where Simpson will present, deal with important topics like food chemistry and health, and perhaps political systems (“Mafia and Italian Food Supply Chain”). Another upcoming conference, that of  the Association for the Study of Food and Society, also offers papers on scientific concerns, alongside such things as “Gender, Race, and Ethnicity” and “Art, Media, and Literary Analyses.”

And, finally, the Food Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association will hold several panels at itsmeeting, mostly on political topics, like “Food, Debt, and the Anti-Capitalist Imagination” and “How the Other Half Eats: Race and Food Reform from the Slaughterhouse to the White House.”

“Food studies” has become an academic growth area, adding to the deterioration of the humanities, and to the advancement of leftist ideologies. No doubt our universities will be producing many more “scholars” investigating all aspects of food: food and race, food and capitalism, food and gender, etc.  But we will have fewer graduates familiar with literary and philosophical masterpieces.  Fewer will be able to produce good writing—or real food.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of Liz West from Boxborough, MA of a food basket. The photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. The use of this image does not in any way that suggests that Liz West endorses the author or your use of the work in this column.

Obamas Send Wrong Messages

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Two weeks ago, President Obama launched an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper.

As a part of this initiative, he signed a presidential memorandum establishing the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, chaired by Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson. The task force will help determine what public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon them, how the federal government’s own policies and programs can better support these efforts, and how to better involve state and local officials, the private sector, and the philanthropic community in these efforts.

I fail to understand the logic of setting up a yet task force. You would think groups like the NAACP, the National Urban League, the National Council of La Raza would already have “shovel ready” projects that the administration could access immediately.

I can’t help but notice that Dave Steward and Bob Woodson were not invited to participate. Dave Steward, chairman of World Wide Technology in St. Louis, is the largest Black-owned business in the U.S. and has built a $ 6 billion company based on principles that highlight morals and values. He also supports these values and morals with his money in communities throughout the U.S.

Bob Woodson, founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, has a 30-year track record of dealing with troubled youths. He has done a lot of work in the president’s adopted hometown of Chicago.

It is impossible to adequately deal with our youth without incorporating the issue of values and morals. It means telling our kids that there is right and wrong; not saying to them: “Who are we to judge?”

The president said, “…I explained to them (the kids on stage with him) when I was their age, I was a lot like them. I didn’t have a dad in the house. And I was angry about it, even though I didn’t necessarily realize at the time. I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. I didn’t always take school as seriously as I should have. I made excuses. Sometimes I sold myself short.”

Was this not the same president that said a week before in the White House that he supported legalizing marijuana? But, then he tells kids, “I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do.” If it was a bad choice and it could cause harm, then why would you want to legalize marijuana? As with the president, I am extremely confused and concerned with Ms. Obama’s fascination with people who promote values that are antithetical to creating a healthy environment for young girls to flourish in. Beyoncé is the personification of this.

Two years ago, Ms. Obama was asked by People magazine who she would choose to be other than herself. She replied with, “Gosh, if I had some gift, I’d be Beyoncé.” She and Beyoncé are purported to be very close personal friends, but is Beyoncé the person you really want your daughter to immolate?

Allow me to share a few lyrics from Beyoncé’s most recent CD, Drunk in Love: “I’ve been drinking; I get filthy when that liquor get into me; I’ve been thinking; Why can’t I keep my fingers off it, baby?”

On her song Bow Down: “I know when you were little girls; You dreamt of being in my world; Don’t forget it; Respect that, Bow down b—-es; Don’t get it twisted this is my sh-t, bow down b—-es.”

There is more. On the song Partition: Oh he so horny, he want to f—k; He bucked all my buttons, he ripped my blouse; He Monica Lewinski all on my gown.”

And the First Lady wants to be like that?

Beyoncé has become the Howard Stern of music – vulgar simply for the sake of shocking the public. Her concerts boarder on pornography Yet, Ms. Obama had no problem taking her two daughters (Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10 at the time) to watch Beyoncé perform two years ago in Atlantic City.

Here is a Twitter exchange between Beyoncé and Michelle Obama before the concert: “Michelle, thank you so much for every single thing that you do for us. I am proud to have my daughter grow up in a world where she has people like you to look up to.” Obama’s response on twitter: “@Beyoncé Thank you for the beautiful letter and for being a role model who kids everywhere can look up to. –mo.”

The president and his wife are sending out conflicting messages. Kids need to be told and shown how to behave. You can’t support legalizing marijuana and then tell kids not to use it. You can’t tell little girls to carry yourself like a young lady and then tell them you want to be Beyoncé.

That’s not Drunk in Love. You have to be plain drunk to think that Beyonce should be anybody’s role model.

“Son of GOD” – What a Movie! What a terrific Turn-out!

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I cannot explain to you the feeling that went through my entire body last night at the Cobb Palm Beach Gardens Theater, while watching the phenomenal blockbuster, “Son of GOD”. Not only did we weather the “Tornado Warnings” during the afternoon to get there and not only was the movie a very accurate depiction of what truly happened in the life of our Lord & Savior – but, to watch a movie like this – a day after Ash Wednesday – with a theater full of Catholic friends – is difficult to put a price tag on an experience like this. We need to do this more often.

I laid in bed all night, thinking about the movie; thinking about all our wonderful friends who showed up; thinking about the “100” year-old Catherine Hughes, who sat in her wheelchair in front of me; thinking of our youngest camper, Marlee (8 years old), who sat next to me (while covering her eyes during the rougher parts of the scourging); and I am still reliving the beautiful prayer that Father Richard Champigny – the 75 year-old humble Carmelite priest – opened up the evening with. Yes, a beautiful, heartfelt prayer in a public theater. We had the entire theater to ourselves & that was awesome! It should be like that everywhere we go. Thank you, Father Richard.

And, friends, if Christian on a Mission had the money, we would do this “Bold for Our Faith Movie Night” every single time a wonderful Christian movie like this comes out. Heck, we should show Christian movies like “Son of GOD” at our churches every Sunday – we will pack the pews! And, nobody will leave right after Communion. They will wait until the end of the movie!! And, the movie “Noah”, is on deck & coming soon to a “Catholic Theater” near you…Can we do this one more time? I will try my hardest to do this all over again. Stay tuned…Just pray it doesn’t rain for 40 days & 40 nights when this one comes out…and, no woodpeckers on the ark, please.

