The Legacy of Liberalism

By John C. Goodman

Saturday, August 31, 2013

The 50 year anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington is causing a lot of people in my generation to reminisce.

In doing so, it is hard not to be struck by two puzzling facts: (a) the fall of racial barriers to success almost everywhere and (b) the lack of economic progress in the black community as a whole, relative to whites. On the one hand, it would seem that a black in America can achieve almost anything, even being elected president of the United States. On the other hand, if we compare the economic condition of blacks and whites as a whole, you would be tempted to conclude that almost no progress has been made.

For example, blogger Brad Plummer reminds us that:

    · The gap in household income between blacks and whites hasn't really narrowed at all in the last 50 years.

    · The black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as the white unemployment rate for 50 years.

    · For the past 50 years, black unemployment has almost always been at recession levels.

This incongruity has given rise to two liberal myths — repeated frequently on television talk shows over the past week: (a) that the fall in racial barriers is the result of liberal legislation, designed to outlaw discrimination in the private sector and (b) that the lack of economic progress is evidence that liberals haven't done enough — that still more intervention is needed to correct the effects of current and past discrimination.

The reality I believe is just the reverse. The decline of racial barriers in the job market and throughout the economic system — at least outside the south — had very little to do with liberal legislation. But the lack of economic progress by the black community as a whole is in many ways the result of the liberal approach to politics. On balance, liberalism has been an obstacle to black progress, not a help.

The natural assumption is to believe that a lot of labor market regulation is preventing discrimination — against blacks and other minorities, against women, against…Well, against just about everybody who isn't a young, white male with an Ivy League degree. However, June O'Neill, an economist who used to direct the Congressional Budget Office, and her husband Dave O'Neill have produced a comprehensive study of this issue and they find that the natural assumption is wrong.

Take the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The O'Neills find that the black/white wage gap was narrowing at about the same rate in the two decades leading up to the passage of the act as it did in the years that followed. Only in the South is there evidence that the legislation mattered. Outside the South, federal legislation basically followed social change rather than lead it. The wages of blacks rose relative to those of whites over time for two primary reasons: (1) more schooling and better schooling and (2) the migration of blacks out of the South.

[The approach of the Kennedy White House to race relations, by the way, was similar to the way Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama approached gay rights. One is tempted to call it "cowardly." In all these cases, the politicians waited until public opinion had clearly shifted before announcing their own change of heart and before doing or saying anything that would be considered politically risky. In other words, these presidents didn't lead. They followed.]

But isn't there a lot of discrimination going on right now? Isn't regulation combatting it? Take the difference in pay for black and white men. The O'Neills find that the difference narrows to just 4% after adjusting for years of schooling and it reduces to zero when you factor in test scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), which is basically an intelligence test. In other words, after adjusting for just two factors that cause people to be different, the pay gap between black and white men disappears entirely. Among women, the gap actually reverses after adjusting for education and AFQT scores. Black women get paid more than white women.

Among Hispanic and white men, the pay gap narrows to 8% after adjusting for years of schooling and disappears altogether with the addition of AFQT scores. Among the women, these two variables cause the pay gap to reverse. As in the case of race, Hispanic women are actually paid somewhat more than white women.

But if discrimination isn't holding back black Americans, what is? Answer: the liberal economics.

The political genius of Roosevelt was to combine people who had nothing in common and who didn't even like each other into one grand coalition. This included farmers, labor union members, civil servants, the elderly, southern racists, blacks, etc. [Yes, black and white racists in the South both voted Democrat for years!] For each group, the liberal Democrat approach was to use the power of government to intervene in the marketplace. In return they expected political support. For example, the farmers got price supports; the steel workers got tariffs; the elderly got Social Security, etc.

In the Franklin Roosevelt era, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) became a cartel agent for the trucking industry as well as the railroads. The Civil Aeronautics Board became a cartel agent for the airlines. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became a cartel agent for the broadcasters. The primary goal of all these agencies was to suppress "ruinous competition" and make sure the industries were profitable. Of course, you could argue (and some economists did) that regulation served the interest of both consumers and producers — a viewpoint that largely rejects almost everything Adam Smith said in the Wealth of Nations. However, even the pretense of consumer protection was blatantly tossed aside with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act.

The goal of the NIRA (modeled after Italian fascism) was to allow each industry to set its own prices, set its own wages and control its own output. Had Roosevelt gotten his way, we would have had predatory monopolies in every market. Fortunately, the NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But suppose the court had ruled the other way? Or suppose president Roosevelt had succeeded in his effort to overturn the decision by packing the court? Can you imagine what would have happened to blacks, immigrants, other minorities and any new entrants to the labor market?

