The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
Jason R. Edwards is an associate professor of education and history at Grove City College and a fellow with The Center for Vision & Values. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Though my mastery of Greek mythology is not strong enough to know off-hand the muse of history's sexual orientation, I do know that Clio might try to persuade her father to hurl thunderbolts from Mt. Olympus into Sacramento as punishment for defiling her beloved discipline.
The crime?
On July 14, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 48, which dictates that California schools adopt instructional materials in social science classes that emphasize "the role and contributions of . . . lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans" in history.
When considering the myriad ways such a law tramples on parental rights and academic legitimacy, it is hard to know where to begin. However, since the law will be celebrated by some as a triumph of inclusivity, perhaps it should be noted it solves no conceivable problem currently plaguing California.
Regarding inclusivity, California law already bans discrimination in instructional materials based on "race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry." Not content with banning discrimination, earlier California legislators already mandated emphases on the contributions of both men and women as well as "Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans" and other ethnic and cultural groups in California textbooks and curriculum.
In other words, it is hard to imagine that historically significant lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are not already being included. The real change here is that while those in the "LGBT" crowd used to scream for others to "stay out of their bedroom," they now demand that their bedroom be put in everyone's classroom.
The absurdity of the law can be seen when considering that despite the proclivity of lowbrow boasting, rarely does a person's bedroom behavior actually make the person worthy of historical veneration - a fact that undoubtedly contributes to so many students finding history class "boring." In fact, when a person's sexual activity might actually be germane, it is almost always for scandalous reasons; and, ironically, this probably couldn't be covered since negative associations with a person's lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender identity is specifically banned by the law. Therefore, according to this new law, sexual preference rather than actual historical significance will determine inclusion.
All of this means that rather than relying on historians and teachers to do their jobs - stem the tide of cultural and historical ignorance - California politicians have rushed in and demanded that historians and teachers (K-12) waste time endorsing sexual preferences rather than covering their actual subject. And, yes, the law makes no distinction for age or grade level - including, assumedly, little Johnny's and Suzy's kindergarten class.
Such action makes sense only in a bizarre world where political "leaders" of an economically bankrupt state ignore pressing needs in order to tilt at politically correct windmills. Sweetening the irony is the fact that the legislators' usurpation of others' jobs (and dereliction of their own) places more financial burdens on their already strapped school system by demanding the purchase of new textbooks and curriculum.
Of course, the tragic ironies of SB 48 do not end with economics. Proponents of SB 48 trumpet the law as "anti-bullying," but "bullying" is the mildest term one could have for a law that dictates public teachers trample the values of millions of parents, children, and taxpayers in addition to disregarding their own professional opinions and personal beliefs.
For those thankful that their residency insulates them from the folly of California legislators, it is important to remember that despite laws to the contrary, the United States does have a national curriculum. That curriculum is created by textbook companies, which must cater to high population states. Thereby, while the nation need not fear the actions of Wyoming's legislature, which publishers will ignore, California's de jure educational mandates often become the de facto curriculum for the entire country.
Selecting historical subjects through a myopic lens of sexual preference is simply bad history - a crime egregious enough to outrage Clio. Furthermore, for freedom lovers nationwide, it is also outrageous educational practice and heinous lawmaking. *
Haven Bradford Gow is a T.V. and radio commentator and writer who teaches religion to children at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Greenville, Mississippi.
In one game during the 2010 baseball season, an opposing team's pitcher threw a fastball that hit New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's bat; however, Mr. Jeter started grimacing in apparent pain and kept dancing around home plate like the fastball had hit him on the wrist. Fooled by Mr. Jeter's great acting performance, the umpire awarded first base to the Yankee shortstop.
In sharp contrast, in 2006, during a soccer match between Framingham State College and Bridgewater State College, a referee mistakenly awarded a goal to Framingham State when the ball had really gone through the side of the net instead of the front of it; the Framingham players - in a spirit of fair play and good sportsmanship - informed their coach who, in turn, told the referee, who refused to change the call. So Framingham proceeded to let Bridgewater State College score an uncontested point.
In 1954, during a football game between Oklahoma and Texas Christian, the Sooners were ahead in fourth quarter 21-16 when TCU proceeded to march down the field and score an apparent touchdown on a pass into the end zone. However, the receiver admitted to the referee that he had trapped the ball instead of receiving it cleanly, thereby nullifying the touchdown pass.
During a college softball game in April, 2008, a young lady on the Western Oregon team hit a homerun but injured her right knee while rounding first base; two players on the opposing Central Washington team proceeded to carry the injured Western Oregon player around the bases so the homerun would stand.
As philosophy teachers Craig Clifford and Randolph Feezell point out in Sport & Character (Human Kinetics):
Sport provides an arena in which good character can be developed and practiced. . . . Young people can learn to be persistent, determined, respectful, trustworthy, courageous, responsible, fair, and honest. . . . Sport and life are connected, not because there are winners and losers in life, but because good character matters in both.
When Breanna Lewis played basketball for Greenville-Weston High School, she was the heart and soul of her girls' basketball team. Watching Breanna's fine and graceful defensive play, dribbling, passing, and shooting was like watching poetry in motion. In one game, she scored 13 points to lead her team to victory. Breanna is such a fine and graceful player and shooter that had she taken most of her team's shots, she easily could have scored at least 30 points; but Breanna chose to be an unselfish team player and pass the ball to her teammates so they could develop and display their skills.
Breanna's unselfish team play and good sportsmanship showed character development can and must go hand in hand with athletic development.
Breanna also displayed good character and sportsmanship in a game with Vicksburg High School. A star player on the Vicksburg game kept verbally and mentally abusing Breanna during the whole contest. Instead of trying to retaliate against the player, Breanna ignored the abuse and showed grace and good sportsmanship.
Today, Breanna is displaying good character and sportsmanship as an important player on the Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City, Florida. *
Earl Tilford is a military historian and fellow for the Middle East & Terrorism with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. A retired Air Force intelligence officer, Earl Tilford earned his Ph.D. in American and European military history at George Washington University. From 1993 to 2001, he served as Director of Research at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute. In 2001, he left Government service for a professorship at Grove City College, where he taught courses in military history, national security, and international and domestic terrorism and counter-terrorism. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, the Duke of Cambridge wrote, "There is a time for all things. There is even a time for change; and that is when it can no longer be avoided."
Speaking of change, the current debt crisis could force drastic cuts in the Department of Defense budget, perhaps as high as 50 percent.