Well, last night, the Catholics came from everywhere. From “18” different parishes (not including some of our “snow birds” from Ohio, New York, New Jersey, etc,). But, nobody traveled as far as our beloved “100” year-old Catherine Hughes – who came up all the way from Deerfield Beach with her beloved mom, Dolores (President of the CCW). And, they drove up in torrential rain, wicked thunderstorms and tornado warnings. Needless to say, Jesus was right there in the back seat with Catherine & Dolores, calming the storms as they headed north on I-95. They came up early (at 4:30 pm, during the height of the storm), to get a bite to eat. Friends: If that doesn’t motivate you to get more active and “step out of the boat” for your Faith, I don’t know what will…I love those two beloved ladies as well as the countless ladies from the CCW who showed up last night, as they filled the entire theater with their love and tenderness.

And, not too far behind them was our two beloved Carmelite priests – Father Richard Champigny & the retired Father Rommaeus Tooney. They drove all the way up from St. Jude in Boca – and yes, during the torrential storms as well. Nothing but dedication and a love for our Lord. I think it was only appropriate that we had those wicked storm warnings leading up to a Christian movie like this because Satan tried his hardest in keeping all of us from attending – while Jesus simply walked on water and calmed the storms for us, just in time for the majority of us to drive safely to the theater. When we keep our eyes focused on Jesus and not lose sight of Him, He will bring us to calmer waters, greener pastures and Catholic Theaters.

And, let’s not forget our “Michelangelo of the Diocese”, Father Harold Buckley, whose latest & greatest sculpture, The Descent”, graces our beautiful grounds at our beloved Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Cemetery. Yes, soon to turn “89” (in April – the same age that Michelangelo retired from his prolific art career), this Brooklyn Renaissance Man showed up with the ever-smiling, beloved Ken Reynolds, as his Cursillista “groupers” greeted Father Buckley as if he had co-written “Son of GOD” with Roma Downey & Mark Burnett. “The Buck Stops Here” is how I always greet Father Buck and just to watch him walk ever-so-gingerly to the box office with his trusty old cane, made my night. What a gem we have in Father Buckley. Folks: Love him while we still have him. They don’t make them like Father Buckley anymore. I love the man dearly. GOD Bless him.

Friends: It would take me forever to thank everybody that came out to “Son of GOD” last night, as we had an incredible representation from our beloved Diocese. From Bishop Barbarito’s Executive Secretary, Annette Russell & her beloved mom (the last two to leave the shopping center with me); to our beloved Chancellor, Lorraine Sabatella & her husband, Joe; to Birthline/Lifeline’s coordinator, Mary Rodriguez & her husband, Jose; to countless ministry leaders, sacristans, Pro-Lifers, Deacon John Beaudoin, Deacon Greg Horton, My Main Man, Barry Hallett, and one of the cutest & most serious altar servers we have in our Diocese – Jordan Ross (11 year-old from St. Patrick). Sitting next to me on my left was Jane McGann – another gem in our Diocese. What a humbling honor to hold her hand during the more excruciating parts of the Passion. All told, we came from “18” different parishes – all to see one thing:

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD – The Life & Times of Our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ.

For those who could not make it out last night for this “Special Event”, we prayed for you and hope you can make it out to see this wonderful film. You did miss one special night, but there will be more to come. This film was made very purposefully, very articulately and with terrific cinematography. The lighting was exceptional. The acting, tremendous. The story line, right on target. The lead actor, superb. The main character, perfect.

How does one portray a perfect character like Jesus of Nazareth? How does one try to imitate everything that He did? How does one become closer to Jesus and His teachings? For starters, going to a movie like this in a huge group of “180” Catholics is a pretty good start. And, going a day after Ash Wednesday truly motivates one to fast, pray & give it all up for the One who died for us. I only wish we could have attended this incredible movie on Ash Wednesday, itself, as I can just see the theater managers, Susie & Harry, watching 180 Catholics walking into their lobby with ashes on our foreheads in the shape of a cross. That was my initial idea, but, too many people were at church that evening receiving their ashes. That would have been “bold”, though…”bold for our faith”.

In closing, on behalf of our non-profit ministry, Christian on a Mission – I want to say Thank You to everybody who came out last night to watch “Son of GOD”. I thank the numerous people who sent beautiful e-mails & thank you messages about our event last night. This was our “6th Christian Movie Night” over the past few years as I try to do these events because it serves to bring all of our parishes “Two-Gether” as One Body in Christ – and that is my ultimate mission with our ministry. We have “266,882” parishioners in our “53” Catholic parishes in our Diocese and my ultimate goal is to one day be able to meet each and every one of them through the countless events that we run in our beloved Diocese.

Now, tell me it isn’t great to be Catholic?

Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation

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Many Democrats wonder what happened to their party since the days of President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism. He relentlessly fought political corruption, patronage and bossism. Indeed, as a reformer his prestige was so strong that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called “Mugwumps“, joined with him.

Many have written about the growing number of Americans who are dependent on the government for their livelihood.

The growth of government programs since Cleveland including FDR’s “New Deal”, President Johnson’s “Great Society” and President Obama’s Affordable Care Act are in the news of late. The Great Society’s programs expanded under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Presidents Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama have added to the size and scope of government.

Perhaps it is appropriate to revisit how government expansion, taken to its ultimate end, impacts an entire society.

Leon_trotsky

Leon Trotsky

In November, 2009  wrote a column titled “The Evil of Leon Trotsky Revisited“. Ilya’s column has relevance today. Here it is for your edification:

Two of Leon Trotsky’s best-known quotes are his statement that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (made famous, especially among libertarians, in part because it was quoted by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom), and the very next sentence in the same paragraph: “The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” My GMU colleague Bryan Caplan helpfully provides the context of these quotes, from Trotsky’s 1936 book, The Revolution Betrayed:

During these years [since Stalin took power in the USSR] hundreds of Oppositionists, both Russian and foreign, have been shot, or have died of hunger strikes, or have resorted to suicide. Within the last twelve years, the authorities have scores of times announced to the world the final rooting out of the opposition. But during the “purgations” in the last month of 1935 and the first half of 1936, hundreds of thousands of members of the [Communist] party were again expelled, among them several tens of thousands of “Trotskyists.” The most active were immediately arrested and thrown into prisons and concentration camps. As to the rest, Stalin, through Pravda, openly advised the local organs not to give them work. In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

Bryan points out that this context doesn’t reflect well on a man who is still admired by many leftists and even a few ex-leftist conservatives:

Worth noticing: While Trotsky meant what libertarians think he meant, the man’s sheer evil still shines through. He doesn’t mind if the socialist state starves human beings. He was delighted to wield this power when ran the Red Army. No, Trotsky is outraged because the Soviet Union is turning its totalitarian might upon fellow Communists. Was there ever a better time to snark that “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”?

