Paul Kengor

It's the Spending, Stupid: A Crucial Historical Look at Federal-Government Spending

2011-08-25T18:56:24Z

We have failed to heed the lessons of economic history, with terrible consequences for our economy and country. And the most crucial of those lessons, particularly since the start of LBJ's Great Society, is this: deficits have been caused not by a lack of income-tax increases but by recession and, most of all, by excessive government spending.

The failure to learn that lesson is again on painful display, as President Obama travels the country pointing the finger at "the rich" for not forking over enough income. By this narrative, the 36 percent income-tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans is somehow robbing the poorest Americans, whose income-tax rate is zero percent; something one would never know from Democrats' class rhetoric.

Because I comment on this topic so frequently, especially in the context of Reaganomics, I constantly deal with these issues from a historical perspective. Here, I would like to make it easy for everyone to see the numbers themselves and understand the root of the problem.

The answers are as easy as googling the words "historical tables deficit." Two sources pop up: CBO historical tables and OMB historical tables. "CBO" is Congressional Budget Office; "OMB" is Office of Management and Budget. These are the official go-to sources for data on deficits, revenues, and government expenditures.

Either source will work. To keep it simple, I'll focus on the OMB numbers. At the OMB link is Table 1.1, titled, "Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits: 1789-2016." That is an official scorecard of spending by the federal government since the founding of the republic.

Looking closely at the chart is an eye-opening experience. As the first two columns show, receipts (i.e., revenues) and outlays (i.e., expenditures) moved up and down throughout our history. In 1965, however, something historically unusual, something literally deviant, began: Spending increased every single year, non-stop, consistently, without exception, into the Obama presidency, from 1965-2009.

There are few constants in the universe: gravity, the sunrise, the oceans, the moon. Add another: spending by the federal government; it rises every year.

Significantly, revenues don't increase every year. The most dependable reason for declines in revenues is not a lack of tax increases, or high enough income-tax rates, but recessions. Since 1965, as the data shows, annual revenues declined seven separate times.

At the start of the Great Society, in 1965, revenues and expenditures were nearly equal, with expenditures only slightly higher, leaving a manageable deficit of $1.4 billion. By 2009, however, annual expenditures ($3.5 trillion) had far outpaced annual revenues ($2.1 trillion), leaving a record deficit of $1.4 trillion.

Significantly, the biggest one-year drop in revenues was from 2008-9, when they declined from $2.5 trillion to $2.1 trillion. Worse, President Obama and the Democratic Congress responded with an $800-billion "stimulus" package that didn't stimulate. In other words, they responded in the worst way: with another $800 billion in government spending. That further mushroomed the record deficits/debt we face. The math is very simple.

Government spending, which has hampered growth rather than spark growth, caused this fiscal crisis.

It is crucial to realize that this spending addiction is a new thing in American history. Previous generations of politicians showed much more restraint. Prior to 1965, expenditures were not following an ever-upward trajectory; expenditures decreased year-to-year frequently, nearly two-dozen times between 1901 and 1965, even during the administrations of big-government liberal presidents, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

This changed in the mid-1960s, when the federal government began a serious spending problem.

How do we communicate the crisis to the wider public, beyond charts and data?

I suggest comparing the situation to a household: Your family's annual revenue has probably not enjoyed a 40-year-plus consecutive increase. For some years, you were paid less. Perhaps you lost a job, took a pay cut, or switched jobs. Maybe your spouse was laid off, or left work to have a child. You bought a house one year, another 20 years later, spent a ton of money on your children's college education, lost on a bad investment.

I doubt your family's yearly revenue has been a steady upward climb since 1965. Life obviously doesn't work that way.

And yet, imagine if each successive year, without fail, you spent considerably more money than the previous, including money that isn't yours. You added debt each year, creating massive debts for your family and children. You paid taxes with a credit card.

How long would this go on before you ended up with a credit downgrade or in jail? Get the picture?

If President Obama and the Democrats don't, they should. Warren Buffet certainly should. Our fiscal crisis is due not to insufficient income taxes but uncontrolled, undisciplined spending.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan, "It's the spending, stupid."

John Lennon's Heaven Above Us

2011-08-25T17:27:07Z

A really interesting article was recently posted at FoxNews.com by Mark Joseph, a Hollywood film producer and dedicated Christian. Joseph writes about the late, great pop-music icon, John Lennon. Most intriguing, Joseph reports the late-in-life turn to the Christian faith by John Lennon, a turn vigorously opposed and thwarted by his wife, Yoko Ono.

Lennon had begun praising the Lord not only in his daily thoughts and conversations but even in his music. Remarkably, he tuned in to popular TV preachers like Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, and Billy Graham, even calling the prayer line of "The 700 Club."

Yoko, who separated John from the Beatles, was enraged, striving to separate John from Jesus. John fought back, telling Yoko she had been blinded by Satan and the dark arts. She had long been too close to the dark side. The days were evil.

For John Lennon, however, he wanted to be a child of the light. He sought truth. And as happens when you find truth, you change your entire worldview, and you begin to question lies and nonsense.

For Lennon, that nonsense included the theory of evolution. Said Lennon:

I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage.... I don't buy it. I've got no basis for it ... I just don't buy it.... I don't buy anything other than "It always was and ever shall be."

John Lennon was buying nothing but the Gospel, as it was and ever shall be, under which the world could live as one.

According to Mark Joseph, John Lennon had so firmly moved away from secular liberalism that he even became a supporter of Ronald Reagan during Reagan's 1980 presidential run. He was very unhappy with Jimmy Carter, and it seems that Soviet ascendancy in the Cold War battle concerned Lennon, further moving him to Reagan. One friend recalled Lennon embarking on "some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who's an old-time communist... He enjoyed really provoking my uncle... it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism."

As Mark Joseph concludes, if John Lennon had become a Reagan-supporting, TV-evangelist watching, evolution-mocking 40-year old, it was certainly no crime--though it was apparently a crime to Yoko Ono. And it would be a worse crime if Yoko Ono has kept from us such a remarkable conversion. For Yoko, it would be a 30-year, ongoing cover up, a blatant denial of truth, a concealment of an uplifting end to an otherwise depressing end to the rich, controversial life of John Lennon. It would greatly inspire all those baby-boomers and fans of his from the '60s. It would help them, too.

John Lennon, the one-time author of the song, Imagine, whose lyrics, according to friends, embarrassed him late in life, did indeed imagine a heaven above and a hell below us. By 1980, as he was fatally nearing an assassin's bullet, John Lennon was preparing himself for heaven, not hell.

May this man who gave peace a chance, rest in peace, especially the ultimate peace he imagined and sought at the very end.

-- Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," and his latest release, "Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."

No Contest: The Reagan Stimulus vs. the Obama One

2011-08-17T21:18:07Z

Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared in USA Today.

How ironic that as America debated its debt ceiling all summer and faced a stunning credit downgrade, the nation approached a most timely anniversary: It was August 13, 1981, that President Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Act. Understanding Reagan's thinking 30 years ago is critical to discerning where we are now.

Reagan's initiative was the antithesis of President Obama's $800-billion "stimulus" that didn't stimulate. The 2009 version was the single greatest contributor to our record $1.5-trillion deficit. It was, plain and simple, what Reagan didn't do.

When Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Act at his ranch near Santa Barbara, it was the largest tax cut in American history. He also revealed leadership that Democrats and Republicans alike agree we are not seeing currently from the White House. Even the Washington Post called Reagan's action "one of the most remarkable demonstrations of presidential leadership in modern history."

