By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson's quietly chilling article, "Two Californias," in National Review Online, ought to be read by every American who is concerned about where this country is headed. California is leading the way, but what is happening in California is happening elsewhere-- and is a slow poison that is being largely ignored.
Professor Hanson grew up on a farm in California's predominantly agricultural Central Valley. Now, as he tours that area, many years later, he finds a world as foreign to the world he knew as it is from the rest of California today-- and very different from the rest of America, either past or present.
In Hanson's own words: "Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards."
This is a Third World culture, transplanted from Mexico, and living largely outside the scope of American law, state or federal.
Ironically, this is happening in a state notorious for its pervasive and intrusive regulation of the minute details of people's lives, homes, and businesses. But not out in the Third World enclaves in the Central Valley, where garbage is strewn with impunity and unlicensed swarms of peddlers come and go, selling for cash and with no sales tax.
While waiting in line at two supermarkets, Victor Davis Hanson realized in both places that he was the only one in line who was not paying with the plastic cards issued by welfare authorities to replace the old food stamps. He noted that these people living on the taxpayers were driving late-model cars and had iPhones, BlackBerries and other parts of what he calls "the technological veneer of the middle class."
Sadly-- and, in the long run, tragically-- this is not unique to California, or to illegal immigrants from Mexico, or even to the United States. It is a pattern to which the Western world has been slowly but steadily succumbing.
In France, for example, there are enclaves of Third World Muslims, living by their own rules and festering with resentments of the society that is content to let them vegetate on handouts from the welfare state.
The black ghettos of America, and especially their housing projects, are other enclaves of people largely abandoned to their own lawless and violent lives, their children warehoused in schools where they are allowed to run wild, with education being more or less optional.
What is going on? These and other groups, here and abroad, are treated as mascots of the self-congratulatory elites.
These elites are able to indulge themselves in non-judgmental permissiveness toward those selected as mascots, while cracking down with heavy-handed, nanny-state control on others.
The effect of all this on the mascots themselves is not a big concern of the elites. Mascots symbolize something for others. The actual fate of the mascots themselves seldom matters much to their supposed benefactors.
So long as the elites have control of the public purse, they can subsidize self-destructive behavior on the part of the mascots. And so long as the elites can send their own children to private schools, they needn't worry about what happens to the children of the mascots in the public schools.
Other people who cannot afford to send their children to private schools can simply be called "racists" for objecting to what the indulgence of the mascots is doing to the public schools or what the violence of the mascots is doing to other children trapped in the same schools with them.
A hundred years ago, groups who are now indulged as mascots were targets and scapegoats of Progressive era elites, treated like dirt and targeted for eradication in the name of "eugenics."
There are no permanent mascots. As fashions change, the mascots of today can become the scapegoats and targets of tomorrow. But who thinks ahead anymore?
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Manhattan Project Of Illegal Immigration
Why do millions of Mexican nationals see America as racist, exploitative — and worth everything to get to and stay in?
Victor Davis Hanson
Monday, January 03, 2011
We all are familiar with the debates surrounding illegal immigration: absolute versus flexible laws; amnesty versus deportation or earned citizenship; closed versus open borders; entitlement dependency versus work no one else will do.
We also know the debates over the causation of this perfect storm that has resulted in 12 to 15 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. Was it the Right’s desire for cheap labor or the Left’s wish for more constituents, or both?
Was it abetted by the middle-class habit of wanting inexpensive nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners, and facilitated by the professional Latino elite’s dream of remaking American demography, with the ensuing careerist windfalls?
Of course, there was a desperate Mexico’s tripartite aim of obtaining billions in remittances, exporting what it apparently considers a bothersome poor, and winning a loyal expatriate population that seems to like Mexico all the more the farther it is distant.
The sloganeering and mytho-history were necessary relish: Illegal aliens only do the work others won’t do; the borders crossed indigenous peoples rather than they the borders; aliens are instead “undocumented workers,” who all work and who forgot their documentation at the border; America’s own poor are not hurt by the driving down of wages.
But lost in all of this talk is the real mystery at hand. The United States — ad hoc, often nonchalantly, without much debate or discussion — is currently engaged in one of the largest, most ambitious attempts at foreign aid and nation building in its history, one far more costly and daring that what is going on in either Afghanistan or Iraq. That such a project is not legal, much less approved by our lawmakers, and is funded largely by local and state governments, does not mean that it is not a project nonetheless.
Quite simply, America in almost instantaneous fashion has chosen to take in millions of the poorest citizens of one of the poorer nations in the world in an attempt to transmogrify them into middle-class suburbanites within a generation. That may not be the explicit description of our undertaking, but it surely is one arrived at empirically. And it is a multifaceted political, economic, cultural, and social effort that involves tens of millions of Americans at all levels of society and is proving to be the near salvation of Mexico.
Under the old protocols of legal immigration, we assumed that the world’s poor arrived here, struggled, learned English, assimilated, instructed their children in the exceptionalism of America, and achieved parity — but often not until the third generation. All that — both the methodology and the results — is obsolete today. In short, those who lived in near-18th-century poverty in Oaxaca can become statistical proof of America’s supposed racism and oppression in a nanosecond by simply crossing the border illegally. That they were poor and ignored in Mexico is considered almost natural; that they are still poorer than others after coming a foot north of the border and spending a second on U.S. soil becomes proof of the failure of America itself.
Take away illegal immigration, and in terms of assimilation, intermarriage, integration, income, and general well-being, the so-called Latino population is not all that much out of sync with the rest of America. Factor in millions of Mexican nationals, and we apparently have a massive problem that calls for Manhattan Project–like remedies, with all of the interested parties predictably participating.
Almost all university race-based research — and it is considerable — seeks to discover disparities in longevity, health, housing, and general quality of life, and it finds them, those responsible for them, and the government programs needed to address them. Such studies make no distinction in legal status. A recently arrived Mexican national from Jalisco who delivers a baby without much prenatal care is just as much proof of America’s “broken” health-care system as if she were an American citizen without health insurance. The failure to reach utopian results is as widely lamented as the near impossibility of the task of such massive assimilation is neglected.