Almost all government intervention in the labor market was designed to help establish unions (the modern equivalent of medieval guilds) and to promote their interests. Minimum wage laws were seen not as a way of lifting people out of poverty, but as a way of preventing blacks and other outsiders from competing for jobs. Skilled labor competes against unskilled labor. And the political goal of skilled labor has always been to price its competition out of the market.

Similarly, equal-pay-for-equal-work laws and the Davis Bacon Act (requiring that all workers on federal projects be paid the prevailing union wage) were seen as ways to prevent black workers from "stealing" white worker's jobs. In the old days, before there was "political correctness," politicians actually said these things in congressional debates.

What I'm describing contradicts not only Adam Smith, but also almost all of modern economics. Special monopoly privileges designed for one group create benefits for that group, but harm everyone else. And the harm to society as a whole is inevitably much greater than the benefits to the special interests.

That's where black Americans come in. Liberal government promises them a pittance or two. But these are mere crumbs compared to the harm of being closed out of huge portions of the labor market. Of being forced to send their children to bad schools because they cannot afford the price of an expensive house. Of being denied the right to choose better schools for their children because of counter promises made to the teacher's unions. Of being forced to rely on public provision of housing, transportation, and medical care because government regulation has priced low-cost alternatives out of the market. Of being seduced by a welfare state that subsidizes and enables single black mothers who try to provide for the 73% of all black children who are born out of wedlock. Of watching traditional black culture disintegrate along with the black family.

Here is background reading:

On the Democrats' unholy history on the question of race, see Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.

On the consequences of liberal policies for black America, see Walter Williams, The State Against Blacks and other writings.

On an editorial that makes some of these same points, see Dr. Ben Carson, MLK Would Be Alarmed by Black-on-Black Violence, Lack of Family Values.

President Obama's Iraq, His Other Iraq and His Third Iraq

By Ben Shapiro

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

President Obama has made his entire career off of not being George W. Bush. During his shockingly fast political rise, he differentiated himself by claiming that he had stood alone against the warmongers who wanted to depose Saddam Hussein (never mind that he wasn't in Congress at the time). During the 2008 campaign, he claimed that he wouldn't be the kind of president who would enter America into open-ended conflicts without true American interests at stake. Iraq, he said, was the bad war; Afghanistan was the good war.

Well, so much for that.

For a man who sees the war in Iraq as indicative of America's imperialistic adventurism, President Obama sure does enjoy imperialistic adventurism. In Libya, President Obama led the effort to provide al-Qaida-linked rebels with weapons and stop the Muammar Qaddafi regime from using military force to crack down on them. Never mind that Qaddafi posed little or no threat to American interests. "Confronted by (Qaddafi's) brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean," Obama declared.

Then, in Egypt, President Obama decided to throw his lot in with the Muslim Brotherhood-led opposition to dictator Hosni Mubarak. Never mind that Mubarak allied with America to ensure at least a measure of stability in the most volatile region on the planet. "Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day," Obama announced.

Finally, in Syria, President Obama has decided to double-down in his support of the al-Qaida-led opposition to the Bashar Assad regime. Never mind that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Assad a "reformer." Never mind that Russia and China oppose action against Assad, and that the Obama administration had announced a new era of international cooperation with both countries.

"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should heed U.S. warnings to neither use nor move chemical or biological weapons, lest he risk crossing a 'red line' and provoke a U.S. military response," Obama said.

And so now America will likely embark on another episode of swashbuckling Democrat-led interventionism in a part of the world in which America has no friends. At least President Bush went to Congress for authorization to use force in Iraq. President Obama's imperialistic ambitions match his imperial attitude toward the executive office: He needs no Congressional approval, and so he will seek no Congressional approval. In Libya, Obama never bothered to ask Congress to sign off on a no-fly zone; instead, he simply put the military in place, then ignored Congressional deadlines for a cut-off. In Egypt, Obama has avoided declaring the current Egyptian military coup a coup -- and yet Obama is apparently ready to cut off aid regardless, meaning that he wants to avoid any sort of Congressional control over his decision-making.

Now, in Syria, Obama is readying the missiles, despite the fact that just 9 percent of Americans want America to intervene in Syria. Why? Because for Obama, personal pride is at stake. Obama once accused George W. Bush of a petty obsession with Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

But at least America had interests in Iraq ranging from preventing terrorism to quashing threats to American oil flow. America has no such interests in Syria. President Obama is intervening in Syria for one reason: He wants to. He wants to because he set down a "red line" on the use of chemical weapons in Syria; he wants to because he is sick of being seen as a lead-from-behind world ninny; he wants to because he believes that his personal influence trumps the Islamism of the enemies we now fund and arm. Most of all, President Obama wants to intervene in Syria because we have no interests in Syria.