As I explained in this series of posts, Trotsky was a brutal mass murderer who objected to political repression only when it targeted his fellow communists. He also opposed Stalin in part because he thought Stalin wasn’t repressive enough. Any residual admiration for Trotsky is sorely misplaced.

Nonetheless, the translation of The Revolution Betrayed quoted by Bryan seems to be less damning than the wording quoted by Hayek. In Hayek’s version, Trotsky is quoted as writing that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (emphasis added). Since Trotsky of course favored an economic system where the state is the sole employer, this version of the quote implies that he also favored the inevitable “slow starvation” of oppositionists. By contrast, the translation linked by Bryan states that “Where the sole employer is the State, this [referring to Stalin’s policy of denying employment to oppositionists] means death by slow starvation.” The translation quoted by Bryan doesn’t seem to say that opposition means death by starvation in any society where the state is the sole employer, but only if that state is governed by Stalin’s policy of denying work to “oppositionists.” And, as we can see later in the same chapter, Trotsky did not propose to abolish the government’s monopoly over employment, but merely to replace the Stalinist “bureaucratic” class with a different set of economic central planners. The latter might potentially have a more liberal policy on employing oppositionists. Which version is correct? The only way to tell is to check the original Russian text of The Revolution Betrayed. If anyone can find it online, please let me know and I would be happy to do the checking myself.

Even the more charitable version of this passage still doesn’t paint Trotsky in a flattering light. After all, as Bryan notes, the only “oppositionists” whose right to dissent Trotsky wanted to protect were communists who disagreed with Stalin’s party line. Towards the end of the same chapter of The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky calls for “a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of Bolsheviks.” Non-Soviet (i.e. – non-communist) parties need not apply. He had no objection to the “slow starvation” (or even outright execution) of non-communist oppositionists, including even non-communist socialists. Indeed, when he was still in power, Trotsky often ordered such starvation and execution of political opponents himself.

UPDATE: I have found the Russian text of The Revolution Betrayed online here. In my judgment as a native speaker of the language, the Russian version is closer to the translation cited by Bryan than the one used by Hayek. Here is the original Russian text of the relevant sentence:

В стране, где единственным работодателем является государство, эта мера означает медленную голодную
смерть. Старый принцип: кто не работает, тот не ест, заменен новым: кто не повинуется, тот не ест.

Here’s my own translation:

In a country where the state is the sole employer, this policy [referring to Stalin’s policy] means a slow death by starvation [for oppositionists]. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

The key Russian phrase “эта мера” literally means “this measure.”

UPDATE #2: Some commenters on this and previous posts about Trotsky ask whether anyone really admires Trotsky anymore. In reality, quite a few modern leftists still do. Christopher Hitchens (see here and here) is one example. As Clive James points out, Trotsky “lived on for decades as the unassailable hero of aesthetically minded progressives who wished to persuade themselves that there could be a vegetarian version of communism.”

Black conservative leaders: NRA created to protect freed slaves

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A year ago Black conservative leaders discussed how the NRA was created to protect freed slaves. These Black conservative leaders discuss the reason the NRA was founded and how gun control is an effort to control people. This is the full version of that discussion:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/jKMi023Ofro[/youtube]

 

The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) hosted a group of prominent figures from the African American community at 9:45 a.m. on Friday, February 22nd [2013] at the National Press Club to speak out against gun control legislation currently being considered on Capitol Hill.

CURE is the largest black conservative think tank in the nation and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

CURE organized the news conference in response to concerns shared by black conservatives that the Senate proposed laws will restrict their ability to defend themselves, their property and their families. They are also concerned that the proposed gun control legislation puts too much power in the hands of politicians.

“I believe that it is our duty to stand together and challenge the proposals currently on the table in the Senate, which invoke painful memories of Jim Crow laws and black codes,” said CURE president and founder, Star Parker. “Black history is rife with government demands for background checks in order to qualify for constitutional rights. All Americans should be concerned.”

Star Parker, a nationally syndicated columnist and other noted thought leaders, authors and speakers will make the case against the type of gun control measures President Obama and his liberal allies are proposing. While the group believes that Sandy Hook was a national tragedy, they oppose its use as an opportunity to advance government control and strip any American citizens of their constitutional rights. In the middle of Black History Month, CURE is calling for a serious national dialogue about the impact of gun control on the black community.

“We want to inform United States senators that we will be notifying urban pastors, business leaders and other black voters of their legislators’ position on the Second Amendment—especially blue senators in red states currently up for re-election.” The news conference is to rally behind the tradition of former slave and great American orator Frederick Douglass who said, “A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”

DAFR fights for the inalienable firearms rights of responsible disabled Americans. Disabled Americans have unique needs when exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. The mission of DAFR is intertwined within five basic areas of focus.

These areas consist of:

1. The introduction of firearms for self-defense to disabled Americans.
2. Shooting sports program and organized competition for disabled Americans and wounded veterans.
3. Oversee firearms legislation and research their impact on Americans with disabilities.
4. Offer assistance to responsible disabled Americans in order to exercise their 2nd Amendment right.
5. Educating the public and elected officials about how disabled American firearms owners have unique needs that must be met when exercising their 2nd Amendment right.

We have also become concerned with recent legislation that is proposed throughout the United States in reaction to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. With that, our organization has taken a clear stand on various bills, public acts and proposed laws that we deem would be disadvantageous to responsible disabled firearms owners. DAFR intends to shed light on the fact that many Disabled Americans can only use certain types of firearms such as the highly adaptable AR 15 rifle platform. A ban or other serious restrictions on the AR 15 rifle as well as certain other firearms will have an adverse effect on the rights of thousands of disabled Americans.

RELATED LINKS:

http://www.dafr.org

http://www.facebook.com/DAFRUSA

http://www.twitter.com/DAFRUSA

Disabled Americans for Firearms Rights: http://www.dafr.org.