Indeed, sometimes this holistic effort at continuing the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens is truly mind-boggling. An unstable Mexico survives in part on tens of billions of dollars of remittances, its second-largest source of foreign revenue. To maintain that precious income stream, the Mexican government has adopted strict diplomatic protocols: (a) do everything possible to ensure that nearly a million Mexicans at least try to leave each year; (b) do not praise the generosity of the American host, but constantly suggest that its motives for trying to close its borders are selfish, racist, or worse; (c) open consulates and establish outreach programs to promulgate the narrative that expatriate Mexican nationals are patriotic colonists who, by leaving their homes, have rightly made the construct of borders irrelevant; (d) never mention the ensuing remittance revenue nor the cost to the U.S. economy of losing nearly $50 billion a year to Latin America nor the subsequent need of federal, state, and local governments to provide housing, food, and education subsidies to Mexican nationals to enable them to send cash home.
So for this landmark project to continue, certain perspectives have to be maintained. Racism is not found among the mostly white Mexico City elites who cynically export indigenous peoples from Mexico’s interior in a modern-day sort of helotage. Instead, the real bias lies with the American host that provides work and services without much audit, but fails to ensure near-instant parity with the American middle class.
For the new arrival, there is a vague sort of ideology that he senses he must embrace. In simplified and rather crude terms it goes something like this: Drop hostility for the Mexican government that failed you. Adopt a sense of noble tribal solidarity in which you work hard and receive less than your American counterparts, reflective largely of illiberal prejudice. React with charges of racist insensitivity to any suggestion that an alien in a host country should always investigate means of achieving lawful residency, always try to avoid imposing entitlement costs on the host taxpayers, and always show gratitude as a guest to the host. That parity is difficult to achieve when the new arrival is without English, a high-school diploma, or legality is unmentioned.
Indeed, one of the most baffling aspects of the project is this disconnect between rhetoric and reality. We suspect that illegal aliens, who so bravely have fought to come to U.S. soil, appreciate the differences between the economic, legal, political, and social landscape in America and its counterpart in Mexico. I say “suspect” because we almost never hear from illegal aliens or their spokespeople blanket and unqualified praise of the United States, its Constitution, its history, and its present system, which does something that Mexico apparently does not.
During the recent DREAM Act frenzy, when a few Mexican students in American universities came forward to announce that they were here illegally, we heard almost no reasons why in the abstract they wished to remain in the country they had traveled to — and why under no circumstances were they willing to return to the country where they were born. Indeed, had supporters of the DREAM Act praised the dignity of the United States, its economic robustness, its historical role in the 20th century of defeating totalitarianism, its rule of law, or its meritocratic system rather than postured that America “had to” adjust its protocols to the desires of the illegal immigrants, the DREAM Act might well have passed.
Of course the illegal alien believes that his labor is underappreciated; of course the host believes that his generosity is taken for granted. Tragically, the ultimate arbiter of that debate is the reality that Mexico wishes illegal immigration to continue and America now does not.
In sum, illegal immigration from Mexico into America is the most radical attempt at nation building on the world scene today, theirs and ours. Stranger still, its narrative assumes a general inability or unwillingness to explain why millions leave Mexico and do not wish to return there, why they so like this supposedly oppressive country and wish to stay — and why admission of that fact is apparently neither necessary nor wholesome.
Victor Davis Hanson
Monday, January 03, 2011
We all are familiar with the debates surrounding illegal immigration: absolute versus flexible laws; amnesty versus deportation or earned citizenship; closed versus open borders; entitlement dependency versus work no one else will do.
We also know the debates over the causation of this perfect storm that has resulted in 12 to 15 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. Was it the Right’s desire for cheap labor or the Left’s wish for more constituents, or both?
Was it abetted by the middle-class habit of wanting inexpensive nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners, and facilitated by the professional Latino elite’s dream of remaking American demography, with the ensuing careerist windfalls?
Of course, there was a desperate Mexico’s tripartite aim of obtaining billions in remittances, exporting what it apparently considers a bothersome poor, and winning a loyal expatriate population that seems to like Mexico all the more the farther it is distant.
The sloganeering and mytho-history were necessary relish: Illegal aliens only do the work others won’t do; the borders crossed indigenous peoples rather than they the borders; aliens are instead “undocumented workers,” who all work and who forgot their documentation at the border; America’s own poor are not hurt by the driving down of wages.
But lost in all of this talk is the real mystery at hand. The United States — ad hoc, often nonchalantly, without much debate or discussion — is currently engaged in one of the largest, most ambitious attempts at foreign aid and nation building in its history, one far more costly and daring that what is going on in either Afghanistan or Iraq. That such a project is not legal, much less approved by our lawmakers, and is funded largely by local and state governments, does not mean that it is not a project nonetheless.
Quite simply, America in almost instantaneous fashion has chosen to take in millions of the poorest citizens of one of the poorer nations in the world in an attempt to transmogrify them into middle-class suburbanites within a generation. That may not be the explicit description of our undertaking, but it surely is one arrived at empirically. And it is a multifaceted political, economic, cultural, and social effort that involves tens of millions of Americans at all levels of society and is proving to be the near salvation of Mexico.
Under the old protocols of legal immigration, we assumed that the world’s poor arrived here, struggled, learned English, assimilated, instructed their children in the exceptionalism of America, and achieved parity — but often not until the third generation. All that — both the methodology and the results — is obsolete today. In short, those who lived in near-18th-century poverty in Oaxaca can become statistical proof of America’s supposed racism and oppression in a nanosecond by simply crossing the border illegally. That they were poor and ignored in Mexico is considered almost natural; that they are still poorer than others after coming a foot north of the border and spending a second on U.S. soil becomes proof of the failure of America itself.
Take away illegal immigration, and in terms of assimilation, intermarriage, integration, income, and general well-being, the so-called Latino population is not all that much out of sync with the rest of America. Factor in millions of Mexican nationals, and we apparently have a massive problem that calls for Manhattan Project–like remedies, with all of the interested parties predictably participating.
Almost all university race-based research — and it is considerable — seeks to discover disparities in longevity, health, housing, and general quality of life, and it finds them, those responsible for them, and the government programs needed to address them. Such studies make no distinction in legal status. A recently arrived Mexican national from Jalisco who delivers a baby without much prenatal care is just as much proof of America’s “broken” health-care system as if she were an American citizen without health insurance. The failure to reach utopian results is as widely lamented as the near impossibility of the task of such massive assimilation is neglected.