In the immediate post-Cold War era, DoD futurists envisioned a 25-year period of "strategic pause" before the nation faced a "major peer competitor" sometime between 2015 and 2020. In the 1990s, major candidates for peer-competitor status included China and a resurgent Russia. India and a nuclear-armed Iran were cast as lesser threats. In those heady days, terrorism was seen as a tactic and more the purview of law enforcement. The major emphasis was on being prepared for big wars against peer competitors - wars no world power can afford to lose. Preparing for those wars also satisfied each service's need to perpetuate itself in familiar ways wrapped around developing and acquiring high-tech weapon systems. Programs like "The Army After Next," "From the Sea," and "Air Force Next" addressed future strategic paradigms focused on parochial core strengths.
To be sure, there were cuts in defense spending during the 1990s. The size of the American military shrank. The Air Force, alone among the services, reorganized its force structure from one based on strategic deterrence to power projection. Cuts were "salami slices" that, for the most part, reduced but did not reform outmoded force structures.
And then, September 11, 2001, changed everything. In the immediate aftermath, the Bush administration made a major mistake by declaring a "War on Terror" rather than specifying the enemy as al Qaeda, associated groups, and nations that support them. With a generic "terror" as the enemy, the war easily morphed from one into two wars, with Operation Iraqi Freedom launched in March 2003. Ten years later, the fighting in Iraq continues, and what was originally a campaign to root out and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan has become an endless struggle against the Taliban. This war has exhausted the American military, contributed to our national economic nightmare, and derailed critical thinking about the future.
This exhausted force is also outmoded. Cutting such a force by a quarter, much less half, would invite aggression by nations like Iran and North Korea. Keeping the current force at the status quo would be expensive and also leave the nation vulnerable to current threats and unable to cope with a rapidly growing Chinese threat.
The U.S. military needs massive restructuring. Its current structure originated with the reforms instituted in 1903 after the Spanish-American War. A major overhaul on the eve of World War II made it possible to fight the Axis powers. The National Security Act of 1947 institutionalized the Industrial Age force extant today. Now, the armed forces of the United States would be hard-pressed to counter a North Korean invasion of South Korea without using nuclear weapons.
In fact, war on the Korean peninsula is one of our immediate threats. Iran, soon to be a nuclear-armed state, is bent on establishing hegemony in the world's energy epicenter. Despite a predictably forthcoming declaration of "victory" in the ill-conceived War on Terror, al Qaeda and associated groups will continue to attack U.S. interests abroad while putting the nation on the defensive at home.
An anti-American alliance between Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and possibly Cuba is not beyond the realm of possibility. If Mexico continues to descend into anarchy, that alliance could extend to our immediate and undefended southern border; imagine the cost of trying to fortify it sufficiently to keep it secure.
Slicing the salami thicker will result in fewer divisions, cutting new weapons acquisition, and trimming at the edges by reducing costs associated with professional military education. This is like starting a weight reduction with a frontal lobotomy and removing a few fingers. What is needed is drastic restructuring of the armed forces, massive reduction in the associated bureaucracy, and major changes in the way officers are educated.
Meanwhile, China is building a first-class fighting force, one capable of global power projection. While Russia's ability to project power remains questionable, its modernization programs focus on high-tech weaponry and on revitalizing nuclear forces.
Critics argue that the United States now spends more on its military than the next 10 nations combined. True. A lot of that goes to sustaining force structures that are redundant, unnecessary, and ill-suited for Information Age warfare. Much of it goes to personnel costs (including retirement), maintaining bases and posts that are no longer needed, and unnecessary civilian personnel. There is much that can be cut, but also much more that needs to be restructured if the United States is to survive the challenges beyond 2015.
The U.S. Department of Defense must restructure to accommodate deep budget cuts and, more important, be ready for the challenges of 21st-century warfare. Those challenges will include unconventional operations and wars fought in vastly expanded battle spaces. Reforms are needed in three areas.
First, today's DoD - structured around land, air, and sea forces to accommodate Industrial Age conflict - is inadequate for Information Age warfare. The U.S. Air Force received separate service status in 1947 by a mating of the atomic bomb to the long-range delivery system of the day, the B-29 bomber. For five decades, air-power enthusiasts argued that air power formed the tip of the spear while land and sea forces constituted the supporting shaft. That is no longer the case.
Human-piloted combat aircraft undergird the Air Force's reason for being. It is likely that the 20 B-2 bombers currently in the inventory, at $2 billion dollars a copy, will be the last of the manned bombers. Additionally, the F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter developed by the United States. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be the fighting platforms of the future. They can do more for less cost because UAVs are not designed for pilot survivability. Additionally, in the current war, the Air Force has been the supporting - rather than the supported - service. It's time to reintegrate the Air Force into the U.S. Army. This eliminates an entire service with accompanying bureaucracies while minimally expanding an Army likely to experience reductions throughout its other branches.
The U.S. Navy should assume primary responsibility for space and cyber warfare. Movement in space is more analogous to that at sea than it is to operations on land or air. The global reach of the Navy also makes it appropriate to place cyber operations under its purview.
Second, since warfare is foremost a mental and secondly a physical endeavor, DoD needs to restructure officer education. In the interest of building a truly seamless force, the three service academies should be closed and then consolidated into a single National Defense University located in Washington, D.C. Additionally, the professional military education system can be streamlined by doing away with the individual service schools for junior, mid-level and senior officers. Schools like the Air, Army, and Naval war colleges would become part of the National Defense University. Military physicians and lawyers, after completing basic medical and legal training at civilian universities, can be prepared for military service at the NDU. Students could also take courses at the universities within the District of Columbia's educational consortium.
NDU's graduate courses (replacing the current war colleges) would offer real masters and doctoral level courses. Individual service "think tanks" associated with the various war colleges exist primarily to support host service prerogatives. As in any civilian university, research and writing at NDU would be expected of all faculty members. A single, consolidated think tank might be established at NDU with resulting cost savings in personnel. This reform would close three academies: close the Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps command and staff colleges; close the Army, Naval, Marine Corps, and Air war colleges; and reduce facilities at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and Quantico, Virginia.
Eliminating three service academies reduces overhead costs and also might ameliorate the pernicious effects of inter-service rivalries by educating all officers at a single, integrated institution. An entering freshman class of 4,000 to 5,000 should provide enough entry-level Army and Naval officers. To further military diversity, ROTC would provide 2,000 to 3,000 officers a year, but ROTC should be restricted to the 50 to 75 top-rated academic institutions.
Third, allowing officers to retire at half pay after 20 years of service, and forcing them to retire (in most cases) at some point between 24 and 32 years, is a waste of human skills and money. Service careers should run between 25 and 40 years. Concomitantly, the number of flag-rank officers should be reduced by at least 50 percent. Older officers can be moved to desk jobs or, if academically qualified, serve as faculty at NDU or in ROTC units.
