March Soundings

Great Moments in Liberal Apprehension: In 1990, Robert Heilbroner, the Norman Thomas Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, wrote in the New Yorker that "socialism has been a great tragedy this century." In 1996, the leftist columnist Nicholas von Hoffman wrote in the Washington Post that "the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations were rife with Communist spies, and political operatives who reported, directly or indirectly, to the Soviet government, much as their anti-Communist opponents charged." Now, add to these historic insights the admission by ABC News that "the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. … They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative efect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories." http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote_Feb1004.html

BBC Radio 4's Today program asked its listeners to suggest legislation that would improve life in Britain, and promised that a member of parliament would attempt to get the most popular proposal enacted into law. More than 10,000 suggestions were offered, and the top five were submitted to a vote. The winning proposal, with 37 percent of the vote, would authorize homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders." In Britain, the proposal is known as Tony Martin's law, after a farmer who served four years in prison for killing an intruder. No sooner was the winning proposal announced than it was described as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable, blood-stained piece of legislation"—by Stephen Pound, the MP who agreed to push the winner in Parliament. "The people have spoken," said the Labour MP to the Today program, "…the bastards."

One of the central legal objections to the welfare state is that robbing Peter to subsidize Paul violates the government's obligation to treat its citizens equally. Now a counterargument has been proposed by a professor of economics and moral philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, Philippe van Parijs, author of Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? So far from its being the case that welfare-transfers treat citizens unequally, Parijs believes, the absence of welfare-transfers—and in particular the absence of a guaranteed annual income—treats citizens unequally. His reason, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 16, 2004), is that "the liberal principle of neutrality among conceptions of the good life . . . demands that the state not favor the industrious . . . over the lazy."

Once upon a time, every high school in America had to put on West Side Story for its senior play. Who could be hipper than Leonard Bernstein? The sophistication of Shakespeare, the grit of New York youth gangs, and, above all, the improving moral lesson: We must love one another or die. Well, according to The O'Reilly Factor (January 14, 2004), Amherst, Massachusetts, has now discovered that West Side Story is unsuitable for presentation to the tender minds of a high-school audience. Why? Because it promotes "racial stereotypes." (Leonard Bernstein a racist? The man whose fundraiser for the Black Panthers gave us Radical Chic?) So, what did the school substitute? The real Romeo and Juliet, you may be hoping? Or maybe some tired anti-bourgeois cliché like Death of a Salesman? No, with the approval of the school board, the school substituted The Vagina Monologues.

Between fiscal years 2001 and 2004, total federal outlays will rise about 24 percent. One excuse given is that national-security needs are driving up the budget. But according to the Cato Institute (The Republican Spending Explosion, Veronique de Rugy, January 23, 2004), real, discretionary, nondefense spending increased 23 percent during President Bush's first three years in office. The Heritage Foundation (Federal Spending—By the Numbers, Brian M. Riedel) breaks down the increases more precisely: "From 2001 through 2003, spending expanded by $296 billion, of which: $100 billion (34 percent) went for defense; $32 billion (11 percent) went for 9/11-related costs, including homeland security; and $164 billion (55 percent) went to new federal spending totally unrelated to defense and 9/11." Says Rugy: "The administration is arguing that much of the increase in nondefense spending stems from increases in homeland security spending. Whether or not this is correct, the fact that overall discretionary spending has risen so rapidly indicates that no trade-offs are being made in the budget." More strictly speaking, the administration does not need to make "trade-offs" between spending on national defense and other spending. It simply needs to recognize that national defense is essentially the only task our federal government ought to be pursuing, whether in war or peace.

Source: The Republican Spending Explosion, Veronique de Rugy, January 23, 2004. Based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office, August 2003, and Budget of the U.S. Government FY2004, Historical Tables. FY 2004 is estimated and excludes $87 billion Iraq supplemental.