Indeed, sometimes this holistic effort at continuing the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens is truly mind-boggling. An unstable Mexico survives in part on tens of billions of dollars of remittances, its second-largest source of foreign revenue. To maintain that precious income stream, the Mexican government has adopted strict diplomatic protocols: (a) do everything possible to ensure that nearly a million Mexicans at least try to leave each year; (b) do not praise the generosity of the American host, but constantly suggest that its motives for trying to close its borders are selfish, racist, or worse; (c) open consulates and establish outreach programs to promulgate the narrative that expatriate Mexican nationals are patriotic colonists who, by leaving their homes, have rightly made the construct of borders irrelevant; (d) never mention the ensuing remittance revenue nor the cost to the U.S. economy of losing nearly $50 billion a year to Latin America nor the subsequent need of federal, state, and local governments to provide housing, food, and education subsidies to Mexican nationals to enable them to send cash home.
So for this landmark project to continue, certain perspectives have to be maintained. Racism is not found among the mostly white Mexico City elites who cynically export indigenous peoples from Mexico’s interior in a modern-day sort of helotage. Instead, the real bias lies with the American host that provides work and services without much audit, but fails to ensure near-instant parity with the American middle class.
For the new arrival, there is a vague sort of ideology that he senses he must embrace. In simplified and rather crude terms it goes something like this: Drop hostility for the Mexican government that failed you. Adopt a sense of noble tribal solidarity in which you work hard and receive less than your American counterparts, reflective largely of illiberal prejudice. React with charges of racist insensitivity to any suggestion that an alien in a host country should always investigate means of achieving lawful residency, always try to avoid imposing entitlement costs on the host taxpayers, and always show gratitude as a guest to the host. That parity is difficult to achieve when the new arrival is without English, a high-school diploma, or legality is unmentioned.
Indeed, one of the most baffling aspects of the project is this disconnect between rhetoric and reality. We suspect that illegal aliens, who so bravely have fought to come to U.S. soil, appreciate the differences between the economic, legal, political, and social landscape in America and its counterpart in Mexico. I say “suspect” because we almost never hear from illegal aliens or their spokespeople blanket and unqualified praise of the United States, its Constitution, its history, and its present system, which does something that Mexico apparently does not.
During the recent DREAM Act frenzy, when a few Mexican students in American universities came forward to announce that they were here illegally, we heard almost no reasons why in the abstract they wished to remain in the country they had traveled to — and why under no circumstances were they willing to return to the country where they were born. Indeed, had supporters of the DREAM Act praised the dignity of the United States, its economic robustness, its historical role in the 20th century of defeating totalitarianism, its rule of law, or its meritocratic system rather than postured that America “had to” adjust its protocols to the desires of the illegal immigrants, the DREAM Act might well have passed.
Of course the illegal alien believes that his labor is underappreciated; of course the host believes that his generosity is taken for granted. Tragically, the ultimate arbiter of that debate is the reality that Mexico wishes illegal immigration to continue and America now does not.
In sum, illegal immigration from Mexico into America is the most radical attempt at nation building on the world scene today, theirs and ours. Stranger still, its narrative assumes a general inability or unwillingness to explain why millions leave Mexico and do not wish to return there, why they so like this supposedly oppressive country and wish to stay — and why admission of that fact is apparently neither necessary nor wholesome.
‘Civil Rights’ Gone Wild
To the Civil Rights Division, pilgrimages and stiletto heels matter more than actual violations of the Civil Rights Act.
Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Monday, January 03, 2011
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has no time to pursue voter-intimidation cases against black defendants. But it has plenty of time to pursue local school boards that make common-sense decisions about student dress codes and accommodations for teachers’ religious practices.
The contrast between what the division does and doesn’t regard as important reveals a radical ideology on the loose — and the willingness of this administration’s political appointees to abuse the civil-rights laws they are supposed to enforce.
In the latest outrage, the Civil Rights Division is suing the board of education in the leafy Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Ill. The board’s offense? It would not allow a middle-school computer-math-lab teacher to take off three weeks during December’s crucial end-of-semester course reviews and final exams in order to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
DOJ filed the suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits an employer from discriminating on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. Federal regulations require an employer to provide reasonable accommodations for the religious practices of employees unless doing so would “result in undue hardships on the conduct of its business.” In 1977, in TWA v. Hardison, the Supreme Court held that it is an “undue hardship” if the employer has to “bear more than a de minimis cost” in order to provide the accommodation.
The courts have reasonably concluded that employers must accommodate certain religious practices, such as letting teachers take a day off for a religious holiday like Rosh Hashanah, or permitting devout Muslims to briefly absent themselves during the day to pray. Federal regulations identify additional examples of reasonable religious accommodations deemed to be of minimal cost to employers. These include voluntary swaps with other employees who are willing to work on a particular day, flexible arrival and departure times, staggered work hours, and new job assignments and lateral transfers. No rational observer, though, would construe a request for a three-week Hajj during the run-up to finals as a reasonable accommodation.
The Justice Department will probably argue that the school board would incur only a de minimis cost in granting three weeks of unpaid leave to this untenured teacher, who had been employed by that school for only a year. But if a teacher were to leave for three weeks at the end of a semester, the cost to the students could be quite heavy. That is the time when teachers are responsible for reviewing with their students all that they have been taught and preparing them for the finals. That is not a job that a substitute teacher can effectively handle. Substitutes typically don’t know the syllabus, the projects assigned, the readings required, or any other details of a four-month-long course. Assuming that the students’ education is the top priority of the school board, it is simply not reasonable to let a teacher leave during this crucial period.
In this case, the contract with the local teachers’ union stipulates accommodations for shorter religious holidays but not, apparently, for such a lengthy pilgrimage. By acting fully within the negotiated terms of that agreement, the school board had provided all reasonable accommodations required by law. In the TWA case, the Supreme Court held that an employer cannot be faulted for acting according to a seniority system set out in a collective-bargaining agreement since that agreement represents a significant accommodation of the religious and secular needs of all covered employees. In this case, the school board acted within its union contract and provided all the religious accommodations it was required to offer under applicable federal law and regulations. The Justice Department’s view here goes far beyond what is legally required.
