Jan 6
am less sure that the proceedings have much to do with high principle.
Perhaps the best illustration is found in the behavior of Mr. DeLay, one of the chief architects of the impeachment vote. Apparently sharing the belief of many that the articles of impeachment were weak, he invited undecided Members to view secret evidence, including documents dealing with matters which neither the Judiciary Committee nor the Independent Counsel had seen fit to take up. He later suggested that if Senators only would inspect this mother lode of gossip, the necessary sixty-seven votes would materialize.
Those who spoke in the House debate in favor of impeachment and invoked Constitutional principle probably believed what they said. They were, however, lending their support to a political lynching.
Jan 7
Commentary presented a symposium in December's issue, inviting observations on the meaning of the November election, "the moral disposition of the American people" and the direction of conservative thought in the matter of morals.
Most of those who discussed the election sought to rationalize it in comforting terms: "Voters last November refused to send a Big Message, either that all was well or, by contrast, that the country would be definitively on its way to hell unless Clinton was kicked out of office...." "The '98 elections suggest that it has dawned on most Americans that we are in bad moral trouble, but we do not know what to do about it." "The results of the November elections reveal public indifference and Republican diffidence." Any explanation will do other than the inconvenient one that many voters see less in the Lewinski affair than do Clinton's critics and are more afraid of the latter.
Several of the essays undercut the frequent denial by Congressional Republicans and other friends of impeachment that the issue is sex. In fact, those opinions were notable primarily for their unabashed preoccupation with the subject. Another, and related, theme was that the problems with our moral disposition are all the fault of the Sixties.
In this view, the legacy of that time is primarily a liberalized, irresponsible attitude toward sex, finding expression in toleration (if not celebration) of casual sexual activity, in homosexuality, unwed motherhood and divorce. However, the worst manifestation, and the issue which seems central in the thinking of these writers, is abortion. To them, President Clinton's hesitant, passive, tawdry fooling around is part of the degenerate mindset which leads the heirs of the counterculture to murder their unborn. I think that one can, without much danger of overstatement, point out that this is ridiculous.
Leaving aside that Bill's chosen form of recreation wasn't procreation, it is absurd to argue that sexual promiscuity is inextricably linked to liberal ideas about abortion. Men cheated on their wives, took advantage of their subordinates and lied about it long before 1960. Conservatives did it, Republicans did it, Victorians did it and so did men of religious faith. Abortion may be wrong and the legacy of the counterculture may be regrettable, but conservatives aren't going to make that case by denouncing Mr. Clinton's behavior. Neither are they going to convince anyone that he should be forced out of office by denouncing the Sixties.
There were exceptions to this pattern. David Frum suggested that the "American public's disinclination to remove President Clinton from office is in many ways a conservative impulse..." The Democrats won in 1998 "by getting to the right of Kenneth Starr on the issue of public decency." They argued "that it was time to get smut off television - and that the way to get it off was by ending the investigation." Christopher Caldwell made much the same point: The "Penthouse Forum tone of the Starr report and much anti-Clinton commentary cast Republicans as the party that really likes to talk about sex." To get caught in certain activities is humiliating to Mr. Clinton, but "to spend a year turning blue in the face about it is perverse." Also, "Republicans appeared opportunistic in adducing a 'moral crisis' or a 'death of outrage' to explain the public's refusal to desert the President over the Lewinski matter." The confusion of targets - or melding of fixations - regarding Clinton and the Sixties isn't the only example of fuzzy thinking in the responses. The worst, at least to my admittedly legalistic mind, was offered by James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson speculated that voters are tired of the impeachment proceedings because they require "incontrovertible evidence" of wrongdoing. They did not repudiate President Nixon until that appeared and "[l]ittle evidence of this kind has been presented against Clinton." So far, I'm with him. However, he thinks that such evidence exists and that the voters simply haven't taken the time to review it. The Starr report alleges - plausibly in my opinion - that Clinton did attempt to obstruct justice, but to accept that finding one must first study the report carefully or listen closely to Starr's congressional testimony...." The Starr Report may allege obstruction plausibly, but an allegation is just that, not proof.
However, before finishing a sentence, Professor Wilson converted an accusation into a "finding." Of course he has company, as the Judiciary majority was equally unable to understand the distinction. He continued, "I have read the report and listened to Starr's testimony and I think he is reasonable, and so I believe Clinton has acted wrongly. But not many Americans have done this." Professor Wilson's approach is somewhat less than rigorous. One need not subject the evidence to critical scrutiny, analyze the charges, consider the standards for impeachment or listen to contrary interpretations. It is enough that the advocate of a conclusion one supports appear to be reasonable. This is indistinguishable from the standing ovation granted Mr. Starr
by the Committee Republicans.
Even the claim that the public opposes impeachment because it has not read the Report is unconvincing. The versions of the charges reported in the media have been more damaging than the real thing and, unlike the Report, cannot be dissected.
In her essay, Midge Decter suggested that the public be instructed by neoconservative intellectuals."1 If Professor Wilson is an example of their reasoning power, I'll take the maligned electorate.
_____________________
1. 10/10/01: Neoconservatives are insistent on this label, apparently intending it to suggest deep thinking. A more appropriate definition is suggested by Jaques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence: "It was during 'the [Dreyfus] Affair' that the word intellectual became a noun with its present connotation of professional of the mind holding social or political views. It bears the same relation to thinker that aesthete does to artist: it denotes a large group of people articulate for a cause and often militant, without being themselves artists or thinkers."
Jan 11
William F. Buckley was another contributor to the Commentary symposium. His comments there were somewhat rambling, touching on "the eschatological dynamic of the Judiciary Committee's inquiry" and "the progressive enfeeblement of ethical will." He was quoted in the New York Times on December 18 in a more succinct, although markedly less logical, vein.
The arguments in favor of impeaching [the President] come down to this:
One, his behavior was disreputable. He deceived the courts and the American people.
Two, the gravity of his offense is best measured by the disgusted attention that has been given to what he did.
Three, the arguments in his defense have been semantic and legalistic.... [ellipsis in the original]
Four, the objection that the American people are opposed to impeachment ignores culture lags of historical frequency, including general opposition to the liberation of the slaves....
Five, the true test of the stability of the Constitution is in its usefulness in liberating the country from miscast faith in a failed leader.
And six, the profiles in courage, in the contemporary scene, will highlight the Republican and Democratic Congressmen who summon the courage to do the right thing.
Mr. Buckley should stick to rambling; he doesn't make much sense when he tries to be systematic.
Jan 15
McCarthyism has been used as a metaphor for the fixation on Mr. Clinton's sins. Alan Dershowitz has entitled his recent book Sexual McCarthyism and The Weekly informed us in the current issue that there is a web site called "Sexual McCarthyism.com."
I'm slowly wending my way through The Crosswinds of Freedom, the third volume of James MacGregor Burns' The American Experiment. Last night, reading about the McCarthy era, I came across this: "His 1950 crusade elevated McCarthy to the high priesthood of Republican right-wing extremism. McCarthyism, said the rising young conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., 'is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.'" I don't detect much good will in either of Mr. Buckley's crusades, but the rest is revealing.
Jan 17
One Republican has expressed impatience with the theory that the President should be driven from office because of annoyance at the defenses - or evasions, obfuscations or whatever - he has offered in response to the charges. Senator Jeffords of Vermont was quoted as follows: "If you say lying about a noncrime can be converted into a high crime by the way he handled it, (that) sets a pretty low standard to me." On the other hand, an accompanying story claimed that no one in the Senate now is saying that conviction is impossible, citing five senators, two of
them Democrats, to the effect that the House had presented an impressive case.