The enemy that day was America's progressive federal income-tax system, birthed in 1913 by Congress and President Woodrow Wilson. It was revolutionary, requiring a constitutional amendment. That tax, which began as a 1 percent levy on the wealthy, would rocket up to a top rate of 94 percent by the 1940s.

Ronald Reagan personally felt the toll. In the 1940s, the so-called "B"-movie actor was one of the top box-office draws at Warner Bros. Then a Democrat, Reagan saw no incentive in continuing to work--that is, make more movies--once his income hit the top rate. He also realized who suffered from that choice. It wasn't Reagan; he was wealthy. It was the custodians, cafeteria ladies, camera crew, and working folks on the studio lot. They lost work.

Reagan viewed such rates as punitive, confiscatory--"creeping socialism," as he put it. In speeches in the 1950s and 1960s, he blasted the tax as right out of Marx's Communist Manifesto.

By the late 1970s, Reagan concluded that out-of-control taxes, spending, and regulation had sapped the economy of its vitality and ability to rebound. And so, on that August day in 1981, Reagan, with a Democratic House and Republican Senate, secured a 25 percent across-the-board reduction in income tax rates over a three-year period beginning in October 1981. Eventually, the upper rate would drop to 28 percent.

As biographer Steve Hayward notes, even when Reagan compromised with Democrats on tax increases in exchange for promised spending cuts in 1982, he "never budged an inch on marginal income tax rates." Reagan understood that not all taxes, or tax increases, are equal.

After a slow start through 1982-83, the stimulus effect of the cuts was extraordinary, sparking the longest peacetime expansion in U.S. history. The "Reagan Boom" not only produced widespread prosperity but--along with the attendant Soviet collapse--helped generate budget surpluses in the 1990s. Carter-Ford era terms like "malaise" and "misery index" vanished. Only now has America re-approached similar misery-index levels, reaching a 28-year high.

Unfortunately, liberals have so maligned Reaganomics that they are unable to separate facts from myths--to the detriment of their party and president. Among the worst myths is that Reagan's tax cuts created the deficit, even as the deficit increased under Reagan.

In fact, Reagan inherited chronic deficits. Since Franklin Roosevelt, the budget had been balanced a handful of times, mainly under President Eisenhower. From 1981-89, the deficit under Reagan increased from $79 billion to $153 billion. It peaked in 1983-86, hitting $221 billion. Yet, once the economy started booming, the deficit steadily dropped.

Tax cuts were not the problem. Tax revenues under Reagan rose from $599 billion in 1981 to nearly $1 trillion in 1989. The problem was that outlays all along outpaced revenue, soaring from $678 billion in 1981 to $1.143 trillion in 1989.

The cause of the Reagan deficits was the 1982-83 recession and spending--as is always the case. And, yes, the culprit was not just social spending by congressional Democrats but Reagan defense spending designed to take down the Soviet Union. What a bargain that turned out to be: It helped kill an "evil empire" and win the Cold War, paving the way for a peacetime dividend in the 1990s.

Yet it is clear today that we have refused the proper lessons of history. For one, our problem remains excessive spending. Obama must bear this in mind if he's considering tax increases (which hamper growth) as part of his "balanced" approach to deficit reduction. More than that, the best "stimulus" relies on the tried-and-true American way: Let free individuals stimulate the economy through their earnings and activity.

Ignoring such realities explains the mess we face in August 2011--a millennium removed from the wisdom of August 1981.

Two Negotiators: Obama vs. Reagan

2011-08-01T19:01:03Z

Editor's note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

Presidential scholars write on all sorts of aspects of the American presidency. Among the most interesting have been several important works on so-called presidential character and temperament. And when it comes to the temperament of our current president, we've learned quite a bit during the recent debate over the debt ceiling.

The most illuminating report I've read was a Politico piece titled, "Obama abruptly walks out of talks." The article described President Obama's bitter negotiations with nemesis Eric Cantor, the Republican House Majority leader. Obama "abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting," Politico reported, "a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations." Eric Cantor said of the president's behavior: "He shoved back and said 'I'll see you tomorrow' and walked out."

The Politico continued: "the White House talks blew up amid a new round of sniping between Obama and Cantor, who are fast becoming bitter enemies." When Cantor told the president that they were too far apart to get a deal by the fateful August 2 deadline, Obama, according to Politico, "began to lecture him." Obama indignantly told Cantor that no other president--including Ronald Reagan--would condescend to sit through such negotiations.

Alas, it was Obama's Reagan reference that nags at me.

In truth, Ronald Reagan was a remarkable negotiator, both incredibly patient and principled. Negotiating was one of Reagan's greatest but most unappreciated attributes, to the point where I've many times considered doing a book strictly on Reagan as a negotiator.

When we think of Reagan as a negotiator, we remember his crucial walk-out of the Reykjavik Summit in October 1986. Some Obama supporters want to invoke that example here, which is short-sighted at best. Reykjavik was just one of five separate, extended Reagan one-on-ones with Mikhail Gorbachev: Geneva (November 1985), Reykjavik (October 1986), Washington (December 1987), Moscow (May-June 1988), and New York (December 1988).

I could detail any number of examples of Reagan negotiating, from Hollywood in the 1940s to the White House in the 1980s. However, I'd like to cite an example that I believe is most instructive and applicable to Obama right now in dealing with Congressional Republicans. To his credit, Reagan biographer Edmund Morris wrote about it. Beyond Morris, one needs to venture to the Reagan Library to dig through boxes and folders from Reagan's gubernatorial years.

It was 1971, and Governor Reagan squared off with the speaker of the California legislature, a tough Democrat foe named Robert "Macho Bob" Moretti. California was on the verge of a major policy success--a historic welfare-reform package. First, Moretti and Reagan would need to sit down together, side by side, and hammer out specifics. Moretti made his way to Reagan's office, walked in by himself, and announced: "Governor, I don't like you. And I know you don't like me, but we don't have to be in love to work together." Reagan replied simply, "Okay." He committed to a good-faith effort to work with Moretti.

The two endured a long, windy path of binary and plenary sessions, as well as much less formal settings, marked by battle after battle for six weeks--almost exactly the time since Obama walked out of his talks with Cantor. Moretti himself calculated that he sparred with Reagan for "seventeen days and nights," "line by line, statistic by statistic," and obscenity by obscenity. At times, Reagan burned with frustration--"that's it, I'm through with this"--but never gave up.

Grudgingly, Moretti came to respect Reagan, who he saw as hard on his principles but flexible in the details--an observation of Reagan shared by numerous aides over the decades. The governor surprised Moretti by yielding to fair and rational arguments, once even agreeing to renegotiate a point that the speaker had regretted conceding.

As Morris shows in his biography, Moretti was most impressed with Reagan's honesty as a deal maker. He admired the fact that the governor never lied and honored every commitment he made. This was a character trait Reagan had learned in Hollywood as head of the Screen Actors Guild.

In the end, on August 13, 1971, the California Welfare Reform Act became law. Reagan rightly called it "probably the most comprehensive" such welfare initiative in U.S. history. It was way ahead of its time, predating what would happen in much of the rest of America in the 1990s, made possible by the decentralization, block granting of welfare by President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress--another bipartisan example of working together.