Extremists in the Civil Rights Division are pouncing on other school policies as well. When it was first formed in the 1960s, the division pursued cases of real discrimination — cases where, for example, black students were harassed or intimidated or provided with intentionally inferior education. These days, the division believes that prohibiting boys from wearing makeup, nail polish, and high heels is sex discrimination.
The current cases involve two schools in upstate New York that supposedly discriminated against one male student who wore a pink wig and makeup and another male student who wore a wig and stiletto heels and wanted to be able to “dress like a woman.” These students had violated the schools’ common-sense dress codes and were told to change clothes and remove the makeup. That prompted the Civil Rights Division to come knocking. The boys were being treated “differently” from female students, and such differential treatment, the division asserted, “implicate[s] the civil rights laws that we enforce.”
The civil-rights statutes prohibit sex discrimination. Today’s division wants to equate sex with sexual orientation or, as it said in one letter, “perceived sexual identity.” Yet the division cannot make even a weak showing that such issues fit within the definition of discrimination prohibited by the relevant statutes, which were passed long before the gay-rights movement had even begun.
As Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity observes: “The Obama administration apparently believes that it is unconstitutional for high schools to have a dress code that makes distinctions between what is appropriate dress for males and what is appropriate dress for females.” Clegg also points out that the division’s attempt to equate “sexual-orientation discrimination” with sex discrimination, by asserting that the use of sexual “stereotypes” is an instance of the latter, is nothing but naked bootstrapping (if you will pardon the expression). But legal justification or not, in the eyes of the warped and silly (but dangerous) lawyers inhabiting the division, barring boys from wearing stiletto heels is a serious civil-rights violation.
There is no question that schools should not allow bullying or violence of any kind. But it’s ludicrous to launch federal investigations of schools for having dress codes that differentiate between males and females, or to equate such dress codes with “sex discrimination.”
The division also wants to literally make a federal case out of derogatory name calling — something that can (and should) be handled at the local level. If you, as an immature teenager, make fun of another boy because he “dyed his hair [and] wore makeup and nail polish,” or you otherwise engage in what the division terms “teasing,” look out. The division may force your school to put you in a “training” class to educate you as to how you are discriminating on the basis of “gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.” That’s what the division did in its settlement agreement with New York’s Mohawk Central School District.
The bizarre enforcement policies of today’s Civil Rights Division have nothing to do with ensuring real civil-rights protections. Instead, the division’s radical lawyers seem determined to use the agency’s power to impose their peculiar cultural and social views on the rest of us.
Oddly, one of those views is that discrimination by some racial groups is perfectly acceptable. This explains why the Justice Department dismissed the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case it had already won. It is why this administration is studiously not pursuing cases like the one filed against Southern Illinois University in 2006 for maintaining a paid fellowship program that categorically excluded white males from applying. It was the Bush administration’s race-neutral enforcement policy in such cases that enraged the radical civil-rights organizations that dominate Washington and formed the basis for much of the unfair and misleading criticism of that administration’s enforcement of civil-rights laws.
One can only hope that the public will soon take notice of the Obama administration’s abuse of its civil-rights enforcement function. Otherwise, the division’s “enlightened” erosion of our culture and our real civil rights will proceed apace.
Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Monday, January 03, 2011
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has no time to pursue voter-intimidation cases against black defendants. But it has plenty of time to pursue local school boards that make common-sense decisions about student dress codes and accommodations for teachers’ religious practices.
The contrast between what the division does and doesn’t regard as important reveals a radical ideology on the loose — and the willingness of this administration’s political appointees to abuse the civil-rights laws they are supposed to enforce.
In the latest outrage, the Civil Rights Division is suing the board of education in the leafy Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Ill. The board’s offense? It would not allow a middle-school computer-math-lab teacher to take off three weeks during December’s crucial end-of-semester course reviews and final exams in order to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
DOJ filed the suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits an employer from discriminating on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. Federal regulations require an employer to provide reasonable accommodations for the religious practices of employees unless doing so would “result in undue hardships on the conduct of its business.” In 1977, in TWA v. Hardison, the Supreme Court held that it is an “undue hardship” if the employer has to “bear more than a de minimis cost” in order to provide the accommodation.
The courts have reasonably concluded that employers must accommodate certain religious practices, such as letting teachers take a day off for a religious holiday like Rosh Hashanah, or permitting devout Muslims to briefly absent themselves during the day to pray. Federal regulations identify additional examples of reasonable religious accommodations deemed to be of minimal cost to employers. These include voluntary swaps with other employees who are willing to work on a particular day, flexible arrival and departure times, staggered work hours, and new job assignments and lateral transfers. No rational observer, though, would construe a request for a three-week Hajj during the run-up to finals as a reasonable accommodation.
The Justice Department will probably argue that the school board would incur only a de minimis cost in granting three weeks of unpaid leave to this untenured teacher, who had been employed by that school for only a year. But if a teacher were to leave for three weeks at the end of a semester, the cost to the students could be quite heavy. That is the time when teachers are responsible for reviewing with their students all that they have been taught and preparing them for the finals. That is not a job that a substitute teacher can effectively handle. Substitutes typically don’t know the syllabus, the projects assigned, the readings required, or any other details of a four-month-long course. Assuming that the students’ education is the top priority of the school board, it is simply not reasonable to let a teacher leave during this crucial period.
In this case, the contract with the local teachers’ union stipulates accommodations for shorter religious holidays but not, apparently, for such a lengthy pilgrimage. By acting fully within the negotiated terms of that agreement, the school board had provided all reasonable accommodations required by law. In the TWA case, the Supreme Court held that an employer cannot be faulted for acting according to a seniority system set out in a collective-bargaining agreement since that agreement represents a significant accommodation of the religious and secular needs of all covered employees. In this case, the school board acted within its union contract and provided all the religious accommodations it was required to offer under applicable federal law and regulations. The Justice Department’s view here goes far beyond what is legally required.