Jan 18
The Senate reportedly still is undecided whether to call witnesses, but the first one already has testified and has helped his case. I thought that President Clinton was taking a huge gamble in proceeding with the State of the Union address in the midst of his trial. His political instincts, not surprisingly, are better than mine. The speech was one of his better efforts even ignoring the obstacles; under the circumstances, it was incredible. He challenged his chief accuser to a showdown and Henry Hyde blinked.
Jan 24
In today's P-I, a column by the director of the Baptist Center for Ethics criticized the religious right for condemning sexual misbehavior but not racist attitudes. The occasion was the revelation that Senator Lott and Representative Barr, the latter one of the House prosecutors, have attended meetings of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The writer's conclusion was that "the ethical double standard of the religious right advances moral relativism and discloses how ill-fitting the modifier religious is when applied to these right-wingers." The accusation of moral
relativism is a nice bit of irony.
The other aspect of this episode which I find intriguing is the lack of interest displayed by the media, especially given Barr's status as one of the House impeachment managers. There is, as to some subjects, an undeniable liberal bias in the media. However, contrary to my observation a year ago, it would be difficult to make that case based on reporting and commentary on the Lewinski affair.
Feb 9
I used to regard Henry Hyde as a principled, generally sensible conservative. In the early stage of the impeachment proceedings, he seemed, like the rest of us, to be caught up in an unpleasant process he would rather be rid of. However, at some point, he decided that he had a mission. Perhaps he saw himself as a defender of public integrity, but to me he appeared to be a latter-day Roundhead - part moral scold, part revolutionary - calling for the death of the tyrant. The reference in his closing argument to the divine right of kings did nothing to dispel the image. His
demand that the Senate cleanse the office epitomized the moralistic excess of the House managers and their detachment from reality.
Anthony Lewis, who has talked more sense about this mess than anyone else, summed up these tendencies in today's column. Referring to the speech by Rep. Graham, he asked,
Why the trembling emotion? Frustration, I think. Mr. Graham and the other Republican managers believe that an evil President is about to be acquitted of the impeachment charges, and they cannot understand why.
If they could only see it, one reason is their very certainty: their absolute conviction that they are right. Most Americans do not want to be governed by men who know they are always right....
Feb 10
The Attorney General is looking into possible misconduct by Mr. Starr. At the moment, the focus is on his denial, at the time of the expansion of his powers to include the Lewinski affair, that his office was in contact with lawyers representing Paula Jones. This has been expressed as a challenge to his veracity but, as with his target, there isn't much to damage. The more important issue is whether the eventual charges against Mr. Clinton were the result of collusion, whether they were a species of entrapment. Unintentionally shedding light on the latter issue while denying the former, Charles Bakaly said, "There was no misleading of Justice. This was a very fluid evolving situation. Unlike most public corruption cases, this one was - ongoing felonies were still possibly being committed."
Feb 11
The Senate voted today. As expected, neither article of impeachment came near to commanding the necessary 67 votes, but the result was worse for the House managers than would have been forecast until very recently: 45 for conviction on perjury, 50 on obstruction.
One of the many ironies, one which exposes the misuse of the impeachment power, is the extent to which the votes for impeachment and for conviction were influenced by Mr. Clinton's behavior after the events which ostensibly formed the basis for the proceedings, especially his refusal to admit wrongdoing in a manner acceptable to his critics. This was noted in an article by Lawrence Tribe today:
Many who have urged the President's removal have been willing to see him remain in power if only he would confess that he committed a crime - strongly suggesting that no danger to individual rights or to the constitutional system itself was perceived in the President's admittedly shameful behavior. This impeachment has been less about danger to the nation than about disgust with the President's attitude....
Mar 3
The revelations that America is depraved and that the causes are liberalism and the Sixties prompted the acquisition of Robert Bork's Slouching towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and America's Decline. (I also should consult The Death of Outrage, but it hasn't yet found its way to the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble).
The hearings on his nomination to the Supreme Court convinced me that Judge Bork was outside the mainstream of American legal thought and an unsuitable candidate for the Court. Therefore, when I read his apologia, The Tempting of America, I expected to find myself in complete opposition. Instead, although I disagreed with him on important matters, it struck me as a well-reasoned exposition of his version of conservatism, much less radical than I expected. Slouching towards Gomorrah, his 1996 jeremiad, reflects more of the extremism that I thought I detected in 1987.
On Pages 2 and 3 of the Introduction, he tells us that society is deteriorating:
...We hear one day of the latest rap song calling for killing policemen or the sexual mutilation of women; the next, of coercive left-wing political indoctrination at a prestigious university; then of the latest homicide figures for New York City, Los Angeles, or the District of Columbia; of the collapse of the criminal justice system, which displays an inability to punish adequately and, often enough, an inability even to convict the clearly guilty; of the rising rate of illegitimate births; the uninhibited display of sexuality and the popularization of violence in our entertainment; worsening racial tensions; the angry activists of feminism, homosexuality, animal rights - the list could be extended almost indefinitely.
Following the ominous introduction, the book is divided into three parts. Part I tells us how we came to our present place; it begins, predictably, with a discussion of the Sixties. "It is important to understand what the Sixties turmoil was about, for the youth culture that became manifest then is the modern liberal culture of today." Quoting a description of the attitude of the time, he says, That was the authentic voice of adolescent Sixties radicalism -impatient, destructive, nihilistic. Modern liberalism is its mature stage.
It's not clear where some of Judge Bork's fixations originated, but the first two chapters demonstrate that his opinion of the Sixties is due in no small part to his having seen student demonstrations at first hand; the earlier book showed that his attitudes toward liberalism were influenced or at least confirmed by his treatment during the hearings. I can sympathize with both reactions: the irrationality and violence of some of the student actions would have offended almost any thoughtful person and the hysterical performance of some of his critics at the hearings might make anyone wonder what sort of people liberals are. However, Slouching towards Gomorrah claims that there is something fundamentally wrong with liberalism and that it is corrupting American culture. So sweeping an indictment requires something more than anecdotes about rude behavior. It requires factual support and persuasive argument, of which there is not nearly enough.
Judge Bork's theme is the "progression of liberty and equality to their present corrupt states of moral anarchy and despotic egalitarianism." In two chapters criticizing "the rage for liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "the passion for equality," he changes his focus, arguing that this tendency did not arise in the Sixties but is revealed in the Declaration of Independence.
In denouncing radical individualism, Judge Bork informs us that the Declaration's "ringing phrases are hardly useful, indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private." However, his argument is nothing more than the obvious one that there are practical limits on the application of the principles of the Declaration, ones embodied, e.g., in the Constitution. As it is the Constitution and not the Declaration which has great continuing impact on our decisions, his denunciation of the former is mostly rhetoric.
Judge Bork's main target as to individualism is On Liberty. His understanding of that work is about on a par with that of our local columnist, the only difference being her admiration and his disdain for the one simple principle." Neither seems to have read beyond that passage. His interpretation of On Liberty, of the influence of that essay and of the inevitable tendencies of the Enlightenment lead him to one of his simple principles: "Liberalism moves, therefore, toward radical individualism and the corruption of standards that movement entails."1
Judge Bork doesn't have any more regard for the Declaration of Independence when it comes to equality.
The proposition that all men are created equal said what the colonists already believed, and so, as Gordon Wood put it, equality became "the single most powerful and radical ideological force in all of American history." That is true and, though it verges on heresy to say so, it is also profoundly unfortunate.
Even assuming, as he apparently does, that once equality is posited, it inevitably must lead to some sort of excess, does he really think that whatever evils he perceives are too great a price to pay for the emancipation of the slaves, civil rights for minorities and votes for women?