Finally, close the Pentagon. It was built to accommodate a bureaucracy needed to field and operationalize the Industrial Age armed forces of World War II. The tendency is for bureaucracies to fill empty space and once in place, become entrenched. The Pentagon would make a fabulous privately run retirement complex with enough room for a shopping mall, restaurants, a gymnasium, and even a hospital. A restructured DoD could be housed in the Forrestal Building in downtown Washington.
This restructuring streamlines bureaucracies, utilizes human capital and potential more effectively, and fosters a seamless interaction between the services. Armed forces exist to fight and win the nation's wars. A leaner, better-educated force can meet the challenges of Information Age Warfare and do it at considerably less cost. *
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The World-renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (published by Richard Vigilante Books). He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Editor's note: This article first appeared at Financial Post. This article is reprinted with permission from Lawrence Solomon.
New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun - not humans
The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won't be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun - not human activities - as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
The research, published with little fanfare this week [the week of Aug 27] in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from ber-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world's largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth's atmosphere.
In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done - demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth's atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun's magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth's atmosphere (the stronger the sun's magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.
The hypothesis that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." He then set about discrediting the theory, and any journalist that gave the theory credence, and most of all the Danes presenting the theory - soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials.
The mobilization to rally the press against the Danes worked brilliantly, with one notable exception. Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory's importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber - he called it CLOUD, for "Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets."
But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had - not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.
"The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth's temperature that we have seen in the last century," Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth's temperature.
The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes' groundbreaking theory.
Yet this spectacular success will be largely unrecognized by the general public for years - this column will be the first that most readers have heard of it - because CERN remains too afraid of offending its government masters to admit its success. Weeks ago, CERN formerly decided to muzzle Mr. Kirby and other members of his team to avoid "the highly political arena of the climate change debate," telling them "to present the results clearly but not interpret them" and to downplay the results by "mak[ing] clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters." The CERN study and press release is written in bureaucratese and the version of Mr. Kirkby's study that appears in the print edition of Nature censored the most eye-popping graph - only those who know where to look in an online supplement will see the striking potency of cosmic rays in creating the conditions for seeding clouds.
CERN, and the Danes, have in all likelihood found the path to the Holy Grail of climate science. But the religion of climate science won't yet permit a celebration of the find. *
Editor's Note: This essay was written many years ago.
You are without principle if you think only of happiness. Should you not be unhappy and grieved in your soul in the face of evil or stupidity? If the world has been carried forward, it has been carried forward by unhappy people who have worked with full strength to correct the abuses either of those in power who have been wicked, or of those who have been so blind that they have not known the difference between right and wrong. Josiah Royce was an eminent American philosopher (1885-1916), and he was a Hegelian. Believing that the evil in the world was part of the goodness of the universe when seen from the point of view of God, he believed progress was made from action and reaction, thesis and antithesis; there was no need for him to be alarmed when a German submarine sank the passenger ship Lusitania. According to his theory, this was a necessary act in the unfolding of events; he was to survey whatever happened with philosophic disdain. But he was enraged by the sinking, calling it the work of barbarians! His capacity for contradiction, proof that his moral soul was more comprehensive than his intended cold rationality, the unhappiness that made him leave the professorial closet to damn evil as evil - this proved that he was a good man. He was unhappy in the presence of evil.
But happiness is not so easily dismissed. We will not admit that the good man must be always unhappy. Let a man argue for a hundred years that only animals are happy and that human unrest is prompted by the divine - we are not convinced. We cannot always find the words to refute our protagonist, but we believe that there must be some mistake in his argument. We do not want the happiness of pigs, but we do not despise happiness. We are more than animals, and we are aware of our duty. But the man who thinks only of good and evil, who is unhappy unless he is busied in reform, who is so pure and so constant in his purity that he grows a long nose the better to sniff with - this man is warped in his virtue. Some will say he is an angel, but he would do better to get some of the strong earth under his delicate fingernails.
Some people with private income are convinced that life is evil. With their refinement and learning they talk at the cocktail hour of what is to be done to save their stupid inferiors, or, if they are charitable, to pass their time, they form do-good societies for the advancement of those who work. From a pinnacle of sadness, some of the idle rich look with contempt on the grown and hearty who live with relish, though they be poor. Thinking those without wealth are to be pitied, the idle rich want to give even of their wealth so that the life of the poor may be better. If the poor accept the advice and help of these idle ones, a sad reformation is effected. The poor forget to work; they lose their pride; they shortly become objects of pity. The reformers gloat over their possibilities, now the poor know that they are to be pitied, but the idle rich quickly forget that it is they who told the poor they were unfortunate. Until this great news arrived, the poor were among the happiest. Some admired and called them blessed.
The poor had better do without culture and the blessings of refinement and luxury, if by receiving them they are made to doubt the blessedness that they have known for centuries, and if they are paralyzed so that, instead of working with good cheer, they become lazy, rebellious, and unhappy. By all means fight against stupidity, by all means try to make the callous more sensitive, but make people sensitive to beauty rather than to appetite. We are to help our fellows, not by telling them they are unfortunate, but by drawing for them a picture of what is good. We will communicate not unhappiness but joy. We will teach our friends how to be brave and vivacious. We will work to abolish indifference. We will not tell people that life is dull, bad, or ugly. The poorest have had this wonderful quality; they have known how to be happy.
Ordinary people are wonderfully tenacious of happiness. One is absorbed in his garden, and another is just as absorbed in something else. As we could not stand the strain of having to think every morning of how to fold our tie, neither could we stand the strain of having to find happiness in everything that we do. We are saved by the dumb contentment that carries us through the many tasks of each day. If we are not appreciative of this, if we cannot live with some gusto, we are the ones to be pitied, and we are the ones who are in need of reformation. Lacking a magic in our veins that will enable us to know joy, we give proof that something is lacking in our faith.
The great mass are peaceful and happy, but they are disturbed by petty ones who think it their duty to fight and scratch. These petty ones bring war and unrest; they disrupt every organization they enter. Their discontent is devilish rather than divine. The bulk of people know they must respect others, tolerate differences, and live peaceably; they know that all important acts are accomplished through patience, goodwill, and love. The masses are humble. They know that life began about five billion years ago and will end in another five billion years. One of these days, the sun will cool, then get hot; will enlarge, explode, and shrink; life as we know it will cease. The great bulk of people know that they must be humble, cooperate rather than fight, only goodness is worth attention, and the mystery of life will be continued by those who have inward beauty and become part of the great mystery which arose we know not when nor how.