Extremists in the Civil Rights Division are pouncing on other school policies as well. When it was first formed in the 1960s, the division pursued cases of real discrimination — cases where, for example, black students were harassed or intimidated or provided with intentionally inferior education. These days, the division believes that prohibiting boys from wearing makeup, nail polish, and high heels is sex discrimination.
The current cases involve two schools in upstate New York that supposedly discriminated against one male student who wore a pink wig and makeup and another male student who wore a wig and stiletto heels and wanted to be able to “dress like a woman.” These students had violated the schools’ common-sense dress codes and were told to change clothes and remove the makeup. That prompted the Civil Rights Division to come knocking. The boys were being treated “differently” from female students, and such differential treatment, the division asserted, “implicate[s] the civil rights laws that we enforce.”
The civil-rights statutes prohibit sex discrimination. Today’s division wants to equate sex with sexual orientation or, as it said in one letter, “perceived sexual identity.” Yet the division cannot make even a weak showing that such issues fit within the definition of discrimination prohibited by the relevant statutes, which were passed long before the gay-rights movement had even begun.
As Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity observes: “The Obama administration apparently believes that it is unconstitutional for high schools to have a dress code that makes distinctions between what is appropriate dress for males and what is appropriate dress for females.” Clegg also points out that the division’s attempt to equate “sexual-orientation discrimination” with sex discrimination, by asserting that the use of sexual “stereotypes” is an instance of the latter, is nothing but naked bootstrapping (if you will pardon the expression). But legal justification or not, in the eyes of the warped and silly (but dangerous) lawyers inhabiting the division, barring boys from wearing stiletto heels is a serious civil-rights violation.
There is no question that schools should not allow bullying or violence of any kind. But it’s ludicrous to launch federal investigations of schools for having dress codes that differentiate between males and females, or to equate such dress codes with “sex discrimination.”
The division also wants to literally make a federal case out of derogatory name calling — something that can (and should) be handled at the local level. If you, as an immature teenager, make fun of another boy because he “dyed his hair [and] wore makeup and nail polish,” or you otherwise engage in what the division terms “teasing,” look out. The division may force your school to put you in a “training” class to educate you as to how you are discriminating on the basis of “gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.” That’s what the division did in its settlement agreement with New York’s Mohawk Central School District.
The bizarre enforcement policies of today’s Civil Rights Division have nothing to do with ensuring real civil-rights protections. Instead, the division’s radical lawyers seem determined to use the agency’s power to impose their peculiar cultural and social views on the rest of us.
Oddly, one of those views is that discrimination by some racial groups is perfectly acceptable. This explains why the Justice Department dismissed the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case it had already won. It is why this administration is studiously not pursuing cases like the one filed against Southern Illinois University in 2006 for maintaining a paid fellowship program that categorically excluded white males from applying. It was the Bush administration’s race-neutral enforcement policy in such cases that enraged the radical civil-rights organizations that dominate Washington and formed the basis for much of the unfair and misleading criticism of that administration’s enforcement of civil-rights laws.
One can only hope that the public will soon take notice of the Obama administration’s abuse of its civil-rights enforcement function. Otherwise, the division’s “enlightened” erosion of our culture and our real civil rights will proceed apace.
It’s About More Than Money
Increases in personal well-being overshadow personal inequality.
Michael Barone
Monday, January 3, 2011
Consider one conundrum in American politics: Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics, yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.
Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around, but large majorities in polls approved when Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned oft-repeated campaign promises to raise taxes on high earners in the lame-duck session.
Why don’t voters care more?
One reason is that economic statistics can miss important things that affect people’s lives. After adjusting for inflation, wages may not have risen much since 1973, but that’s partly because the tax code encourages increased compensation in the form of benefits, including health insurance. And it’s partly because the Consumer Price Index overstated the effect of inflation in the 1970s, making 1973 wages look higher than they should in “real dollars.”
Another reason is that inflation indexes can’t fully account for product improvement and technological progress. I bought my first electronic calculator in 1970 for $110. Today you can buy the same gadget for $1.99 at your local drugstore. The consumer electronics widely available today at declining prices simply didn’t exist in the 1980s.
In addition, as George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen writes in The American Interest, “The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past 20 years, as well.” Bill Gates may have a bigger house than you do, but you have about the same access to good food, to medical care, and even to the Internet as he does.
Or consider something as prosaic as food. The supermarkets of the 1960s and 1970s didn’t come close to matching the amazing selection of produce, meats, and exotic foods that you find in supermarkets today — and not just in high-income neighborhoods, but in modest-income places all over the country.
Or clothing. Firms like Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s have good-quality clothes at astonishingly low prices — you can outfit a kid in school clothes for $100 or so a year. Presidential candidate John Edwards claimed to have seen a little girl shivering in the winter because her parents could not buy a coat; you can get one for five dollars at the Salvation Army.
It’s a widespread assumption in some affluent circles that ordinary Americans are seething with envy because they can’t afford to shop regularly at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. My sense is that most Americans just don’t care. They’re reasonably happy with what they’ve got, and would like a little more.
So I am inclined to agree with Cowen when he writes, “The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless.”
Cowen is worried that high earners in financial industries benefit hugely when they bet correctly but are sheltered from losses by government bailouts when they bet wrong. It’s a problem that the financial-regulation bill passed by the outgoing Congress addressed but, in his opinion and those of many others I respect, did not solve.
Even so, there’s little evidence that most Americans begrudge the exceedingly high earnings of the likes of Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, or J. K. Rowling. We believe they have earned their success and don’t see how taking money away from them will make the rest of us better off.
We already take quite a bit. Current tax rates mean that the top 1 percent of earners account for 40 percent of federal income-tax revenue — a higher percentage than in many Western European countries. Higher tax rates would probably produce more tax avoidance — rich people can adjust their affairs — and lower revenues than forecast by static economic models.
Of course, not everyone is well off in a nation where unemployment has been 9.4 percent or higher for the last 19 months. And I suspect that most Americans would be thrilled to get a 13th month of pay. But they’re not seething with envy at those who are better off.
So who does? One example is the cartoonist and author Garry Trudeau, a college classmate of George W. Bush, who has been spewing contempt for the Bushes for 40-some years. The strongest class envy in America, it turns out, may be the resentment of those who were one club above you at Yale.
Michael Barone
Monday, January 3, 2011
Consider one conundrum in American politics: Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics, yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.
Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around, but large majorities in polls approved when Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned oft-repeated campaign promises to raise taxes on high earners in the lame-duck session.
Why don’t voters care more?
One reason is that economic statistics can miss important things that affect people’s lives. After adjusting for inflation, wages may not have risen much since 1973, but that’s partly because the tax code encourages increased compensation in the form of benefits, including health insurance. And it’s partly because the Consumer Price Index overstated the effect of inflation in the 1970s, making 1973 wages look higher than they should in “real dollars.”
Another reason is that inflation indexes can’t fully account for product improvement and technological progress. I bought my first electronic calculator in 1970 for $110. Today you can buy the same gadget for $1.99 at your local drugstore. The consumer electronics widely available today at declining prices simply didn’t exist in the 1980s.
In addition, as George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen writes in The American Interest, “The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past 20 years, as well.” Bill Gates may have a bigger house than you do, but you have about the same access to good food, to medical care, and even to the Internet as he does.
Or consider something as prosaic as food. The supermarkets of the 1960s and 1970s didn’t come close to matching the amazing selection of produce, meats, and exotic foods that you find in supermarkets today — and not just in high-income neighborhoods, but in modest-income places all over the country.
Or clothing. Firms like Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s have good-quality clothes at astonishingly low prices — you can outfit a kid in school clothes for $100 or so a year. Presidential candidate John Edwards claimed to have seen a little girl shivering in the winter because her parents could not buy a coat; you can get one for five dollars at the Salvation Army.
It’s a widespread assumption in some affluent circles that ordinary Americans are seething with envy because they can’t afford to shop regularly at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. My sense is that most Americans just don’t care. They’re reasonably happy with what they’ve got, and would like a little more.
So I am inclined to agree with Cowen when he writes, “The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless.”
Cowen is worried that high earners in financial industries benefit hugely when they bet correctly but are sheltered from losses by government bailouts when they bet wrong. It’s a problem that the financial-regulation bill passed by the outgoing Congress addressed but, in his opinion and those of many others I respect, did not solve.
Even so, there’s little evidence that most Americans begrudge the exceedingly high earnings of the likes of Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, or J. K. Rowling. We believe they have earned their success and don’t see how taking money away from them will make the rest of us better off.
We already take quite a bit. Current tax rates mean that the top 1 percent of earners account for 40 percent of federal income-tax revenue — a higher percentage than in many Western European countries. Higher tax rates would probably produce more tax avoidance — rich people can adjust their affairs — and lower revenues than forecast by static economic models.
Of course, not everyone is well off in a nation where unemployment has been 9.4 percent or higher for the last 19 months. And I suspect that most Americans would be thrilled to get a 13th month of pay. But they’re not seething with envy at those who are better off.
So who does? One example is the cartoonist and author Garry Trudeau, a college classmate of George W. Bush, who has been spewing contempt for the Bushes for 40-some years. The strongest class envy in America, it turns out, may be the resentment of those who were one club above you at Yale.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Moral Mush of Pacifism
By Jonah Goldberg
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Colman McCarthy has a really exasperating op-ed in the Post today arguing that ROTC must remain banned from campuses, even after the DADT repeal. As I briefly mentioned in my column yesterday, the lifting of DADT is really inconvenient for peaceniks and other folks who hold anti-military views because it lends credibility to the military (among liberals and leftists).
If the point of the column was simply to honestly admit this, I’d find it admirable. But it gets worse. McCarthy adds this:
And, last, there’s this execrable bit of moral equivalence: “To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices …”
This is the sort of obtuse even-handedness that drove Orwell crazy. Moreover McCarthy clearly doesn’t even believe it. Of course he’s anti-soldier. He believes they dedicate themselves to a “foul notion.”
Er, no. In America, they dedicate themselves to protecting America, her liberties and her Constitution. The Taliban’s priorities are very different and one cannot wave them away by prattling on about the “discipline” and “loyalty” of Jihadist murderers.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Colman McCarthy has a really exasperating op-ed in the Post today arguing that ROTC must remain banned from campuses, even after the DADT repeal. As I briefly mentioned in my column yesterday, the lifting of DADT is really inconvenient for peaceniks and other folks who hold anti-military views because it lends credibility to the military (among liberals and leftists).
If the point of the column was simply to honestly admit this, I’d find it admirable. But it gets worse. McCarthy adds this:
To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I’ve had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.This is a riot of intellectual and moral confusion. First of all, the idea that any of the Ivies currently enjoys something that might be called “intellectual purity” is a compliment unearned (but such flattery will no doubt be eagerly accepted). Second, the notion that intellectualism is somehow at odds with military values or ethics is willfully dishonest (paging VDH!). Since when has “intellectual purity” or intellectualism of any kind been defined by its antipathy to the military? Third, the idea that nations cannot wage war for peace is one of the most easily disproved and transparently silly utopian notions out there. The post-WWII peace was bought with a lot of killing and destroying, not with a seminar.
ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
And, last, there’s this execrable bit of moral equivalence: “To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices …”
This is the sort of obtuse even-handedness that drove Orwell crazy. Moreover McCarthy clearly doesn’t even believe it. Of course he’s anti-soldier. He believes they dedicate themselves to a “foul notion.”
Er, no. In America, they dedicate themselves to protecting America, her liberties and her Constitution. The Taliban’s priorities are very different and one cannot wave them away by prattling on about the “discipline” and “loyalty” of Jihadist murderers.
Intimidation and Tyranny
By Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, January 2, 2011
While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.
The moral of this column is that in today's world, cartoons, if they target Islam, can be more hazardous to your health than crossing the mighty U.S. government and its allies.
Swedish and Danish authorities arrested four suspected militant Islamic jihadists last week for allegedly planning a terrorist attack before this weekend. Their target was the Jyllands-Posten news bureau in Copenhagen. In 2006, the newspaper became the target of terrorist threats after it printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Authorities say the suspects arrested planned to use the same "swarm" tactics used in the 2008 Mumbai killing spree that left at least 160 people dead.
Kurt Westergaard drew a cartoon that depicted Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Last January, a Somali man wielding an ax and demanding "revenge" broke into Westergaard's home. In 2009, Danish authorities arrested three men for planning to behead Westergaard.