In addition, his concept of radical egalitarianism is somewhat eccentric. Although he offers a few other examples, the chapter on the unfortunate effects of the passion for equality is devoted primarily to progressive income taxation. This, he informs us, is based on nothing more than envy of the more successful. Only someone influenced by the Chicago school of law and economics could reach such a conclusion and, stranger yet, believe that this demonstrates the march of liberalism toward Gomorrah.
In a chapter on the judicial system, Judge Bork denounces the Supreme Court's "constitutionalizing of radical individualism," using as examples decisions dealing with religion, freedom of expression and abortion, with passing mention of crime and education. Certainly there are debatable decisions in all of these areas, and some of them could be regarded as manifestations of excessive notions of personal liberty, but the conclusion that such a theme underlies all of the Court's work merely is asserted and is not to me self-evident. Judge Bork also discusses Bowers v. Hardwick, regarding prosecution for sodomy, but he has to criticize the dissent in order to make his point, as the Court handed down a notably conservative ruling, one which is an inconvenient exception to his supposed rule.
Under the heading of radical egalitarianism, Judge Bork indicts, among others, opinions on affirmative action. He notes a decision pulling back from approval of set-asides, but cautions that it is "too soon, however, to say that the Court has abandoned its extreme egalitarianism...." To do so would detract from the theme. He toys with the idea of legislative review of Court decisions, but neglects to mention that the closest approach to that recently was the legislative repudiation of Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, a decision dealing with proof of disparate impact discrimination; Congress intervened in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 because it thought the Court too conservative. (Wards Cove was decided in 1988; does it reflect the pernicious effects of the Eighties?)
There are many aspects of contemporary American culture, politics and law which deserve close scrutiny, some which liberals would agree need major change, and some as to which many people would concur that there is evident an aspect of cultural decline or illness. However, addressing such issues is not advanced by overwrought, unpersuasive denunciations such as Judge Bork sets forth in Part I of his book, nor is analysis aided by simplistic arguments that all of the problems are the fault of one ideology, philosophy, tradition or decade.
Part II, as Judge Bork tells us in the foreword, "examines the particular institutions and areas of cultural warfare that result from the twin thrusts of modern liberalism: radical individualism and radical egalitarianism." This is not exactly a promise of moderation but there is, briefly, an entirely different tone. In the first four chapters of Part II, he discusses popular entertainment, the internet, pornography, crime, "illegitimacy," welfare, abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Even when taking an uncompromising position, he is more reasonable, more persuasive and more humane than anyone would have anticipated from reading Part I.
However, in addressing feminism, he returns to the earlier style. Many of the extreme views he criticizes have been reported in one form or another elsewhere and seem as dubious as he suggests. However, none of his discussion reveals any understanding of the significance of feminism to most women, or of the ways in which they integrate it, or parts of it, into their lives. His belief that gender discrimination no longer exists would surprise many.
Judge Bork’s apparent detachment from everyday life was one of the reasons I thought he was a poor choice for the Court. His concept of the law seemed academic; it was, in his telling, an intellectual exercise in which purity of reasoning was more important than just results. Much of this chapter reflects that same detachment. Apart from his discussion of the military, his view of feminism is academic in the literal sense: he is concerned primarily with battles on campus. The
same is true of his opinions on liberalism in general. While such debates are not unimportant, this focus leads him to take an unrealistic view and an unnecessarily hostile stance.
His attitude toward racial issues is similar: the problem has been solved but we are being poisoned by anti-white rhetoric.
Judge Bork concludes Part II with a chapter entitled "The Wistful Hope for Fraternity." True to his method, he informs us that the impediments to fraternity are "modern liberalism's radical versions of liberty and equality." His focus is multiculturalism, which, he tells us, is "barbarism". One of the oddities of his argument is that Western culture, which here he defends, elsewhere is accused of being the source of the excesses of liberalism, or at least of individualism.
Concern about the effects of multiculturalism is not unique to conservatives. Judge Bork refers to but is somewhat dismissive of Arthur Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. Another study, which provides not only a far more insightful and objective appraisal than Judge Bork's but also an apt critique of his attitude, is Todd Gitlin's The Twilight of Common Dreams. On the latter point, Professor Gitlin has this to say:
...The publicists and scholars who obsess about political correctness, and the politicians who seize on the opportunities they open up, are frozen into their own correctness. They are factions against factions. They feel victimized by those accused of cultivating victimization. Deploring hyper-sensitivity, they are hypersensitive to every slight directed against white men. Humorlessly, they decry the humorlessness of feminists and minorities.... [I]n the thick of the culture war, the movement that purports to wish to shore up the American center is itself a centrifugal force.
Dismissing Judge Bork's concerns about the culture would be a mistake and even his attacks on liberalism are worth considering. Liberalism has significant problems and Judge Bork is an intelligent man: he’s bound to be right about some of them. It is, however, a challenge to do justice to a critique which takes such an extreme stance. I find myself thinking twice about accepting even sensible arguments from someone whose starting point is Irving Kristol's dictum that rot and decadence...[are] the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism.... Reasoning from
such an ideological premise is a poor substitute for analysis and clear thinking.
_____________________
1. 5/5/99: "On Liberty is widely praised; it is, however, less widely read. Otherwise so many misconceptions about its content could not have been so frequently disseminated." This accurately describes the Malkin-Bork inter- pretation (apart from praise, of course, as to Bork). "Far from being a plea for individual license, it is a sober and balanced presentation of its subject." Germino, Modern Western Political Thought.
8/24/02: Michelle Malkin, after leaving the Seattle Times, became a syndicated columnist. She is included in the conservative Townhall.com group and turned up last night as a substitute conservative commentator on The News Hour. She doesn't, however, share Judge Bork's views on personal liberty - or, at least, didn't when she was at the Times - which demonstrates, as Townhall.com states, that there is more than one conservative viewpoint.
Mar 8
There are more balanced and useful commentaries on the Sixties and on the dangers of excessive individualism. One is found in E.J. Dionne's Why Americans Hate Politics. In a discussion of "family politics," Dionne noted the common perception about individualism and the opportunism inherent in the kind of critique offered by Bork: "The conservatives took advantage of the public's uneasy sense that the sexual revolution, looser laws on drugs and pornography, even feminism itself, were the values of a self-centered individualism." However, conservatives "were committed to precisely such an individualism in the economic sphere...."
Dionne began from a rather different view of liberalism than that of Judge Bork: "Liberalism had always based its claim to power on representing the interests of the community as a whole against individualism." Like Gitlin, he advocated "restoring our sense of common citizenship." After listing some of the challenges that face us he said,
Solving all these problems requires acceptance of the notions that individualism must be tempered by civic obligation and that the preservation of personal liberty is an ineluctably cooperative enterprise. These ideas lie at the heart of the popular revolt against both the Sixties Left and the Eighties Right. If there is an uneasiness about both the counterculture and the money culture, it is that both shunned the obligations of individuals toward the broader community.... 1
1. Mario Cuomo stated the principle thusly in Reason to Believe: "...to the classic American tradition of individualism we must add the equally American notion of community...." Less centrist liberals than Cuomo and Dionne are more entranced by the notion of complete freedom, less committed to common goals.
A critique of their position is in order, but it requires a more objective and more subtle mind than Judge Bork's. Governor Cuomo's comment should be the guide: individualism and communitarianism are not liberal or conservative positions, but shared values.
Mar 10
...Republicans see no connection between the cultural phenomena they deplore and the capitalist culture they promise to intensify; no connection between the multiplying evidence of self-indulgence and national decadence (such as pornography, promiscuity, abortion, divorce and other forms of indiscipline) and the unsleeping pursuit of ever more immediate, intense and grand material gratifications.