Our traditional happiness has been upset by democratic madness. We have been taught until we have believed it - the nonsense that all are equal. We give a person the right to vote - well, just because. We say there is no difference between a carpenter and a doctor, a machinist and a lawyer, a banker and a salesman, a cleric and a painter. No one ever said one was better than the other, but the one is a fool who sees no difference. Even if it were true that all are equal, good manners should prevent us from saying so; but bad manners have accompanied the growth of democracy. We have torn down walls that separate people so that the commonest criticize and demand what only the best have earned. Respect for difference, position, and tradition have been replaced by democratic scratching. The happiness that was the birthright of everyone and which we enjoyed with considerable success for thousands of years has been supplanted by democratic madness. I want to know the contentment of the one who, in wiser times, grew to maturity slowly and quietly, like a cabbage.
Happiness has eluded us because we have followed politicians rather than our inward resolutions. Politicians are men of the least importance, busy as they are tending to others' business, telling everyone how to live, what to learn, how to die. Politicians think legislation will put an end to fraud, injustice, and all forms of rascality, and they are surprised and hurt when good people tell them the truth: reprobates must give up eating and drinking, laziness and immorality; an evil state will not be cured by laws, and a good state does not need them. Politicians cannot measure, and those who tell them that they are ten feet tall are believed, for they do not know how to measure. They have heard the applause of the multitude to whom they have given gifts (with others' money), and they have been deluded into thinking that they are statesmen. But good people, the truly happy, know that God is the only lawmaker, and happiness comes from obedience to the divine call; if the state is rotten, we need purity of heart; if the state is pure, we need to pass no laws. Unhappiness is a keynote today because we are pursuing happiness without divine promptings. We are in profound error when we agree with politicians that legislation can make men happy. Happiness is an inward possession of those who are content with goodness, whatever their material lot. Preachers are of far greater importance than modern, pompous, pontificating politicians who, with a new type of preaching, are trying to usurp the function of the Christian faith with doctrines of materialism and false equality.
Love of money and politicians have combined to tell us that happiness is proportional to our possession of things; but the truth, which is the opposite, comes to us sooner or later. When we were young, we thought that to possess a fine automobile and other luxuries was the highest goal in life. We saw people who held places of prominence, and we were convinced that these, of all, must be the most happy. Part of our maturity is born when we know prominent people firsthand. No sooner do we get a glimpse of their inner life than we realize they have sacrificed their best part for the sake of prominence. The famous are not made happy by having big cars or newspaper headlines. If they were wise, if they had the character to renounce their prominence, they would get out of the pit that they have dug and which others mistakenly admire; they would renounce the mad pursuit of what does not matter. Many prominent people fear to lose face, and they spend their days sadly continuing mistakes they know they could and should avoid.
Happiness comes from the inner self. Our unhappiness with externals drives us inward. In desperation, when we are children, we try to drown out the voice of the inner self by being a part of the roar of the world's excitement; but we cannot shake a nagging deep inside. Never has there been a tongue nimble enough to refute the voice within. We struggle for a long time between two forces: the claims of the external and those other claims, and only when the inner voice triumphs do we know happiness. Happiness is the contentment that comes with reliance on the eternal. Happiness is contentment with the good. Happiness is the knowledge that we have been steadfast with a good conscience. If we recall contradictions and live with the knowledge of a divided spirit, something must give place to a deeper demand. We must have peace in our spirits. Happiness is dependent on this inner peace.
We advance in the esteem of our fellows, but we are not satisfied. We are successful and want not bread for ourselves nor for our children, but something is missing. We seek for something we may never find. More than sense, more than intelligence, there is something heavenly that we can feel but may never know. This unknowable treasure so excites us that all other pleasures and delights are as nothing. Happiness is the pursuit of perfection, and we are not complete until we lay hold on it. If we reach our goal, nothing further is to be attained. Our souls are content and fully satisfied. They rejoice without thirst. They agree with the Psalmist:
O taste and see that the Lord is good!
Happy is the man who takes refuge in him!
O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no want!
The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. *
The following is a summary of the August, 2011, issue of The St. Croix Review.
In "Lying About the Debt Ceiling" Barry MacDonald describes the dishonesty in the debate on raising the ceiling, and he suggests a course of action.
In the "Letters to The St. Croix Review," John Ingraham questions whether Mark Hendrickson's view (published in the June issue) of Paul Ryan's budget proposal is too harsh, and Mark Hendrickson responds.
Mark Hendrickson, in "Jefferson Versus Hamilton: The Continuing Contest" writes about the Founding of the nation, and he compares these great Founders; in "Thanks, Pop," he describes the strong, independent character of his father; in "The High-Stakes Showdown Over Medicare Reform," he believes Americans have yet to learn the lesson that huge bureaucracies are inherently inefficient; in "My Congressman's Tough Job," he points out why it's so hard to cut federal spending; in "Swindling America's Youth," he says the young will can never repay all of the federal government's debt and unfunded promises - he considers the consequences; in "The Global Energy Superpower," he reveals the enormous wealth in coal, oil, and natural gas the U.S. has, and the lack of political will to use it; in "Millionaires in America," he outlines two ways of getting rich - through the free market or government connections; in "Who Objects to Free Speech?" he cites recent and historical attacks made on our most basic right.
In "Downgrading America: S&P Declares the Obvious," Fred Kingery writes that the financial markets are prepared punish America's politicians and taxpayers if we do not curb our exploding spending.
Herbert London, in "Environmental Activism," writes that activists successfully use propaganda and intimidation to thwart development of America's plentiful energy resources; in "The Nation's Economic Future" he says political bickering makes another financial collapse more likely; in "The World of Political Discourse Enjoins the Imagination" he shows that politics involves the creation of make-believe metaphors with tenuous connection to truth; in "Fin de Siecle Attitude" he describes the chaotic and disorienting state of American culture; in "Fraud Up and Down the Education System" he believes all levels of education are corrupted.
Allan Brownfeld, in "In Contemporary American Society, Truth Is in Increasingly Short Supply," he cites examples of lying from politics, business, sports, publishing, and more; in "Can a Free Society Endure if It Does Not Teach Its History and Its Values to the Next Generation?" he shows how distressingly ignorant of history American students are, and he blames decisions made by federal and state policy makers; in "European Leaders Are Turning Against Multi-culturalism - a Dilemma Faced by Our Own Society as Well," he says that immigrants should integrate and participate in national traditions.
Paul Kengor, in "Obama's Inalienables," shows the President tampering with the Declaration of Independence; in "Chesterton's Stars & Stripes" he writes that Chesterton foresaw America's role as the bulwark of Christianity; in "This Fourth of July: Confirm Thy Soul in Self-Control" he writes about the urgency of instilling virtue in our culture; in "Obama vs. the Bushes: Comparing Costs and Coalitions from Libya to Iraq" he shows how far below standard Obama is; in "Thirty Years Ago: When President Reagan Was Shot" he reveals new details of Reagan's changed perspective and sense of mission as a result of the attack.
