Ideology Crashes into Reality

The invaluable website, Twitchy, ran an article today on the Democratic Socialists of America's hawking of t-shirts through their Twitter feed.  The shirts are for sale, even though the DSA tries to pretend that they are given in exchange for a donation, like a PBS tote bag.  One Twitter user posed the obvious question, "Why aren't they free?"

It reminded me of two other instances where people purporting to hold firm convictions compromise them when confronted with the real world.

V for Vendetta is an anarchist movie, based on an anarchist graphic novel, by anarchist Alan Moore.  Yet when you tee up the DVD for an evening's enjoyment, you are confronted with this familiar image:

Alan Moore may self-identify as an anarchist, but that doesn't prevent him from calling on the government, specifically the FBI, to protect the income he derives from his art.

The other case is the Shady Maple Smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat buffet in East Earl, PA.  It serves some of the best food in Pennsylvania and regularly draws huge crowds.  The owners are a family of Mennonites that eschew the use of violence, either in war or to protect their own persons and property.  Yet there are signs throughout the dining room stating that all food must be consumed on the premises.  Removing any food from the restaurant is considered shoplifting and will be reported to the police.  In other words, they are perfectly willing to enlist others to protect their property by force, or the threat of force.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

The headline for John Hawkins' latest column says it all: "A Column Most People Will Hate: We are the Real Reason Politics is Screwed Up in America."  Hawkins calls us all out for bemoaning the state of the country as if we had nothing to do with it.  Everybody has his favorite scapegoats.  The left blames corporations, Fox News, the alt-right, lobbyists, Citizens United and, most of all, Donald Trump.  The right blames the media, Maxine Waters, universities, the "Deep State," globalists, RINOs and Never Trumpers.  But the actual culprit is staring at us in the mirror every morning.

None of the institutions or people we blame for screwing up America could have any influence without at least the tacit acceptance of the American people.  Some of us through corruption, some through laziness, and most of us through some combination of the two, have put all these actors in power.  And its not even a recent phenomenon.

The hard truth is that a republic does not run on autopilot.  It can only thrive through the serious engagement of an informed, skeptical and moral electorate.  Benjamin Franklin said as much at the close of the Constitutional Convention.  A woman famously asked him whether the delegates had given the United States a republic or a monarchy.  Franklin's response, "A republic, if you can keep it."  Unfortunately we underestimate the commitment required to "keep" a republic.

A citizen of a republic cannot outsource his responsibility to internalize and zealously defend the principles that undergird it.  For the United States, those principles are contained mainly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Sadly, popular ignorance of both these documents has become so commonplace as to pass without notice.  And even those who have some passing familiarity with the Constitution are content to let the courts tell us what it means instead of reading and thinking for themselves.

Even more damaging are those who put their own material interests or ideological fervor ahead of adherence to the supreme law of the land.  This has always been a danger but it grew into a systemic cancer with the FDR administration.  In the 1930's a substantial majority of the people were frightened into vesting the federal government with vast powers never contemplated by the Constitution.  The Supreme Court abetted this process by "reinterpreting" the commerce clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Having conferred expansive powers on the federal government, the voters felt justified in using them against their fellow citizens in order to benefit themselves.  The main qualification for any politician was his ability to loot the treasury on behalf of his constituents, or to advantage those constituents through the imposition of onerous regulations on whomever they blamed for their circumstances.  In the rush to seize advantage for themselves, the oath that every officeholder must take to support the Constitution was forgotten.  After all, the Constitution no longer really meant anything anyway.

Decades before we traded our birthright for a bowl of stew, President James Garfield put the responsibility for this country's well-being exactly where it belongs:

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature."

There have always been those who put their own selfish interests ahead of the good of the country.  In 1776 Samuel Adams addressed such people and sought to ostracize them from the body of responsible citizens:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Unfortunately, those people are now running the show.

Bastille Day

I love Twitchy.  It's a regular stop on my daily cruise through the world wide web.  Every day there are leftists proudly tweeting their idiocy to the whole world.  Twitchy collects the best of these brainless emissions and highlights them for the rest of us to enjoy.  But this post from earlier today left me smh, as the kids say:

"July 14 is Bastille Day, the French national holiday that celebrates the beginning of republican democracy in France and the end of tyrannical rule."