Republicans sense that manners, meaning conduct in its moral aspect, are as determinative in a nation's life as are materialistic preoccupations. Republicans seem not to sense the effect of such preoccupations on manners.
Mar 11
Judge Bork's preoccupation with the pompous ramblings of college leftists is especially noteworthy as there seems to be a consensus that such people are increasingly disconnected from ordinary American life. As Todd Gitlin put it in a chapter entitled "Marching on the English Department," "The more their political life was confined to the library, the more their language bristled with aggression."
I may be naïve as to the influence of academic debates, but I see little in the way of direct effect. The newsletter of the Philosophy Department at the UW informed me recently that a new faculty member's interests include "feminist critiques of science and traditional epistemology." I'd bet that I wouldn't agree with her point of view, but so what? Unless something has changed since my undergraduate days, the Philosophy Department's position on epistemology has limited influence on world affairs, and science probably will continue on its fact-bound course despite her critique.
Apr 13
Up to this point, the principal contribution of editorial columns on the bombing of Yugoslavia has been to reveal that a policy is good if followed by one’s party, bad if by the other. Charles Krauthammer added two notes to the refrain yesterday. He is upset that the campaign in Yugoslavia reflects too much sensitivity: a Dutch pilot was barred from marking a kill on his plane; the Italians wanted to scale down the bombing on Easter; we have taken the Presidential palace off the list because it contains art treasures; we try to minimize the number of people killed. This is not sufficiently brutal: bombing empty buildings shows a "lack of seriousness," which can be demonstrated by "hitting targets...that may indeed kill the enemy, and civilians
nearby." To what end? According to him, the war never should have been started.
However, his confusion as to aims is not the most remarkable aspect of his column; that is the disclosure that the deficiencies in the conduct of military affairs, not only by the Clinton administration but by NATO, are (surprise!) the fault of the Sixties: "This is war? This is war as waged by humanitarians, idealists and the flotsam of the counterculture...." Whether we should have intervened in Kosovo could be questioned, as could the tactics, and the seemingly aimless, ad hoc responses of our government and its allies are a legitimate cause for concern, but intelligent debate is not fostered by dredging up the counterculture yet again. It is difficult not to conclude that those who are preoccupied with fighting thirty-year-old battles can’t pay enough attention to the current ones to have views on them worth noting.
May 1
By a dismal coincidence the NRA convention was held today in Denver, only a few days and miles from the Littelton massacre. Even the NRA has some sensitivity, so the meeting was scaled back. However, someone apparently forgot to tell Charlton Heston that restraint might be in order.
I tuned into C-SPAN partway through what I assume was his keynote address. His comments on the events were the following:
-- There always will be tragedies.
-- Somewhere another evil person is plotting a similar crime.
-- The media have, for their corrupt reasons, pointed the finger at us.
-- It's not our fault.
-- However, opportunist politicians are using the tragedy to take away our freedoms (i.e., our guns).
Having thus disclaimed responsibility, he proceeded, in a delivery which sounded like a comedian imitating Heston playing Moses, to issue the following from on high, substituting a teleprompter for stone tablets:
-- The Second Amendment is the protector of the Bill of Rights.
-- As long as we have the Second Amendment, we cannot be conquered, from within or without.
-- Because of the Second Amendment we never will have tyranny.
-- We need not worry about having to bear arms against our government: as long as there is a Second Amendment - as long as we are in arms - it will not dare move against us.
-- No one can tell the NRA not to visit his city or state, because the entire country is our land.
We all have bad rhetorical habits; one of mine is to use detachment from reality too frequently as a metaphor. Here, however, is a genuine, honest-to-God example of it. Mr. Heston has transformed his personal fears and fantasies into a world view, one which invites the most deficiently socialized among us to imagine themselves to be defenders of society.
5/6/99
Judge Bork thinks that liberals are uniquely subject to belief in radical individualism. How much more radically individualistic can one be than to claim that there is a virtually absolute right to own guns, that a limit of one gun purchase per month is unreasonable, that a proposal for background checks on purchasers smells of tyrrany? I don’t think that anyone would accuse Charlton Heston of being a liberal, but such are his views.
June 15
["Fairview Fanny" is a nickname for The Seattle Times.]
Rep. George Nethercutt has, like several other members of the class of ’94, decided that a limit of three terms doesn't make as much sense as it seemed then. This has led to ironic reactions: the Democrats criticize Nethercutt for abandoning a policy they thought was wrong all along; U.S. Term Limits, which probably is happy with Nethercutt in Congress and isn't likely to prefer his opponent, will spend large sums to defeat him. The best reaction, though, came from Fairview Fanny.
The Seattle Times apparently has found its assignment as the conscience of Western Washington an insufficient challenge; it now will perform the same service to the citizens of the Inland Empire. Its views were presented in today's paper under the heading "Nethercutt's epiphany: Give hypocrisy a chance." Representative Nethercutt's decision is, we were advised, "the cynical, self-serving hypocrisy of someone who exploited others for personal gain." The issue, the Times advised us, is not the merit of the policy: "This editorial page opposes term limits;" it does so because the voters' choice "should not be overturned by gimmicks promoted as democratic virtue by the political party out of power." Instead, the editorial posed the question as follows: "What does George Nethercutt really believe? Voters will have to ask themselves that every time he opens his mouth." Fair enough, but applying the same standard to the Times would subject its editorials to more skepticism than our moral leaders would welcome. To be sure, Rep. Nethercutt's change of mind is more important than that of the Times: he promised his constituents that he would step down at the end of this term and presumably some voted for him for that reason. However, his reversal is there for all to see and the voters can decide whether to punish him for it. The Times hides its change of mind by failing to mention that it too formerly advocated those undemocratic gimmicks. Its pompous caption is more hypocritical than Rep. Nethercutt's epiphany.
For those of us who have fallen into a habit of nearly-automatic suspicion of any religious aspect of political discourse, The Culture of Disbelief, by Steven Carter, is a rebuke (or at least it seemed so at first reading). It challenges the negative attitudes toward religion prevalent in much of American life.
The thesis of Professor Carter’s book, as expressed in the subtitle, is that American law and politics trivialize religious devotion. This is an exaggeration, as American culture is not monolithic. However, his thesis is pertinent, and may be an understatement, as a description of the attitudes of American liberals, among whom there is often, as Irving Kristol put it, a powerful animus against the dominant traditional beliefs, especially religious beliefs....
Professor Carter deals with three major issues, although one is mentioned only in passing. That one is, to me, the most important and the least controversial: religious belief can support virtue, both personal and civic. Carter gives this little attention as his focus is almost entirely on the political uses of religion.
The second issue is our treatment of religious practices or institutions. In Professor Carter’s view, the role of religion, and the reason it must be protected, is its mediating function, one which it best serves by being in opposition to the state: "religions are at their most useful when they serve as democratic intermediaries and preach resistance." Under this theory, it is the religious organization which is important. He rejects neutrality toward religion in favor of "accommodation":
...Neutrality treats religious belief as a matter of individual choice, an aspect of conscience, with which the government must not interfere but which it has no obligation to respect....
Accommodation, however, can be crafted into a tool that accepts religion as a group rather than an individual activity. When accommodation is so understood, corporate worship, not individual conscience, becomes the obstacle around which state policy must make the widest possible berth.... Thus the reason for accommodation becomes not the protection of individual conscience but the preservation of religions as independent power bases that exist in large part in order to resist the state....
This part of the book is substantive and raises a number of difficult questions regarding the free exercise of religion. However, at its extreme, Professor Carter's view allows religious groups to undermine government, his attitude toward which at times resembles that of the paranoid right.