Like Westergaard, Jyllands-Posten Editor Flemming Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, now has round-the-clock security. I asked via e-mail how many planned attacks against his paper and cartoonists have been thwarted.
Rose answered that this latest episode represents the sixth or seventh foiled attack.
In his new book, "Tyranny of Silence," Rose explains that he asked cartoonists to submit works on Muhammad in order to stand up to "my perception of prevalent self-censorship among the Danish media" on the subject of radical Islam. Now he has a target on his back.
When we met in 2008, Rose summarized what summed up "The Cartoon Crisis." "They are basically saying, 'If you say we are violent, we are going to kill you.'"
And: "If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation."
Back to Molly Norris. In April, the one-time Seattle Weekly cartoonist made the mistake of drawing a cartoon that called for an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." Norris was reacting to Comedy Central's decision to censor parts of the show "South Park" that depicted a cartoon Muhammad dressed in a bear suit -- wink, wink -- lest showing an image of the prophet offend. The network also bleeped out verbal references to Muhammad.
Norris quickly renounced the idea and apologized to the Muslim community. But that didn't stop American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki from declaring that that Norris should be "a prime target of assassination." Al-Awlaki, you may recall, has been linked to the attempted Times Square bombing, last year's failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound plane, and the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 dead.
At the FBI's urging, Norris changed her name and wiped her identity.
As for "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they didn't like Comedy Central's decision to censor their material. To their credit, they risked the wrath of extremists, who made veiled death threats against them.
But they thrive in a system that perpetuates a double standard. Stone and Parker are now working on a new Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon." In reporting on the musical, Newsday called them "scamps" and "the wonderful troublemakers of 'South Park.'"
Those aren't the sort of terms reserved for Rose, who became something of an international pariah for doing to Islam once what Parker and Stone do regularly to devout Christians. The "South Park" guys know that they can make fun of Mormons without fear of censorship from upstairs or fatwas from abroad.
This new year will bring the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "Since Sept. 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement," a Heritage Foundation paper reported in April. And that was before Faisal Shahzad failed to set off a car bomb in Times Square.
As for 2010, it ended with arrests in London, Denmark, Sweden and a suicide bombing in Stockholm.
We don't know the names of the intelligence operatives and law enforcement officials who saved innocent lives by uncovering and stopping these plots, but they are the unsung heroes of the last decade.
As for Assange, his leaks "have made it much harder for those who are stopping attacks to do their jobs," according to former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. "The countries we rely on for information must increasingly be unwilling to share it with us for fear that it will be exposed in the next set of leaks. Next time an attack is successful, those who are applauding WikiLeaks today will give not a second's thought that they contributed to it."
Sunday, January 2, 2011
While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.
The moral of this column is that in today's world, cartoons, if they target Islam, can be more hazardous to your health than crossing the mighty U.S. government and its allies.
Swedish and Danish authorities arrested four suspected militant Islamic jihadists last week for allegedly planning a terrorist attack before this weekend. Their target was the Jyllands-Posten news bureau in Copenhagen. In 2006, the newspaper became the target of terrorist threats after it printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Authorities say the suspects arrested planned to use the same "swarm" tactics used in the 2008 Mumbai killing spree that left at least 160 people dead.
Kurt Westergaard drew a cartoon that depicted Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Last January, a Somali man wielding an ax and demanding "revenge" broke into Westergaard's home. In 2009, Danish authorities arrested three men for planning to behead Westergaard.
Like Westergaard, Jyllands-Posten Editor Flemming Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, now has round-the-clock security. I asked via e-mail how many planned attacks against his paper and cartoonists have been thwarted.
Rose answered that this latest episode represents the sixth or seventh foiled attack.
In his new book, "Tyranny of Silence," Rose explains that he asked cartoonists to submit works on Muhammad in order to stand up to "my perception of prevalent self-censorship among the Danish media" on the subject of radical Islam. Now he has a target on his back.
When we met in 2008, Rose summarized what summed up "The Cartoon Crisis." "They are basically saying, 'If you say we are violent, we are going to kill you.'"
And: "If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation."
Back to Molly Norris. In April, the one-time Seattle Weekly cartoonist made the mistake of drawing a cartoon that called for an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." Norris was reacting to Comedy Central's decision to censor parts of the show "South Park" that depicted a cartoon Muhammad dressed in a bear suit -- wink, wink -- lest showing an image of the prophet offend. The network also bleeped out verbal references to Muhammad.
Norris quickly renounced the idea and apologized to the Muslim community. But that didn't stop American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki from declaring that that Norris should be "a prime target of assassination." Al-Awlaki, you may recall, has been linked to the attempted Times Square bombing, last year's failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound plane, and the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 dead.
At the FBI's urging, Norris changed her name and wiped her identity.
As for "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they didn't like Comedy Central's decision to censor their material. To their credit, they risked the wrath of extremists, who made veiled death threats against them.
But they thrive in a system that perpetuates a double standard. Stone and Parker are now working on a new Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon." In reporting on the musical, Newsday called them "scamps" and "the wonderful troublemakers of 'South Park.'"
Those aren't the sort of terms reserved for Rose, who became something of an international pariah for doing to Islam once what Parker and Stone do regularly to devout Christians. The "South Park" guys know that they can make fun of Mormons without fear of censorship from upstairs or fatwas from abroad.
This new year will bring the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "Since Sept. 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement," a Heritage Foundation paper reported in April. And that was before Faisal Shahzad failed to set off a car bomb in Times Square.
As for 2010, it ended with arrests in London, Denmark, Sweden and a suicide bombing in Stockholm.
We don't know the names of the intelligence operatives and law enforcement officials who saved innocent lives by uncovering and stopping these plots, but they are the unsung heroes of the last decade.
As for Assange, his leaks "have made it much harder for those who are stopping attacks to do their jobs," according to former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. "The countries we rely on for information must increasingly be unwilling to share it with us for fear that it will be exposed in the next set of leaks. Next time an attack is successful, those who are applauding WikiLeaks today will give not a second's thought that they contributed to it."
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Yes, the Greatest Country Ever
Our greatness is simply a fact.
