By Thomas E. Brewton, on October 27th, 2005 Liberalism’s fundamental nature necessitates relentless, class-centered greed. Congressional or regulatory action truly for the general welfare is almost impossible.
The essential nature of liberalism forces people to think only of themselves and to place never-ending demands on the public treasury. When government becomes both the tax-collector of a huge portion of people’s income and a mechanism for redistributing that income, people have no choice but to scramble for whatever they can get.
There is no point in altruistically holding back. If your special-interest group doesn’t grab the money, some other group will greedily snatch it.
The concept of the general welfare, which the Constitution’s preamble says the Constitution was ordained and established to promote, changes dramatically. Instead of the original design of balancing competing sectional economic and other interests to do what would be in the best interests of the nation as a whole, the Federal government under liberalism becomes merely a marketplace for the purchase of votes.
The general welfare becomes nothing more than the arithmetic sum of all demands by special interest groups for funds and privileges. And, there no longer being a unifying concept of the national interest and the general welfare, Congress has no way to reconcile the inevitable conflicting and counter-productive purposes of the multitudinous special-interest programs.
Once the process of funding special interests becomes the accepted mode of government, there can be no restraints upon it. Every special interest group can legitimately demand, why not us, if you gave to them? There being no criterion of a unified national interest and general welfare, Congress has no answer to the greed of special interests.
This is the real root of our preoccupation today with election campaign reforms. All of the McCain-Feingold bills in the world, with whatever number of amendments may be affixed, will be of no use, so long as the Federal government is the universe’s largest fountain of inflated money. As bank robber Willie Sutton explained, he robbed banks, because that’s where the money is.
Under what was called pluralistic democracy during the New Deal in the 1930s, the Federal government shifted from individualism to collectivism, in two respects: power was unconstitutionally stripped from states and local government, concentrating it in Washington, DC, and the unit of popular sovereignty was changed from the individual voter to special-interest classes of voters.
Governing via coalitions of special-interest voters was a fundamental implication of Karl Marx’s socialistic economics, which held that class conflict is the essential motivating force of political society.
Along with that collectivization of power in Washington came an astronomical expansion of the Federal income tax. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932, the top bracket Federal income tax rate was 25 percent. That top rate was immediately raised by the New Deal, reaching 80 percent in 1939, well before the onset of World War II, when the top rate went to 95 percent.
When Mr. Roosevelt took office, more than 70 percent of all taxes were raised by state and local governments. By 1939, that ratio had been reversed, with the Federal government confiscating the revenues that historically had enabled state and local governments to handle all of the everyday functions of government.
Unconstitutionally arrogating to the Federal government all of the revenues and, ipso facto, powers and functions of state and local governments was essential to implementing President Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign promise to impose Soviet and Fascist-style state planning in the United States. So radical and far-reaching was New Deal planning that its centerpiece, the National Recovery Administration — modeled on Fascist State Corporatism — was declared by Italian leader Benito Mussolini to be much too harsh compared to Fascism.
The contrast between liberalism and the founding ethos of the United States is stark.
Statesmen who wrote the Constitution structured a government whose functions and powers were enumerated in the Constitution, among them national defense, diplomacy, regulation of interstate commerce, maintaining a postal service, and providing and regulating a national money. Fearing a repetition of the high-handed and arbitrary exercise of power by Parliament and George III that led to the War of 1776, they deliberately left nearly all powers of everyday government in the hands of the states and local communities.
Additionally, it was explicitly and repeatedly affirmed by all statesmen that such a government of limited powers required a populace that would be self-restrained by its commitment to Judeo-Christian morality. One had to balance the other.
Liberal-socialist measures like Social Security that we take for granted today would have been unthinkable under the ethos prevailing throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in North America. Not because people were indifferent to hardships of their fellow citizens, but because such people were to be helped by individuals, synagogues, and churches, guided by the Bible’s great commandments to both Jews and Christians: Love the Lord God above all others, and love your neighbor as you would want him to love you.