A Libertarian Frank Underwood by Elijah O’Kelly

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If you’re involved or even interested in politics and haven’t heard about House of Cards, then it’s likely that neither you nor your friends own a TV, a tablet, or a smart phone.

The series, one of Netflix’s new in-house production, portrays the ruthless, power hungry politician Frank Underwood. In addition to its critical acclaim, it has become a staple in the conversations of political activists everywhere. Watching as a libertarian, his nearly every action is reprehensible. Underwood acts solely to increase his own power, never shying away from doing immoral things, and he consistently pushes legislation that increases the scope of government. He is a libertarian nightmare. And yet we can’t help but be entranced by him.

But what if Frank Underwood was a libertarian? At first thought, the idea is a complete paradox. His blatant acts of aggression and his vision of power as an end rather than a means are contradictory to the underlying principles of libertarianism. Yet if Underwood viewed power as a means to accomplish libertarian policies rather than an end to satisfy personal desires, it wouldn’t be so easy to despise him. A plethora of valid critiques can be launched at him, but it is indisputable that he has a talent for getting things done.

Imagine if instead of education and entitlement reform, Underwood had pulled strings, twisted arms, and manipulated politicians in order to pass something like a repeal of the Federal Reserve Act or a decriminalization of drugs. It might be hard for libertarians to be smug. The bottom line is that Underwood’s talent for increasing his own power could be very effective if modified and applied by a real life counterpart trying to create libertarian change.

A mental exercise like this doesn’t typically mean much in reality, but the truth is that it offers insight into the current direction of the liberty movement. There are two main methodologies that people subscribe to for creating libertarian change. One seeks to rely mainly on educational efforts, sometimes even abstaining from voting or any political activity, to create gradual change towards a freer society. The other emphasizes political activism to sway elections and build alliances with different groups in order to pass libertarian legislation. Both are vital for a movement and some libertarians effectively use a combination of both approaches. But if we picture the effect a libertarian Frank Underwood could have on the direction of the country, the superior approach becomes obvious.

As unfortunate as it is, government bureaucrats and their cronies won’t change their behavior because they get handed copies of Human Action. Politicians won’t begin following the Constitution because they got mailed a pocket-sized version of it. The government will continue to pass legislation violating everything libertarians stand for until someone has enough power to stop it. Gaining and keeping this power may very likely entail manipulative schemes to thwart more statist peers. It may be contrary to what every libertarian, myself included, wishes the situation could be, but a failure to “play the game” means a failure to make change.

Envisioning a figure like a libertarian Frank Underwood makes it clear what the impact of a master politician who pursues libertarian legislation could be. This isn’t to suggest that all libertarians must attempt to emulate Underwood or that those in politics should try to mold themselves into replicas of him. But questions about purity—doctrinal or otherwise—rarely touch on how the sausage gets made. At some point, some libertarians are going to have to get their hands dirty.

There are, of course, limits to this. Underwood the character commits acts of inhumanity that no amount of legislative achievement could justify and that no honest libertarian would participate in. There are also worries about the corruptive nature of power and if a libertarian could actually avoid succumbing to its temptations. After all, how much of one’s soul must be sold off to achieve such heights of power? In a reality that television writers don’t have to face, a libertarian Underwood might be impossible. Yet, for those who dare to fight the beasts in their own lair, taking a cue from Underwood and outfoxing politicians could lead to enormous gains for libertarian causes. And so the question becomes: What ends justify what means? Or, where on the continuum has the libertarian politician gone too far?

The extent to which a libertarian Frank Underwood deserves our support has no simple answer, but it’s a question we have to ask ourselves as we begin to aspire to political offices. In any case, we cannot dispute that a willingness to “play the game” is absolutely vital if the Liberty Movement has any hope of moving out of the Internet’s basement and into the statute books.

ABOUT ELIJAH O’KELLEY

Elijah O’Kelley is currently interning with Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) where he works to spread the ideas of liberty on college campuses.

Some Very Good News About Americans

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We are all besieged daily by bad news. It is easy to become depressed about the present state of the nation, but there is some very good news as well.

This is not to say there aren’t legitimate problems and concerns. The last two elections put a President in office that lies all the time. The nation’s economy has been so awful that 100 million Americans are either out of work or have ceased looking for work. Democrat political leaders are actually telling Americans that being unemployed is a good thing because it leaves them free to pursue their hobbies.

The President has been pursuing a campaign to make Americans believe that there is massive income inequality when, in fact, there is relatively little. There has always been a very wealthy class and a very poor one. What there is, however, is a loss of wealth primarily in the Middle Class. As for poverty, America has long provided income mobility to those who wish to study and work hard to improve their status.

What is rarely addressed is the seething power of American entrepreneurship which, at present, is trapped by a largely socialist federal government imposing a mountain of regulations that thwart growth and take money from the private sector that would otherwise be invested in the creation or expansion of business and industry nationwide.

Americans have repeatedly suffered, survived, and overcome financial crises to come back to build the greatest economy in the world. Part of the reason for this are the long established values that Americans of every description embrace.

That is why Wayne Baker’s new book, “United America: The Surprising truth about American values, American identity and the 10 beliefs that a large majority of Americans hold dear” is a welcome review that the author’s extensive research confirms.

The beliefs are:

  • Respect for others
  • Symbolic patriotism
  • Freedom
  • Security
  • Self-Reliance & Individualism
  • Equal Opportunity
  • Getting ahead
  • Pursuit of happiness
  • Justice & Fairness
  • Critical patriotism

Cover - United AmericaA journalist, David Crumm provides an introduction to Baker’s book. “Dr. Baker defines a Core American Value (as one) that is strongly held by a large majority of Americans, stable over time, and shared across diverse demographic, religious and political lines…Here a core value represents an area of deep and broad consensus among American people, not disagreement and division. A core value is not a prescription of what Americans ought to believe, but what Americans actually do believe.”

The research supporting Dr. Baker’s book was conducted over two years by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute. The data was analyzed with a battery of statistical techniques to ensure the validity and reliability of the results.

Touching on a few of the values addressed in the book, Dr. Baker starts with respect for others which he describes as “so important that it actually characterizes what it means to be an American…More than 90 percent of Americans in the national surveys I conducted said that respect for people of different racial and ethnic groups is important to them.”