The negotiations between Reagan and Moretti were somewhat of a microcosm of the Reagan-Gorbachev talks. Then, too, the two men spent many intense hours, exchanging heated words and a few obscenities. For Reagan, there were non-negotiables then as well, of which SDI (at Reykjavik) was the most dramatic. There were items that Reagan insisted upon, such as addressing the USSR's persecution of its own citizens (especially Russian Jews), and giving no quarter in his belief in the superiority of the American system. He and Gorbachev likewise were locked horn to horn. The results were historic changes in arms control. Like Moretti, Gorbachev learned to like and respect Reagan.

I'm not privy to the records on all of President Obama's negotiations with House Republicans like Eric Cantor and John Boehner. From what I'm reading, however, we're seeing a very different kind of chief executive. Barack Obama is not only no Ronald Reagan on economic policy. He's also no Reagan when it comes to negotiating skills. Obama doesn't understand Reagan at all, and that's a loss for this nation.

The Secret Memo That Predicted the Soviet Collapse

2011-07-27T20:57:34Z

"It was 20 years ago this summer that the final disintegration of the Soviet Union rapidly unfolded... Historians debate the credit that goes to various players for that collapse, from Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel, to name a few. These are the people who get books written about them. But there were many behind-the-scenes players who performed critical roles that have never seen the light of a historian's word processor. Here I'd like to note one such player: Herb Meyer. Specifically, I'd like to highlight a fascinating memo Meyer wrote eight years before the Soviet collapse."

In "The Secret Memo That Predicted the Soviet Collapse" (1,168 words), professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College--Dr. Paul Kengor--highlights a memo that would foreshadow the Soviet collapse. Herbert E. Meyer, who delivered the third annual Ronald Reagan Lecture at Grove City College, was the author of this memo. He would later receive the prestigious National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal for his analysis, which Dr. Kengor contends "ought to rank among the most remarkable documents of the Cold War."

Editor's note: This article first appeared at National Review Online.

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"The Secret Memo That Predicted the Soviet Collapse" (1,168 words)
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The Secret Memo That Predicted the Soviet Collapse
By Dr. Paul Kengor

Editor's note: This article first appeared at National Review Online.

It was 20 years ago this summer that the final disintegration of the Soviet Union rapidly unfolded. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was freely elected president of the Russian Republic, with Mikhail Gorbachev clinging to power atop the precarious USSR. In August, Communist hardliners attempted a dramatic coup against Gorbachev, prompting a stunning succession of declarations of independence by Soviet republics, with seven of them breaking away in August alone, and four more following through mid-December.

The writing was on the wall--not the Berlin Wall, which had collapsed two years earlier, but the graveyard of history, which would soon register the USSR as deceased. It was December 25, 1991, the day the West celebrates Christmas--a celebration the Communists had tried to ban--that Gorbachev announced his resignation, turning out the lights on an Evil Empire that had produced countless tens of millions of corpses.

Historians debate the credit that goes to various players for that collapse, from Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel, to name a few. These are the people who get books written about them. But there were many behind-the-scenes players who performed critical roles that have never seen the light of a historian's word processor. Here I'd like to note one such player: Herb Meyer. Specifically, I'd like to highlight a fascinating memo Meyer wrote eight years before the Soviet collapse.

From 1981 to 1985, Meyer was special assistant to the director of central intelligence, Bill Casey, and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. In the fall of 1983, he crafted a classified memo titled, "Why Is the World So Dangerous?" Addressed to Casey and the deputy director, John McMahon, it had a larger (though limited) audience within the intelligence community and the Reagan administration, including President Reagan himself. Later, it would earn Meyer the prestigious National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Even so, the memo has eluded historians, which is a shame. It ought to rank among the most remarkable documents of the Cold War.

Meyer began his eight-page memo of November 30, 1983, by describing a "new stage" that had opened in the struggle between the free world and the Soviet Union. It was a "direction favorable" to the United States. He listed positive changes in America that suddenly had the USSR "downbeat." Not only was the U.S. economy "recovering," but Meyer foresaw a "boom" ahead, "with the only argument" having to do with its "breadth and duration."

Meyer listed seven signs of America's surge before providing even more symptoms of Soviet decline--a decline that was unrecognized by most pundits and academic Sovietologists. His insights into what he saw as an imminent Soviet collapse were prescient. After 66 years of Communist rule, the USSR had "failed utterly to become a country," with "not one major nationality group that is content with the present, Russian-controlled arrangement." It was "hard to imagine how the world's last empire can survive into the twenty-first century except under highly favorable conditions of economics and demographics--conditions that do not, and will not, exist."

"The Soviet economy," Meyer insisted, "is heading toward calamity."

Meyer nailed not only the Soviet Union's economy but also its "demographic nightmare." Here, he was way ahead of the curve, reporting compelling information on Russian birthrates, which were in free-fall. He recorded an astounding figure: Russian women, "according to recent, highly credible research," "average six abortions."

As for the Soviet Bloc, Meyer didn't miss that either. "The East European satellites are becoming more and more difficult to control," he wrote, emphasizing that it wasn't merely Poland that was in revolt. "[O]ther satellites may be closer to their own political boiling points than we realize."

"In sum," concluded Meyer, "time is not on the Soviet Union's side."

He summed up with two predictions, nearly identically worded, as if to let the reader know he knew the magnitude of what he was saying: (1) "if present trends continue, we're going to win the Cold War;" and (2) "if present trends continue we will win." He quoted President Reagan's May 1981 Notre Dame speech, where Reagan proclaimed that history would dismiss Soviet Communism as "some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." Meyer felt that Reagan was "absolutely correct," adding that the USSR was "entering its final pages." His memo projected a window no longer than 20 years.

Herb Meyer was dead on. I know of no other Cold War document as accurate as this one.

I recently talked to Meyer about his memo. He had no idea it had been declassified until someone sent it to him last month. "I was astonished," Meyer wrote me in an e-mail, "and it's a weird feeling to read something you'd written decades ago and hadn't seen since."

Meyer remembered well certain elements of the memo, particularly the Cold War predictions. He also had not forgotten the memo's reception. Within the intelligence community, there was a general feeling that Meyer had lost his mind. That was just the start of the backlash.

The memo was leaked to syndicated columnists Evans & Novak, who devoted a column to it. There was subsequent uproar throughout Washington, which made Meyer very nervous. He was summoned to his boss's office.

"Herb, right now you've got the smallest fan club in Washington," Bill Casey told him grimly. As Meyer turned pale, Casey laughed: "Relax. It's me and the president."

Today, Meyer says with a chuckle: "If you're going to have a small fan club--that's it."

CIA director Casey, like President Reagan, was committed to placing a dagger in the chest of Soviet Communism. He was pleased, and he encouraged Meyer. Meyer recalls: "My orders were, in effect, to keep going."

Meyer particularly remembers Reagan's being shaken by the statement about Russian women averaging six abortions. To Meyer's knowledge, Reagan "never went public with that astounding statistic.... Come to think of it, no one--except some Russians--ever talked about it."

Of all the items in the memo, that one remains the most far-reaching. Demographers today foresee Russia plummeting in population from 150 million to possibly 100 million by 2050. Meyer's memo is a prophetic warning that isn't finished. For Russians, the internal implosion isn't over.