Walter E. Williams, a Professor at George Mason University and a syndicated columnist, in a recent article” provided some specific instances of this understanding:
….Some people might say, “Aha! They forgot about the Constitution’s general welfare clause!” Here’s what James Madison [a principal architect of the Constitution] said: “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.“
Madison’s understanding was the accepted one, with the exception of Progressive [liberal] Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, as late as the presidency of William Howard Taft, from 1908 until 1912.
Giving additional examples, Professor Williams also noted that,
In February 1887, President Grover Cleveland, upon vetoing a bill appropriating money to aid drought-stricken farmers in Texas, said, ‘I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.’
President Cleveland added, ‘The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.’
Thomas E. Brewton had the extraordinary good fortune to study political philosophy under Eric Voegelin and Constitutional law under Walter Berns. His website is The View from 1776.
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By Alan Caruba, on October 27th, 2005 History is replete with lessons that teach the futility of negotiating with people who want to kill you.
Making the rounds of the opinion editorial pages of various US dailies, Professor Allen J. Zerkin has been urging the United States to begin opening channels to al Qaeda for the purpose of seeking “a truce…no matter how much that galls us.”
Professor Zerkin is a research fellow at New York University’s Center for Catastrophic Preparedness and Response, and an adjunct professor at its Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. These would appear to be rather impressive credentials, but should we really listen to someone who thinks al Qaeda has “limited and specific goals?”
According to Osama bin Laden, “The United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors.” That’s what he was saying back in 1998. It is useful to keep in mind that bin Laden is worth millions thanks to his family connections in Saudi Arabia where he grew up. His father, Muhammad bin Laden, was a billionaire construction magnate in Saudi Arabia.
Osama bin Laden received an excellent education before experiencing some kind of Wahabi epiphany when he put aside a life of wealth and ease in favor of joining the war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When that was over, he returned home to Saudi Arabia expressing an antipathy for the royal family that earned him an invitation to leave. He went to the Sudan and, in time, his Saudi passport was revoked. The Saudis, who live by the strictest Islamic codes of behavior, were not strict enough for Osama.
Professor Zerkin, though, worries that al Qaeda will be able to attack the US with a biological or nuclear weapon. Who doesn’t worry about this? And just as surely, who doesn’t know that there are dozens of other Islamic terrorist organizations that dream of doing it?
Professor Zerkin found a grain of hope in a recent message by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command. In that message, Zawahri referred to bin Laden’s April 2004 offer of a truce to any European country that made a commitment to stop “attacking Muslims or intervening in their affairs.” This is a truce that sets in motion the end of Europe as the birthplace of Western civilization and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate there.
Anyone who has paid even the most casual attention to the news of late knows that al Qaeda’s thugs have themselves been busy attacking Muslims, indiscriminately killing them in Iraq to thwart the birth of a democratic, modern nation. Afghanistan, which just held another successful election, is still a battleground. And, of course, there was the recent terrorist attack in London against “infidels” in its subways and on its buses. There has since been another attack in Bali.
The bloodlust that distinguishes al Qaeda operations is hardly a platform for back channel or any other negotiations. Professor Zerkin acknowledges this, noting that terrorist attacks leave little to discuss and the greater goal of destroying Western, i.e., Judeo-Christian civilization, is non-negotiable. He even concedes it is widely believed that “bin Laden and company will not act in good faith.” If the professor would read the Koran, he would find this supposition confirmed in the Islamic holy book.
History is replete with lessons that teach the futility of negotiating with people who want to kill you. The English, the French, the Soviets, and others discovered that no treaty with the Nazis was worth the paper upon which it was written. Famously, Neville Chamberlain, the then-Prime Minister of England, did not return from Berlin having achieved “peace in our time.”
The dregs of Islam have been gathered together by bin Laden under the banner of al Qaeda. They are led by men with an utterly bizarre view of the world and the same casual indifference to human life with which they recruit “youths who love death as you love life.”
In the end, Professor Zerkin says, “I am not suggesting that we engage in direct meetings with al Qaeda or that we stop pursuing those who commit or support acts of terror. But, through back channels, we should seek to determine if bin Laden would withdraw his ‘fatwa’ against Americans in exchange for certain policy changes, if al Qaeda would settle for less than its maximum demands and if its far-flung followers would honor a truce.”