In addition, Professor Carter demonstrates some confusion as to the status to be accorded to religious beliefs. At one point, as part of his advocacy for religious institutions, he argues that the world view of fundamentalists is as valid as the scientific version, even though the former includes theories about the material world incapable of verification by secular means or even of rational defense. He carries this relativism to the point of asserting that truth is a function of power. On the other hand, he dismisses the most controversial aspect of the fundamentalist
world view, creationism, as "simply wrong and "bad science. If this is so, it is because he has applied the scientific view and rejected the religious one, so what is all the talk of equally valid world views about?
Professor Carter argues that a statute should not be invalidated merely because it was the result of religious motivation on the part of the legislature; he criticizes the Supreme Court for applying that test in Edwards v. Aguillard, which struck down the Louisiana equal-time law. However, he states that the decision was correct because creationism, "even if dressed up in scientific jargon . . . is, at heart, an explanation for the origin of life that is dictated solely by religion.... This sounds like a test based on legislative motivation. He adds to the confusion in the next paragraph:
From the beginning, the constitutional case against the teaching of creationism in the public school classroom has been inextricably bound up with the scientific case against the claims that creationism makes. This strikes me as perhaps an inevitable course, but an awkward one as well. A statute cannot be said to further religion merely on the ground that a majority of scientists do not believe that it furthers science. Even if the "scientific" case for creationism is appallingly shoddy and naive, nothing follows for constitutional purposes.
At one point, Professor Carter appeared to be moving toward the view advanced by Stephen Jay Gould in Rocks of Ages: any proposition about the material world which is verifiable belongs to the realm of reason and science; religious views have their proper sphere, but that isn't it. Professor Gould offers a more consistent approach to the problem of world views, and a much simpler one, although he makes it seem arcane by dubbing it "NOMA" (Non-Overlapping
Magesteria).
To summarize,...the...magesterium of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magesterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. The two magesteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry....
Professor Carter’s final issue is our attitude toward the introduction of religious ideas and beliefs into public, i.e., political debate. The application of his thesis here is based on a peculiar definition: for example, he disapproves of the rhetoric of the 1992 Republican convention and tries to make that disapproval fit the thesis by saying that the frequency with which religion was invoked trivialized it. This is entirely unconvincing: elsewhere trivialization means failing to take religion seriously, and the Republicans gave every indication doing just that. In addition, Professor Carter wants religion to be afforded a larger role in public debate; he offers the civil rights movement as an example of the proper use of religion in advancing a political agenda and makes a point of how often Dr. King and others based their argument on religious principles. For that reason he can’t, and doesn't, criticize Pat Buchanan and friends for appealing to religious belief; his complaint is that what they said was wrong. It comes down to this: he disagrees with the political uses to which religion was put; religion is, apparently, respected and celebrated if used in connection with ideas he approves and trivialized when offered in support of ones he disdains. Professor Carter devotes a chapter to the danger that political agendas will be advanced under the banner of religion, that religion will be subordinate to politics. However, despite his recognition of the problem, he does not avoid it: "what was wrong with the 1992 Republican convention was not the effort to link the name of God to secular political ends. What was wrong was the choice of secular ends to which the name of God was linked."
One measure of the seriousness of his argument is how much his religious convictions affect his positions on social or political issues. Professor Carter believes, on religious grounds, that prayer in school is good but holds, on secular grounds, that allowing it in public schools is prohibited. Here is an opportunity to show the primacy of his religious beliefs; instead, he resolves the conflict by sending his children to a private school where, he is relived to say, they pray. (He isn't persuaded that every parent should be given the same alternative through vouchers). As to abortion, his position is resolutely secular; his only reference to religion, apart from advising us to let the religious have their say, is a sarcastic reference to the zealotry of the humanity-from-conception argument.
Even on a religious issue, his religious convictions don't seem to be dominant. In approving the ordination of women, with specific reference to his denomination, the Episcopal Church, he distances himself from those "for whom politics drives spiritual commitment rather than the other way around." However, his discussion does not demonstrate that his approach is anything else. Like the conservatives he criticizes, he seems to have reached a position on political or logical or nonreligiously ethical grounds, but has described it as a religious conviction.
The closest Professor Carter comes to a political position clearly based on his religious beliefs is in a discussion of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, his statement is personal and apologetic: "Still, I must confess a bias in the matter. I share the traditional Christian view that suicide is wrong.... It is not my desire to impose this tradition on anyone - only to relate it, for what moral guidance it might offer."1
In the end, one must wonder whether Professor Carter’s third issue has any substance. If his political positions are essentially the same as they would be absent his religious beliefs, if his reaction to the use of religion in debate depends on the political agenda, what is the point of the discussion? If religious belief is not going to change anyone’s political convictions, why need we worry whether expression of religious belief is being discouraged? Why not argue political issues
on political grounds and avoid all of the emotional pitfalls inherent in introducing religion into the debate? Only if a stated religious principle led to an unexpected political opinion would there be any real effect, and only then would we need to concern ourselves about the propriety of using religious arguments to support political positions. I haven’t seen enough such surprises.2
A recent issue of First Things reinforces my conclusion. It includes an extended essay on the Clinton-Lewinski affair by Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal and President of the publisher, the Institute on Religion and Public Life. The article is presented in a section entitled "The Public Square: A continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life." The author, as a preface to his discussion, says, "This 'journal of religion and public life' does not understand public life primarily in terms of politics as that term is ordinarily used." However, Fr. Neuhaus’ views, at least on the subject of Mr. Clinton, seem indistinguishable from those of other conservatives or, for that matter, from those of virtually any spokesman for the Republican Party. That being the case, what function does religion play? Is the Institute merely a front, a means of pretending that the political arguments offered are grounded in religious belief? Is it merely an illustration of the fact that there are liberal and conservative religious as well as political beliefs and that, not surprisingly, conservatives of one sort tend to be conservatives of the other? Under either theory, religion merely adds the potential for misunderstanding and resentment to the debate by allowing political opinions to be disguised in religious garb.
____________________
1. 12/19/99: In The De-moralization of Society, Gertrude Himmelfarb quotes Richard Hoggart: "In Hunslet, a working-class district of Leeds, within which I was brought up, old people will still enunciate, as guides to living, the moral rules they learned at Sunday School and Chapel. Then they almost always add, these days: 'But it’s only my opinion, of course.' A late-twentieth-century insurance clause, a recognition that times have changed toward the always shiftingly relativist....
2. 9/1/99: I’ve just come across a review of The Culture of Disbelief by Glenn Loury in a 1994 issue of The Public Interest. In some ways Professor Loury is kinder to the book than I. He reaches a somewhat similar conclusion about the third issue, although from a different perspective, one which emphasizes pluralism: [N]o particular set of religious beliefs...can be the standard for the adjudication of conflicting public claims. He recognizes the importance and propriety of religious motives, but argues that public debate should include
compelling secular arguments. Therefore he is not contending that religious rationales be banned, only that they be accompanied by secular ones: expression of religious motives is, and should be, inadequate by itself to the task of public persuasion about the exercise of public power in a pluralistic democracy. This is a more liberal and may be a more realistic policy than the one I suggested and I agree with it to the extent that there should be no inhibition in revealing the religious basis for one’s opinion. However, once God’s will is invoked
in support of a proposal, we’re over the line, and I’m not convinced that the line will be respected with any regularity.
July 22
The House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax cut package which would cost the government $864 billion over ten years, an exercise in threefold irresponsibility: it gives away money which doesn't exist and may never exist; if the surplus were a sure thing, a substantial part should be applied to reduction of the debt which previous irresponsibility created; if there were enough left to reduce taxes, the reduction should be equitably apportioned.