This has become a running theme with Democrat-led wars. American interests in Yugoslavia were non-existent. American interests in Somalia were non-existent. For Democrats, the virtuous war is the war in which America has nothing to gain -- except, of course, glory for the occupant of the White House.

President Bush could rightly be accused of wanting to remake the Middle East in the American image. President Obama wants to make the Middle East over in his own image, unblemished by considerations about America. A new world. A world without American hegemony. And he'll use American force to do it.

A Minority View

By Walter E. Williams

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

This week begins my 34th year serving on George Mason University's distinguished economics faculty. You might imagine my surprise when I received a letter from its Office of Equity and Diversity Services notifying me that I was required to "complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training." This is a leftist agenda for indoctrination, thought control and free speech suppression to which I shall refuse to submit. Let's look at it.

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I've asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren't going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what's fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?

I'm guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism. Back in 1960, when interviewing people to establish a marital contract, every woman wasn't given an equal opportunity. I discriminated against not only white, Indian, Asian, Mexican and handicapped women but men of any race. My choices were confined to good-looking black women. You say, "Williams, that kind of discrimination doesn't harm anyone!" Nonsense! When I married Mrs. Williams, other women were harmed by having a reduced opportunity set.

George Mason's Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams. They must know that courts have long held that gross racial disparities are probative of a pattern and practice of discrimination. The most notable gross racial disparity on campus, and hence probative of discrimination, can be found on GMU's fabulous men's basketball team. Blacks are less than 9 percent of student enrollment but are 85 percent of our varsity basketball team and dominate its starting five. It's not just GMU. Watch any Saturday afternoon college basketball game and ask yourself the question fixated in the minds of equity, diversity and inclusion hunters: Does this look like America? Among the 10 players on the court, at best there might be two white players. In 2010, 61 percent of Division I basketball players were black, and only 31 percent were white.

Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That's unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women -- such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West?

Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn't happen overnight. It emerged feebly -- mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 -- and took centuries to get where it is today.

One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It's no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person.

Western values are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. They want to replace personal liberty with government control and replace equality before the law with entitlement. The multiculturalism and diversity agenda is a cancer on our society, and our tax dollars and charitable donations are supporting it.

Colorado's Grassroots Revolt Against Gun-Grabbers

By Michelle Malkin

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

While most Americans will be chillin' out, maxin' and relaxin' this Labor Day weekend, dedicated patriots in Colorado are hard at work preparing for a groundbreaking special election day with nationwide repercussions. George Washington would be proud.

On September 10, Democratic legislator and state Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs faces a citizen recall for his sellout to New York anti-gun special interests, for his betrayal of transparency and accountability to constituents, and for his destructive economic policies that are driving thousands of jobs away. Also up for recall: Democratic legislator Angela Giron of Pueblo.

In March, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed his left-wing colleagues' sweeping package of gun- and ammo-control measures -- pushed not by Coloradans, but by gun-grabbing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the anti-Second Amendment Brady bunch and the White House. Vice President Joe Biden inserted himself into my adopted home state's legislative process, phoning up swing Democratic legislators to lobby for the bills personally.

These radically expanded background checks on every individual gun sale and ammunitions restrictions banning the purchase or transfer of magazines with more than 15 cartridges will do little to nothing to prevent the next Newtown or Aurora or Columbine. "Moderate" Hickenlooper publicly admitted their ineffectiveness before surrendering to the gun-control zealots.

Morse and Giron also posed as middle-of-the-roaders. But there's nothing moderate about gun-control laws that demonize law-abiding gun owners. While Morse brags of his time as a police officer in Colorado Springs, his brethren in the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association have condemned him and support his recall. One of Morse's extremist proposals, backed by Bloomberg and company, would have made firearms owners, sellers and manufacturers legally liable for any crimes committed with guns. He was forced to back down on that one.

There's also nothing moderate about marginalizing tax-paying, job-creating gun and ammo manufacturers. The Morse-Hickenlooper-Bloomberg-Biden laws have already forced Colorado-based Magpul Industries and other manufacturers to abandon the state -- and take thousands of related jobs with them. As I reported earlier this year, Magpul alone fueled 600 jobs and an estimated $85 million in spending in the state. Overall, as the National Shooting Sports Foundation found, "The firearms and ammunition industry was responsible for as much as $31.84 billion in total economic activity in the country ... (and) the industry and its employees pay over $2.07 billion in taxes including property, income and sales based levies."

At a local fundraiser in Colorado Springs (which I supported and spoke at), Morse's GOP challenger and Air Force veteran Bernie Herpin hammered the incumbent over his economic destruction and contempt for the will of the people. "I'm running to defend our Constitutional rights and promote an environment where small businesses are free to create jobs and improve our local community," Herpin says, while Morse's agenda is "doing the bidding of big-government interests in Denver and Washington."