Professor Zerkin thinks there is “inconclusive” proof that bin Laden might be willing to do a deal. So (1) why is he even suggesting negotiations and (2) why is any daily newspaper actually printing his recommendation as if it had a shred of merit?
He needs to visit the former Nazi concentration camps or any of the camps of the former Soviet Union’s Ghulag Archipelago. He needs a reminder of the prisons and mass graves that dot the landscape of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He needs to gain a greater insight into the Arab mind.
He needs to visit Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. When he does, he will no longer be penning hopeful nonsense about negotiating with the criminally and theologically insane. There is only one course of action for the West. It must destroy its Islamist enemies or, failing that, it must surrender
Alan Caruba is the author of Warning Signs, published by Merril Press. His weekly commentaries are posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.
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By Mark Rosenthal, on October 27th, 2005 The new PBS film Breaking the Silence relies on research that fails to distinguish between accusations of abuse and actual abuse.
Beginning October 20th, PBS stations around the nation began airing a film entitled Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories. Although protecting helpless victims from brutal abusers is a noble undertaking, distorting the facts to libel an entire class of people is not.
The Strategy For Passing Unjust Laws
This film seems to be the first step in a pattern that’s been played out many times in the past few decades:
1. Determine what conclusions a study would need to reach in order to stampede legislators into passing the laws you want passed.
2. Conduct studies that are carefully designed ignore any inconvenient facts. Popular techniques in this step include: 1) using self-selected rather than randomized population samples, 2) taking care not to ask any questions that might elicit undesired answers, and 3) neglecting to report any results at all from any questions whose answers contradict your thesis.
3. Publicize these studies as if they were impartial research, by planting newspaper stories, publishing in journals whose referees are as biased as the studies’ authors, getting corporations to fund advertising that masquerades as a “documentary”, etc.
4. Use yellow journalism to scare the public into demanding that legislators pass a law to fix the nonexistent problem.
In the early 1990s, the American Association of University Women had great success using such strategies. They began by issuing a report entitled “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” Diane Ravitch, former Director of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement, calls the AAUW report “bizarre” for reporting that girls’ educational achievement was lagging behind boys at exactly the time that girls had just overtaken boys in almost every area. But it doesn’t seem bizarre at all if you assume that AAUW’s goal was not to conduct honest research, but rather to drive public policy, certain in the knowledge that journalists wouldn’t have the expertise to challenge their conclusions, and that they could get laws enacted to address their fabricated problem quicker than honest researchers could analyze how they’d manipulated their research to come to such a “bizarre” conclusion. And that’s exactly what happened. Laws enacted as a result of the AAUW hype resulted in inequitable allocation of resources to programs for girls only. By pitting our daughters against our sons in this way, they denied a generation of boys the opportunity to overcome their deficits.
Breaking the Silence seems to be the publicity and hype phase of an even more insidious campaign. The goal this time appears to be stampeding legislators into passing laws that will have the effect of preventing courts from granting any form of custody (legal or physical, shared or sole) to any father over any mother’s objection.
The Program’s Claims
The hour-long program makes some astonishing claims. George Washington University Law Professor Joan Meier says that in “75% of cases in which fathers contest custody, fathers have a history of being batterers.” In her worldview, if a father seeks a relationship with his children in family court, that in itself is tantamount to proof that he’s a batterer.
A copy of the “Guest Editor’s Introduction” to the August, 2005 issue of the journal Violence Against Women was distributed at the prescreening. The film’s press release repeats that article’s allegation that Parental Alienation Syndrome has been “discredited by the American Psychological Association,” and Meier echoes that in the film, asserting that scientists have declared PAS “junk science.” The film also claims that in family court cases where mothers allege battery, fathers are given custody two-thirds of the time.
What the Filmmakers Don’t Want You to Notice
Analysis of the claims made in the Violence Against Women journal indicates that this research, on which much of the content of this film is based, fails to distinguish between allegations and actual abuse, and instead blindly assumes all allegations to be true.