I don't know if the French actually believe this, but I think we in this country should be clear about the French Revolution.  The storming of the Bastille did not usher in "the beginning of republican democracy in France and the end of tyrannical rule."  Bastille Day was followed by the Terror, Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, not the end of tyranny.  To the extent the French Revolution resulted in democracy, it certainly wasn't a republican democracy as envisaged by the leaders of the American Revolution and the framers of the Constitution.  The French Revolution devolved quickly into a mobocracy, embodying all the worst characteristics of democracy that the framers endeavored to forestall.f

The writers at Twitchy should choose their words more carefully, particularly when taking Andrea Mitchell to task for her historical illiteracy.

Pencees Part II

In my last post I wrote about the progressive's disdain for people, like Mike Pence, who try, with varying degrees of effort, and success, to live up to a moral code, a code that is objective and exists outside the person's own leanings, prejudices and enthusiasms.  They mock Pence's determination to avoid temptations that might damage his marriage by adopting and adhering to certain rules regarding social interactions in the absence of his wife.  These critics are arrogant enough to claim that Pence's code of conduct is antiquated and strange, that it betrays a hostility towards women and/or a tendency to perversion that must be controlled with draconian medieval rules of behavior.  Whereas the critics themselves are too sophisticated and well-adjusted to have to worry about such things.

As I was writing this it occurred to me that this attitude among progressives is not limited to the marital arena.  It is of a piece with their contempt for constitutional government.

Progressives believe that all the ills of the world, as well as the anti-social behaviors and attitudes of people, can be cured if we just put the right people into government and give them all the power they feel necessary to enable them to re-engineer society.  Woodrow Wilson, one of the earliest leading lights of the progressive movement, was openly contemptuous of the Constitution, even as he swore to preserve, protect, and defend it.  Put the right hands on the levers of power and they could remake society.

The framers of the Constitution had a more jaundiced, and I would say clear-eyed, view of human nature.  They knew that all men were fallen and susceptible to temptation and that, when men are given power over their fellow citizens, they are apt to abuse it if allowed to do so.

So they designed a government for the United States that would frustrate the natural tendency of men to amass and abuse power.  The framers held no illusions that any men, even themselves, could be trusted with unchecked power.  So if they couldn't eliminate man's drive to seek power, they would harness it.  In James Madison's famous formulation, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

Someone once wrote that the Constitution was designed with sinful man in mind.  The powers of government are fractured and distributed.  They are divided between the central government and the states.  And within the federal government the legislative, executive, and judicial functions are established in three separate but equal branches; each branch possessing certain powers that enable it to resist encroachment by the other two.  The purpose is not to facilitate the smooth and efficient administration of government, but rather to frustrate it and keep it contained.

But the scheme only works if we honor it and internalize it.  As the Constitutional Convention was disbanding, its delegates returning to their home states, a woman famously asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government they had devised for the United States:  "A republic, if you can keep it," was his reply.

Sadly, we have done a poor job preserving the founders' vision.  Congress and the president found the legislative process to cumbersome so they created the administrative agency, combining the legislative, executive, and judicial functions within one organization.  The federal government was dissatisfied with the limited powers granted it so all three branches colluded in rewriting the Constitution to grant virtually unlimited authority to the central government.  And all this was done with the enthusiastic support of the voters.

Just as progressives see no legitimate purpose to Mike Pence's personal rules of conduct, they hold the structural constraints of the Constitution in utter contempt.  They see themselves as fundamentally good people, capable of identifying the best interests of a country of 330 million people and of advancing those interests if only they are given the power to do so without any silly reservations about liberty and stuff like that.

Pencees

This week Mike Pence proved that many on the left who imagine themselves sophisticated, tolerant, and cosmopolitan are, actually, bat-$#!t crazy.  And it required no real effort on his part.  A Washington Post profile of Pence's wife, Karen, contained a brief reference to two personal rules of conduct to which Pence adheres to protect his family against unnecessary strain.

In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.

My completely unscientific impression is that this sort of code of conduct is unusual, but I might be wrong.  Regardless of how common or not it is, I can't see why anyone who is not Mike or Karen Pence should have any strong opinions about it.  I certainly can't see why anyone should be offended.  But I failed to account for the modern American progressive's intolerance for any deviation from their prevailing orthodoxy.

That one sentence generated dozens of columns from leftists.  They weren't writing to compliment Pence for his commitment to his marriage, they made over-the-top, borderline insane criticisms that deliberately misstated Pence's position and exaggerated its consequences beyond the limits of parody.