And New York City. On Tuesday, insatiable control freak Bloomberg tossed in $350,000 to a pass-through committee established less than a month ago to fund the anti-gun Democratic recall targets.

Recall leader Rob Harris, a Colorado Springs resident in Morse's Senate District 11, explains that he was just an ordinary citizen "fed up" with the overlords in Denver. No outside groups contacted him. He had no ties to Republican groups or strategists. Harris was incensed that his representative refused to respond to his emails and to the concerns of his neighbors (an arrogant move that Morse even bragged about on far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's show).

Through hard work and local activism, the grassroots campaign gathered 16,000 signatures in three months to qualify the recall for the ballot. Morse "changed state Senate committee rules, which effectively silenced the voices of hundreds of Colorado citizens from testifying on legislation" affecting them, Harris points out. While Democrats made room for out-of-state astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former Arizona congresswoman and Tucson shooting survivor Gabby Giffords, to testify before the legislature, the majority Dems manipulated the process so that untold numbers of Colorado residents who support the Second Amendment were frozen out.

In his new No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "The Liberty Amendments," Mark Levin calls for citizen activists to use the tools and principles the Founding Fathers bestowed upon us to restore the balance of power back to "we, the people." The spirit of George Washington animates the important battle here in Colorado. As Washington wrote to his nephew in 1787:

"The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled."

The recalls are a historic David and anti-gun Goliath showdown -- and my fellow Colorado Springs citizens know the stakes are high. This isn't a "single issue" election about guns. It's about electoral accountability, economic prosperity, personal security and self-government. The single issue encompassing them all: freedom.

What's So Great About Coalitions?

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, August 30, 2013

This week the United Kingdom, with the support of the U.S. and France, scrambled -- in vain -- to get the approval of the United Nations Security Council for a military strike on Syria.

I can certainly understand why some see this as a legal or political necessity. International law says that nations should seek approval of the Security Council before attacking other nations. That means if the United States attacks Syria without U.N. approval, President Obama will open himself to the charge from the left of being even more of an international war criminal than George W. Bush, who at least could plausibly claim U.N. Security Council support for the Iraq war.

But if you think such accusations are nonsense -- as I do -- then what's left is the political case. This argument holds that we must placate a poltergeist called "world opinion." But this will-o'-the-wisp is as fickle as it is elusive. Obama has been chasing it in the Middle East for years, and he's less popular there than Bush was in 2008. In Europe, where Obama remains popular on the German and Belgian streets, it's hard to point to an area where popularity has yielded concessions to Obama's agenda.

A related reason, we're told, to seek U.N. approval is that other nations need it if they're going to join our coalition. Fair enough. But there's often a Catch-22 here in that it's hard to get a coalition without U.N. approval, and it's hard to get U.N. approval without a coalition. One way to cut through the Gordian knot is to ask, "What's so great about coalitions?"

Sure, it's always better to have friends and allies pitching in -- many hands make light work and all that. But if something is in America's vital national interest, it doesn't cease to be because Belize or Botswana won't lend a hand. Posses aren't more moral in proportion to the number of white hats who sign up.

Somehow this basic fact was lost in the last decade or so. According to liberals in the Bush years, the essence of wise foreign policy boiled down to: "It's better to be wrong in a big group than to be right alone."

Anyway, what I really don't get is the investment of moral authority in the Security Council or the U.N. generally. The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are France, Great Britain, the United States, China and Russia. The other nations of the 15-member body rotate on and off the council. They also don't get a veto the way the permanent five do. But for the record they currently are: Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Rwanda and Togo.

Now, taking nothing away from the great and glorious accomplishments of the Luxembourgeois, Togoans and Rwandans -- never mind the invaluable insights the Pakistanis have into what constitute America's vital interests -- I am at a near-total loss to see how gaining their approval for a measure makes that measure more worthwhile. If you believe Bill Clinton was right to bomb the Balkans to stop ethnic cleansing (which I do), do you think that action was any less moral or right because he did it without the support of the U.N. and therefore -- according to international law -- illegally? I don't.

And then there are the permanent five. It's worth remembering they have their seats on the council simply by virtue of the fact they were the great powers at the end of World War II. One irony is that the people who routinely insist the U.S. must seek approval from the U.N. are also the sorts of people who blithely opine that "might doesn't make right." Well, the council's authority is derived entirely from the idea that might does make right. More important, by what perverted moral calculus does the approval of Russia (never mind the old Soviet Union) or China confer moral legitimacy? Without reading the full bill of indictment (the gulags, the mass murder, the invasions, etc.), suffice it to say that China and Russia's opinion of what is right and legal counts less than Miley Cyrus's verdict on what is tasteful.

But there is a deliberative body that has significant moral, political and legal authority when it comes to the conduct of American foreign policy. It's called "Congress." You could look it up.