“Respect is given to people who do what they say, who live according to what they believe, who are persons of integrity. A position or title doesn’t necessarily garner respect, but integrity does” says Dr. Baker and that is bad news for those identified as “leaders” or “experts” who do not display integrity. Telling lies undermines everything they say and do.

“We have what appears to be a contradictory situation,” says Dr. Baker. “Politicians, political elites, and party activists are increasingly polarized, moving further apart from one another. Yet public opinion polls clearly show that Americans loathe the divisiveness. And the values of Americans are not polarized.”

“There is widespread agreement among Americans when it comes to core values. Which means our polarizing politicians are becoming less and less representative or our actual views.”

A review of those core values show that Americans love their symbolic patriotism such as our flag and our national anthem. “Love of country is especially strong in America” says Dr. Baker.

“Americans hold tenaciously to the principles of liberty and freedom,” says Dr. Baker. “A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center shows that 53 percent of Americans see the federal government as a threat to personal rights and freedoms. This is the first time since Pew started asking about this issue in 1995 that a majority felt this way.”

Little wonder when one recalls the assault on the Second Amendment that was launched by the Obama administration and one that failed significantly. Recent news of the Federal Communications Commission’s plans to “monitor” radio and television news judgments evoked a comparable response.

Freedom to participate in politics and elections evoked a response in which 98 percent of Americans agree with this definition of freedom and it stands in stark contrast to the Obama administration’s corruption of the Internal Revenue Service to deny Tea Party and patriot groups non-profit status routinely granted to other groups.

As one reads Dr. Baker’s book, one comes away with a renewed confidence in the judgment of Americans, confirming that their core values are those that have made America a beacon of freedom in the world.

And that’s the very good news!

© Alan Caruba, 2014

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of an American Bald Eagle taken at the Hoogle Zoo in UT taken by Therightclicks.

Um, Scarcity? by Sandy Ikeda

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The new mayor of New York wants to make city streets safer. According to The New York Times:

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping set of proposals aimed at improving street safety in New York City, pledging considerable police resources and even precious political capital in Albany to a most ambitious goal: eliminating traffic deaths.

Not just lowering traffic deaths, mind you. Eliminating them.

I posed the following question to my students: If His Honor did manage to eliminate all traffic deaths in the city, how might that policy actually raise the total number of deaths? The answer lies in understanding a very basic lesson in economics: Scarcity matters.

What Is Scarcity?

Scarcity is what gives something economic value. Scarcity results when our wants exceed available, want-satisfying resources. The air we breathe outside is ordinarily not scarce, while the air we need to breathe underwater usually is. Consequently, to those who want air to breathe, the value of outside air is low while the value of underwater air is high.

Although we are often tempted to ignore scarcity, it’s impossible to escape its consequences. For example, there are not enough hours in a day to consume as much leisure as I want and also to earn as much income as I want. But the more I work the less time is left for leisure, and vice versa. Scarcity entails trading off some ends for other ends.

Now, if I’m spending my own private resources to pursue ends of my choosing—to buy a shirt for myself or a gift for someone else—scarcity is hard to ignore. But it’s much easier to overlook if I’m spending someone else’s valuable resources—when someone else is footing the bill. And because modern governments sustain themselves precisely by spending other people’s resources (acquired through taxation or inflation), public officials are far more likely to ignore scarcity and its consequences than a private person is. They may not be aware of the costs of a choice, but those costs always fall on someone, somewhere.

I argued recently that you can almost define economics as “the science that explains why passing a law won’t get it done” because the unintended consequences of a government intervention tend to frustrate what its advocates want to achieve. In that essay I emphasized how an intervention generates unintended consequences because society is so complex. But often the problem is simply that public officials ignore the existence of scarcity. If they spend more of the government budget on traffic control, that means spending less on preventing violent crime, and they may not like the results.

Political Rhetoric or Social Science Fiction?

So when I read about de Blasio’s plan, it caught my eye. The article goes on to say:

The 42-page plan is rooted in a Swedish street safety approach known as Vision Zero, which treats all traffic deaths as inherently preventable. Perhaps the most significant changes involve the New York Police Department, whose officers will increase precinct-level enforcement of speeding.

I’ve developed a soft spot for Sweden lately because it has taken major steps at the macroeconomic level toward a freer economy.

We here in the United States should learn from these steps. So I visited the website of Vision Zero and found much to like in their approach, which tries to take into account the imperfection of human behavior. They claim that safety in Sweden has improved, presumably as a result of Vision Zero.

The trouble begins when you look closely at the underlying philosophy.

The first is the idea that “no loss of life is acceptable” if it’s caused by traffic. But why stop there? Why should traffic deaths be less acceptable than deaths by poisoning or by drowning or from the flu or from a myriad of other causes? The same arguments they make for eliminating traffic deaths could be made for those. But Vision Zero doesn’t make them, perhaps because if they did it might direct scarce resources away from their pet project, or because at some level they realize that it’s too costly to eliminate all accidental deaths.

Second, Vision Zero places the bulk of the responsibility for safety not on the imperfect driver or pedestrian but on the less imperfect “professionals” in charge. Aside from the uncomfortable paternalistic overtones of that attitude, as I explained in the column I reference earlier, making driver “safer” can cause more accidents. In order to minimize accidents, the driver and pedestrian must bear the costs of their actions, otherwise they have an incentive to act recklessly.

At any rate, in each of these cases the VZ folks can’t possibly mean what they are saying because it utterly ignores scarcity. The spokesperson says that people should be able to demand (and presumably get) freedom, mobility, and safety all at once. Since what Vision Zero is purportedly aiming for is perfect safety—which is what is supposed to make the approach novel—then he must also mean perfect freedom and perfect mobility as well. In world of scarcity, that’s fantasy, or to be more precise, it’s social science fiction.

Surely, it’s only political rhetoric. At least I hope so. But there’s another problem with Vision Zero.

Ought Implies Can

If drivers and pedestrians who put their lives at risk still make mistakes, why should we assume that traffic professionals who don’t have as much to lose won’t also make mistakes? They can’t possibly anticipate every contingency, nor would we want them to if the cost is going to be sky high. Everyone makes choices that might contribute to an accident.  But why can’t an accident, even a terrible one, simply be an accident? Why does it have to be somebody’s fault, every time? I think this is wrong-headed.

I’m not saying that lowering traffic deaths isn’t a good thing. But making it a moral problem, by placing the main responsibility for saving lives on experts, is confused. Morality is related to economy, of course, but probably not in the way its proponents think.