Laura Turner's op-ed piece for the Post on March 30 is a case in point.  When she writes "But for men to categorically refuse to meet one-on-one with women is often dehumanizing and denies the image of Christ that each person bears,"  she is taking issue with a stand that Pence never articulates.  Pence only avoids dining alone with a woman other than his wife.  There are many occasions during a work day when a man and a woman may meet alone in an office setting and Pence's rule, on its face, would not interfere with those interactions.  She also accuses Pence of "fuel[ing] the myth that loads of women are waiting around to falsely accuse powerful men of rape."  If Ms. Turner had any real friends one of them would have warned her how stupid that sentence is.

She then accuses Pence of limiting women's career opportunities.  "If a woman at work cannot meet one-on-one with her boss or colleague, her options for advancement (or even being taken seriously as a colleague) are extremely limited."  Again, Pence's rule is not nearly that broad.  To suggest that the opportunities for women who work with him are "extremely" limited is ludicrous.  But to make that argument raises the threat that men who try to protect their marriages could be put through the wringer of a sex discrimination charge.

For the progressive, everything is politics and politics is everything.  He can't just say "That's just how Mike Pence does things.  It's not my style but its not my business."

Mike Pence's refusal to dine alone with other women does not imply that all women are foul temptresses or rape hoaxsters.  Nor does it imply that Pence is completely incapable of controlling his sexual urges around them.  It is a prudent recognition of the reality of our fallen nature.

The National Opinion Research Center published a survey in 2006 that 15 to 18% of married people have had a sexual affair outside of their marriage.  I doubt very much that all of those people set out to cheat on their spouses.  For many of them it "just happened."  And there are also so-called emotional affairs, where there is no physical intimacy, that can be almost as damaging to a marriage as full-blown adultery.

I think Pence's personal code is a recognition that no one is immune to temptation.  Anyone who claims he is is a liar or a fool.  Maybe when everything in his life and marriage are going great, Pence can have all sorts of interactions with the opposite sex without a hint of an improper thought getting into his head.  But all marriages go through periods of stress: illness in the family, financial troubles, working long hours, kids getting into trouble, etc.  When that happens, people become more vulnerable to seeking escape in an extramarital affair.  They also become more vulnerable to entertaining suspicions that their spouses are up to something.  Pence shouldn't be lambasted because he takes precautions against those eventualities.

FX's The Americans began its fifth and penultimate season two weeks ago.  By way of background, the series, set in the 80's, follows the lives and adventures of two Soviet illegals.  Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings are KGB officers who don't work in the embassy under diplomatic cover or enjoy diplomatic immunity.   They pose as an ordinary middle-class American couple with two teenage children.  They run a travel agency but they're real job is carrying out dangerous clandestine operations on behalf of Communist Russia.

In this season the KGB suspect that the United States are plotting to attack the Soviet Union's wheat crop by breeding a variant of sitodiplosis mosellana, the wheat blossom midge and sowing the eggs among the wheat fields.  The midges will hatch and destroy the crops.

I don't know what the show runners have in mind for this story line.  It could be the Department of Agriculture is breeding pests to study how to protect wheat.  But the two agents, as well as their handler, Gabriel, clearly recognize that Soviet agriculture is seriously vulnerable to sabotage.  Gabriel points out that the Soviet Union has to import half its grain from the United States and their allies.

In last night's episode Phillip and Elizabeth travel to Oklahoma to investigate the lab where the midges are bred.  They drive through miles and miles of wheat fields.  Sitting in their motel room, waiting for night to fall, Phillip says that the fields remind him of home.  "We've got this, too," he says.  "Why can't we grow enough grain ourselves?"

Throughout the series, Elizabeth has been the true-believer, never doubting Communist dogma, at least outwardly.  She is not nearly bothered as Phillip by the people they kill and the lives they destroy while carrying out their missions.  Phillip, on the other hand, is more courageous at facing uncomfortable (or inconvenient?) facts; like the fact that Russia, once the bread basket of Europe, cannot feed itself.

The show has drawn criticism for attempting to portray Soviet spies in a sympathetic light.  But every once in a while it illuminates the failures of socialism, like it did last night.

A Modest Proposal

Last January the South Carolina Senate passed a rule regulating the naming of bills introduced in that chamber.  The rule prohibits senators from attaching the names of people or animals to bills.  The idea is that bills should stand or fall based on their policy merits, and not on cheap emotional appeals.