A documentary filmmaker has a responsibility to present an issue in an accurate and balanced fashion. In this case, filmmakers Catherine Tatge and Domenique Lasseur provided a soapbox for a number of very angry women and their children to make some very serious accusations. The closing frame of the film says that only one accused father declined to be interviewed. So where were all the other accused fathers who didn’t decline?
Michael McCormick, director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, reports that filmmaker Domenic Lasseur called him last spring to arrange to interview an ACFC spokesperson so the documentary would have some balance. But Lasseur later canceled the interview. That, plus the absence of any other spokesperson to provide balance, suggests that he or someone above him decided that fairness and balance were unnecessary.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data on child abuse shows that over twice as many children are battered by their mothers (40.8%) as by their fathers (18.8%), excluding cases in which both parents are abusive (16.9%). Likewise the number of children killed by their mothers without the father’s involvement is double the number killed by their fathers without the mother’s involvement. Yet the filmmakers mislead viewers by interviewing only children victimized by fathers and denying children victimized by their mothers the opportunity to tell their stories.
Even the title Breaking the Silence is disingenuous. A Google search for “domestic violence” turns up 36.8 MILLION documents. This is “silence” like “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”
Filmmakers Tatge and Lasseur use a small handful of cases to create the illusion of a pervasive problem of family court discrimination against women and children domestic violence victims. With a U.S. population of 297 million, it’s possible to cherrypick a small non-representative sample to prove nearly anything.
Misleading the Public About Scientists Opinions on Parental Alienation Syndrome
The film’s central thesis, that Parental Alienation Syndrome is “junk science” that has been discredited by the American Psychological Association, is itself misleading. Although it’s true that Temple University psychiatry professor Paul Fink called PAS “junk science” in a July 1, 2003 Newsday interview, he explained, “There are lots of people who alienate their partners during a divorce. But it is not a syndrome, a disease or a disorder.” So the claim that PAS is “junk science” doesn’t mean it never happens; it just means it’s not a recognized mental illness. Without Fink’s full explanation, most people would assume that calling PAS “junk science” means the phenomenon doesn’t happen. Dispelling that misimpression would undermine the filmmakers’ point, so the fact that they don’t provide the full explanation is worth noting.
The claim that PAS has been discredited by the APA is based on a single sentence from the APA’s 1996 report on violence and the family, which simply says there are no data to support PAS.
The Association of Women Psychiatrists (a professional group unaffiliated with the APA) takes PAS seriously enough that their Fall 2003 newsletter printed an article asserting, “The Denial and/or Discrediting of the Parental Alienation Syndrome Harms Women.”
And apparently even the APA does not consider their 1996 report to be the final word. At the 2002 APA conference, PAS was considered important enough for them to offer a seminar worth seven Continuing Education credits, in which they explained what Parental Alienation Syndrome is and taught custody evaluators to identify when PAS does and does not occur.
If the Film’s Agenda Becomes Law, Kids Will Pay the Price
“Research” that fails to distinguish between accusations of abuse and actual abuse is unworthy of the name “research.” Using such a trick to conclude that nearly all fathers who contest custody are batterers, amounts to libel against all fathers who love their children enough to fight for their welfare.
Those who play this ugly little game in order to stampede politicians into passing ill-considered laws that will make it virtually impossible for any father to ever be granted custody, show a callous disregard for the welfare of two-thirds of abused children — those children abused by their mothers.
Finally, PBS’s own Code of Ethics requires them to “avoid any conduct that might result in the loss of public confidence in CPB’s programs … or might reasonably give the appearance of … the compromise or loss of complete impartiality of judgment and action.” Allowing a speaker to assert that trying to maintain a relationship with your children means you’ve probably battered your wife, and not including any speaker to point out the hatefulness of that statement, certainly gives the appearance of a complete loss impartiality.
Mark Rosenthal advocates for a principled approach to the problem of family violence, with the goal of providing services to all victims and treatment to all perpetrators without regard to gender. He has been a featured speaker at York College (C.U.N.Y.)’s annual Domestic Violence Conference and has served on the board of the Battered Men’s Helpline.
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