Paul Kengor

This article is republished from V&V Q&A, an e-publication of the Center for Vision & Values, at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center. The topic of this article is taken from his latest book, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

Editor's note: If you'd like to reach Dr. Kengor to discuss this book, contact him directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

V&V: Dr. Kengor, why the title, "Dupes"? That's a word that will make many religious people uncomfortable.

Paul Kengor: Yes, but they need to understand that the term has been around since at least George Washington's Farewell Address. "Dupes" has a negative connotation, but, in reality, it's descriptive and points to a very specific phenomenon that has long been a part of political parlance. The word was especially common during the Cold War, where even the duped regrettably referred to themselves as having been duped. "Yes, I was duped," was a common refrain. This included even the likes of my political mentor, Ronald Reagan.

Until this book, no one had done a serious look at this phenomenon. I was motivated by the vast declassifications of former Soviet and Communist Party USA archives, where we see how duping was done quite deliberately.

V&V: Let's get to the focus of this interview: Why is religion central to this book?

Kengor: First, the Communists were, by their own definition, atheistic. More than that, they were proudly, militantly atheistic. Marx called religion the "opiate of the masses," and said that, "Communism begins where atheism begins." Lenin said far worse, comparing religion to everything from venereal disease to "a necrophilia." "There's nothing more abominable than religion," declared Lenin.

This institutionalized atheism was true for Communists everywhere, from Moscow to New York.

Beyond that, Communists viciously persecuted believers of all stripes.

V&V: And these Communists, who locked up and even executed Christians, Jews, and other believers, sang a different tune when speaking to liberal Christians in the United States?

Kengor: Yes. They cynically, contemptuously, targeted the Religious Left. And it's downright depressing to see the success they had. They knew these liberal Christians were trusting souls, who agreed with them on certain sympathies -- workers rights, civil rights, wealth distribution. The Communists exploited that trust.

The Communists excelled at lying, as noted not only by conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers, but also by liberals and Democrats like Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, George Kennan, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. As Lenin infamously said, the only morality that Communists recognized is that which furthered class interests. Vaclav Havel called it "the Communist culture of the lie."

So, the Communists lied to liberals. And as the Communists operated covertly, not openly admitting they were Communists, they enlisted liberals in their petitions, marches, protests, publications. Without these duped liberals/progressives, the Communists were dead in the water, exposed as the tiny fringe they were.

V&V: Where did they have their best success?

Kengor: The mainline denominations, particularly the Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church USA.

When I started researching this book, I asked Herb Romerstein, the veteran investigator of the Communist movement, and himself a former Communist, which group of Americans were most manipulated. He unhesitatingly answered "liberal Protestant pastors." He called them "the biggest suckers of them all."

V&V: Are there certain pastors who stood out?

Kengor: It's hard to pick just one, but as a symbol, starting very early, there was the Rev. Harry F. Ward, a liberal Methodist minister, a seminary professor, and founding member of the ACLU, along with atheist Roger Baldwin, who wrote a horrible 1928 book called Liberty Under the Soviets.

In my book, we publish a December 1920 list of liberal college professors targeted by the Soviet Comintern and American Communist Party. On the list is not only Ward, listed with Union Theological Seminary, but other professors from seminaries or religious colleges, from Mount Holyoke to Trinity College. The Communists counted on the Religious Left to be duped -- sheep led to the slaughter.

V&V: You say Ward was "easy prey."

Kengor: Harry Ward gobbled up Soviet propaganda. Early on, he set the standard for much of the liberal left: that is, he exposed not the Communists, but, instead, attacked the anti-Communists. In Ward's world, it was anti-Communism that was the great menace to be resisted. Writing in Protestant Digest in January 1940, long before Senator McCarthy arrived on the scene, Ward admonished the faithful of the perils of "anti-Communism," which was being employed "under the leadership of [Congressman] Dies in a new red hunt" that promised to be even "more ruthless than that of Mitchell Palmer."

Here, Ward warned about Congressman Martin Dies, Texas Democrat, the first head of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general.

By the way, right there, in that sentence, were three Democrats -- Dies, Mitchell, and Wilson -- all Christians, who weren't duped, and who were excellent anti-Communists, with their faith informing their understanding of the dangers of Bolshevism. Certainly, not everyone on the Religious Left was duped.

V&V: Dr. Kengor, you note that many liberal/progressive Christians were duped by Communists, whereas many others, fortunately, were not duped. Let's break it down.

Dr. Paul Kengor: On the plus side, some were never duped in large part because of their faith-based understanding of the godlessness of Marxism-Leninism. These included liberal Democrats like President Woodrow Wilson -- big surprise to modern ears -- Wilson's attorney general, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and more. Wilson called the Bolsheviks "barbarians," "tyrants," and "terrorists." JFK alerted America to its "atheistic foe" and the "godless" "Communist conspiracy."

V&V: And then, you say, there were duped liberals/progressives who eventually "came to see the light," and switched and repented in part because they saw the evil of the Soviet war on religion.

Kengor: Yes, this included William Bullitt, our first ambassador to the USSR, who once literally planted a kiss on Stalin's cheek. Another was Paul Douglas, a later U.S. senator, who had been wined and dined by Stalin. Another was a Hollywood liberal named Ronald Reagan, whose pastor alerted him to the menace of atheistic Communism. All three, Reagan, Douglas, Bullitt, saw the light and made reparation.

V&V: You also describe lifelong liberals who, either agnostic or not notably religious, were appalled by the faith-like structure of Soviet Communism.

Kengor: Yes, these liberals were repulsed by the Soviet promise of an earthly utopia. The Bolsheviks created their own gods in their own image, repeating that first sin: Ye shall be as gods.

This included John Dewey, father of modern American public education. Interestingly, Dewey was initially duped by the Soviets, who adored his educational work, rapidly translating it into Russian, one book after another. The totalitarian Bolsheviks saw Dewey's work as perfect for their state; they quickly implemented the precise Dewey books that America's teachers' colleges and educational departments have used to train a century of public-school educators. In Dupes, I list these books, their years of translation, and the Bolsheviks' glowing appraisals. They loved Dewey.

The Bolsheviks invited John Dewey to the USSR for a 1928 trip, where they rolled out the red carpet. There, this public-school icon was manipulated badly. When he returned home, he did exactly what Stalin hoped, proclaiming the "new world" he discovered in the USSR. In one especially outrageous account, Dewey hailed the "restoration" of Russia's churches, when, in fact, as everyone knew, the Bolsheviks were demolishing churches.

To his credit, the professor eventually saw the light, becoming a staunch critic of Stalin. It took Dewey a few years, but he came around. I think Dewey's own earlier departure from the faith numbed his awareness of the evil staring him in the face. Dewey's mother had been very devout, and he had once taught Sunday school, but by the time he got to Columbia, he had fled the faith.

V&V: And then there were lifelong atheists who you said "never learned," and were duped into "stumping for the Soviet state until their final days."

Kengor: Yes, spiritually speaking, one might see these folks as victimized by the continued lack of light in their lives, of wallowing in darkness. That would be spiritual speculation, which I avoid in the book. Here I have in mind the famous humanist/atheist Corliss Lamont, one of Dewey's star pupils at Columbia.

V&V: Corliss Lamont also made a sojourn to Moscow, where he, too, was manipulated. Tell us about that.

Kengor: What Lamont recorded about that visit, which he turned into a book, is breathtaking. It was embodied in his reaction to Lenin's dead body encased in glass, which caused Lamont to swoon in delight. He was also inspired by his visit to Moscow churches that had been converted into atheist museums. Unlike Dewey, who was so nave that he allowed himself to be convinced that these were "restoration" projects, Lamont knew precisely what they were, and heartily approved.

In some of these churches, the Bolsheviks displayed the corpses of saints, which Lamont ridiculed. In Lenin's corpse, Lamont perceived not rot but a "resolute and beautiful face." In the case of the saints, however, he eagerly reported worm holes, "smelly" odors, and mockingly asserted that it looked as if the Lord wasn't taking very good care of these "holy" people.

V&V: It was very disrespectful.

Kengor: It was classic Corliss Lamont, who was a dupe for the Communists and their worst sins for seven decades until his death in the 1990s.