When we look back at the Cold War, we remember big names and big statements and documents. There's nary a college course on the Cold War that excludes George Kennan's seminal "Long Telegram," sent from the U.S. embassy in Moscow in February 1946. Kennan's memo prophetically captured what the free world faced from the USSR at the start of the Cold War, forecasting a long struggle ahead. Herb Meyer's November 1983 memo likewise prophetically captured what the free world faced from the USSR, but this time nearing the end of the Cold War, uniquely forecasting a long struggle about to close--with victory.

George Kennan's memo is remembered in our textbooks and our college lectures. Herb Meyer's memo merits similar treatment.

-- Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" and his latest release, "Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."

Could You Survive Another Great Depression?

2011-07-20T20:56:53Z

I just read two very interesting articles on the U.S. economy, written from historical perspectives. They compelled me to share my own historical perspective. And what I want to say is more about our changing culture than our economy.

One of the articles, by Julie Crawshaw of MoneyNews.com, notes that the "Misery Index"--the combined unemployment and inflation rates--made infamous under President Jimmy Carter, has hit a 28-year high. It's also 62 percent higher than when President Obama took office.

But that's nothing compared to Mort Zuckerman's article in U.S. News & World Report. Zuckerman measures the current situation against the Great Depression. He writes:

"The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off.... We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression."

Zuckerman is a perceptive writer who looks at economies from a historical perspective. In my comparative politics course at Grove City College, I use his article on the Russian collapse in the 1990s, which Zuckerman showed was worse than our Great Depression.

I can't say we're teetering on that precipice, but Zuckerman's article got me thinking: Imagine if America today experienced an economic catastrophe similar to the 1930s. How would you survive?

I remember asking that question to my grandparents, Joseph and Philomena. How did they survive the Great Depression?

My grandmother, never at a loss for words, direly described how her family avoided starving. Compensation came via barter. Her father, an Italian immigrant, baked bread and cured meats in an oven in the tiny backyard, among other trades he learned in the old country. My grandmother cleaned the house and babysat and bathed the children of a family who owned a grocery store. They paid her with store products. Her family struggled through by creatively employing everyone's unique skills.

What about my grandfather? When I asked that question as he sat silently, my grandmother raised her loud Italian voice and snapped: "Ah, he didn't suffer! Don't even ask him!"

My grandfather, also Italian, returned the shout: "Ah, you shut up! You're a damned fool!"

Grandma: "No, you're a damned fool!"

After the typical several minutes of sustained insults, my grandfather explained that, indeed, his family didn't suffer during the depression. They noticed no difference whatsoever, even as America came apart at the seams.

Why not? Because they were farmers. They got everything from the land, from crops and animals they raised and hunted to fish they caught. They raised every animal possible, from cattle to rabbits. They ate everything from the pig, from head to feet. There were eggs from chickens and cheese and milk from goats and cows. There were wild plants.

I was captivated as my grandfather explained his family's method of refrigeration: During the winter, they broke ice from the creek and hauled it into the barn, where it was packed in sawdust for use through the summer. They didn't over-eat. They preserved food, and there was always enough for the family of 12.

When their clothes ripped, they sewed them. When machines broke, they fixed them. They didn't over-spend. Home repairs weren't contracted out. Heat came from wood they gathered.

And they didn't need 1,000 acres of land to do this.

They were totally self-sufficient--and far from alone. Back then, most Americans farmed, knew how to grow things, or provided for themselves to some significant degree.

That conversation with my grandparents came to mind as I read Zuckerman's piece and considered life under another Great Depression. I realized: The vast majority of Americans today would be incapable of providing for themselves. If you live in the city with no land, you'd be in big trouble. Even most Americans, who have a yard with soil, wouldn't know what to do.

Isn't it ironic that with all our scandalously expensive education--far more than our grandparents' schooling--we've learned so little? We can't fix our car let alone shoot, gut, skin, and butcher a deer.

Think about it: If you lacked income for food, or if prices skyrocketed, or your money was valueless, what would you do for yourself and your family?

Americans today are a lifetime from their grandparents and great grandparents. God help us if we ever face a calamity like the one they faced--and survived.

-- Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" and his latest release,"Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

Obama's Inalienables

2011-07-05T23:17:19Z

Editor's note: A longer version of this article appears at today's American Thinker.

Each time President Obama addresses America's inalienable rights, I get emails. "Did you see Obama left out 'Creator' again?" began the latest.

The most recent occasion was a June 17 presidential statement responding to a U.N. resolution on sexual orientation. Obama stated that "LGBT persons are endowed with the same inalienable rights--and entitled to the same protections--as all human beings."

I can imagine why Obama and his speechwriters excluded the Creator in this particular statement. To say that "LGBT persons," meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, have inalienable rights is one thing. After all, in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson affirmed that "all" human beings are endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

I take the Founders at their word. "All" means "all." And this, wrote Jefferson, with the hearty approval of John Adams, Ben Franklin, and the entirety of the Continental Congress, is a "self-evident" truth.

No one should argue that "LGBT persons" don't have inalienable rights.

And who endows those rights? The Creator does.

President Obama and his speechwriters and staff surely knew that to bring the Creator into this statement on sexual orientation would generate a firestorm over origins--from the origins of man and marriage to the origins of sexual orientation, from the ancient words of Genesis to the modern text of the Defense of Marriage Act.

That said, this is far from the first time President Obama has been selective with inalienable rights and, more tellingly, with their preeminent author. As CNS News reported, this was the third time this year alone that Obama used the language of "inalienable rights" but omitted the "Creator."

In fact, this tendency by Obama began literally at the very start of his presidency. In quoting what seemed to be an amalgam of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, our new president excluded "life" among the inalienables, as well as the "Creator" that endows that right to life. It was quite a statement for his first presidential statement.

What to make of all of this? It's hard to say, but it's surely no accident.

Presidents have speechwriters. They write speeches with carefully crafted words that the president wants to say. Those speeches go through an exhaustive review. Exclusions like "Creator" and "life" from America's sacred inalienable rights (or "unalienable") don't happen causally--or shouldn't.

In truth, one cannot separate our Declaration's inalienable rights from their Creator. The Founders understood this, knowing that Americans must realize that these inherent rights come not from man or government but God.

Is President Obama's repeated failure to overtly link the two an attempt to separate them in a deeper sense? Or is he simply assuming they're intertwined, with no need to openly acknowledge God as the source? I don't think we can assume the latter, especially given Obama's consistent omission of the source, but--to be fair--I can't say for certain.

Nonetheless, something is going on here. And this much I can say:

President Obama and his administration pride themselves as modern progressives. The progressive project, for 100 years and counting, has been about reshaping and redefining the very essence of American thinking. The Constitution itself has been the obvious target. Progressives eagerly reinterpret the Constitution, declaring it a "living document" subject to their unceasing, always-evolving "changes" and "reform."

So, given their liberties with the Constitution, why wouldn't progressives do the same with the Declaration of Independence?

With Obama's statements, are we witnessing larger symptoms of a progressive push to reshape and redefine the Declaration's inalienable rights and, more fundamentally, their very source? Are we observing an attempt to remake these rights in the progressives' own image, with the Creator out of the process?

Progressivism is moral relativism at the political level. Truth is never constant, with no fixed starting point, whether (theologically) in Sacred Scripture or (politically) in sacred political documents like the Constitution and Declaration. Truth is determined not by an absolute authority but by individuals--or, here, progressive individuals en masse--who are always marching and ever-advancing toward evolving truths revealed somewhere down the road. There is no goalpost set in concrete. Progressives themselves cannot tell you their ultimate endgame because they are constantly progressing (click here).

Is this an exasperating ideology? You bet it is.