Over the years we have seen many such bills introduced in both state and federal legislatures.  A 2013 article in USA Today listed a brief sample of them: “Megan's Law and Jessica's Law, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. There's Kendra's Law, Leandra's Law and Lauren's Law, three Jacob's Laws and at least three Laura's Laws.”  On January 5 Kate’s Law, establishing a mandatory 5-year prison sentence for illegal aliens who reenter the country after being deported, was introduced in the U.S. Senate for the third time.

Legislators claim that putting the names of victims on legislation is a way to honor and remember them.  But I submit that the real reasons are far less high-minded.  A politician who sponsors or supports legislation bearing the name of a sympathetic victim, particularly a child, can count on fawning press-coverage.  There will be a grieving family urging people to support the bill and praising the legislator’s concern and courage in championing their cause.  On the flip side, opponents will be dissuaded from publicly opposing or objecting lest they appear insensitive.

The idea behind appropriating a victim’s name for a legislative title is to shut down debate before it begins.  Kate’s Law, one of the most recent manifestations of this phenomenon, is a case in point.  The legislation was actually dreamed up not by any member of Congress, but by Bill O’Reilly.  O’Reilly maintains his audience by feeding them a steady diet of preening moral outrage.  In 2015 O’Reilly took the story of Kate Steinle, a woman fatally shot by an illegal alien who had already been deported five times and beat it like a drum.  He proposed Kate’s Law and would demand of every Senator and Representative who appeared on his show to declare whether he supported it or not.  The format of a television talk show doesn’t allow for a detailed examination of the merits of the bill, the potential cost of incarcerating all offenders for five years or any unintended consequences.  And O’Reilly isn’t interested in those things anyway.  One is either fully in support of Kate’s Law or one is opposed to getting justice for Ms. Steinle and her family and is probably in league with the illegal alien criminals.

If our legislators were mature grownups, they would eschew such obvious stunts.  I suggest that the South Carolina Senate’s rule be adopted by all 101 legislative chambers in the Union.

But there are other objectionable trends in bill-naming – like acronyms.

Remember the Patriot Act?  Its full name is the USA PATRIOT Act.  That’s an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”  The Washington Post counted 364 bills introduced between January and August 2015 with acronyms in the title.

On September 25, 1973, Representative John N. Erlenborn, Republican of Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, introduced H.R. 10489, the Multiprotection of Employee Retirement Income and Tax Act (MERIT).  Acronyms have been polluting our federal statutes ever since.  Noah Veltman of noahveltman.com has done an exhaustive analysis of Congressional acronyms from that date until June 2013.  He found that the percentage of bill titles containing acronyms began to take off around the turn of the century, peaking in 2010.  He also identified the worst offenders in terms of number of bills sponsored with acronyms (Charles Schumer – 42) and percentage of bills sponsored with acronyms (Rep. Suzanne Bonamici – 33%).  The most recent entry in the roll of dishonor appears to have been introduced this past week: the No Taxpayer Revenue Used to Monetize the Presidency Act (NO TRUMP), sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

Obviously I’m not the only person put off by this.  In fact, on April Fool’s Day in 2015, Congressman Mike Honda half-jokingly introduced the Accountability and Congressional Responsibility On Naming Your Motions Act (ACRONYM).

Unlike with bills named after victims, the problem with acronyms isn’t so much that they’re emotionally tendentious; they’re just stupid.  They’re juvenile and they bring disrespect and ridicule down on the nation’s legislature.  They have to go.

The final thing I’d like to eliminate from bill titles is adjectives.  Yep, adjectives.

Although not as flagrantly abusive as victims or acronyms, adjectives can still steal a rhetorical base and sway people who lack the time, the inclination or the understanding to read the actual text and analyze a bill properly.  I have in mind laws like the Clean Water Act.  Who’s against clean water?  But just because some politician hangs that title on a bill doesn’t meant that’s what the bill does.  The legislation might clean the water.  It might just be 435 water projects spread evenly around the nation’s congressional districts.  It also might be a Trojan Horse giving federal Vogons the power to harass every citizen with so much as a bird bath in his back yard.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Come to think of it, let’s just eliminate bill titles altogether.  Just give them numbers – like the song “Secret Agent Man” or the residents of the Village in The Prisoner.  If the press wants to give bills names it can always name them after their sponsors, in the time-honored tradition of Dodd-Frank, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or Smoot-Hawley.