V&V: Dr. Kengor, what were some of the Communist campaigns that successfully duped liberal Christians?

Dr. Paul Kengor: The most tragic example was the World War II front-group, the American Peace Mobilization, which -- led by secret Communists -- publicly pushed President Franklin Roosevelt to accommodate Hitler, because Hitler had signed an August 1939 non-aggression pact with Stalin. This group angrily demanded no Lend-Lease money to the British, as the Brits were being savaged by Hitler's Blitzkrieg. How could the American Peace Mobilization -- or at least its Communist ringleaders -- take this position? They did so because it was Stalin's position, at least from August 1939 until June 22, 1941, when Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the USSR.

Once that betrayal took place, the American Peace Mobilization became, literally overnight, the American People's Mobilization, and suddenly became fanatically pro-war, pro-British, pro-Lend-Lease, you name it. This group took its orders from Moscow.

V&V: The switch was that blatant?

Kengor: Yes, and Congress certainly noticed. Congress later dubbed the American Peace Mobilization "one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States," "one of the most notorious and blatantly Communist fronts ever organized in this country," and an "instrument of the Communist Party line."

And yet, the American Peace Mobilization had more success with peace-loving, turn-the-other-cheek Christians than any other group. Some did learn, but many did not.

By the way, also taken for a ride here, as usual, was The New York Times. In one 1940 article on the American Peace Mobilization, the Times described the group not as a Communist front -- the word "Communist" never appeared in the article -- but as a "group of clergymen."

V&V: Fast-forwarding to another war, tell us about the Communist campaign regarding the Vietnam War.

Kengor: Moscow, of course, wanted U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, because it wanted a Communist Vietnam. So, this was ideal for another Soviet-led "peace campaign." The Communists again, from the USSR to those operating in the United States, looked to anti-war Christians to enlist in marches, petitions, and whatever else.

Most striking, Communists within leadership positions of groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) never dared express their true sympathies and intentions to the liberals in their ranks. That was especially true for the Marxist radicals who set fire to cities like Chicago.

As these folks descended on Chicago in 1968-69, for instance, with no money but lots of drugs and other things -- including arrest warrants -- where would they be housed? The answer came from clergy in the liberal mainline denominations in the Chicago and Evanston areas. A special clergy group was established for the purpose of finding housing for the young folks. Or, as put by Mark Rudd, a dedicated Communist and the face of SDS, who shut down Columbia University in the spring of 1968, they found "churches loaned to us by sympathetic clergy."

According to the official Congressional investigator -- by the way, the congressional committees who held hearings were run by Democrats -- the revolutionaries were accommodated in Evanston at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Covenant Methodist Church, and Garrett Theological Seminary. It was at Garrett that a police officer was beaten. In Chicago, they stayed at University Disciple Church in Hyde Park.

V&V: Couldn't the clergy see the chaos this would cause?

Kengor: You would think so. Interestingly, the liberal clergy had laid down one condition for the dope-smoking, weapons-toting militants: no dope or weapons in the churches. That simple rule, naturally, obviously, was violated. Much like how the Vietcong had used "sanctuaries" in Cambodia to launch attacks on American troops inside Vietnam, the radicals used these literal sanctuaries to stage assaults on their domestic enemies: the "pigs," as they called the police, that had always protected these churches and their congregations.

V&V: What did the folks in the pews think about all this?

Kengor: They weren't exactly thrilled when they caught the news. In no time, members of the congregations and people from the surrounding community were demanding that the liberal preachers expel the extremists from their houses of worship. Fighting the fight for "social justice," some of the good reverends sided with the marijuana-smokers.

In one case, the police were forced to enter a church with warrants to arrest those who had engaged in violent action. There, the minister complained that the police broke down the door. Quite the contrary, as the Congressional investigator calmly explained during hearings, "They broke the door down because the Weathermen had barricaded the door of the church and had refused to let the police serve the warrants."

The pastor was shocked at what was happening in his church -- shocked, that is, by the behavior of . . . the police.

V&V: Dr. Kengor, you noted disturbing examples of Communists manipulating liberal/progressive Christians through phony peace campaigns, including the case of the Communist front-group, the American Peace Mobilization, which accommodated Hitler because Hitler signed a pact with Stalin. Who were other manipulators of the Religious Left?

Kengor: One was Stalin himself. I give a bunch of examples in the book. Most troubling is how Stalin hoodwinked President Roosevelt. For the record, I probably defend FDR in Dupes more than I criticize him. FDR was targeted by Communists, who tried not only to dupe him and his administration, but penetrated his administration with spies and Soviet sympathizers. Worse, Communists demonized FDR in their literature and campaigns.

That said, FDR was terribly naive toward Stalin, whom he called "Uncle Joe" as a term of endearment. FDR openly mused that Stalin had taught him, Churchill, and all various officials something about "the way in which a Christian gentleman should behave." Where did Stalin gain this alleged virtue that FDR somehow saw radiating from this man who slaughtered millions? The Episcopalian elder from Hyde Park looked upward for an answer: Perhaps, pondered FDR, it had been Stalin's youthful training for the "priesthood."

V&V: You say that FDR really felt this way, and wasn't simply saying such things to "get along" with a difficult ally during wartime?

Kengor: That's correct. Most observations like this were made in private by FDR. I footnote them carefully. I know their seriousness.

V&V: From roughly this same era, what about Frank Marshall Davis?

Kengor: Another manipulator of liberal/progressive Christians was Frank Marshall Davis, mentor to a young man in Hawaii named Barack Obama. I have photo exhibits of Davis's weekly columns for the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) organ in Hawaii, the Honolulu Record, plus pages from his declassified 600-page FBI file listing his actual Communist Party membership number, which was 47544.

V&V: Share some examples from Davis's weekly columns.

Kengor: In one Davis column, titled, "Challenge to the Church," September 29, 1949, Davis framed Communism as friendly to Christianity, and anti-Communism as un-Christian. He painted an image of Judgment Day, where hypocritical anti-Communist Christians would be judged for opposing alleged Christ-loving Communists. "The Christian churches," asserted Davis, "are making a grievous error in their shortsighted belief that the major enemy of Christianity is Communism." Not only was Soviet Russia not anti-religious, maintained Davis, but Stalin had spared the planet of Hitler's "anti-Christian paganism." Christians ought to thank Stalin.

V&V: In another column you cite, Davis called anti-Communists "Pontius Pilates."

Kengor: Yes, Davis wrote that in July 1949, as Stalin was approaching his third decade of literally blowing up churches and jailing and executing religious believers. The good Communists were, said a stoic Davis, "ready to face crucifixion, if need be, for what they believe in. They have no fear of the Pontius Pilates of 1949."

In Frank Marshall Davis's world, the anti-Communists were the Pontius Pilates, not the Communists conducting show trials of priests and bishops sentenced to execution or dispatched to prison camps in Russia.

Obviously, this was blatant Soviet propaganda. But, here again, Davis was making a bid for the support of the Religious Left. The way that Frank Marshall Davis manipulated "social justice" pastors is quite cynical but also quite impressive.

V&V: You also write that Davis was reflective of how atheistic Communists often quoted Christ or cited Scripture when looking to dupe liberal Christians.

Kengor: They did that all the time, from the pages of Pravda to the Daily Worker. One example was FDR's former vice president, Henry Wallace.

The Daily Worker adored Wallace. He was a go-to guy for a quick quote blasting not Stalin and the Soviets but American anti-Communists. Speaking of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Daily Worker quoted Wallace: "Has America gone crazy?" He asked, "Is the Un-American Activities Committee evidence that America is travelling the road to fascism?" The former vice president urged his fellow Americans that they "must destroy" the committee -- at the ballot box. If they did not, the committee "will destroy many of the foundations of democracy and Christianity." The former veep, a fond admirer of the Soviet experiment, was worried about threats to democracy and Christianity -- in America, that is.

The Daily Worker, in turn, thrust quotes like this directly onto the front cover. The comrades appreciated Henry Wallace dearly.

V&V: Dr. Kengor, we looked at FDR, Stalin, and the pro-Stalin propaganda work of Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis. Concluding this interview on the Religious Left being duped by the Communist movement, let's end where you start: The cover of your book features arguably the most famous "born again" president, Jimmy Carter, kissing Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev.