What does this mean as America again prepares to mark the Declaration of Independence? Does it mean our "inalienables"--or, more so, their fountainhead--are not so self-evident, or at least subject to reinterpretation?

To citizens of a "progressive" mind, yes, I'm afraid so. Is our president among them? I fear so.

And I'm even more afraid that few Americans know or care.

Planned Parenthood Funding: James Madison vs. Obama and the Progressives

2011-06-30T23:35:32Z

Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared at CatholicVote.org.

With a critical vote in its state Senate, North Carolina has voted to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Republicans hold a huge majority in the Senate--meaning, as a Republican majority usually does, that the Senate is pro-life. The governor of the state, Bev Perdue, is a Democrat--meaning, as a Democrat chief executive usually does, that the governor is "pro-choice," and favors funding Planned Parenthood. Enough Republicans exist in the legislature to over-ride Perdue's veto.

Prior to this vote, North Carolina infused Planned Parenthood with $434,000 annually, directed at state "family-planning programs." That money was to go to "non-abortion services;" that is, "non-abortion services" by the nation's largest abortion provider.

Most significant, North Carolina's action signals a potential trend among states. It is the third state to vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood, following measures by legislatures in Indiana and Kansas, where the governors are Republicans and supportive. In Kansas, the governor is the solidly pro-life Sam Brownback, a gigantic change from Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who is now President Obama's point-person to revamp America's healthcare system. In Indiana, the governor is Mitch Daniels.

In all three states, North Carolina, Kansas, and Indiana, we see yet again how the Republican Party has become the pro-life party and the Democratic Party--the party of my family's roots--has continued in the opposite direction.

The next key thing to watch is how the Obama administration reacts to North Carolina. In recent weeks, the Obama administration moved to deny Indiana's de-funding of Planned Parenthood. Indiana sought to remove the millions of dollars in subsidies Planned Parenthood received in federal funds (via the Indiana government) through Medicaid. The Obama administration told Indiana that it can't do that, arguing that federal Medicaid law prohibits states from barring certain "health" providers "because of a provider's scope of practice."

That said, here's the big picture:

It's critical to comprehend the Obama administration's position. It needs to be understood. It represents not merely a policy or partisan divide but an ideological chasm over the very function of government and balance of powers.

Among liberals/progressives, we see here not only an obvious embrace of the Planned Parenthood worldview, but the bitter fruits of a much longer march, pre-dating Planned Parenthood, to centralize power and control in a single government based in Washington, along with a corresponding removal of authority from states and localities. This is a debate as old as the republic itself. It dates to the 1780s: the Articles of Confederation, theFederalist Papers, Jefferson and Hamilton and Jay and Madison, the Constitution. Our Founders vigorously debated the proper balance of powers between states and the federal government, trying to avoid extremes in either direction. They did not want an imbalance where Washington slowly but surely subsumed powers that not only rightfully belonged to states but better served citizens in the hands of states.

To place this in a theological perspective, this is somewhat similar to the teaching of subsidiarity. When it comes to assisting citizens in need, whether through poverty programs or healthcare, subsidiarity encourages localism to the best extent possible. The essence of subsidiarity is that localities, whether public or private, from counties to churches, are closer to the problem; they provide a more efficient, human touch than a distant bureaucracy--and can do the job better than a one-size-fits-all source in Washington. Subsidiarity opposes collectivism and sets limits on state intervention.

I view subsidiarity as somewhat of a reflection or extension of James Madison's so-called "Middle Ground." Madison was mindful of a careful balance between state and federal power. Though he was at times a strong proponent of federal power, he warned against excesses in either direction. Though subsidiarity isn't exactly the same thing, it, too, is about striking the best balance, and not over-centralizing things in Washington.

Sadly, progressives have long pushed for government powers almost solely in the federal direction. Healthcare and Planned Parenthood's "services" are just the latest manifestation. Thus, they are apoplectic at the Obama administration--and throughout the halls of power in the Democratic Party--by any move by any state to de-fund Planned Parenthood. They are already greedy for federal power. They are already greedy for "abortion rights." So, to have states getting in the way of their attempts to ensure federal funding of Planned Parenthood is nothing short of cultural Armageddon.

Watch these current actions closely, in North Carolina, Indiana, and Kansas, with more to come. Observe the ongoing hysterical response (click here for examples) of liberals/progressives, from the Obama administration to Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. Their reaction says a lot about these folks, not only about their views on cultural issues and human life but on the very essence of government.

-- Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," and the newly released "Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."

This Fourth of July: Confirm Thy Soul in Self-Control

2011-06-27T23:18:44Z

I encourage you to set aside the burgers and dogs and soda and beer for a moment this Fourth of July and contemplate something decidedly different, maybe even as you gaze upward at the flash of fireworks. Here it is: Confirm thy soul in self-control.

What do I mean by that? Let me explain.

The founders of this remarkable republic often thought and wrote about the practice of virtue generally and self-control specifically, two things long lost in this modern American culture of self. Thomas Jefferson couldn't avoid a reference to one of the cardinal virtues--prudence--in our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which, incidentally, ought to be a must-read for every American every Fourth of July (it's only 1,800 words). Our first president and ultimate Founding Father, George Washington, knew the necessity of governing one's self before a nation's people were capable of self-governance. As Washington stated in his classic Farewell Address, "'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."

A forgotten philosopher who had an important influence on the American Founders was the Frenchman, Charles Montesquieu, whose work included the seminal book, The Spirit of the Laws (1748). Montesquieu considered various forms of government. In a tyrannical system, people are prompted not by freedom of choice or any expression of public virtue but, instead, by the sheer coercive power of the state, whether by decree of an individual despot or an unaccountable rogue regime. That's no way for human beings to live. There's life under such a system, yes, but not much liberty or pursuit of happiness; even life itself is threatened.

Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government is a self-governing one, and yet it is also the most difficult to maintain because it demands a virtuous populace. As noted by John Howard--the outstanding senior fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, & Society--Montesquieu noted that each citizen in a self-governing state must voluntarily abide by certain essential standards of conduct: lawfulness, truthfulness, honesty, fairness, respect for the rights and well-being of others, obligation to one's spouse and children, to name a few.

"Each new generation must be trained to be responsible citizens ... to be virtuous and conscientious," writes Howard in The St. Croix Review. "Once the free society is well-established, the daily life of the family and the society is such that becoming virtuous is not a monstrous chore for the young people."

Sadly, becoming virtuous has indeed become a monstrous chore in a society not only lacking virtue but eschewing virtue--fleeing virtue like a vampire fleeing a cross. Living life in a good way--what Benedict Groeschel calls The Virtue Driven Life--becomes so alien that the people prefer darkness over light. When virtues are not taught--whether at home, at school, or by America's educator-in-chief, the TV set--they become unknown and ignored and unfulfilled, desiccated and dead upon the national landscape.

And perhaps saddest of all, as John Howard notes, virtue is something that can be acquired, like learning to speak a culture's language. Once inculcated, however, it needs to be continuously reinforced by the cultural elements of the society. Virtue needs nourished, like fruitful plants need water and sunlight. Says Howard emphatically: "I want to repeat.... Virtue must be continuously reinforced by the culture."