In "The Seriousness of Budget Games: How to Play 'Spin the Budget,'" Murray Weidenbaum, who was Ronald Reagan's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, exposes how politicians hide the enormous amount of money they are spending.
Haven Bradford Gow, in "Morality and Economics," writes that when considering the health of a nation, addressing only economics and politics is inadequate - people need to learn courtesy, kindness, honesty, decency, moral courage, etc.
Tracy Miller, in "Our Health Is Over-insured!" believes that the cost of healthcare would be greatly reduced if each of us paid for routine care ourselves.
In "Persist for Airport Freedom," Joseph Horton believes the indignities suffered during security screenings do not make passengers safer and should not be tolerated.
Durlin and Jenkin, in "Conservative Magazines: A Survey," review The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Commentary that focus on the turmoil in the Middle East; and they highly recommend "Beyond the Welfare State," by Yuval Levin in the spring issue of National Affairs.
In "Versed in Country Things - Invitation to the Simple Life," Jigs Gardner relates his family's transition into country living when he leased a Vermont farm for two years for $270 in 1962. He meets odd people, and learns surprising lessons.
In "Writers for Conservatives: 34 - Daniel Defoe and Verisimilitude," Jigs Gardner discusses Defoe's great gift, as revealed in the "person" of Robinson Crusoe.
Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review. Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
In December 1961 my teaching contract was not renewed, which meant that in six months I would be without a job and salary, and since I had a family to support, I began looking for another job. The possibilities were uninteresting, and my heart really wasn't in it. I liked teaching, but I was increasingly irked by the academic milieu, and the prospect of a lowly job (I would never be more than an instructor) in a second-rate college was not alluring. We had a friend in northern Vermont, now a farmer but once a colleague at another college, who, having often urged me to quit teaching and move north, was full of schemes for us to make a go of it there. We had been impressed, on our visits, by the pastoralism still predominant there in the neat small villages in the narrow valleys. Willie's farmhouse was on a gravel road back in the hills bordered by stone walls and shadowed by majestic elms. Broad fields rose gradually beyond the orchard to a wooded ridge. A team of horses, a small herd of Jersey cows, a flock of hens, and two pigs filled in the bucolic picture. His sister Ann Woodwright, married to a local farmer, had a farm a couple of miles along the road, an esthetic blockbuster. The small house, snugly built long ago of squared timbers, wainscoted and plastered within, blended country plainness with restrained sophistication. The white walls were stenciled with a few pale red and blue flower designs; the polished black cast iron range gleamed darkly (there was a sleek modern kitchen around the corner); in the big bedroom upstairs Bible verses celebrating marriage were stenciled in a continuous dark blue line along the wall above the baseboard, around and over the door and windows; there were small touches of color and decoration here and there (but never too many) that charmed the eye. The milk from their small herd of Jerseys was sold to the creamery in the village; they employed a hired man; Bob Woodwright tapped a sugarbush and sold excellent syrup; much of the work was done with horses; they were building a handsome new barn. Furthermore, all these people read books and magazines, listened to (and made) music, were informed about public matters, and could spend time to sit over a cup of tea and talk to a visitor. In short, everything said, "This is a Beautiful Life."
As winter gave way to spring and the job offers didn't improve, Willie's urgings were more and more tempting, so I wrote and asked him to look into places to rent. One weekend in May we went north to see what he had found. This was long before the Vermont boom, so there were plenty of country places - house, barn, fields, woods - standing empty, renting for twenty to thirty dollars a month, livable places where a few animals could be kept, just what we were looking for. Of the several houses we looked at that day, nearly all were possible, but the last one had the near-perfection of the Woodwright place.
On a remote narrow road that clung to the edge of a steep hillside, it was an old storey and a half farmhouse vertically sheathed in silvery-gray barn boards. The bank of windows across the front looked out across the hillside and valley below to a range of hills. The owner, Ralph Corbin, had left suddenly the fall before to take a job overseas, and everything had been left as if he had just stepped out. We peered through the windows into a book-lined study and then into the main room: barn boards covered two walls and a third was papered with topographical maps of the region. The furniture was sturdy, simple, good-looking. A tiny kitchen area with woodstove, sink, shelves, and counter occupied a corner with a pantry next to it. One door led into a bedroom, another to a study and to bedrooms upstairs. The former kitchen wing was now the mudroom and storage area, and beyond it a large room had been added to house a print shop with a foot treadle press, stacks of paper, fonts of type, and other implements of the printing trade. A mudroom is a large vestibule where outdoor gear, like boots, are kept.
The barn was perfect for us: a small stable set up for one cow and some hens with ample room beyond it for a horse or pig. The stone foundation walls of a much larger barn were visible, sheltering the garden area and plantings of rhubarb, red currants, perennial herbs, and old-fashioned tall hollyhocks. There was a small fenced pasture on the hill behind the house, a large hayfield, a nearby brook and a wood beside and above the house. Water flowed by gravity from a spring a half mile away in woods beyond the hayfield, piped directly to the kitchen sink with secondary lines to the stable and to a small brick box built on the edge of a hollowed-out ledge, a tiny pond beside the house. The box served as a refrigerator, a miniature spring house, there being no electricity. There was a privy (regular seat, two windows, cement catchment areas with clean out door) attached to the barn, and finally, pretty flower gardens along the front of the house. I will have some hard things to say about Corbin before I'm done, but I must say that he and his wife had an eye for beautiful simplicity that made living there, despite our trials, an enduring pleasure. It was already rented for the summer, so we leased it, beginning September first, for two years for $270.
The most important thing, what became a key to another world, was revealed in the print shop when Willie picked up a thin booklet and handed it to me. "Corbin wrote this; you might find it useful." It was called "Towards Simple Living." The name will probably alert most of my readers, but it meant nothing to us; we were complete innocents. We were attracted to Corbin's place, and we wanted to get away from academic life, and that was all that was in our heads. We weren't accustomed to looking ahead, we weren't careerists, we weren't even prudent. To say that we were unworldly is the understatement of the year; we were better described as anti-worldly. We had no idea what we were doing or where we were going. You would think that a booklet describing a way of life based on this house would be a powerful influence on our lives, and it was and it wasn't, as I shall explain in a moment. First let me describe the booklet.