Kengor: That occurred at the Vienna Summit in June 1979. It's a metaphor for how sincere, well-intentioned, liberal Christians were fooled by Communists. In this case, an American president betrayed with a kiss. Mere months later, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan. President Carter was celebrating Christmas with his family when he got the news.

V&V: Carter was surprised by the invasion?

Kengor: Yes, completely. "My opinion of the Russians has changed most dramatically," Carter told ABC's Frank Reynolds:

[T]his action of the Soviets has made a more dramatic change in my own opinion of what the Soviets' ultimate goals are than anything they've done in the previous time I've been in office.

Carter was trusting to a fault. There he was, kissing the leader of the world's atheist empire -- an "Evil Empire," as Carter's successor described it. Carter suffered from a terribly nave faith in the Soviets. The quotes to this effect, listed at length in Dupes, pulled from the official Presidential Papers, need to be seen to be believed.

V&V: You say Carter persisted in such naivete after the presidency, when he supposedly redeemed himself as a great ex-president.

Kengor: The examples are numerous, unrivaled by any president, Democrat or Republican, from the Cold War to War on Terror. To cite one example, Carter's statements about Kim Jong-Il after a 1994 trip to North Korea defy imagination. Each time I read them, I stare in disbelief.

Carter was impressed by what he somehow perceived as a pleasant, unique "interest" in Christianity by Kim. Kim, of course, spearheaded a militantly atheistic regime; yet, Carter, a born-again Baptist, found Kim "very friendly toward Christianity." In truth, as anyone with any knowledge of North Korea knows, North Korea is the world's most repressive nation, and has been for decades. Christians there are in prison. How could Carter say that?

With Carter, there's this inexplicable gullibility. It's an extraordinary thing that I can't explain.

V&V: Changing gears, tell us how Communists sought to divide Protestants and Catholics. You give several examples.

Kengor: Bear in mind that Communists were enraged at the institutional Roman Catholic Church, which issued scathing indictments of Communism immediately after the publication of Marx's Communist Manifesto. In a 1937 encyclical, the Catholic Church called Communism a "satanic scourge."

Here's one example of a closet American Communist trying to pit Protestants against Catholics:

Anna Louise Strong was an editor of the flagship publication of the Communist front-group, Friends of the Soviet Union, which manipulated "progressives" like Upton Sinclair. In the book, I have photos of Strong and Sinclair from the Friends editorial page. A stoic Sinclair vows to "expose the lies and slander" against Joe Stalin.

Anna Louise Strong was a loyal Bolshevik. Later, Congress described her as "one of the most active agents for the Communist International." She did hideous propaganda work, shamelessly arguing that Stalin had "conquered wheat," when, in fact, he launched a famine that killed millions. Only the most naive couldn't detect her sympathies.

Among the groups Strong targeted were Protestant clergy. One egregious example was a letter-to-the-editor she placed in the October-November 1941 issue of The Protestant. There, she claimed the Vatican was calling for religious freedom in the USSR not because the Soviets were blowing up churches, killing priests, and jailing nuns with prostitutes in special sections of the gulag -- the nuns were deemed "whores to Christ" -- but because the Church was (allegedly) seeking control of Russia. She claimed the Roman Catholic Church was looking to supplant the Russian Orthodox Church, a perfect parroting of the Kremlin line.

Of course, this was what some anti-Catholics wanted to hear. Not surprisingly, some swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

That letter from Strong was so deceptive and blatant that it was republished by Congress in a July 1953 report.

V&V: There's much more in Dupes on the Religious Left, but we need to stop.

Kengor: Yes, the duping of liberal Christians by Communists is a sad, troubling saga. *

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." --James Madison

Barry MacDonald--Editorial

The free market ideal is a treasure. Without it America would not be the prosperous country that it is. But people need something more, something stronger to bond together as a community, and as a nation.

Human emotions and appetites are unwieldy and destructive. Without mitigating institutions that serve to tame human nature how would we learn empathy, or gather the wherewithal to experience companionship? It is in the self-interest of a business to behave honestly, if the goal is to have customers return for more; but a deeper level of honesty, a more complete degree of sharing, is needed for the family to create a nurturing home.

Pornography sells very well, it is hypnotic. Where have we traditionally gone to counter base desire? In football the tradition has grown up for players to display themselves by spiking the football and prancing around in inventive ways after scoring a touchdown. This is an indulgence of ego spreading through the culture. How do we relearn a sense of humility? Can the ideal of humility compete with the satisfactions of pride in the free market?

Each of us is inescapably self-centered. We are driven to better ourselves, and to gather together what we think we need. But we also need to find the grace sometimes to let the other fellow go first. The self-centered point of view is with us every step we take and within each encounter we have with another person. But we can acquire the practice of seeing the world through eyes of the other guy.

All of us experience resentment. A dictionary definition says that resentment is a "re-feeling." We feel again an emotion that was frustration, jealousy, fear, hurt. Resentment becomes an obsession occupying the mind. The mind rehearses why I am right and he is wrong. Mitigating circumstances are ignored. I am trapped in a mindset, resentment becomes blindness, and fellowship becomes impossible.

Resentment becomes a habit. The resentful mind acquires targets everywhere. To see if you have acquired the habit ask yourself whether you are often angry with people who are not with you. If you are often angry when alone then you might have a soul sickness. The problem is not the people who make you angry but the habit of being resentful.

To discover that I had resentments was an awakening. I am often aware of disturbing emotions that serve no useful purpose. Habitual emotions do not come with an off switch. It takes single-minded effort to behave kindly in the midst of unpleasant thoughts.

The best talk-radio hosts are masters of policy and they are experts at explaining how the world works. The best, like Rush Limbaugh, use rationality, logic, history, immense knowledge, and humor to make their points. To say that Rush Limbaugh as "only" an entertainer is to misunderstand that talk radio has become a major forum in which political issues are discussed.

And yet so much of successful talk radio seems to be about the cultivation and targeting of resentments on a mass scale. The same can be said of partisan politics. Are political ads geared to explaining policy, or to motivating voters through fear and resentment?

Can politics be separated from the skillful marshalling and manipulation of harsh emotions? Haven't politicians always used "war rooms"? Haven't economics, education, science, even entertainment, become saturated in bitter partisan politics? Is it really a healthy state of affairs to have so many of us walk around angry all the time?

Can difficult political issues ever be separated from the arising of destructive emotions?

I have asked many questions so far but have provided few answers. From its Founding America has always relied on strong religious institutions. A curmudgeon can always point to the strife between religious groups. For thousands of years religious bodies have warred with each other. Every human institution is liable to corruption, because we are human.

Forgiveness is a divine emotion. Forgiveness is a phenomenon. Forgiveness happens: one can want to forgive but not be able to surrender resentment. One can take all the necessary steps prescribed to let go, but still not be able to achieve forgiveness.

It is a huge benefit, one that many people do not realize, to discover that it would be a good thing, a necessary thing for peace of mind, to forgive. Then, given enough time, and having just the right circumstances fall in place, forgiveness happens. And once forgiveness is experienced companionship is possible again.

It is the religious institutions of our nation that provide the guidance that we need to attend to our troubling and turbulent emotions. Our churches create an inner check on our desires. Each of us knows someone who is a living example charity and unselfishness. It is from such people that the human race acquires a conscience. *

"[R]eligion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society." --John Adams

Some of the quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.

The following is a summary of the December 2010 issue of the St. Croix Review:

Angus MacDonald, in "Our Christian Faith," recalls our the basic faith of our Founding.

Jigs Gardner shares wonderful stories in "Christmas Memories."

Herbert London, in "The Rise and Fall of a President," considers why the Democrats lost the midterm elections; in "A Tea Party Beyond Boston," he assesses the grass roots movement; in "When Satirists Dominate the Culture," he believes we are taking our comedians too seriously; in "Resistentialism," he flies a flag curmudgeons can rally to.

Mark Hendrickson, in "Tough Times Ahead: Gridlock and Quantitative Easing Are Not Enough," believes that we must defuse the time bombs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; in "Breakdown," he believes the suspension of foreclosures could freeze-up the housing market, crack-up the financial industry, and shake confidence in legal titles to property; in "Reflections on the GOP Pledge," he believes it is a crafty political document, but too wordy and not bold enough; in "Understanding 'Austerity,'" he says that we can not continue to spend more than we produce; in "Exchange-Rate Mythology and Weak-Dollar Nonsense," he shows why a stronger yuan against the dollar will not reduce our trade deficit with China, and why politicians love a weak dollar -- they wiggle out of repaying debt.