Rich Lowry
Friday, December 31, 2010
When the likes of Marco Rubio, the new Republican senator from Florida, say this is the greatest country ever, sophisticated opinion-makers cluck and roll their eyes. What a noxious tea-party nostrum. How chauvinistic. What hubris.
Yet, what other countries deserve this designation? For the sake of convenience, start at 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia ratified the modern system of nation-states. And grade on power, prosperity and goodness.
Is Spain the greatest ever? It had a nice run a couple of hundred years ago based on plundering the New World of its gold and silver. By 1800, it was one of the poorest countries in Europe. Today, it teeters on bankruptcy.
Is France? Its model of centralizing monarchy in the 17th century was extremely influential, and admirable — if you like elaborate court ritual, religious persecution and expansionistic wars. It gave the world the template for modern ideological madness in the French Revolution and for the modern tyrant in Napoleon. After the debacle of World War II, it recovered to a power of middling rank. If there’s no doubting the greatness of the French, their history comes with the implicit admonition: “Do not try this at home.”
Germany? In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was a cultural jewel. And one of the most talented statesmen ever, Bismarck, forged a nation that became an industrial behemoth. It also had an illiberal heart. Germany today is an anchor of democratic Europe, but with a hellish black mark against it that will last for all time.
Russia? By the beginning of the 20th century, a decrepit autocracy sat atop a mass of misery. Then, things went south. The communists murdered and enslaved many millions across seven decades. Russia remains an important, if vastly diminished, power, governed by a prickly, grasping kleptocracy.
Britain? Getting warmer. It invented the rights that are the bedrock of liberal democracy. More than most European powers, it lived by Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity: “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” From a tiny island, it came to govern an enormous extent of the globe in a relatively benign colonialism. It was a bulwark against the dictatorships of the Continent, from Napoleon, to the Kaiser, to Hitler. And it spawned the countries that have made the English-speaking world a synonym for good governance and liberty: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America.
Which brings us to the U.S. We had the advantage of jumping off from the achievement of the British. We founded our nation upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, even if our conduct hasn’t always matched them. We pushed aside Spain and Mexico in muscling across the continent, but brought order and liberty in our wake. Our treatment of the Indians was appalling, but par for the course in the context of the time. It took centuries of mistreatment of blacks before we finally heeded our own ideals.
The positive side of the ledger, though, is immense: We got constitutional government to work on a scale no one had thought possible; made ourselves a haven of liberty for the world’s peoples; and created a fluid, open society. We amassed unbelievable wealth, and spread it widely. Internationally, we wielded our overwhelming military and industrial power as a benevolent hegemon. We led the coalitions against the ideological empires of the 20th century and protected the global commons. We remain the world’s sole superpower, looked to by most of the world as a leader distinctly better than any of the alternatives.
Our greatness is simply a fact. Only the churlish or malevolent can deny it, or even get irked at its assertion. When a Marco Rubio talks of the greatness of America, it’s not bumptious self-congratulation. Our greatness comes with the responsibility to preserve our traditional dynamism and status as a robust middle-class society. To paraphrase the Benjamin Franklin of lore, we have the greatest country ever — if we can keep it.
Rich Lowry
Friday, December 31, 2010
When the likes of Marco Rubio, the new Republican senator from Florida, say this is the greatest country ever, sophisticated opinion-makers cluck and roll their eyes. What a noxious tea-party nostrum. How chauvinistic. What hubris.
Yet, what other countries deserve this designation? For the sake of convenience, start at 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia ratified the modern system of nation-states. And grade on power, prosperity and goodness.
Is Spain the greatest ever? It had a nice run a couple of hundred years ago based on plundering the New World of its gold and silver. By 1800, it was one of the poorest countries in Europe. Today, it teeters on bankruptcy.
Is France? Its model of centralizing monarchy in the 17th century was extremely influential, and admirable — if you like elaborate court ritual, religious persecution and expansionistic wars. It gave the world the template for modern ideological madness in the French Revolution and for the modern tyrant in Napoleon. After the debacle of World War II, it recovered to a power of middling rank. If there’s no doubting the greatness of the French, their history comes with the implicit admonition: “Do not try this at home.”
Germany? In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was a cultural jewel. And one of the most talented statesmen ever, Bismarck, forged a nation that became an industrial behemoth. It also had an illiberal heart. Germany today is an anchor of democratic Europe, but with a hellish black mark against it that will last for all time.
Russia? By the beginning of the 20th century, a decrepit autocracy sat atop a mass of misery. Then, things went south. The communists murdered and enslaved many millions across seven decades. Russia remains an important, if vastly diminished, power, governed by a prickly, grasping kleptocracy.
Britain? Getting warmer. It invented the rights that are the bedrock of liberal democracy. More than most European powers, it lived by Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity: “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” From a tiny island, it came to govern an enormous extent of the globe in a relatively benign colonialism. It was a bulwark against the dictatorships of the Continent, from Napoleon, to the Kaiser, to Hitler. And it spawned the countries that have made the English-speaking world a synonym for good governance and liberty: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America.
Which brings us to the U.S. We had the advantage of jumping off from the achievement of the British. We founded our nation upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, even if our conduct hasn’t always matched them. We pushed aside Spain and Mexico in muscling across the continent, but brought order and liberty in our wake. Our treatment of the Indians was appalling, but par for the course in the context of the time. It took centuries of mistreatment of blacks before we finally heeded our own ideals.
The positive side of the ledger, though, is immense: We got constitutional government to work on a scale no one had thought possible; made ourselves a haven of liberty for the world’s peoples; and created a fluid, open society. We amassed unbelievable wealth, and spread it widely. Internationally, we wielded our overwhelming military and industrial power as a benevolent hegemon. We led the coalitions against the ideological empires of the 20th century and protected the global commons. We remain the world’s sole superpower, looked to by most of the world as a leader distinctly better than any of the alternatives.
Our greatness is simply a fact. Only the churlish or malevolent can deny it, or even get irked at its assertion. When a Marco Rubio talks of the greatness of America, it’s not bumptious self-congratulation. Our greatness comes with the responsibility to preserve our traditional dynamism and status as a robust middle-class society. To paraphrase the Benjamin Franklin of lore, we have the greatest country ever — if we can keep it.
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