We Americans might not think about this much, but we actually sing it fairly often, even if the words don't sink in. Consider this line from one of our sacred political hymns, America, the Beautiful:

America, America,

God mend thine ev'ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

That's the ticket: Confirm thy soul in self-control. Our liberty is enshrined in our laws, but liberty should not be license for opportunities for the flesh. Our liberties, protected and permitted as they are, should not be exploited to do anything and everything we want, including things harmful to oneself, to one's family, to one's neighbors, to one's culture, to one's country. That misunderstanding and abuse of freedom is what Pope Benedict XVI calls a "confused ideology of freedom," one that can engender "the self-destruction of freedom" for others.

In truth, a genuine freedom requires responsibility. As the song says--and as Washington and Montesquieu intimated--we must successfully govern ourselves in order to successfully govern our nation.

It's a timeless concept worth remembering this Fourth of July and every day going forward.

Bush, Obama, and Osama: America's Hour of Choosing

2011-05-02T16:12:25Z

"In Bin Laden Announcement, Echoes of 2007 Obama Speech," declared the headline in The New York Times. It's difficult to find a newspaper that has demonstrated a worst pro-Obama and anti-Bush bias than The New York Times, especially when dealing with the War on Terror. And so, I expected a headline like this in the Times. When I searched Google this morning, looking for a text of President Obama's statement on the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Times headline was the first thing that popped up.

That's too bad. A better banner would have been, "In Bin Laden Announcement, Echoes of 2001 Bush Speech." That's what I immediately thought when I heard the stunning statement by President Obama announcing the killing of Osama Bin Laden. To wit, President Obama stated:

Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden....

The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.... Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al-Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done....

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

For President Obama, it was a refreshing and surprising expression of American exceptionalism.

More than that, President Obama's words read like a punctuation, an exclamation point, on what President George W. Bush had said on September 14, 2001, during an unforgettable 9/11 memorial service at the majestic National Cathedral. Bush himself had organized the service. He picked the music, selected speakers, and carefully chose the words he delivered that afternoon.

Bush had declared the day a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. In preparing for his speech, he literally prayed that he could rise to the occasion and deliver his talk meaningfully in keeping with the somberness of the occasion. "I prayed a lot before the speech," he later told reporter Bill Sammon, "because I felt like it was a moment where I needed, well, frankly, for the good Lord to shine through."

Everyone in elite Washington was there: Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford sat in the third pew, as did Al Gore. The Clinton family sat in the front pew. An ailing Billy Graham, in a poignant display, struggled to address those gathered. President Bush approached the platform at 1:00 PM. He stated:

We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead and for those who love them.

On Tuesday our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel. Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read....

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.

Note that last word, "choosing." Indeed, here is where both President Bush and President Obama--not to mention America and history--found common ground: This war, and that awful attack on September 11, 2001, crafted by the diabolical Osama Bin Laden, had not been our choice. Both Bush and Obama pledged that justice against Osama would come at a time of our choosing.

That time arrived, at long last, on May 1, 2011. Justice, indeed, has been done, and on America's terms, not Osama Bin Laden's.

Sterilizing Those Pesky Humans: Earth Day with Paul Ehrlich

2011-04-20T20:06:48Z

Every April 22 is Earth Day. As one who studies Soviet Russia, I can't help notice that the day coincides with the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. The inaugural Earth Day occurred April 22, 1970, no less than Lenin's birth centennial.

This is most ironic. Lenin is a decaying symbol of central planning, which, regrettably, is the ideological preference of many of those filling the streets on Earth Day. Although Lenin was a collectivist, not an environmentalist, he is frequently recycled, as mortuary specialists from Russia's health ministry regularly re-embalm him in his tomb.

Lenin had no respect for life. He declared certain people "harmful insects." In Lenin's deadly worldview, pesky humans were not precious, special, unrepeatable; they were disposable.

That brings me to a living symbol of Earth Day: Paul Ehrlich. Dr. Ehrlich's explosive bestseller, The Population Bomb, inspired the freshman class that first Earth Day, embodying the wildest fears of apocalypse mongers. The great Johnny Carson was, sadly, one of Ehrlich's dupes, giving him a platform on "The Tonight Show" dozens of times.

Much has been said about Ehrlich's book. But as author John Berlau reports, one item has been conveniently sunk into a land-fill. "He [Ehrlich] flirted with a proposal to require adding contraceptive material to all food items in the United States," writes Berlau in Eco-Freaks. "But Ehrlich's most drastic--and contemptuous--measures were reserved for the third world. Ehrlich advocated that all men in India who had three or more children be forcibly sterilized."

Really? That was something I needed to see for myself, certainly never learning this in my public education. So, I tracked down a September 1971 edition of The Population Bomb.

What Ehrlich wrote is jaw-dropping. Dealing first with pesky Americans, he wrote (pages 130-31):

"[T]he first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size. Those of you who are appalled at such a suggestion can rest easy. The option isn't even open to us, since no such substance exists. If the choice now is either such additives or catastrophe, we shall have catastrophe. It might be possible to develop such population control tools, although the task would not be simple. Either the additive would have to operate equally well and with minimum side effects against both sexes, or some way would have to be found to direct it only to one sex and shield the other."

As for pesky (non-white) folks in places like India, Ehrlich was less patient. On pages 151-52, he favored "sterilizing all Indian males with three or more children," and with the direct help of the U.S. government. "We should have volunteered logistic support in the form of helicopters, vehicles, and surgical instruments," advised Ehrlich. "We should have sent doctors to aid in the program by setting up centers for training para-medical personnel to do vasectomies."

Was this "coercion?" asked Ehrlich. Of course, but it was "coercion in a good cause."

Immediate action was imperative, assessed the professor. It was, after all, 1970, and the human race had precious little time. Ehrlich warned of humans metastasizing all over Mother Earth. He said stoically:

"I wish I could offer you some sugarcoated solutions, but I'm afraid the time for them is long gone. A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells.... Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies--often horribly.... We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense."

To borrow from other scaremonger imagery of the era, such as the hysterical propaganda film Soylent Green, it was only a matter of time before the helpless masses started consuming one another. Only government action by anointed elites could save us from Armageddon.

Today, Ehrlich remains an icon, holding a plum spot at Stanford as the Bing Professor of Population Studies. Because he's a liberal, a "progressive," the 78-year-old has gotten away with this, much like Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood matron, who ran a "Negro Project," spoke at a KKK rally, labeled certain pesky people "human weeds" and "imbeciles" and "morons," and preached "race improvement."

For icons of the left, there's no need to say "I'm sorry." The sins of the fathers and mothers of the progressive left are buried with the trash, never to be recycled, especially at Earth Day.

On Margaret Sanger, the Soviets, and Democrats

2011-04-15T16:08:22Z

"[W]e could well take example from Russia," advised Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, "where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government."

Sanger, racial-eugenicist who spoke to a 1926 KKK rally, whose work included a "Negro Project," who wished to rid America of "human weeds" and "morons" and "imbeciles," and who wanted birth control for "race improvement," had just returned from a pilgrimage to Stalin's Russia. Like many progressives (click here for John Dewey's experiences), she went there to soak in the alleged triumphs of the communist motherland, marveling at Lenin's and Stalin's advancements for women.

And so, in the June 1935 edition of her publication, Birth Control Review, in an article titled, "Birth Control in Russia," Sanger concluded:

Theoretically, there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted ... on the grounds of health and human right.... [W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.

I could quote more, including this jaw-dropping prediction: "All the officials with whom I discussed the matter stated that as soon as the economic and social plans of Soviet Russia are realized, neither abortions nor contraception will be necessary or desired. A functioning Communistic society will assure the happiness of every child, and will assume the full responsibility for its welfare and education."