In "What's Next? Buckle Up," Fred A. Kingery surveys the economy after the Feds' decision in November to print $600 billion in fiat money.

In "Remembering James J. Kilpatrick, A Leading Conservative Voice," Allan Brownfeld tells the story of a conservative who came to his views through honesty, a sense of justice, and great effort; in "Celebrating Young Americans for Freedom at Fifty -- The Real Beginning of the Modern Conservative Movement," he relates how a group of young idealists came to their counter-cultural principles.

In "President Carter's 'Superiority' Complex," Paul Kengor chronicles Carter's foolish behavior, especially concerning North Korea; in "A Dose of Capitalism and Freedom," he revisits Milton Friedman's timeless economic insights; in "Thirty-five Years Ago: When Ford Snubbed Solzhenitsyn," he revisits an infamous instance when a Republican president compromised with evil; in "Newsflash: Stalin Liberates Normandy," he highlights the moral obtuseness of erecting a Statue of Joseph Stalin at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

In "The Public Employee Union Scam," Jarrett Skorup describes the incestuous relationship between government unions and politicians.

In "A Tea Party American Cheat Sheet," Marvin Folkertsma writes that people who believe in limited government must be prepared for a decades-long fight.

Robert L. Wichterman warns us, in "Radical Islam Fights On," that radical Islamists remain at war with us.

In "The Rules of the Game and Economic Recovery," Amity Shlaes looks at how FDR and the New Deal prevented recovery and extended the Great Depression by playing God with the economy, and she sees the Obama administration doing the same thing.

Jigs Gardner, in "Lark Rise to Candleford," reviews the books of Flora Thompson, whose subject is the country folk of 19th century England, and whose genius is exact description without sentimentality.

In "The Importance of Leisure," Robert Thornton discusses the means and ends of life.

In "Who Spoke Last in a 1983 Courtroom?" Joseph Fulda writes of his experience as a jury foreman.

Joseph S. Fulda

Joseph Fulda is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is the author of Eight Steps Towards Libertarianism.

This is a tale that can be read two ways. The reader who is merely a libertarian will read it one way. The man of faith will see a lot more. It must be capable of being read in two ways or faith would not truly be faith.

I had the privilege and the honor of being selected for service on a civil jury in New York State Supreme Court, where a six-member jury is impaneled, with five sufficient to render a verdict.

The case concerned a woman who had been badly scalded -- to the point of considerable disfigurement -- in her shower. She, and her husband, filed suit against the landlord and the boiler-repair company. Her claims were several. His claim was loss of consortium.

I listened to the testimony alertly and intently and, after the charge was given to us by the presiding Justice, saw immediately that the boiler-repair company could not possibly be held liable. They were on-call and there was no evidence given whatsoever that they had ever been notified that the boiler was malfunctioning! Who knows why they had been named a party to the lawsuit?

In the jury room, I asked my colleagues to send a note to the judge asking him how the repair company could possibly be held liable. It seemed to me that as a matter of law, they should be held harmless. When the judge received the note, he had a small fit. "You are not the foreman," he lectured me staring at me intently, "and only the foreman can send out a note with a question." Of course, he did not want us to show our hand to the parties. If a question is properly asked, it becomes a part of the record and must be divulged to all parties. So he sent us back, after disallowing the note. But I was undeterred, and not at all through; I wanted what I normally want: the complete exoneration of the innocent. So, I boldly asked my colleagues to elect me foreman, although I was the youngest of the lot. They obliged. The note went out again.

The judge scowled, but said that the jury could elect its own foreman, although that was unusual. He then "answered" the question by repeating verbatim et literatim his jury instructions on negligence. But this time the note was entered onto the record. So, I had the privilege and the honor of speaking first, and of exonerating the completely blameless. Little did I know that I would not be permitted to speak again. And, try I did! Four of my colleagues saw it my way, that the law of negligence did not hold the landlord liable either -- although ethics clearly did, a subject we could not and did not even broach. The sixth juror, a woman of little intelligence but much empathy, simply repeated over and over again that she could not make up her mind, notwithstanding our concerted efforts at persuading her.

So, I tried to speak again, this time to no avail. I tried ever-so-hard to persuade my four colleagues to deliver a five-person verdict, based on the law and the facts as we all saw them, but they would not allow it. They said to me, "Have some patience. Wait. She may yet come around." What she actually did, however, suggested otherwise: She asked to examine the extensive photographic evidence of the injury taken when it was fresh. Having been obliged, I had little choice but to oblige her. Note after note was sent out of the jury room calling for the production of this-and-that evidence of the severity of the burns. This, of course, sent a clear and unmistakable signal to the landlord: Settle, or else! I have no idea whether my four concurring colleagues understood this or not; all they did was wait, and I, however reluctantly, with them.

I entirely misunderstood the woman's review of the photographic evidence. She turned out not to be completely unpersuadable at all; she was merely showing enormous empathy. Finally, she was ready, and she joined the five of us for what my colleagues had wanted all along: a unanimous verdict for the defendants. They, too, were not to be permitted to speak. They were allowed to speak second, merely to counsel -- nay, insist on -- patience, while the woman was permitted to speak third, merely to display empathy.

My finger, as foreman, was now on the button -- literally, on the button -- from the jury room to the Court, ready to press it to ring the bell notifying the Court that the jury had reached a verdict. At just that very moment, the other bell rang, from the Court to the jury room. We were all summoned into the presence of the judge, who, this time cordially, addressed me: "Mr. Foreman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service; the parties have reached a settlement; you are free to go." The judge's charge, and all else that he had said, turned out not to matter at all.

I was stunned, and more than a little upset. I did not approach counsel for the plaintiffs or for the landlord, for I had nothing to ask them. I made a beeline for the lawyer for the boiler-repair company and, with considerable dismay, asked him why he had settled. His reply caused a light bulb to go on within my thick skull: "The other parties settled; I did not."

So, who spoke last in that courtroom in 1983? The libertarian will say that the parties who should have been talking all along -- and without the involvement of the State at all -- spoke last. This was truly just between them, and they settled it -- as they should have.

That, however, is not my conclusion, although I am a libertarian. My conclusion is that the entire performance, from beginning to end, was orchestrated by the Almighty Conductor above us all, including exactly who was permitted to play what notes when. Now you know, dear readers, why selection for service on that jury was described by this author as an honor and a privilege. None of us, ever, truly has the last word. *

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Thomas Jefferson

Robert Thornton

Robert Thornton writes from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

Not too many years ago, many people, including children, worked long hours just to support themselves in modest comfort. This is not necessary today in our prosperous nation. Why, then, the frantic pace of modern life -- the urge to work harder and longer, to always be doing something "worthwhile" even when on vacation, to use "leisure time" in "productive ways," to always be in a hurry and to always be "in touch"?

Forty years ago, drama critic Walter Kerr answered this question in his The Decline of Pleasure (1962). "While the 20th Century has relieved us of much labor," he wrote, "it has not relieved us of 'conviction that only labor is meaningful.'"

These abnormal pace and work pressures have not been established by some "blind, mindless, mechanized force we are unable to resist." If a time that should be the most leisurely in all history is condemned for being the fastest, who set this pace? Why "the fellow who insisted 'upon maintaining its tempo during all the hours when his office doors are locked.'"

"We feel guilty," wrote Kerr, "when we take our pleasure, because there is so much work we might do. We feel guilty when we work so hard, because our lives may depend upon pausing for pleasure." It is as though we are struggling "to produce a new kind of man -- a man whose sole concern should be his useful work. . . ."

"Guilt" is a strange word to have become associated with the experience of pleasure. It suggests "that we have a deep conviction, of time wasted, of life wasted, of worthwhile opportunities missed whenever we indulge ourselves in a mild flirtation with leisure." We have come to believe that "only useful activity is valuable, meaningful, moral." Activity that is not useful is "worthless, meaningless, immoral." When man does not put his every working hour to useful pursuits, he is socially a poor citizen. Where did this idea come from in an "age that really hopes to make machines to do all the useful work while man enjoyed his freedom?" It came from a philosopher, of course.