As my colleague Steve Horwitz put it, “Ought implies can.” Economic concepts such as scarcity help us get a handle on what’s possible, the set of feasible choices, from among which we can choose. The “eliminate deaths” approach ignores the feasible and goes right to what we would like to see. Sure, bringing the number of traffic deaths to zero would be great, if it could be done at a reasonable cost. But I can say with assurance that the cost would not be reasonable.

That’s because “pledging considerable police resources” to eliminate traffic deaths necessarily means drawing police and other resources (for narrowing streets or installing devices that will penalize taxis for speeding) away from other areas, such as monitoring thefts or preventing violent crime and so on. In that way, Vision Zero could wind up taking away more life than it saves. The total effect would be an empirical question.

The mayor points out that last year there were 176 pedestrian deaths in the city. That works out to about 2.2 deaths per 100,000 persons, which is significantly higher than the national average of 1.58 deaths. Now, New York City has an above-average number of pedestrians per 100,000 persons, which might explain much of the difference, but it might be a good thing anyway to try to lower that number to somewhere closer to the national average. And that’s where people get uncomfortable with economists because we’ll often talk about the “optimal” number of deaths in such a case.

But when we say something is optimal, we’re not trying to morally justify those deaths. We’re only trying to make it clearer what the realm of the possible is—what we can do. Can we do better with existing resources? Almost certainly; our knowledge is never perfect and there’s always room for improvement. Can we increase government resources by increasing taxation and through inflation? Yes, we can!

That won’t solve the fundamental problem though. Even with a bigger budget, scarcity and the hard choices it entails won’t go away. The sooner real-world governments and their supporters realize it the better.

ABOUT SANDY IKEDA

Sandy Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism. He will be speaking at the FEE summer seminars “People Aren’t Pawns” and “Are Markets Just?“

Pat Condell: There’s no Racist like a Liberal Racist

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“Progressive” used to mean socially enlightened and forward looking. Now it’s just another word for a creepy liberal racist.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/vz4PjxSmtoI[/youtube]

 

Good piece by Nick Cohen on liberal racists and the harm they do
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-coh…
Liberal intellectuals are frightened of challenging Islam’s honour-shame culture
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ric…

Muslim opinion polls: Challenging the “tiny minority of extremists” myth
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pag…

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Milton Friedman on America’s Haves and Have-nots

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman talks about the state of inequality in America, what he calls a system of haves and have-nots. Learn more about Milton Friedman, school choice, and his legacy the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice at http://www.edchoice.org.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/yEQl3zW9NZ4[/youtube]

Baroness Margaret Thatcher on the Moral Foundation of Democracy

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Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925 and went on to earn a degree in chemistry from Somerville College, Oxford, as well as a master of arts degree from the University of Oxford. For some years she worked as a research chemist and then as a barrister, specializing in tax law. Elected to the House of Commons in 1953, she later held several ministerial appointments. She was elected leader of the Conservative Party and thus leader of the Opposition in 1975.

She became Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979 and served her nation in this historic role until her resignation in 1990. In 1992, she was elevated to the House of Lords to become Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. The first volume of her memoirs, The Downing Street Years, was published in 1993 by HarperCollins.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/bb1sgMoYb70[/youtube]

EDITORS NOTE: The following transcript is from the concluding lecture given on November 1994  by Lady Thatcher delivered at the Hillsdale Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar, “God and Man: Perspectives on Christianity in the 20th Century” before an audience of 2,500 students, faculty, and guests. In an edited version of that lecture, she examines how the Judeo-Christian tradition has provided the moral foundations of America and other nations in the West and contrasts their experience with that of the former Soviet Union.

The Moral Foundations of the American Founding

History has taught us that freedom cannot long survive unless it is based on moral foundations. The American founding bears ample witness to this fact. America has become the most powerful nation in history, yet she uses her power not for territorial expansion but to perpetuate freedom and justice throughout the world.

For over two centuries, Americans have held fast to their belief in freedom for all men—a belief that springs from their spiritual heritage. John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote in 1789, “Our Constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” That was an astonishing thing to say, but it was true.

What kind of people built America and thus prompted Adams to make such a statement? Sadly, too many people, especially young people, have a hard time answering that question. They know little of their own history (This is also true in Great Britain.) But America’s is a very distinguished history, nonetheless, and it has important lessons to teach us regarding the necessity of moral foundations.

John Winthrop, who led the Great Migration to America in the early 17th century and who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared, “We shall be as a City upon a Hill.” On the voyage to the New World, he told the members of his company that they must rise to their responsibilities and learn to live as God intended men should live: in charity, love, and cooperation with one another. Most of the early founders affirmed the colonists were infused with the same spirit, and they tried to live in accord with a Biblical ethic. They felt they weren’t able to do so in Great Britain or elsewhere in Europe. Some of them were Protestant, and some were Catholic; it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they did not feel they had the liberty to worship freely and, therefore, to live freely, at home. With enormous courage, the first American colonists set out on a perilous journey to an unknown land—without government subsidies and not in order to amass fortunes but to fulfill their faith.

Christianity is based on the belief in a single God as evolved from Judaism. Most important of all, the faith of America’s founders affirmed the sanctity of each individual. Every human life—man or woman, child or adult, commoner or aristocrat, rich or poor—was equal in the eyes of the Lord. It also affirmed the responsibility of each individual.

This was not a faith that allowed people to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences. The Ten Commandments, the injunction of Moses (“Look after your neighbor as yourself”), the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule made Americans feel precious—and also accountable—for the way in which they used their God-given talents. Thus they shared a deep sense of obligation to one another. And, as the years passed, they not only formed strong communities but devised laws that would protect individual freedom—laws that would eventually be enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Freedom with Responsibility

Great Britain, which shares much of her history in common with America, has also derived strength from its moral foundations, especially since the 18th century when freedom gradually began to spread throughout her socie!y Many people were greatly influenced by the sermons of John Wesley (1703-1791), who took the Biblical ethic to the people in a way which the institutional church itself had not done previously.

But we in the West must also recognize our debt to other cultures. In the pre-Christian era, for example, the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had much to contribute to our understanding of such concepts as truth, goodness, and virtue. They knew full well that responsibility was the price of freedom. Yet it is doubtful whether truth, goodness, and virtue founded on reason alone would have endured in the same way as they did in the West, where they were based upon a Biblical ethic.

Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote tellingly of the collapse of Athens, which was the birthplace of democracy. He judged that, in the end, more than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything—security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians’ dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism.

To cite a more recent lesson in the importance of moral foundations, we should listen to Czech President Vaclav Havel, who suffered grievously for speaking up for freedom when his nation was still under the thumb of communism. He has observed, “In everyone there is some longing for humanity’s rightful dignity, for moral integrity, and for a sense that transcends the world of existence.” His words suggest that in spite of all the dread terrors of communism, it could not crush the religious fervor of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

So long as freedom, that is, freedom with responsibility, is grounded in morality and religion, it will last far longer than the kind that is grounded only in abstract, philosophical notions. Of course, many foes of morality and religion have attempted to argue that new scientific discoveries make belief in God obsolete, but what they actually demonstrate is the remarkable and unique nature of man and the universe. It is hard not to believe that these gifts were given by a divine Creator, who alone can unlock the secrets of existence.

Societies Without Moral Foundations

The most important problems we have to tackle today are problems, ultimately, having to do with the moral foundations of society There are people who eagerly accept their own freedom but do not respect the freedom of others—they, like the Athenians, want freedom from responsibility. But if they accept freedom for themselves, they must respect the freedom of others. If they expect to go about their business unhindered and to be protected from violence, they must not hinder the business of or do violence to others.

They would do well to look at what has happened in societies without moral foundations. Accepting no laws but the laws of force, these societies have been ruled by totalitarian ideologies like Nazism, fascism, and communism, which do not spring from the general populace, but are imposed on it by intellectual elites.

It was two members of such an elite, Marx and Lenin, who conceived of “dialectical materialism,” the basic doctrine of communism. It robs people of all freedom—from freedom of worship to freedom of ownership. Marx and Lenin desired to substitute their will not only for all individual will but for God’s will. They wanted to plan everything; in short, they wanted to become gods. Theirs was a breathtakingly arrogant creed, and it denied above all else the sanctity of human life.

The 19th century French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat once warned against this creed. He questioned those who, “though they are made of the same human clay as the rest of us, think they can take away all our freedoms and exercise them on our behalf.” He would have been appalled but not surprised that the communists of the 20th century took away the freedom of millions of individuals, starting with the freedom to worship. The communists viewed religion as “the opiate of the people.” They seized Bibles as well as all other private property at gun point and murdered at least 10 million souls in the process.

Thus 20th century Russia entered into the greatest experiment in government and atheism the world had ever seen, just as America several centuries earlier had entered into the world’s greatest experiment in freedom and faith.

Communism denied all that the Judeo-Christian tradition taught about individual worth, human dignity, and moral responsibility. It was not surprising that it collapsed after a relatively brief existence. It could not survive more than a few generations because it denied human nature, which is fundamentally moral and spiritual. (It is true that no one predicted the collapse would come so quickly and so easily. In retrospect, we know that this was due in large measure to the firmness of President Ronald Reagan who said, in effect, to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, “Do not try to beat us militarily, and do not think that you can extend your creed to the rest of the world by force.”)

The West began to fight the mora! battle against communism in earnest in the 1980s, and it was our resolve—combined with the spiritual strength of the people suffering under the system who finally said, “Enough!”—that helped restore freedom in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—the freedom to worship, speak, associate, vote, establish political parties, start businesses, own property, and much more. If communism had been a creed with moral foundations, it might have survived, but it was not, and it simply could not sustain itself in a world that had such shining examples of freedom, namely, America and Great Britain.

The Moral Foundations of Capitalism

It is important to understand that the moral foundations of a society do not extend only to its political system; they must extend to its economic system as well. America’s commitment to capitalism is unquestionably the best example of this principle. Capitalism is not, contrary to what those on the Left have tried to argue, an amoral system based on selfishness, greed, and exploitation. It is a moral system based on a Biblical ethic. There is no other comparable system that has raised the standard of living of millions of people, created vast new wealth and resources, or inspired so many beneficial innovations and technologies.

The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it does not discriminate against the poor, as has been so often charged; indeed, it is the only economic system that raises the poor out of poverty. Capitalism also allows nations that are not rich in natural resources to prosper. If resources were the key to wealth, the richest country in the world would be Russia, because it has abundant supplies of everything from oil, gas, platinum, gold, silver, aluminum, and copper to timber, water, wildlife, and fertile soil.

Why isn’t Russia the wealthiest country in the world? Why aren’t other resource-rich countries in the Third World at the top of the list? It is because their governments deny citizens the liberty to use their God-given talents. Man’s greatest resource is himself, but he must be free to use that resource.

In his recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul I1 addressed this issue. He wrote that the collapse of communism is not merely to be considered as a “technical problem.” It is a consequence of the violation of human rights. He specifically referred to such human rights as the right to private initiative, to own property, and to act in the marketplace. Remember the “Parable of the Talents” in the New Testament? Christ exhorts us to be the best we can be by developing our skills and abilities, by succeeding in all our tasks and endeavors. What better description can there be of capitalism? In creating new products, new services, and new jobs, we create a vibrant community of work. And that community of work serves as the basis of peace and good will among all men.

The Pope also acknowledged that capitalism encourages important virtues, like diligence, industriousness, prudence, reliability, fidelity, conscientiousness, and a tendency to save in order to invest in the future. It is not material goods but all of these great virtues, exhibited by individuals working together, that constitute what we call the “marketplace.”

The Moral Foundations of the Law

Freedom, whether it is the freedom of the marketplace or any other kind, must exist within the framework of law. 0thenvise it means only freedom for the strong to oppress the weak. Whenever I visit the former Soviet Union, I stress this point with students, scholars, politicians, and businessmen—in short, with everyone I meet. Over and over again, I repeat: Freedom must be informed by the principle of justice in order to make it work between people. A system of laws based on solid moral foundations must regulate the entire life of a nation.

But this is an extremely difficult point to get across to people with little or no experience with laws except those based on force. The concept of justice is entirely foreign to communism. So, too, is the concept of equality. For over seventy years, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had no system of common law. There were only the arbitrary and often contradictory dictates of the Communist Party. There was no independent judiciary There was no such thing as truth in the communist system.