It introduced us to a concept, a way of thinking and acting, an informal movement and a collection of individuals - all wholly bogus - that would shadow our lives as a sort of parallel universe hovering over us, a veil obscuring to onlookers our real lives, even today. Corbin made all the claims I would later recognize as hallmarks of the genre: that by living the Simple Life he avoided the harassing complications and rampant materialism of modern life; freed from the drudgery of earning money he had time to cultivate the higher aspects of life; by foregoing what the world was pleased to call riches, he acquired spiritual riches, and so on. For example, when his wife scrubbed sheets in the tiny pond beside the house, Ralph sat under an apple tree and read poetry to her, surely a much more edifying, more spiritual act than driving to a laundromat in town. The tone was smug, condescending, even contemptuous. In time, in a couple of years, I would realize that Corbin was a bush league Scott Nearing, but then I knew nothing.
You would think, given our ignorance, that we would be easily duped, but we were saved by an education that trained us to think critically about the printed word, and we found the tone off-putting, and all the simpering about the virtues of his life made us uneasy. We came away as agnostics, neither believing nor disbelieving, but we were interested and curious, wondering if our move might have more meaning that we thought.
I have said that we were innocent and imprudent; that, too, is another understatement, but its full meaning will come out in our story. It is enough now to tell you that I was about to turn twenty-nine, Jo Ann was twenty-seven, and we had four children, Seth, Jesse, Nell, and Curdie, aged from seven to two. Our assets were a cow, a dozen hens, the produce from our summer's garden, and $300.
On Saturday evening of the Labor Day weekend in 1962, we drove north in a truck, three or four cars accompanying us, from Massachusetts to Corbin's place. Our companions were former students and friends come to help us get started, and the trip was regarded as a gay lark. One of the group slipped ahead and lit the lamps, so when we arrived and walked into the house, into the warm yellow light cast by the oil lamps, it was as if we were being welcomed to a new life already prepared for us.
Breakfast was barely over next morning when the cow, brought from the Woodwrights, arrived in a truck, and I, sensing that my friends expected me to demonstrate my farmerhood, casually led the cow up to the pasture behind the house. Standing there for a moment, looking down on the farm, watching smoke rise from the chimney, I did feel like Farmer Jigs surveying his domain. As I started back, an old green pickup drove into the yard.
When I got down to the house, the driver, a dirty, strongly-built man who looked forty-five or so, but was in his late thirties, with tiny almost slanted eyes and closely cropped hair, was grinning at some joke evidently not shared by the others, who were watching him with unsmiling faces.
"I was just asking whether they thought you'd last the winter, heh heh."
I was to know Phil Otis for nine years, and I doubt if I heard him make more than half a dozen straight statements; everything was couched in mocking negatives pointed by the "heh heh" that was more a dying wheeze than a chuckle. I became so used to his manner that I hardly noticed it, but he certainly did his best that morning to deflate our spirits.
"I spilled a quart of milk on the running board last Christmas and it stayed frozen there till May, heh heh."
He delivered these happy gems like a morbid standup comic, one line after another, until I managed to interrupt the gloomy flow to find out that he lived in the dark house we could see on the other side of the steep gorge that split the hill, directly opposite us but somewhat lower, across half a mile of space. I asked him, thinking of his dire predictions, if he had painted it black to absorb this sun's heat.
"There's damned little heat for it to absorb. That's tarpaper sheathing; it isn't finished yet, heh heh," he said shortly, as if he were put out by the question. As he got back in his truck he said, "Corbin never stayed the winter, you know, heh heh."
I dismissed that as more of his dismalness, because I was sure Corbin said he lived there year 'round.
We were unloading our household goods when another pickup appeared bearing a ruddy-faced farmer, Elias Turgeon, a school board member there to discuss the enrollement of our two boys in the first and second grades of the village school. They would have to walk eastward down the hill a mile and a half to the highway to meet the bus; the other way, up and over the hill westward to the village, was two and a half miles and a bus couldn't drive up the hill in winter because of wind and ice. Before he left, he told us some of the history of the Corbin place where his family, the last people to really farm it, lived in the 1930s.
We finished unloading the truck just as another visitor came, a woman driving an old jeep with a heap of baskets in the back. She was small, with graying hair pulled back into an untidy bun, wearing khaki pants and a faded flannel shirt. Where were we from? What were we doing? What were our plans? There was no finesse in her approach; she just cornered me on the porch and interrogated me in a strong Brooklyn accent. Her attention was distracted, however, by the sight through a window of the table set for lunch. When the food began to be laid out, her questions became so perfunctory and she paid so little attention to my answers that I invited her in for lunch.
I must have known her full name once, but all I can recall is "Mrs. B.," the name by which everyone knew her. She said she had a summer place down on the highway where she stayed from May to November, when her husband came to fetch her home. It was hard to pry that much out of her; she was as secretive as she was nosey. She ate a lot but made it seem much less by the way she picked at her food, asking questions all the time. Was the food organic? Munch munch. Did we read Organic Gardening? Munch munch. Did we know about the happy Hunzas? It was impossible to kid her. She was humorless, pursuing her whacky queries in a loud, edgy voice, ignoring our little jokes.
At the end of the meal, still reaching for any tidbits in sight, she announced that she had come to harvest the garden planted there by the woman who had lived here in the summer, implying by a muttered jumble of words that Mrs. Allen had promised it to her. This was delivered as she was going out the door, and she moved so fast that she was gathering her baskets at the jeep before I could catch up with her.
"Mrs. Allen left this note for me," I said holding it out.
"I don't have my glasses," she said over her shoulder.
I went ahead, blocking her way. "It says she's coming by next Saturday to pick the garden, and she asks me to keep an eye on it."
Mrs. B. peered to either side, estimating her chances, but finally she turned, said something about a "misunderstanding," climbed back into her jeep, and drove off. I was amused. As I finally learned nearly two years later (and it was Jo Ann who had to teach me) it was a mistake to treat her as a joke; miserly greed is heartless.
The task of milking the cow loomed at the end of the day. Although I had worked on farms for years, and I knew the theory, I had never done it. Nor did I have the muscle. My forearms would get so tired that I could use only one hand at a time, frequently changing, and it was a couple of months before I could milk with both hands simultaneously. That evening I took more than an hour. Luckily, Aster (all the Woodwright's cows had picturesque names - it was part of the scene) was an old, in fact very old cow who didn't take offence at my manhandling of her teats as a younger cow would. Done, I thought at last, turning her back into the pasture. But I had doubts, so I went after her and milked her right there in the pasture. Eventually satisfied, I started for the house, but again assailed by doubts, I turned back. Even Aster had her limits, and when she saw me coming she fled right out of the pasture - not difficult since the fence was a ruin. Our friends caught her and held her on the front lawn for the third milking. I'll spare you the details of two more assaults on the poor cow, once back in the stable and once tied to the pasture fence, but I secured all her milk.