Kerr wrote that it was Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) who declared, "value depends entirely on utility." He was not the only philosopher who believed this assertion. So did John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) in a modified way. He had picked up the doctrine from his father and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). But, how many of us today have heard of these three men? Very few, I am confident. In his The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), John Maynard Keynes ended the book by pointing out that:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly believed. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. . . . Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

Leisure has had a bad press. The puritan thinks it is the source of vice and the egalitarian thinks it is a sign of privilege. Marxists think leisure is the "unjust surplus, enjoyed by the few at the expense of many." These criticisms come because we "mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity," but work is only creative when informed by leisure. "Work is the means of life; leisure the end. Without the end, work is meaningless -- a means to a means, to a means. . . ."

As Roger Kimball put it (The New Criterion, January, 1999), "We live in a world ruled by demands of productivity, the demands of work." Vacations and "breaks" are acknowledged necessities but only as the means to improve the bottom line. He agrees with Max Weber that the world is "increasingly organized to maximize profits and minimize genuine leisure."

One defender of leisure was Joseph Pieper (1904-1997) who in 1948 wrote a little book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. Pieper offered in a "succinct yet learned argument" all the reasons for thinking that the frenzied need to work, to plan, to change things is nothing but idleness under other names -- "moral, intellectual, and emotional idleness."

"Culture," wrote Pieper, "depends for its very existence on leisure. . . ." Unfortunately, we have not recovered the original meaning of the word and the opposing idea of "work" has taken over the whole realm of human action and human existence. Leisure is not a simple break from work, whether it be for an hour, a day, or a week, or more. "It is something that has been built into the whole working process, a part of the schedule." The "break" is there for the sake of the work. It is supposed to provide "new strength" for "new work" as the word refreshment indicates: "One is refreshed for work through being refreshed from work."

Pieper observes that in our Western world, total labor has vanquished leisure. "Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture -- and ourselves."

So if it is not simple idleness, what is the true meaning of Leisure? Father James V. Schall answers this question in some "wise and delightful essays" published as On The Unseriousness of Human Affairs (2001). He writes that what makes our lives worth living is "not the business of politics or economics but the 'unserious' activities of human life." The highest expression of human culture is in leisure -- "that is, in those things that we do when all work is done." Human flourishing is not found in merely utilitarian activities but in things such as play, art, and contemplation. There are things worth doing for their own sakes. There must be space and time for what is beyond politics because neither business nor politics seems to exhaust what we seek.

The point is made in the fine movie, Teahouse of the August Moon. An American Colonel cannot understand why Okinawans don't show more "get up and go," but instead "waste time" sitting quietly to watch the sunset.

Bibliography

Leisure, the Basis of Culture, Joseph Pieper (1948, 1998).

On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, James V. Schall (2001).

The Decline of Pleasure, Walter Kerr (1962).

"Joseph Pieper, Leisure and Its Discontents," Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, January, 1999.

"Geschaft Within Limits," Albert Jay Nock, The Book of Journeyman (1930). *

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson

Amity Shlaes

Amity Shlaes is a syndicated columnist for Bloomberg and a senior fellow in economic history at the Council of Foreign Relations. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

The Monopoly board game originated during the Great Depression. At first its inventor, Charles Darrow, could not interest manufacturers. Parker Brothers turned the game down, citing "52 design errors." But Darrow produced his own copies of the game, and Parker Brothers finally bought Monopoly. By 1935, the New York Times was reporting that "leading all other board games . . . is the season's craze, 'Monopoly,' the game of real estate."

Most of us are familiar with the object of Monopoly: the accumulation of property on which one places houses and hotels, and from which one receives revenue. Many of us have a favorite token. Perennially popular is the top hat, which symbolizes the sort of wealth to which Americans who work hard can aspire. The top hat is a token that has remained in the game, even while others have changed over the decades.

One's willingness to play Monopoly depends on a few conditions -- for instance, a predictable number of "Pay Income Tax" cards. These cards are manageable when you know in advance the amount of money printed on them and how many of them are in the deck. It helps, too, that there are a limited and predictable number of "Go to Jail" cards. This is what Frank Knight of the University of Chicago would call a knowable risk, as opposed to an uncertainty. Likewise, there must be a limited and predictable number of "Chance" cards. In other words, there has to be some certainty that property rights are secure and that the risks to property are few in number and can be managed.

The bank must be dependable, too. There is a fixed supply of Monopoly money and the bank is supposed to follow the rules of the game, exercising little or no independent discretion. If players sit down at the Monopoly board only to discover a bank that overreaches or is too unpredictable or discretionary, we all know what happens. They will walk away from the board. There is no game.

Relevance to the 1930s

How is this game relevant to the Great Depression? We all know the traditional narrative of that event: The stock market crash generated an economic Katrina. One in four was unemployed in the first few years. It resulted from a combination of monetary, banking, credit, international, and consumer confidence factors. The terrible thing about it was the duration of a high level of unemployment, which averaged in the mid teens for the entire decade.

The second thing we usually learn is that the Depression was mysterious -- a problem that only experts with doctorates could solve. That is why FDR's floating advisory group -- Felix Frankfurter, Frances Perkins, George Warren, Marriner Eccles and Adolf Berle among others -- was sometimes known as a Brain Trust. The mystery had something to do with a shortage of money, we are told, and in the end, only a Brain Trust's tinkering with the money supply saved us. The corollary to this view is that the government knows more than American business does about economics.

Another common presumption is that cleaning up Wall Street and getting rid of white-collar criminals helped the nation recover. A second is that property rights may still have mattered during the 1930s, but that they mattered less than government-created jobs, shoring up homeowners, and getting the money supply right. A third is that American democracy was threatened by the rise of a potential plutocracy, and that the Wagner Act of 1935 -- which lent federal support to labor unions -- was thus necessary and proper. Fourth and finally, the traditional view of the 1930s is that action by the government was good, whereas inaction would have been fatal. The economic crisis mandated any kind of action, no matter how far removed it might be from sound monetary policy. Along these lines the humorist Will Rogers wrote in 1933 that if Franklin Roosevelt had "burned down the capital, we would cheer and say, 'Well at least we got a fire started, anyhow.'"

To put this official version of the 1930s in terms of the Monopoly board: The American economy was failing because there were too many top hats lording it about on the board, trying to establish a plutocracy, and because there was no bank to hand out money. Under FDR, the federal government became the bank and pulled America back to economic health.

When you go to research the 1930s, however, you find a different story. It is of course true that the early part of the Depression -- the years upon which most economists have focused -- was an economic Katrina. And a number of New Deal measures provided lasting benefits for the economy. These include the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the push for free trade led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the establishment of the modern mortgage format. But the remaining evidence contradicts the official narrative. Overall, it can be said, government prevented recovery. Herbert Hoover was too active, not too passive -- as the old stereotypes suggest -- while Roosevelt and his New Deal policies impeded recovery as well, especially during the latter half of the decade.

In short, the prolonged Depression can be put down to government arrogance -- arrogance that came at the expense of economic common sense, the rule of law, and respect for property rights.

Arrogance and Discretion

Consider the centerpiece of the New Deal's first 100 days, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which was in effect an enormous multi-sector mechanism calibrated to manage the business cycle through industrial codes that, among other things, regulated prices. The principles on which its codes were based appear risible from the perspective of microeconomics and common sense. They included the idea that prices needed to be pushed up to make recovery possible, whereas competition constrained recovery by driving prices down. They held that big firms in industry -- those "too big to fail" -- were to write codes for all members of their sector, large and small -- which naturally worked to the advantage of those larger firms. As for consumer choice, it was deemed inefficient and an inhibitor of recovery. The absurdity of these principles was overlooked, however, because they were put forth by great minds. One member of the Brain Trust, Ray Moley, described the myopic credentialism of his fellow Brain Truster, Felix Frankfurter, in this way:

The problems of economic life were to Frankfurter matters to be settled in a law office, a court room, or around a big labor-management bargaining table. . . . The government was the protagonist. Its agents were its lawyers and commissioners. The antagonists were big corporate lawyers. In the background were misty principals whom Frankfurter never really knew at first hand. . . . These background figures were owners of the corporations, managers, workers and consumers.