And what is freedom without truth? I have been a scientist, a lawyer, and a politician, and from my own experience I can testify that it is nothing. The third century Roman jurist Julius Paulus said, “What is right is not derived from the rule, but the rule arises from our knowledge of what is right.” In other words, the law is founded on what we believe to be true and just. It has moral foundations. Once again, it is important to note that the free societies of America and Great Britain derive such foundations from a Biblical ethic.

The Moral Foundations of Democracy

Democracy is never mentioned in the Bible. When people are gathered together, whether as families, communities or nations, their purpose is not to ascertain the will of the majority, but the will of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, I am an enthusiast of democracy because it is about more than the will of the majority. If it were only about the will of the majority, it would be the right of the majority to oppress the minority. The American Declaration of Independence and Constitution make it clear that this is not the case. There are certain rights which are human rights and which no government can displace. And when it comes to how you Americans exercise your rights under democracy, your hearts seem to be touched by something greater than yourselves. Your role in democracy does not end when you cast your vote in an election. It applies daily; the standards and values that are the moral foundations of society are also the foundations of your lives.

Democracy is essential to preserving freedom. As Lord Acton reminded us, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If no individual can be trusted with power indefinitely, it is even more true that no government can be. It has to be checked, and the best way of doing so is through the will of the majority, bearing in mind that this will can never be a substitute for individual human rights.

I am often asked whether I think there will be a single international democracy, known as a “new world order.” Though many of us may yearn for one, I do not believe it will ever arrive. We are misleading ourselves about human nature when we say, “Surely we’re too civilized, too reasonable, ever to go to war again,” or, “We can rely on our governments to get together and reconcile our differences.” Tyrants are not moved by idealism. They are moved by naked ambition. Idealism did not stop Hitler; it did not stop Stalin. Our best hope as sovereign nations is to maintain strong defenses. Indeed, that has been one of the most important moral as well as geopolitical lessons of the 20th century. Dictators are encouraged by weakness; they are stopped by strength. By strength, of course, I do not merely mean military might but the resolve to use that might against evil.

The West did show sufficient resolve against Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. But we failed bitterly in Bosnia. In this case, instead of showing resolve, we preferred “diplomacy” and “consensus.” As a result, a quarter of a million people were massacred. This was a horror that I, for one, never expected to see again in my lifetime. But it happened. Who knows what tragedies the future holds if we do not learn from the repeated lessons of histoy? The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.

Free societies demand more care and devotion than any others. They are, moreover, the only societies with moral foundations, and those foundations are evident in their political, economic, legal, cultural, and, most importantly, spiritual life.

We who are living in the West today are fortunate. Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it with our lives. Others before us have done so. But it would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in order to possess it. We do so not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they may build a better future that will sustain over the wider world the responsibilities and blessings of freedom.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of a portrait of Baroness Margaret Thatcher is courtesy of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

Redefining Truth has Consequences

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In all organized sports, there are clearly defined rules that must be adhered to.  In all universities, there are clearly stated guidelines for admittance.  In all religions, there are shared beliefs that all members must adhere to. Without these clearly defined rules of engagement (ROEs), there can be no order within groups; and without order there is nothing left but chaos.

Groups and organizations, by definition are all predicated upon certain agreed upon principles and values. These agreed upon principles and values are the raison d’etre of these entities.

You join the Boy Scouts, for example, because you are a boy and you join the Girl Scouts because you are a girl.  You are a male because you are born with a penis and you are a girl because you are born with a vagina. These things used to be unquestioned statements of fact.

Now some parents are filing lawsuits because their daughters want the legal right to join the Boy Scouts. Some males, on the other hand, want the right to join a sorority while some females want the right to join a fraternity. To call this a ball of confusion is an understatement.

Sadly, sexuality is no longer determined at birth and is no longer absolute.  You now can legally (in California) “self-identify”  your sex.  You can be born a male and simply wake up and say you “self-identify” as a girl and legally you can play on your high school’s girls softball team; you must be allowed to use the girls bathroom; and you must be allowed to wear a dress to class.

Now, right is wrong; up is down, black is white; and there are no rules.

Rules are created in order to maintain order and control.  No matter where you go throughout the world, the rules for basketball, American football, and baseball are the same.

Conversely, when you have no clearly defined rules, you have chaos instead of order.  This is exactly what is happening in America in particular and the world in general.  Rules are the glue that keeps a society together.  Rules make the family into a functioning unit.  Rules create the framework for dispute resolution.

In America, as in most countries, murder is deemed wrong and society universally punishes the perpetrators. Killing can be justified (self-defense), but murder (the taking of an innocent life) can never be justified.  Honoring one’s mother and father is just simply expected in our society.

These rules are necessary to create a society where there is structure and order.  Rules also create a sense of security and freedom for the people.

How can you have a functioning country when you can no longer define the family unit?  For time immemorial, the family has been mother, father, and children; and in some cases grandparents, uncles, or aunts, also known as the extended family.   Now, agreement on the definition of the family unit has become mired in controversy.  Some want Johnny to have two dads or Jenny to have two moms.  Some want Rahim to have one father, but three mothers (all legally married to the one father).  Some simply want mother and child.

Study after study has shown that the family unit is the most stabilizing force in a society and that children who are reared with a mother and father are best positioned to be successful in life.

You can’t prevent or resolve disputes unless you have rules that have been agreed upon by society that are compatible with the values of a country.  Most Americans don’t commit crimes because we have been instilled with a sense of what is right and wrong; also because we know crimes will be met with certain punishment.

When there are disputes, you have courts, Congress, and government to turn to for redress.  Today, you have judges ignoring case law and the will of the people and injecting their personal feelings into cases such as homosexual “marriage.”  Congress is incapable of passing bipartisan legislation that is truly in the best interest of America.  Government is totally incapable of solving conflict because there is no consensus as to what the rules of engagement are.

I am a huge proponent of individual freedom, but freedom can’t exist without some agreed upon rules of engagement.  You can’t have children born as one sex and then be allowed to simply “self-identify” as to something totally different.  You can’t –  or shouldn’t – seek to become a member of, say, a Pentecostal church and then refuse to comport yourself in a manner consistent with their rules (including a prohibition against homosexuality), and then call them a bigot if they refuse you membership.

This altering of what it means to be an American will lead to our demise as a global leader. Even freedom has its orderly limitations.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is a photo of smaller chancel window depicting ‘The Life’ at Holy Trinity Church Leicester by P.J. Parkinson.