On the last point, it could be argued that some of the proposals, taken in isolation, are not gifts to business and the wealthy. However, the plan as a whole is blatantly skewed: reduction of rates in each bracket (a larger reduction at the top), repeal of the minimum tax, elimination of the estate tax, reduction of personal and corporate capital gains rates, increased exemptions for interest and dividends.
Aug 6
Sept 8
Watching Janet Reno explain that she intends to get to the bottom of the Waco coverup left me with the same impression I had of her when she accepted the blame for the fiasco in 1993: here is an honest, responsible person whom I can trust to do the right thing. My earlier appraisal was shared by many and exceeded by some; I seem to be in distinct minority this year.
Ms. Reno escaped any serious criticism in 1993 in part because of her disarming candor and willingness to accept responsibility (which stood in sharp contrast to the evasions and wafflings of her boss) but also because she was overprotected. The example of the latter which sticks in my memory was an exchange on a TV news program between Senator Arlen Specter and then-
Representative Patricia Schroeder. Senator Specter made the obvious point that whenever a government operation results in the death of eighty citizens, an inquiry into what went wrong is appropriate. Rep. Schroeder, in high dudgeon, replied that he would’t make such a comment if the AG were male. Instead of laughing, the poor Senator mumbled and backtracked. Possibly because of this suggestion of sexism, Ms. Reno’s role was not criticized as seriously as it might have been at the time.
Nevertheless, Ms. Reno’s standing declined, no doubt partly because of Waco, but partly due to internal problems at the Justice Department and also because she was ignored by the President. Eventually, there developed a common opinion that she was incompetent, an opinion which has surfaced again in the wake of the recent revelations regarding use of pyrotechnic tear gas canisters at Waco and the suppression of that information.
The twin themes are that Ms. Reno was an affirmative action nominee and that (therefore?) her tenure has been a disaster. Maureen Dowd made the point in passing in a column today about Hillary Clinton: Bill repaid Hillary for her '60 minutes' appearance that saved his campaign after Gennifer Flowers by giving her health care (disaster) and going along with her wish to have a female Attorney General, who turned out to be Janet Reno (disaster). Richard Reeves, in his
column on August 31, was more emphatic. Ms. Reno, surely one of the most incompetent public officials in our history, was appointed because there was this fuss over Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, and the president had this awful time finding a woman attorney general.... He doesn't stop there. Well, he paid a price for that, not in Waco so much as in Washington where she almost cost him his job while saving her own 'credibility' and 'integrity' behind shields of special prosecutors. What is this supposed to mean? Was it the Attorney General’s duty to save Clinton’s hide by refusing to appoint independent counsel? I have some reservations about her agreement to extend Kenneth Starr’s jurisdiction to include the Monica affair, but otherwise the problems with the appointments have more to do with the deficiencies in the law and in the performance of the independent counsel than in Ms. Reno’s allegedly stunted sense of loyalty. She went so far out on a limb in refusing to appoint counsel regarding campaign financing that she was accused of bending the rules to save her job. Damned if you do..., apparently.
Janet Reno was a quota selection, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she was a bad selection. Quota appointments aren't a good idea, but that reflects on the chooser more than on the chosen. The worst aspect of the AG dance in 1993 was Clinton’s refusal to admit why he made his choices, not his only exercise in dissembling.
Senator Lott made his inimitable contribution today by suggesting that the AG resign. This is the reward for again being the only official willing to take any responsibility or corrective action.1 __________________
1. Ms. Reno certainly is not immune to serious lapses in judgment, as shown by the Elián González ontroversy, especially the raid.
Sept. 23
The latter reaction was naïve in two respects: the GOP’s ability to define itself positively is too limited and Buchanan is irredeemable. His recent book and other statements have removed any doubt that he is around the political bend and tend to confirm Krauthammer’s view that he is antisemitic. I still regard the claim that Buchanan is fascistic a bit much, but labels aside, I agree that the Republicans should repudiate him even though, if the Reform Party takes him in, he may cost them some votes. However, thus far no leading Republican other than John McCain has seen fit to invite him to leave.
Oct. 6
The Republican Party’s inability to define itself positively (in both senses: affirmatively and favorably) is exemplified by its leadership on Congress. Whether the subject is taxation, the budget, medical care, tobacco or guns, they demonstrate repeatedly that they are both irresponsible and politically inept. It has become so bad that George W. Bush, until now not noted for clearly defined positions, let alone liberal ones, has criticized Republicans, with specific reference to the Congressional variety, for their backwardness.
A Congressman was quoted in the Seattle Times on October 4 as saying, This is a Congress that has a rendezvous with obscurity....a truly awe-inspiring record of working so very, very hard to accomplish so very, very, little. An op-ed piece in the New York Times the same day took a longer and more theoretical view. The thesis was that national institutions are gradually losing influence to more local ones and, in Europe at least, to supra-national ones. Whatever the theory, the conclusion is the same. Even a casual observer can tell that Congress did very little in the last couple of years, but this obscures a much larger point: Congress has done relatively little of importance in the last 10 years. The author notes the failure to deal with such issues as health care and says that Congress’ major accomplishment was to abandon welfare to the states. (Actually abandon is my term; he sees it as part of the pattern of devolution). Gradually, without most of us stopping to notice it, Congress is ceasing to be a serious legislative institution.
Oct 7
This is the more peculiar as George W. hasn't been reluctant to criticize more mainstream Republicans, especially those in Congress. On conservative moralists: Too often, on social issues, my party has painted an image of America slouching toward Gomorrah. On humane instincts: Too often, my party has focused on the national economy, to the exclusion of all else, speaking a sterile language of rates and numbers.... On political theory: Too often, my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself. On fiscal policy: the plan to defer earned-income tax credit distributions was an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
The lesson he learned was not to pander to Pat Robertson. While other candidates toed the line in appearances before the convention of the Christian Coalition, Bush gave his standard centrist speech, almost defying Robertson to find him in-sufficiently conservative. At first, that seemed to work, but his more recent remarks prompted Pat to warn him not to alienate the core conservatives.
Apart from his reticence regarding Buchanan, all of this seems to reflect confidence in nomination and preparation for November.
Oct 8
Yesterday’s N.Y. Times carried dueling columns by William Bennett and Gary Bauer on George W’s comments.
To Mr. Bauer, Bush is telling conservatives, Go pound sand. I don’t need you. He is running as a wobbly moderate under the banner of 'compassion.'" He is moving to the squishy middle. This, Bauer thinks, is dangerous, as Bush hasn't yet won the nomination. Mr. Bauer apparently thinks that he still has a chance; dream on.
Bauer’s platform seems to approximate the doom-saying attitude which Bush satirized. Mr. Bauer was not amused: There is a deepening moral crisis in our culture, but Mr. Bush is absent in the struggle to redeem our country's values from three decades of leftist erosion. Does this sound like anyone we know? Yes; Bauer is offended by Bush’s gratuitous slap at Judge Robert Bork and his book 'Slouching Toward Gomorrah' as well as to other conservative critics of the popular culture.
The column by William Bennett contrasts not only with Mr. Bauer’s but, at least in its optimism, with Bennett’s recent book The Death of Outrage. There he had told us,
...I cannot shake the thought that the widespread loss of outrage against [President Clinton’s] misconduct tells us something fundamentally important about our condition. Our commitment to longstanding American ideals has been enervated. We desperately need to recover them, and soon....
But something unexpected happened on the way to cultural decline. Problems that seemed inevitable proved to be reversible. They gave way to an optimistic, governing conservatism.