One family that was targeted by NRA bureaucrats was the Schechters, who were wholesale chicken butchers in Brooklyn. The NRA code that aimed to regulate what they did was called The Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry of the Metropolitan Area in and about the City of New York. And according to this code, the Schechters did all the wrong things. They paid their butchers too little. They charged prices that were too low. They allowed their customers to pick their own chickens. Worst of all, they sold a sick chicken. As a result of these supposed crimes, they were prosecuted.

The prosecution would have been comic if it were not business tragedy. Imagine the courtroom scene: On one side stands Walter Lyman Rice, a graduate of Harvard Law School, representing the government. On the other stands a small man in the poultry trade, Louis Spatz, who is afraid of going to jail. Spatz tries to defend his actions. But he barely speaks English, and the prosecutor bullies him. Nevertheless, Spatz is now and then able to articulate, in his simple and commonsense way, how business really works.

Prosecution: But you do not claim to be an expert?

Spatz: No.

Prosecution: On the competitive practices in the live poultry industry?

Spatz: I would want to get paid, if I was an expert.

Prosecution: You are not an expert!

Spatz: I am experienced, but not an expert . . .

Prosecution: You have not studied agricultural economics?

Spatz: No, sir.

Prosecution: Or any sort of economics?

Spatz: No, sir.

Prosecution: What is your education?

Spatz: None; very little.

Prosecution: None at all?

Spatz: Very little.

Then at one point this everyman sort of pulls himself together.

Prosecution: And you would not endeavor to explain economic consequences of competitive practices?

Spatz: In my business I am the best economist.

Prosecution: What is that?

Spatz: In my business I am the best economizer.

Prosecution: You are the best economizer?

Spatz: Yes, without figuring.

Prosecution: I wish to have that word spelled in the minutes, just as he stated it.

Spatz: I do not know how to spell.

This dialogue matters because little businesses like Schechter Poultry are the natural drivers of recovery, and during the Great Depression they weren't allowed to do that driving. They weren't allowed to compete and accumulate wealth -- or, in terms of Monopoly, to place a house or hotel on their property. Instead they were sidelined. The Schechter brothers ultimately won their case in the Supreme Court in 1935. But the cost of the lawsuits combined with the Depression did not go away.

Regarding monetary policy, it is clear that there wasn't enough money in the early 1930s. So Roosevelt was not wrong in trying to reflate. But though his general idea was right, the discretionary aspect of his policy was terrifying. As Henry Morgenthau reports in his diaries, prices were set by the president personally. FDR took the U.S. off the gold standard in April 1933, and by summer he was setting the gold price every morning from his bed. Morgenthau reports that at one point the president ordered the gold price up 21 cents. Why 21, Morgenthau asked. Roosevelt replied, because it's 3 x 7, and three is a lucky number. "If anyone knew how we set the gold price," wrote Morgenthau in his diary, "they would be frightened."

Discretionary policies aimed at cleaning up Wall Street were destructive as well. The New Dealers attacked the wealthy as "money changers" and "Princes of Property." In 1937, after his re-election, Roosevelt delivered an inaugural address in which he described government as an instrument of "unimagined power" which should be used to "fashion a higher order of things." This caused business to freeze in its tracks. Companies went on what Roosevelt himself resentfully termed a "capital strike."

These capital strikers mattered because they were even more important to recovery than the Schechters. Consider the case of Alfred Lee Loomis, who had the kind of mind that could contribute significantly to Gross Domestic Product and job creation. During the First World War, he had improved the design of firearms for the U.S. Army. In the 1920s, he became wealthy through his work in investment banking. He moved in a crowd that was developing a new form of utility company that might finally be able to marshal the capital to bring electricity to the American South. But when Loomis saw that the Roosevelt administration was hauling utilities executives down to Washington for hearings, he shut down his business, retreated to his Tudor house, and ran a kind of private think tank for his own benefit. We have heard a lot about a labor surfeit in the 1930s. Here is a heresy: What if there was a shortage of talent brought on by declarations of class warfare?

Another challenge to the Depression economy was tax increases. While these increases didn't achieve the social equality at which they aimed, they did significant damage by confiscating too much individual and corporate property. As a result, many individuals and businesses simply reduced or halted production -- especially as the New Deal wore on. In the late 1930s, banker Leonard Ayres of the Cleveland Trust Company said in the New York Times: "For nearly a decade now the great majority of corporations have been losing money instead of making it."

As for big labor, the Wagner Act of 1935 proved to be quite destructive. It brought on drastic changes at factories, including the closed shop -- the exclusion of non-union members. Another innovation it helped bring about was the sit-down strike, which threatened the basic property right of factory owners to close their doors. Most importantly, it gave unions the power to demand higher wages -- and they did. A wage chart for the 20th century shows that real wages in the 1930s were higher than the trend for the rest of the century. This seems perverse, considering the economic conditions at the time. The result was high-paying jobs for a few and high unemployment for everyone else. The reality of overpriced labor can be seen in several stock phrases coming out of the Great Depression -- "Nice work if you can get it," for example, was the refrain of a Gershwin song performed by Fred Astaire in The Damsel in Distress, a film released in 1937 at the zenith of union power.

To return to the Monopoly board metaphor, the problem in the 1930s was not that there was no bank. It was that there was too much bank -- in the form of the federal government. The government took an arbitrary approach to the money supply and made itself the most powerful player. It shoved everyone else aside so that it could monopolize the board. Benjamin Anderson, a Chase economist at the time, summed it up in a book about the period:

Preceding chapters have explained the Great Depression of 1930 to 1939 as due to the efforts of the governments and very especially the government of the United States to play god.

Relevance for Today

It is not hard to see some of today's troubles as a repeat of the errors of the 1930s. There is arrogance up top. The federal government is dilettantish with money and exhibits disregard and even hostility to all other players. It is only as a result of this that economic recovery seems out of reach. The key to recovery, now as in the 1930s, is to be found in property rights. These rights suffer under our current politics in several ways. The mortgage crisis, for example, arose out of a longstanding erosion of the property rights concept -- first on the part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also on that of the Federal Reserve. Broadening FDR's entitlement theories, Congress taught the country that home ownership was a "right." This fostered a misunderstanding of what property is. The owners didn't realize what ownership entailed -- that is, they didn't grasp that they were obligated to deliver on the terms of the contract of their mortgage. In the bipartisan enthusiasm for making everyone an owner, our government debased the concept of home ownership. Property rights are endangered as well by the ongoing assault on contracts generally. A perfect example of this was the treatment of Chrysler bonds during the company's bankruptcy, where senior secured creditors were ignored, notwithstanding the status of their bonds under bankruptcy law. The current administration made a political decision to subordinate those contracts to union demands. That sent a dangerous signal for the future that U.S. bonds are not trustworthy.

Three other threats to property loom. One is tax increases, such as the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. More taxes mean less private property. A second threat is in the area of infrastructure. Stimulus plans tend to emphasize infrastructure -- especially roads and railroads. And after the Supreme Court's Kelo decision of 2005, the federal government will have enormous license to use eminent domain to claim private property for these purposes. Third and finally, there is the worst kind of confiscation of private property: inflation, which excessive government spending necessarily encourages. Many of us sense that inflation is closer than the country thinks.

If the experience of the Great Depression teaches anything, it is that property rights must be firmly established or else we will not have the kind of economic activity that leads to strong recovery. The Monopoly board game reminds us that economic growth isn't mysterious and inscrutable. Economic growth depends on the impulse of the small businessman and entrepreneur to get back in the game. In order for this to happen, we don't need a perfect government. All we need is one that is "not too bad," whose rules are not constantly changing and snuffing out the willingness of these players to take risks. We need a government under which the money supply doesn't change unpredictably, there are not too many "Go to Jail" cards, and the top hats are confident in the possibility of seeing significant returns on investment.

Recovery won't happen from the top. But when those at the top step back and create the proper conditions, it will happen down there on the board -- one house at a time. *

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Marvin Folkertsma

Marvin Folkertsma is a professor of political science and fellow for American Studies with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. These articles are from V & V, a web site publication of Vision and Values.