Now there, ladies and gentleman, is progressive utopianism, an absolute faith in central planners. Contrary to the Planned Parenthood matron's optimism, abortions skyrocketed to seven million annually in the USSR.

What struck me in recently re-reading this article is how Democrats in America have arrived at Sanger's ideal, where Planned Parenthood's services have become, in their mind, "part of the regular welfare service of the government"--just like Stalinist Russia.

Consider the revealing response by Democrats to completely legitimate Republican attempts--amid record deficits and debt levels--to cut taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood:

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) vowed: "The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood ... are never, never, never going to pass the Senate."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Republicans had placed a "bull's eye on women in America," barring them from "health services they need."

"The real reason that the right-wing extremists in Congress orchestrated this outrageous government shutdown," added Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), "is to try and defund Planned Parenthood as part of their ideological assault on women's health care."

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) explained, "This is a war on women. They're trying to inject their politics and their religion into local family planning."

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) insisted that defunding efforts were "nothing more than an opportunity for the right wing in the House to sock it to women."

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called it a "very dangerous situation" for women. Pelosi told reporters: "It's degrading to women."

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) described Republican efforts as a "vendetta" against women, insisting, "Behind each of these Republican proposed cuts, there are thousands, maybe millions of people who would be hurt."

Remember when liberals called for civility?

And remember, too, when President Obama referred to "tax cuts for the wealthy" as the Republicans' "Holy Grail?" Well, taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood appears to be the Democrats' Holy Grail. As Obama and Republican Speaker John Boehner battled over a budget compromise, Obama drew a line in the sand on Planned Parenthood, snapping: "Nope. Zero. John, this is it."

The room fell silent. Obama had hoisted the Holy Grail.

You'd think from Democrats' reaction that taxpayer funding of the nation's largest abortion provider was Article 1 of the Constitution, an inalienable right in the Declaration, a sacred political covenant with taxpayers, anchored in the writings of Jefferson and Madison and Locke and Adams, etched in cement at the base of the Washington Monument.

It's preposterous that America has run so far aground that we even seriously entertain directing taxpayer dollars to the nation's largest abortion provider. The "right" to an abortion had to be read into the Constitution, at the exclusion of sections (the 14th Amendment) guaranteeing a right to life. Abortion was read into the "right to privacy," three words which don't exist in the Constitution.

It took Democrats a while to get there, but, finally, almost a century after the start of the Bolshevik Revolution and Margaret Sanger's organization, they've arrived at where the Soviets and Sanger found common ground. They indeed act as if, as Sanger said about Stalin's Russia, "birth control ... is part of the regular service of the government."

The saddest thing is that neither they, nor their supporters, nor America, seem to comprehend the outrageousness of their position.

Obama vs. the Bushes: Comparing Costs and Coalitions from Libya to Iraq

2011-04-05T17:21:51Z

The Libya situation is complicated. I envy no president stuck with the task. Among the complexities, the most daunting unknown is what's behind the opposition. We would all like to see Moammar Gaddafi tossed to the ash-heap of history, but the rub is who, or what, would replace him. What a tragedy it would be if America intervened only to see Gaddafi replaced by an Ayatollah.

President Obama has a tough situation in Libya. I was more certain about what to do with Saddam, in 1990-91 and 2003, under two presidents named Bush, than Libya now.

That said, it's disappointing to see liberals rally behind Obama in Libya in a way they refused under the Bushes in Iraq. I won't go through all the maddening double standards, but there are two that really struck me after President Obama's speech on Libya, and seem to mount by the minute, namely: coalition size and cost.

President Obama stressed that America has not "acted alone" in Libya, and is joined by a "broad coalition," a "strong and growing coalition." He named 11 countries: the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Obama used the word "cost" several times. He assured us that "real leadership" meant working "with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs." He gave no numbers.

Now, these were two areas--coalition and cost--where the American Left vilified both Bushes, especially George W. Bush, literally accusing him of acting "unilaterally" in Iraq in 2003. The accusations were outrageously, irresponsibly absurd. And yet, when comparing Obama to the Bushes here, Obama falls way short.

For the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush assembled a multinational coalition that (depending on varying sources), ranged from 27-34 nations, with as high as one-third of troops stationed in the Persian Gulf by December 18, 1990 provided by U.S. allies. Also contributing were 11 Middle East Muslim nations--they alone equaled the total of President Obama's current coalition partners--and even members of the still-existing Soviet Warsaw Pact.

The vast majority of the costs were provided by U.S. allies, especially Kuwait, Japan, and Germany. A March 2003 Associated Press analysis determined that the Gulf War initially cost the United States $61 billion, with all but $7 billion reimbursed by allies with cash or other contributions like fuel.

For the record, other accounts have been more generous, claiming Uncle Sam was reimbursed entirely.

As for the Iraq War in 2003, that, no doubt, was far more costly. The Bush team had a handle on initial costs; costs rose not with the initial invasion, which went far better than planned, but with the nasty occupation and reconstruction that followed.

Yet, one aspect of the 2003 war that again far surpasses Obama's work in Libya is the coalition George W. Bush put together.

Remarkably, by March 18, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a coalition of 30 to 45 nations. That number depended on the form of support, which ranged from a vocal 30 nations to a discreet 15 nations, the latter largely Arab. This Bush coalition was one of the biggest in history. Such a multilateral stamp of approval was precisely what critics had clamored for, and Bush delivered. It even included Afghanistan, a nation once run by the Taliban, and once Osama Bin Laden's home.

And yet, rather than commend the Bush team, Democratic Congressmen like Lloyd Doggett ridiculed the coalition. He sneered that "the posse announced today is mighty weak." It included "such military powerhouses as Eritrea and Estonia," two nations the administration considered a sign of the worldwide opposition to Saddam. The coalition, said Doggett, was "embarrassing" and signaled a "foreign policy failure."

The day after Powell announced the vast coalition, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times: "We're riding into Baghdad pretty much alone and hoping to round up a posse after we get there."

The frustrated president said repeatedly that the coalition was multinational, but to critics it didn't matter.

Nonetheless, these are facts. In both cases, the Bush coalitions were far superior to President Obama's in Libya.

Frankly, that doesn't matter much to me. I supported President Reagan's unilateral run on Tripoli in April 1986. This multilateral thing isn't my standard.

But it is the standard of the American Left; or at least when the Bushes are in charge.

And as I kept reminding my liberal friends when the Bushes were in charge: be careful about the standards you're demanding to demonize the Republican president, because someday your guys will be back in charge.

The Ted Kennedy Chronicles: A Look at the Latest Declassified FBI Files

2011-03-21T17:24:44Z

Another round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released (click here and here). Fittingly, in Kennedy's case, they once again raise all sorts of questions, from the moral to the political to issues of national security.

First, however, allow me to pause with a sympathetic note. Among the documents within Kennedy's 2,200-page FBI file are materials from the mid-1960s on various lunatics threatening to shoot the young senator. Reading those pages is sad, particularly as they move from not only Ted as a target but also his brother Bobby. And then, it all struck home--like a punch to the gut--when I suddenly happened upon a June 6, 1968 Western Union telegram, sent directly to J. Edgar Hoover, which stated simply: "PLEASE MAKE CERTAIN THAT TED KENNEDY GETS ALL THE PROTECTION HE NEEDS WE ARE DOWN TO ONE KENNEDY."