Mr. Bennett’s positions are not necessarily inconsistent. In The Death of Outrage, he was focused on public reaction to Mr. Clinton's various alleged misdeeds, so perhaps he saw the lack of commitment to historic ideals only in the tepid response to presidential scandal, and no reflection on public attitudes toward other social ills was intended. In addition, he is too honest to argue that all of the signs are positive, so in the recent column he lists some statistics which are
pointing the wrong way. However, there certainly is a change of mood and it is difficult not to conclude that some of the change has to do with the party affiliation of the object.
Whether an upward trend exists perhaps is debatable, and even if a partial reversal of moral fortune has taken place, it may not be due primarily to the ministrations of conservatism. But as a campaign posture, the Bush-Bennett approach is pure gold. It avoids not only the inconvenient statistics which indicate that at least some indicators of cultural illness are falling, but more importantly the dark, moralistic, negative image of conservatism which Mr. Bauer projects, an
image which is more likely to frighten moderate voters away than to appeal to their desire for redemption.
Oct 21
Our annual rite of populism is upon us. On November 2, we will vote on an initiative which would replace the present motor vehicle license fee and tax, the latter based on the value of the vehicle, with a flat $30 fee. Steve Forbes, in town a few days ago to address the gathering of Republican women, endorsed the initiative, as he probably would any proposal in which the words flat and tax appeared in the same sentence.
The annual license charge is mostly a property tax; among its flaws is a methodology which exaggerates the value of most vehicles by not depreciating their value realistically. Property taxes are defective as a general rule because they are not directly related to the ability to pay. However, this one is less flawed in that regard than most, as the cost of one’s car probably bears some relation to one’s income. Certainly we could improve the state’s tax structure by replacing the auto- license impost, but I-695 is hardly the best approach.
As with many initiatives, this one is badly drafted. The existing law not only includes trucks, but assesses an additional tax on tractors used to pull heavy-load trailers. The entire existing statute would be repealed, but the initiative doesn't mention trucks, so they may escape without any license fee. (The section of the initiative referring to the new fee is so ineptly worded that it’s not clear that a fee will be imposed on any vehicle). Conversely, an exemption of some vehicles from the general personal property tax is expressly tied to the continued existence of the license-fee law, so if the latter is repealed, that tax will attach.
The effect on revenue and the public budget is not inconsiderable. The more drastic effect, however, is in Section 2 (the initiative is nothing if not concise, having only three sections, including the repealer), which provides, Any tax increase imposed by the state shall require voter approval.
The state includes cities, counties, special districts and every political subdivision or governmental instrumentality. Taxes include fees and any monetary charge by government. The only exemptions are college tuition and an ill-defined category of fines. Presumably this means that we will need to vote not only on new or increased taxes, but on water and sewer rates, dog and cat licenses, camping permit fees and charges for photocopying by public departments. Library fines may escape, depending on the interpretation of the exemption for civil and criminal fines and other charges collected in cases of restitution or violation of law or contract . Leaving aside the obvious silliness of such a system, consider the cost of the elections.
At least I-695 has the potential to demonstrate the folly in legislating by public vote. Initiative 601, passed in 1993, limited State spending. The spending limitations became inconvenient last year because the Republicans decided to fund transportation costs by borrowing, underwriting the loans with funds diverted from the vehicle-license revenue. That money had been used in part to fund criminal justice programs, so general-fund spending was increased to make up the deficit, which required modifying the rules established by 601. The plan was submitted as Referendum 49; the voters approved, thereby undoing part of what they had mandated in 1993. I-695 would undermine the R-49 plan by virtually eliminating the funds supporting it, thereby undoing what the voters mandated in 1998.
Polls indicate that I-695 will pass, that the weirdness of all this is lost on the people. The weirdness is supported (and suffered) by the Republicans: last year, they pushed R-49 as the solution to highway congestion, but last month they endorsed I-695.
Voters swallowed R-49 because it included a $30 reduction in the vehicle-license tax and a slight liberalization of the depreciation schedule; now they are mesmerized by reducing the charge to $30. Apparently they simply take leave of their senses when someone says tax reduction. Forbes should do well here.
Oct 26
I should feel lucky: I only have to vote on four ballot measures. In addition to I-695, I get I-696, which would ban net fishing, and constitutional amendments dealing with lending the state’s credit to school districts and investing state funds. (Why, one might ask, are these constitutional issues?). If I lived in Seattle, I would be blessed with twenty ballot issues, a situation Brewster Denny described today as plebecitis. That, however, is only a warmup for the town-meting democracy to be instituted by I-695, in which we get to vote on every fiscal issue. Denny considers this to be the death of republicanism. However, the definition of a republic which he adopts, a government through representatives (as opposed to democracy, government by direct action), always has seemed to me to be artificial and historically inaccurate. Let’s not hide behind labels; the I-695 system simply is dumb and unworkable.
Numerous letters to the editors have extolled the virtues of voting on everything; I’d be interested to learn how often the writers vote.
Oct 29
Trivial Indicia of Cultural Decline Department. Jeopardy, which once asked questions that probed some level of education, now has such categories as David Bowie; Washington Week in Review, which once had meaningful, informative discussion by the likes of Charles McDowell, Hedrick Smith, et al. now presents silly, superficial, self-conscious blathering by reporters who couldn't find an issue of public importance with a guidebook. The latter reminds me of football broadcasts: once we watched the game; now the camera either is on the sideline or closeup of a player. In both cases, it’s coverage à la People Magazine; in neither is the focus on the action.
Nov 3
I-695 passed by a wide margin. Although it had some financial support from auto dealers, who will escape a tax, it seemed to be a genuinely grass-roots proposal. It was opposed by most of the opinion-makers and the proponents were far outspent by the opposition, so it’s yet another example of ordinary citizens being unimpressed by their betters.
Tim Eyman, the spokesman for the initiative and its prime mover, stated that it was a tax revolt. Certainly its requirement of elections on any monetary charge by government fits that description. However, the immediate change will have only a modest effect on each taxpayer and the measure does nothing to address the inefficiency and inequity in Washington’s tax structure. This is, unfortunately and perhaps inadvertently, populism and tax revolt in the conservative mold: cut taxes and shift the net burden downward.
Nov 13
Another measure of the grass-roots nature of I-695 is found in the demographics of its reception. In King County, it was rejected in Seattle and in most of the east side, and approved in the south county. The Seattle vote perhaps simply reflects its liberalism, but the remaining split, wealthier precincts rejecting, poorer ones approving, indicates that the tendency to vote in favor was not proportional to the amount to be saved. However, this does not mean that money
was not the primary issue: even though people who voted for it would save less than those opposed, the saving may mean more to the family budgets of the former. This is why Steve Forbes’ plutocratic populism has appeal: even though the rest of us would save far less that he, any saving looks good.
Although four year ago, Forbes was alone among Republican contenders in pushing the flat tax, this year most of the candidates have indicated some affinity. Gary Bauer, the self-proclaimed champion of family values, has gone Forbes one percentage point better: his flat tax would be at 16%, not Forbes’ excessive 17%. Why not 15% or 12%? As the campaign wears on, there may be a fascinating bidding war.
Nov 18
Contemplating the ability of Republicans to fashion a legislative agenda or even of saying something rational about government reminds me of Lionel Trilling’s description of conservatism in The Liberal Imagination: the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas. That was 1949 when, in Trilling’s view, liberalism was not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. That changed and we were told - and accepted - for some years that all of the new ideas were coming from conservatives. Not even conservatives believe that anymore; more to the point, their ideas even when supposedly dominant have not translated into governance, at least at the national level. One obvious reason is that conservative Republicans have no notion of what the federal government is good for.