The Tea Party Movement, otherwise known as the Great Peasant Revolt of 2010, has been greeted by the country's ruling class with all the sympathy that Voltaire expressed toward the Catholic Church: "Kill the infamous thing!"

Although the American Revolution provides the inspiration for today's Tea Party Americans (TPAs), their opponents in government, academia, and the media have exhausted their warehouses of invective by reacting to this new challenge to old privileges the way the French Aristocracy regarded the Third Estate. Which means, in the aristocracy's view, that there must a Robespierre or Marat lurking within that rabble, waiting with guillotines raised, screaming the eternal cry of revolutionaries: "Off with their heads!"

But the truth is more humble and less dramatic. TPAs' real motives are better expressed with a banner that proclaims "Off with their tenures!" Members of America's Ruling Class (consult Angelo Codevilla's superb essay on this point) may keep their heads, thank you; indeed, they'll need them to get real jobs if the Tea Party movement succeeds in removing many of them from power, not by the guillotine but by the ballot box.

Now President Obama is not Louis XVI -- for one thing, he's a lot better looking -- and Tea Party leaders are not the Jacobins. Still, questions remain about exactly what newly elected officials motivated by TPA priorities would do if they gain power. For those bewildered by the flurry of complex legal expressions, such as "First, stop the madness!" the following short list may help:

First, keep your perspective, which means that a few dozen House seats lost or gained doesn't really mean that much in terms of the larger picture, especially for the party out of power. Think of it this way: a trifling 10 percent of the total 435 House seats nets you a grand total of 43.5 seats, an amount that current TPA enthusiasts think is revolutionary. But this rarefied region of mathematics also informs us of the downside, which is that the remaining 90 percent of the seats are still in the same politically geriatric hands that have managed for decades to hire and fire their own constituents using a magical process known as gerrymandering. If the French aristocracy had been so well entrenched, Louis XVI's progeny would still be constructing four-foot hairdos at the Palace of Versailles.

Second, restore the narrative. The larger public needs to be reminded that taking or regulating banks, health insurance, automobile companies, and (if the EPA has its way) nearly every pot, puddle, and breath of air in the country, is not in keeping with America's traditional understanding of constitutional boundaries. And yet, the ruling class, with its fits of labeling, launches into tirades against these Constitution-citing Americans, accusing them of fascism. Go figure.

The problem is that the political left has until recently maintained a unilateral grip on the American narrative and on the country's self-understanding. That perspective has been almost uniformly negative since the 1960s. TPAs need to continue to stress American accomplishments, generosity, self-governance, independence, initiative, and creativity -- in short, American greatness -- and debunk the Witch's Sabbath of imaginary evils that so obsess the country's elite, such as anthropogenic global warming and a host of supposed phobias and isms that apparently stalk the lesser minds of the great unwashed masses who cling to their guns and religion.

Third, think in the long run. Progressives have wanted to socialize the country since Edward Bellamy projected his utopian fantasies into Looking Backward in 1888; left-wing thought police have wanted to manage if not obliterate dissent since Woodrow Wilson's heavy-handed tactics during the Great War. Progressives have had to settle with the welfare state and political correctness, both accompanied by continuous scolding of what they regard as Americans' selfishness and bigotry. The only part of all this that TPAs should emulate is the perseverance. This means setting a decades-long agenda that includes, for instance, reducing the size of the federal government, abolishing useless programs and departments, and demolishing the IRS and any tax scheme used for social engineering instead of raising revenue. Perhaps above all, excoriate the Reverend Wright-like hatred of America that poisons so many in the ruling elite; exalt American exceptionalism in every breath.

Will any of this work? Yes, if ordinary citizens refuse to ever give up. In the meantime, the next time Speaker Pelosi responds to a question about the constitutionality of an act of Congress by saying, "Are you serious? Are you serious?" TPAs and the vast majority of Americans may shout in unison: "Yes, we are!" *

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy." --Benjamin Franklin

Jarrett Skorup

Jarrett Skorup is a 2009 graduate of Grove City College and former student fellow at The Center for Vision & Values. He is the research associate for online engagement for Michigan Capitol Confidential at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Michigan. This article first appeared through the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, private-sector unions are allowed to extract dues and fees from workers if the employer agrees. The NLRA, passed in 1935 during Franklin Roosevelt's first term, does not, however, apply to public-sector employees -- including state and federal workers -- because the thinking was that this would over-politicize government and cause a conflict of interest between unions and politicians. In a Weekly Standard piece by professors Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo titled, "The New Tammany Hall," this problem is described:

Unlike private sector unions, the sheer number of workers represented is not the linchpin of [the public sector unions'] influence. Private sector unions have a natural adversary in the owners of the companies with whom they negotiate. But public sector unions have no such natural counterweight. They are a classic case of "client politics," where an interest group's concentrated efforts to secure rewards impose diffused costs on the mass of unorganized taxpayers.

In the 1960s, many states began chipping away at the wall of separation between unions and public workers. In 1965,the Michigan Legislature revised the Public Employment Relations Act (PERA) to establish mandatory collective bargaining and exclusive representation for state and municipal government workers. This has caused the number of public-sector union employees to skyrocket.

A conflict of interest would be as follows: First, a government union elects politicians by funding their campaigns and organizing a massive get-out-the-vote drive; second, the politicians support employee pay increases, generous pensions, and condition of employment; third, the union takes dues (read: taxpayer money) and starts the cycle all over again for selected politicians.

At both the state and national level, public-sector union support for many Democrats has been well documented. One of the largest public-sector unions in the country, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has given over $40 million to politicians since 1990, with more than 98 percent of that going to Democrats. The SEIU, AFL-CIO, and United Steel Workers have all promised big help in the coming election. In return, the Democratic Party has voted nearly lockstep with these unions' demands.

But political cronyism knows no party lines, and many Republicans likewise have been guilty here in Michigan.

In just the past year, the state has had several such instances. Last fall, nine Michigan Education Association-supported House Republicans nixed a 3 percent cost-saving plan for the school aid budget. In April, MEA-supported Senate Republicans watered down a modest bill that would

. . . increase state and school employee payroll contributions to their pension system by 3 percent, cap pension "service credits" at 30 years, and create a somewhat less generous defined benefit system for new school employees. At the same time, a union subsidiary of the SEIU pushed GOP Senators into coming up short on a vote that would have opened a prison to competitive bidding and privatized it, if privatization promised to save money.

Last August, one Republican state senator came under fire for introducing a bill that would have forced some 42,000 in-home health care workers into a union, sending approximately $6.6 million in taxpayers' money to the SEIU in the form of "dues."

Unfortunately, what has happened in Michigan has taken place elsewhere in America.

The end game for these types of relationships is already happening in our country's most public union-friendly states: in California, where budget gridlock has forced the government to issue IOUs and minimum-wage salaries to public officials, and in Illinois, where the governor has promised massive tax hikes combined with severe cuts to education. Both states have some of the highest tax rates in the county, and yet both face pension obligations that they cannot ever hope to pay.

These types of political dealings and financing may not be illegal, but they're still an offense to the political process. Politicians can take money from government-employee unions and then vote on legislation that directly improves the financial well-being of these entities. A possible quid pro quo exists that would not if public-sector unions were restricted from giving money to politicians.

Politicians granting unsustainable government-employee salaries, benefits, and pensions is a problem everywhere, but the states with the strongest public-sector unions will have the hardest time correcting the problem. More broadly, as long as these incestuous relationships between government unions and the political class remain in place and unchallenged, the size and scope of government will continue to grow. *

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington

Fred A. Kingery

Fred A. Kingery is a self-employed, private-equity investor in domestic and international financial markets from New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and a guest commentator for 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.

The Republican Party, with the help of the Tea Party, swept the House of Representatives with a massive pickup of at least 60 seats. The Federal Reserve made another historic announcement with its $600 billion "Quantitative Easing" program (QE2). The October non-farm payroll number came in at a positive 151,000, and the unemployment number remained elevated at 9.6 percent for the month.

All of this transpired in the course of one week. So, what's next? Hold on to your seats. Consider the following:

1. The U.S. dollar is falling on foreign-exchange markets and will continue to fall as the Fed aggressively prints money for the next eight months in order to monetize U.S. federal debt. The cash reserves will pile up in the banking system and eventually be used by the financial system for speculation, resulting in minimal benefit for the real economy.