When we tried the milk the next morning we were disappointed: it had a slightly dirty taste, not sour, but just not the wholesome flavor of fresh milk. Well, we said, that's our luck - some cows taste better than others. When Willie came by that morning to see how we were doing and learned about the milk, he reached for a cup off the shelf, took my arm, and headed for the pasture.
"There's nothing wrong with Aster's milk. I'll show you."
He held her collar and told me to milk a little into the cup. Fortunately he was on the other side, so he couldn't see me straining. My performance in the stable that morning was an improvement, but it was still an alarming sight.
"What in hell are you doing?" he asked impatiently.
"All done," I said, struggling to my feet.
"Why's your face so red?"
"Sunburn."
He took a sip and handed the cup back. "Nothing wrong with that."
I tried it and it tasted fine.
"Let's see your milk pail."
The dented old galvanized bucket was clean enough; I had scrubbed it meticulously before I used it, but as Willie pointed out, it had seams and there would always be dirt in seams no matter how hard I scrubbed - we needed a seamless bucket. Which is how our porcelainized diaper pail, cover and all, became our primary milk bucket, remaining so for over thirty years. We had no trouble with the milk after that.
Next installment: the "Simple Life" continued. *
Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write from Brownsville, Minnesota.
We thought to have a lively survey of conservative responses to the Middle East ferment, knowing that some conservatives are opposed to overseas adventures, others are uneasy, while neoconservatives are proponents of forthright interventions, but as time passed and events played themselves out, conservative opinions seemed to coalesce into a general wariness, and the marked attitudes of February lost their singularity by May.
The Weekly Standard was optimistic at first:
An Americanism that looks back to 1776 cannot turn its back on the Egyptian people . . . [they] want to exercise their capacity for self-government. American conservatives, heir to our own bold and far-sighted revolutionaries, should help them.
National Review, as we noted in our last survey, was much more cautious, and the March Commentary had an article on Egypt, detailing our mistaken investment in the Mubarak regime, while John Podhoretz's editorial admits that our options are limited but we can encourage "civil society reforms like ensuring freedom of speech and full political participation of women," an incredibly fatuous statement. So the leading neoconservative magazine is more cautious than The Weekly Standard.
As the weeks passed, The Weekly Standard was all over the lot, with a disquieting piece by Charlotte Allen in the 3/14 issue, "Before the Deluge," about Tunisia and Egypt, which ends: "They were living in their own world, and it is a world that is not necessarily friendly to ours." The May 9 issue has a long dispassionate essay by Reuel Gerecht analyzing the situations in all the Middle Eastern countries. To complete the confusion, Ann Marlowe has an essay, "What I Saw at the Revolution," in the 5/23 issue which ends: "The democracy activists I spoke with were hopeful not just for Libya, but for the whole Arab world." Dr. Bugaighis spoke for many when she said, "Now something has changed for us inside. I don't think there will be any more dictators in the Arab world." In April Commentary printed "Egypt's Islamists: A Cautionary Tale"; the title says it all.
So we may say that, with the intermittent exception of The Weekly Standard, conservatives have settled down to wariness. There is general agreement that we should support the Syrian insurgency, but otherwise conservatives are awaiting events with their fingers crossed. Caroline Glick and Barry Rubin, in Israel News, have been skeptical from the beginning, but of course, they live within range of Arab munitions, which wonderfully concentrates the mind.
The Claremont Review's 10th annual double issue for winter/spring is at hand, presenting us with an editorial, 12 essays, and 22 book reviews in 118 pages, surely a feast. We think eight essays are worth reading, and one by Anthony Codevilla on the Mexican border wars so profoundly illuminating and disturbing as to render obsolete all former discussions of this topic. It alone is worth the price of admission. Of the book reviews, 15 are good and two are outstanding: Steven Hayward's review of Pat Moynihan's Letters and Hillel Fradkin's of two books about Islam. There is some evidence that the editor was desperate for filler, because the last three book reviews - about British pirate radio, Swedish pornography, and Walt Whitman (Jigs Gardner is right that conservatives can't deal with literature) - are worthless, and an essay near the end goes on for four boring pages about Aristotle on friendship.
Charles Kesler clearly states the magazine's purpose in his editorial:
. . . The Claremont Review of Books seeks to reinvigorate the American mind to its first principles . . . to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our public life.
Two essays, one on the Adams-Jefferson correspondence, one on Toqueville's observations of religion and liberty, are clearly congruent with that purpose; for anyone ignorant of these matters, they would be enlightening - but is it likely that a CRB reader would be so ignorant? We do not think so, and we are of the opinion that this is hammering the obvious, trying to compel conviction by repetition. It may also be that this is the sum and substance of the editor's message.
To elucidate the consequences of that possibility we must turn to an essay, "Beyond the Welfare State," by Yuval Levin in the spring issue of National Affairs:
In their struggle with the left these past 60 years, conservatives have too often responded to the social-democratic vision by arguing with it in the abstract. Constitutionalism, natural rights, libertarianism, traditionalism - all offered powerful objections to the welfare state, but few viable alternatives . . . [they have] focused on the size and scope of government, but not on its proper purposes - on yelling stop, but not on where to go instead . . . it insists that our problem is just too much government. But if the Republican Party is to be a truly conservative party, it will need to think its way to an agenda of conservative reform.
That seems to us a just description of the CRB's stance - and of many other conservatives, too: "arguing in the abstract." But we must go ahead, and we think Levin's essay enunciates a vision that can guide us forward, and we recommend it strongly to all conservatives.
National Affairs is a new quarterly - we're looking at issue #7, Spring, 2011 - edited by Yuval Levin, which had trouble finding its way until this issue, which is first-rate. Levin made the mistake of filling the earlier issues with long articles on topical issues, as if these matters had not already been thoroughly discussed in more timely venues, weeklies and monthlies. The magazine was a redundant bore, and we were going to write it off when this issue arrived to change our minds. There are nine essays in 143 pages, and seven are excellent, thorough, concise, and enlightening. "Dodging the Pension Disaster," instead of reiterating the arguments threshed over and over for the last year, analyses in detail the complicated economics behind pension plans, and shows ways of dealing with them. There's a piece on government by waiver by Richard Epstein, one on the "Auto Bailout and the Rule of Law," an essay by Gabriel Schoenfeld on "Legalism in Wartime," and Levin's essay which should have a profound effect on conservative politics in the years ahead. He begins with the assertion that the social-democratic welfare state that has "dominated our political imagination for a century" is dying, and he proceeds to show how that vision has failed, at the same time that he shows how conservatives must respond:
Conservatives should therefore not expect to ever simply win the argument. Our challenge . . . is to dominate the argument - to offer the vision that implicitly sets the tone for our common life. The key . . . is the emergence of a policy-oriented conservatism, one able to make gainful compromises . . . because it knows exactly what it wants - a thriving free society. With a market economy, strong families, a devotion to country, and a commitment to the value of every life - and knows that this . . . can be obtained gradually, by a mix of persuasion and proof. . . . In our politics, battles over ideas are won in practice, not in theory.