Nov 23
"'We’re baaaaack,' chortled Eyman," according to the Sunday Journal. The sponsor of I-695 thus announced the drafting of a new initiative. Although part of its purpose is to correct defects in the original, he presents it as a new blow for freedom. (For chutzpah, this resembles the announcement of a new version of software, correcting, at the consumer’s expense, the defects of the prior release). Although Eyman maintained during the campaign that the asserted flaws were imaginary, he has drafted a correction before I-695 has taken effect.
The new measure would exempt vehicles from the personal property tax, thereby eliminating one of the more obvious unintended consequences. It also would roll back the increases which many cities have threatened to impose before January, when 695 takes effect. Eyman is shocked, shocked that they would try such an underhanded tactic. (As he puts it, officials "still don’t get it," "it" apparently being his point of view). To show that he is not a man to be trifled
with, the roll-back would be retroactive to July 2 when, I assume, 695 was certified for the ballot.
Eyman apparently having noticed that a mind-boggling array of charges would be subject to vote, his new brain child would allow prices of some state-sold goods to be raised without an election. This is a step forward - or, rather, back - but examples of the new exemption included sales by the University Book Store which, as it is not a state agency, are not subject to I-695, so Eyman apparently still doesn't get it either.
Finally, the new initiative would limit property-assessment increases to 2% per year to prevent increases in property taxes through increased valuation. This apparently is based on Eyman’s fear that the assessors would hike valuations as a substitute for tax rate increases and his mistaken assumption that there is no existing mechanism to prevent that. As expensive homes increase in value faster than modest ones, the new proposal again would be a disproportionate benefit to the wealthy.
Dec 2
Another battle has been joined in the war between evolution and creationism. It began two or three months ago, when Kansas decided that evolution no longer will be part of the core curriculum, a move interpreted as motivated by a preference for creationism.
The form of creationism which has been offered to this point, centered around the assertion that the earth and mankind are vastly younger than scientists tell us, is nonsense. It could be accepted only by those who believe, for reasons unrelated to any desire to know the facts, that it ought to be so.
The usual and entirely misdirected argument against evolution is that it is "only a theory." The comment by some critics of evolution that no one was present at creation is an especially silly form of that argument. Evolution is indeed a theory, as is creationism; none of its adherents were there either. The only relevant question is which theory better explains observed phenomena. Evolution wins easily, forcing creationism to fall back on religious doctrine for justification, which lands it in the constitutional soup.
I did not expect to see this form of creationism advanced very seriously, both because of its obvious intellectual deficiencies and because of the Supreme Court’s rationale in such cases which, despite Professor Carter’s valid objection, uses motivation as a test. The change of direction in Kansas was subtle enough to suggest a more sophisticated approach. It seemed to me more likely that the next challenge would limit itself to demanding that two concepts be added to any discussion of evolution: some aspects of standard evolutionary theory are debatable and there is room for belief in design. If the critics of evolution limited themselves
to these arguments, they could avoid constitutional problems, might gain wider respect, and, through the former, might do evolutionary theory a service by requiring reexamination of some concepts. However, the battle lines seem to be forming in the usual way.
Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Kentucky has decided that "evolution" will be replaced in the curriculum by "change over time" and Oklahoma has ordered textbooks to contain a disclaimer about the certainty of evolution. This is more intrusive than the Kansas approach, although still hesitant. More ominously for intelligent debate, the article also informed us that one Ken Ham has formed a group called Answers in Genesis, Inc., which claims 110 creation clubs in schools. Its creed is a belief in the literal inerrancy of Genesis. To remove any
doubt that he means literal, he is putting together a museum in which a dinosaur is identified in the usual way with the addition of Created Day Six.
Mr. Ham's theory is that we must reject evolution to save morality:
I see a culture war hotting up in America between Christian morality and relative morality which is really the difference between a creation-based philosophy and an evolution-based one, said Mr. Ham, who argues that if the word day in Genesis’s account of creation is allowed to be taken metaphorically to encompass eons and to blur divinity’s role, then the Bible is made fallible and morality reduced to human whim.
At its worst, the creationist position seeks to substitute ignorance for knowledge; creationism should be rejected on that ground alone. However, anti-intellectualism and even assertive ignorance are not rare in this supposedly enlightened age. It is tempting to see a Luddite factor in the advocacy of creationism. However, Mr. Ham has a web site, www.answersingensis.org; science is good for something, after all.
Dec 15
The subject of irrational responses brings us to the WTO meeting in Seattle. Where the major blame should be laid for the confrontations in the streets is not clear to me at this point, but certainly there is enough to go around. There have been legitimate criticisms of the WTO system from the beginning, criticisms which were brushed aside during the ratification process in a manner calculated not only to offend those critics but to encourage other and less relevant, less civilized opposition. At least the TV reports should discourage further migration here.
Reaction to the WTO - fearing world government, blaming it for all of life’s ills - prompted me to think that it is the liberal’s UN. Then I watched excerpts from the GOP Iowa debate; Allan Keyes denounced the WTO, so it’s apparently not popular on the far right either.
The best line from that debate was from Orrin Hatch. In response to John McCain’s plug for campaign finance reform, he asked why it is that every Democrat in Congress is for it, and almost no Republicans. He thought that was clever.
George W. Bush apparently has been advised that two of his more sensible positions won’t play well among the conservative faithful. Therefore he has decided that government is bad after all; he declared in the debate that it must be starved into submission through a tax cut - or at least parts of it: he also wants to improve the military and education. Maybe he’ll sort this out or maybe he’ll just follow the Reagan line and promise it all.
Mr. Bush’s other discovery is that religion talks in Republican primaries. This led him, during the debate, to identify Christ not only as his savior but as his favorite political philosopher. Whether or not this trivializes religious belief, it certainly misuses and debases it.
Dec 15
Tim Eyman is back - again. Now he proposes an initiative to require that 90% of all transportation funds be spent on highways, not on such luxuries as public transit. In part, this is another fix prompted by his belated realization of the impact of I-695. Highway construction will, to his surprise, be adversely affected by the repeal of one of its sources of funding. (An example is the announcement today that repair of the Hood Canal Bridge will be postponed indefinitely). Among other aims, the new initiative somehow would overturn the Puget Sound rapid transit plan and divert its funds to paving. One of the system’s officials had the
temerity to point out that, in line with Eyman’s supposed view of government, the plan had been approved by the voters.
Gradually, it is appearing that Mr. Eyman is not a naïve populist whose notions unintentionally serve conservative interests, but a conservative activist. We have learned that he was a sponsor of the initiative which overturned affirmative action and that funding and content for the new measure has been provided by a conservative think tank. His attitude toward transportation is pure Bellevue Chamber of Commerce: devote all transportation funds to the service of single-
occupant vehicles; none of that mass-transit socialism.
Dec 17
I’ve always wished that I could quote poetry or Shakespeare at appropriate points, both to show my erudition and to prove to all, to myself mostly I suppose, that I’m not entirely dull. In fact, I rarely recall anything conversationally useful, be it a story, a joke or anything more elevated. Recently, though, I’ve begun to think and occasionally talk in movie lines and song lyrics.
This still may not convince anyone that I would be an addition to a cocktail party. I have seen few movies in the past twenty years and probably haven’t heard or at least understood any lyric written in that period, apart from a few from musicals. Therefore, these fugitive lines are, shall we say, seasoned. As an example, watching ads for the new TV rage Who wants to be a Millionaire? naturally calls to mind the song of the same name from High Society, and Celeste Holm is there before me, telling Frank Sinatra Do I want a yacht? Oh, how I do not!