Bobby was gone, the same manner as John before him, and now Ted was left as a living target. I don't care how much of a beef you have against Ted Kennedy and his actions and politics; that telegram chills your bones.

As to the politics, however, once again we have more declassified files on Ted Kennedy producing yet more unsettling questions. As readers of my previous columns and books (click here and here) know, Ted Kennedy made a confidential outreach to Soviet despot Yuri Andropov in May 1983, evidenced by a stunning KGB memo. The goal was to undermine Ronald Reagan's defense policies and, in my view, Reagan's re-election prospects as well. That document, which has since been resealed in Russian archives, is published in full in Dupes.

Do the latest FBI files produce anything at this level? Well, it's hard to equate degrees of outrage, but these items jump out:

Most serious are the documents relating to a July-August 1961 "familiarization tour" by Kennedy of several Latin American countries. Throughout, Kennedy expressed a curious desire to meet with "Leftists," wanting to know what made them "think the way they do." The documents note that Kennedy "met with a number of individuals" with "communist sympathies." Kennedy asked ambassadors and State Department officials in these countries to help arrange interviews. One official was annoyed, describing Kennedy as a "pompous and spoiled brat."

Ted's behavior was not exactly angelic. Among his unique extracurricular activities, according to two of these documents (dated December 28, 1961 and October 20, 1964), was to attempt to "'rent' a brothel for an entire night."

This aspect of the files fits with the roguish-philandering image of the late senator. More serious, however, is a particularly sobering item: Among the Leftists that Kennedy reportedly met with was none other than Lauchlin Currie, former close aide to FDR. As one of these documents dryly notes, "Currie's name had been mentioned in Washington investigations of Soviet spy rings."

That's an understatement. As we now know, Currie was one of the most duplicitous Roosevelt advisers, widely suspected of Soviet espionage.

Why did Ted Kennedy want to meet with Lauchlin Currie?

Unfortunately, the FBI files provide no answers.

But that doesn't mean there aren't witnesses who could be contacted for further information. Among the living is John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California who was Ted Kennedy's law-school roommate and close pal. Tunney was Kennedy's liaison to the Soviets in May 1983. In this FBI file, he is listed as one of the individuals who joined Kennedy on this Latin America tour.

Tunney likewise might be able to comment on another stunner in these files: A claim that Ted and his brother, Bobby, were looking to parade around America a group of 100 Vietnamese children maimed by American napalm. A March 1967 memo contends that the Kennedy brothers were "plotting" such a scheme as a way to humiliate President Lyndon Johnson.

Finally, a November 21, 1962 memo in these files reports a fascinating tidbit: the muckraking columnist Drew Pearson was planning to report that 19-year-old Teddy had been rejected from attending "a school at Fort Holabird, Maryland, while in the U.S. Army" because of "an adverse FBI report which linked him to a group of 'pinkos.'" According to this memo, when Teddy's dad, Joseph P. Kennedy, heard of this, he threatened to sue Pearson for libel if he dared to print one word. The memo gives specific names and is grounded in what seems a very credible source (click here).

Of course, Joseph P. Kennedy has been dead for decades. He's no longer a threat to our "journalists" doing their job. Will those journalists now, at long last, two years after Senator Ted Kennedy's death, pause to investigate some hard questions?

This latest FBI file begs yet more answers on the doings of Ted Kennedy.

The Tea Party vs. NPR

2011-03-15T23:38:12Z

"The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian," said NPR's Ron Schiller to two undercover reporters. "I wouldn't even call it Christian; it's this weird evangelical kind of [movement]."

Not knowing he was being videoed, Schiller continued: "The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party, it's been hijacked by this group; that is, not just Islamo-phobic but really xenophobic. I mean, basically, they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-American, gun toting--I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people." (Click here for transcript and here for video.)

Schiller is being heavily criticized for these comments, as is NPR and elite liberal thinking in general. Schiller, NPR Foundation president and vice president for development (until these comments), is the Left's latest exhibit in smearing the Tea Party movement as bigots, racists, fascists, Hitler-ites, followers of Attila the Hun, Torquemada, Genghis Khan, or whatever other handy demon.

Yet, what's telling about Schiller's comments is their lack of factual basis, an even greater sin from a man whose business, and erstwhile employer, is the reporting of facts. His comments are a PR problem for NPR, furthering the perception that NPR is not about unbiased reporting but primarily about opinion--a leftist opinion camouflaged as objective news.

As evidence for my perspective, I'd like to share some statistical information on the Tea Party movement. This information was widely published and is easily available to anyone, least of all a major news organization like NPR.

In March 2010, Gallup did a comprehensive survey of the Tea Party (click here). Gallup is the most respected polling firm on the planet, and not conservative. The headline Gallup chose to highlight its study speaks for itself, "Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics."

That study found that 49 percent of "Tea Party identifiers" are Republicans while 43 percent are independents and 8 percent are Democrats. The majority are not Republicans.

As to Schiller's strange "evangelical" comment, the study found that a little over a quarter of Tea Partiers describe themselves as "pro-choice" on abortion, suggesting a stronger libertarian presence than a uniform "evangelical" movement. That's no surprise to anyone who has observed the Tea Party even casually.

The Tea Party movement was inspired by the breathtakingly reckless spending by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democratic leadership that took power in 2009. Its issues are far more economic/fiscal than religious/moral. There's a more discernible Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged" element than a Jerry Falwell "Moral Majority" feel--and Rand was no evangelical.

Generally, Gallup's survey indeed found that the Tea Party was "fairly mainstream" in its demographics.

At the same time as Gallup's study, another survey was released, by Rasmussen. Particularly interesting about this survey was that it gauged public opinion--i.e., how others viewed the Tea Party. Overwhelmingly, by 62 percent to 12 percent, Rasmussen found that "Mainstream Americans" judged the Tea Party "closer to their views" than the Democratic Congress. By 68 percent to 16 percent, Americans deemed Tea Party members "better informed" than members of Congress.

This suggests, as a matter of statistical fact, that NPR's Ron Schiller is the extremist when it comes to Tea Party views. That's a claim I can make from data--which Schiller never offered.

This information is out there, and has been for a while. I know it because, I, too, work in a field where reporting and analysis must be based on information. Anytime I talk to someone who has been to a Tea Party rally, I ask questions. Before I form or adjust an opinion, I want to hear actual experiences. And beyond anecdotal examples, I'd like some hard data.

How could an NPR person--the pinnacle of the liberal news profession--ignore such information?

The answer is more psychological-political than logical. Many liberals despise the Tea Party movement because of its roots in opposition to Obama-Pelosi-Reid. Really, though, the Tea Party was inadvertently created by liberals--or, at least, by their reckless spending policies in Washington.

Yet, for many Obama supporters, that kind of careful analysis of opponents is jettisoned. They'd rather transmogrify their detractors into devils and gargoyles than try to understand them and perhaps even answer them.

In Ron Schiller's take on the Tea Party, we have a member of the liberal elite constructing a reality of his own making, one that flies in the face of evidentiary experience, of thoughtful inspection.

Unfortunately, Schiller is far from alone. And isn't it ironic that he, NPR, his former boss at NPR, Vivian Schiller (no relation), are losing--actually, resigning? They are losing to perceptions of NPR--correct perceptions of NPR's bias, perceptions that are grounded in reality, in actual examination.

Americans are gathering facts on the folks at NPR, and they don't like what they're hearing.