We cannot recommend this essay highly enough.
Random Notes: National Review had a wonderful cover of "Bama" as Captain UN on April 18, with good essays by Victor Hanson, John Bolton, and David Pryce-Jones. Bob Long, in the May 2 issue of NR, has an hilarious article on Donald Trump. But the May issue of First Things takes the prize. Of course, it features deadly, long essays on "The Moral Economy of Guilt," and "The Bearable Lightness of Dignity," but it also has a two-page piece by David Hart that is by far the finest (and funniest) piece of criticism of the work of Ayn Rand that we have ever read. *
Joseph J. Horton is professor of psychology at Grove City College and a researcher with The Center for V & V. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
A "Woman Screams for Help After TSA Molestation," and the "Texas Pat Down Ban May Be Back." Those are just two of the headlines breaking around the nation this morning, as summer travel picks up - and so do concerns over excessive airport security.
How much indignity are you willing to endure if told it's for safety's sake? Would you let strangers look at images of you naked? Would you allow strangers to touch you in ways that we teach children is inappropriate?
Apparently, if you want to travel by airplane, these indignities must be endured.
Our government has decided that it has the right to assume that all people are potential terrorists simply because they choose to fly. A mockery is made of the Fourth Amendment when flying home to attend a wedding is deemed a probable cause to be publically humiliated. Worse, you risk getting yourself arrested if you decide security procedures have gone too far and refuse to submit yourself, your child, or your grandmother to additional screening.
The crazy thing about all of the screening procedures is that they do not make us safer. None of the screening procedures penetrate the skin. A suicide bomber could easily have enough explosives to take down a plane inside his body. The government is treating us like terrorists for the mere appearance of making us safer.
People will put up with a lot inconvenience for safety. But shampoo and toothpaste are not threats to safety. The Transportation Security Administration's concern for the bottle of water carried by a non-terrorist does not make flying safer. It serves only to demonstrate the incompetence of the TSA. A competent TSA would be able to identify and direct attention toward likely terrorists rather than focus on benign objects. If the government will violate our freedoms for the appearance of safety, freedom is in trouble. Our freedom will be violated far more if a legitimate safety claim can be made.
Public outcry can make a difference. The TSA is now testing body scanners that display a generic outline of a person rather than individual anatomical details. The disappointing news is that the "enhanced pat-downs" are still part of the TSA's repertoire. However, the TSA shows no signs of being intelligent about who receives security scrutiny. A state representative from Alaska recently chose to travel by boat rather than air when the TSA requested that she submit to an enhanced patdown. Has a state representative ever committed an act of terrorism?
As a society we must grapple with how much freedom we are willing to give up for safety. But, guaranteed safety is not to be found in this world. There is no way to legislate an end to evil. The only way to come close to preventing all murders from terrorist attacks would be to have a police state. Yet the history of police states is clear.
The Berlin Wall was not there to keep West Berliners from living in the low crime part of town. The wall was there because a life of freedom is superior to a life of safety and people were willing to risk not only their safety but their lives for the benefits of freedom.
Many believe there is nothing that ordinary people can do to stop the loss of freedom. It may sound clichd but ordinary people who are persistent can change things. Indeed, the political climate for supporters of limited government may have never been brighter. We are witnessing real discussion in Washington and state houses across the country about government spending and the role of government.
Each of us can find ways to promote freedom and limited government. We can write letters to the editor or blog. We can use social networking to be sure our friends know about important information, speeches, and townhall meetings. We can run for local office or assist those who are. We can thank our politicians when they do the right thing and be sure they know what is right. We will not win every battle, but must not let this be an excuse for pessimism. The loss of freedom we have suffered did not take place over night.
Invasive airport screenings are but one indication of a government forcing its will on the citizens. Persistence for years will be required for victory. Yet victory can be had. This is the time and this is the place to work for freedom. *
Tracy C. Miller is an associate professor of economics at Grove City College and contributing scholar with V & V. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Chicago. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
One of the arguments for healthcare reform is that millions of Americans with employer-provided healthcare are under-insured. Proponents of this view are saying that people are under-insured if they are paying too many of their healthcare costs out-of-pocket. Quite the contrary, a little reflection on what insurance is and is supposed to do suggests that the problem is really the opposite: many, if not most Americans are over-insured - they have too much health insurance coverage.
On what basis can I claim that Americans have too much health insurance? The purpose of insurance is to protect people from risk. Private companies offer affordable insurance against losses from automobile accidents, accidental death, fires, storms, and floods, among other things. These kinds of insurance arose in response to people's willingness to pay for a contract that will compensate them for losses due to a relatively low probability event over which the insured party has little or no control. Yet, unlike other kinds of insurance, most of what is covered by many health-insurance plans does not fit this description. This is why so many people who do not have employer-provided health insurance are either uninsured or purchase only catastrophic coverage.
The problem with many existing health-insurance plans is that they cover the cost of routine treatment for illnesses, such as colds and flu that occur frequently, or the cost of care for conditions, such as pregnancy, that are heavily dependent upon the choices of the person who is insured. Basic economics teaches that paying for routine treatment via a third-party insurance company will raise the total cost of that treatment. This happens for two reasons: First, the insurance company, as middleman between the consumer and the healthcare provider, has costs that must come out of what the consumer pays. Second, insurance that pays for routine care lowers the cost of each doctor visit to the consumer, thus increasing demand. Higher demand with a given supply means higher prices.
It does not matter whether consumers or employers pay health-insurance premiums. The premiums are part of the cost of healthcare. Eliminating routine care from being covered by health insurance would mean premiums would decrease and employers could pass the savings along to their employees as higher wages. The average consumer would be better off as a result. If it were not for the tax deductibility of health-insurance premiums, employers would not cover routine care and treatment for preventable conditions as much as they do.
This is not to deny that many Americans do not have sufficient access to affordable healthcare or that the inability of some to afford health insurance is something we should be concerned about. Although it does not make sense for insurance to cover the ordinary medical costs of childbirth, treating chronic asthma, or flu symptoms, it may be a good idea to have insurance in case of complications resulting from childbirth or to cover hospitalization for pneumonia and other serious illnesses.
The best way to help those who cannot afford basic health insurance is not to require or subsidize the kind of comprehensive health-insurance plans that most employers now offer. On the contrary, healthcare costs and the cost of health insurance that would cover life-threatening illnesses and serious accidents would be considerably lower if the existing system of taxes, subsidies, and government regulations did not result in so many people being over-insured. *