2. The U.S. banking system is holding a "shadow inventory" of about four million foreclosed residential properties. The inventory of unsold properties will continue to swell to easily double the current level and, at the present rate of liquidation, will be hanging over the housing market for years. Home prices could conservatively fall another 20 percent.

3. U.S. corporations -- which economists boast of holding more than one trillion in cash -- never mention that over 40 percent of the cash is held "offshore." The cash will not come home until the U.S. dollar stops falling, which means that it may never come home at all.

4. By mid-December of this year, the "99ers" will appear. All 1,470,000 of them will ride in on the first wave. These are people who have been on unemployment benefits for 99 weeks and will see their benefits expire. The next wave will come by April of next year, perhaps as many as two million more. They will have to get employment (good luck with that) or food stamps, or both.

5. Balancing state budgets in the current fiscal year will be a major issue going forward for the majority of states. States have seen a modest improvement in revenue, mostly from tax increases, but further tax increases will no longer be an option; they will have to start cutting expenditures. State employees will be dumped from the payroll and pension benefits will be closely examined as a means of conserving cash flow.

6. Earlier this year, the federal debt ceiling was raised by $1.9 trillion to $14.3 trillion, in order to postpone the issue until after the election. It will have to be raised again early in 2011. That's when the real food-fight starts in Congress. The Republican-controlled House will use the process to strip fat and meat off the bone. There will probably be meaningful across-the-board cuts in discretionary federal spending, no more bailouts for Wall Street, and very probably no more federal cash transfers to states to plug their budget shortfalls. Someone needs to be sure the new governors of California and New York get the memo.

7. The stock market traders will like the sugar buzz from the Federal Reserve till they don't like everything else; then the market will roll over. No one has a clue when, or from what level, but the market will roll over. The decline will be properly perceived as one more failed attempt by the Fed to manipulate asset prices. In the meantime, gold and silver prices will continue to spike higher. The mining companies could easily become big dividend payers as most gold miners are now clearing almost $1000 per ounce of free cash flow for every ounce they pull out of the ground. If the price of gold goes up by another $500 per ounce, which it easily could, the dividends will really flow. Then the whole planet will finally come to realize that the "bubble" is not in the price of the metal but in the volume of fiat currency reserves being dumped into the financial system by the Federal Reserve.

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride. *

"Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people." --Thomas Jefferson

Jigs Gardner

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..

A friend from a city tells me that he is sick of Christmas (the secular event, he means). The zillionth Santa Claus has done him in. He has heard his favorite carols boomed on P.A. systems too many times; he has seen thousands too many hideous lighting displays, been shrilly alerted to too many pre-Christmas sales. His responses are dulled by excess; he looks upon the gathering festivities with a jaded eye. Christmas is for children, for them alone he says, because only such innocents can respond with wonder and delight to torrents of flash and glitter and sentimentality. Hence that twaddle about everyone being a child at Christmas. Would that it were so, he sadly concludes, would that it were so.

He says, I am lucky to be living on a remote farm, hardly exposed to the juggernaut of Christmas, and of course, that's true: I suffer no such bombardment as he. But even when I lived out in the world, so to speak, I was not bothered by Christmas as my friend is, because I paid little heed to the kind of things that annoy him, and in this I am surely not unique. I'll bet that most people are similarly selectively inattentive. Christmas takes place in my mind as certain childhood memories, and again, I would not be surprised to learn that this is quite common. The attraction does not seem to me to be nostalgia, but rather some special elusive quality that I have sought for years to understand.

For some reason, although I remember many Christmases, my ritual of inner celebration confines itself to just four memories from the late 1930s when I was about five years old.

It is mid-afternoon of Christmas Eve, the time when we always set up and decorate the tree. It stands in one corner of the living room, and the various relatives and members of the family are hanging decorations, putting up lights, throwing tinsel at the tree, putting holly and evergreen branches on the mantelpiece. In the foreground stands my father, home early from the office, and he is talking with Earl, our postman. In those days, there were two daily deliveries in residential areas, and my father has invited Earl in for a Christmas drink. Finally, naively concerned about the other people on his route, I go up to Earl and tug at his sleeve; shouldn't he go and deliver the letters? Everyone laughs. My own intervention in the scene never seems important to me now; it is the background -- the tree, the decorations, the bright colors, the exhilarated family -- that holds my attention.

The next scene is close up, from the side, of my mother sitting at our upright piano, singing and playing Christmas carols. The rest of the family stands around the piano, singing, but the only one I see distinctly is Mother. I watch her sing; I hear the piano.

The scene fades, and now I see Grandpa, my mother's father who travels by train from Wisconsin to New Jersey every Christmas, sitting in a high-backed chair by our fireplace, the only source of light in the room. Father and Mother are in the background, the other children sit around Grandpa's chair or on the hearth. I, as the youngest, am privileged to sit on his lap. A tall, spare man wearing always a dark, three-piece suit and a hearing aid, Grandpa tells us the same stories every Christmas in a wonderful, deep country voice crossed between Wisconsin and Vermont.

Once when he was a small boy he went to a far pasture to fetch the cows, but they had wandered on the hillside and he was a long time gathering them and starting the herd for home. It was coming dark, and Grandpa heard the cry of a wildcat behind him in the woods. The animal followed him all the way down the hillside to the home fields. This memory, like all my scenes with Grandpa, is a double vision, because each story begot in my mind a scene retained to this day. The cows, rather slight and long-legged like deer, are picking their way down a brushy slope, lit fadingly by the sunset's after-glow; a little boy, carrying a long switch, walks beside them; he determindely does not look back, but behind him in the dark wood a tawny animal prowls from tree to tree.

Out after dark once on some errand, hurrying along the road, anxious to be home, Grandpa was passing a graveyard when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a ghostly light on a grave. It seemed to jump from gravestone to gravestone following the boy's progress. When he reversed his steps, so did the light. Grandpa was released from a growing panic when he realized, looking over his shoulder, that it was only the reflection of the moon on the stones.

When Grandpa went to the Chicago Exposition in 1893 he stayed, for the first time, in a hotel, and in the middle of the night he was awakened by an apparition of a man, covered with blood, beckoning him. After a moment, the apparition disappeared. This happened three times, but Grandpa convinced himself that he was dreaming and finally went back to sleep. When he looked at a newspaper next day, there was the picture of the man who had tried to summon Grandpa to his aid: he had been murdered the night before. This is an old story, of course (it's in Chaucer), but no less mysterious for all that, and so it seemed to me as I sat on Grandpa's lap, watching the firelight flicker on his spectacles.

In fairy tales, and sometimes in dreams, there are enchanted places: the child opens the half hidden door in the vine-covered wall and steps into a secret garden, a place that seems out of time, outside the bounds of ordinary life, magical both in its strangeness and in the intensity of its sensuous reality. But after the child leaves, he can never find the door again -- the enchanted place is given to him only once.

Christmas morning, 1938. We have a houseful of relatives, so my brother, 10 years older than I, and two friends of his from boarding school, Pete and Bill DeBawn, are sleeping in the attic. Clutching my stocking filled with tangerines, apples, and nuts, I climb out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness to make my way to the attic door. Like most attics, it is a dark, dusty storage space with hiding places behind chimneys and in nooks in the corners of steeply sloping roofs, but it was also used, not long before, by my older sisters and brother as a playroom. A swing is suspended from the rafters, and there is a long cloth mural of fairies and toadstools, very tattered and faded, pinned to one wall. Pete and Bill are sleeping in the old iron bedstead, pushed against the front wall under the dormer windows. My brother has a cot nearby. Everyone is awake, everyone has a stocking, everyone is excited, whispering. It has snowed! By standing on the bed, I can look out the window and down into the street. It is still snowing, and the snow, large, fluffy flakes, has piled thick rounded domes on the tops of hedges and posts, rounding all outlines with a thick, soft white blanket. In the circle of light cast by the street lamp on the corner, I see that a single car has passed; its tracks are slowly filling with snow. I gaze and gaze at the circle of light, at the flakes falling steadily past the lamp. As I write these words, unexpectedly my eyes fill with tears, and I know now what I have sought -- the door in the vine-covered wall that I thought was lost: Nothing is so intense as the memory of it. *