Frank’s Case Book

“I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free … And I’d gladly stand up next you and defend her still today. Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land. God bless the USA.” — Lee Greenwood, Proud to Be an American.

Partially prompted by Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation, there has been considerable recent interest in understanding and honoring the generation that endured the Great Depression and fought World War II. Leaving aside fruitless arguments about which American generation was really the greatest; there is much to be learned from that generation which fought the last great war.

Like them, we have recently experienced the jarring experience of having destruction rained upon America soil by foreign enemies. In 1941, over 2400 people were killed in a surprise attack from the Empire of Japan. Almost exactly sixty years later, on September 11, 2001 significantly more Americans were killed in a series of deadly terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. We need not dwell on the particulars of the two events other than to say in both cases foreign powers threatened Americans on American soil. This attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon constitutes the moral equivalent to the attack on Pearl Harbor for our generation. From successful the defeat of the Axis Powers by the “Greatest Generation,” there are important lessons to be learned on how to conduct a war.

Moral Clarity

Wars never arise in a vacuum. Many times the grievances of both sides have some merit. Germany was humiliated and treated unfairly by victorious powers after World War I. Although Japan was waging a war of aggression in Asia, American embargo of oil threatened a critical Japanese import.

Nonetheless, once Germany attacked its neighbors and once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we had the moral self-confidence to realize that those other issues had little relevance to our aggressive conduct of war. Moral clarity was the recognition that World War II represented the real clash of good against evil, of freedom versus tyranny. Moral self-doubt was not allowed to become the enemy of action. Moral clarity meant that the cause we were fighting for was worth the sacrifice of both material well-being and human life. Engagement in the war was not an optional endeavor or a responsibility that could be avoided when the chore seemed too difficult.

In our case, moral clarity means acknowledging that the anger and desperation of Islamic extremists, which provide fertile ground for exploitation by evil opportunists, may have some legitimacy. Moral clarity also means having a sufficiently calibrated moral sense to recognize that such complaints do not justify the deliberate targeting of civilians, even women and children.

Moral clarity means realizing that the leaders of these terrorist groups seek to return to an age of fear and tyranny. They are striking out against not only Americans in particular, but the Western values of freedom, individual rights, commercial exchange, affluence, ethnic and religious diversity, and secular government. Our battle too represents a real clash of the forces of light against the forces of darkness. Moral clarity means appreciating that fidelity to our values requires resolve in the pursuit of this war on terrorism. There is no other morally responsible option.

Singularity of Purpose

When the country commits itself to a specific purpose, it implies that other purposes become subordinated. Winston Churchill, explained that during World War II he had “only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler…life is much simplified thereby.”

In our case, this does not mean American values should be jettisoned in pursuit of victory. But it does mean that we do not permit concerns about taxes or deficits or fuel prices or other inconveniences to deter our single-minded pursuit of victory. To use the words of John Kennedy with reference to the Cold War, “Let the word go out to friend and foe alike. This nation shall support any friend, oppose any foe, pay any price, and bear any burden to insure the survival and success of liberty.” This past week, we have just learned of an additional price.

Americans Are Americans

While the “Greatest Generation” may have shown us what is meant by moral clarity and singularity of purpose, they unfortunately also showed us the ugliness of racial bigotry. Japanese Americans, in particular, were all considered security risks and many were placed in internment camps during World War II. Because Japanese-Americans looked different from the majority of Americans, they were treated with far greater suspicion than German- and Italian-Americans.

Writing this week in the Washington Post, Muslim Reshma Yaqab lamented that every time he hears of a terrorist incident, he prays two prayers. The first prayer is for the victims and their families. The second prayer is that the perpetrator is not a Muslim.

Part of our present challenge in the pursuit of terrorism is to avoid assuming the same bitter and angry intolerance that consumes our enemies. There have been a number of reported threats directed against and vandalism of Arab owned stores and mosques. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Arabs and Muslims in the United States are good and honest people who contribute to their communities as they work to achieve the American dream. Most came to America to embrace not eschew American values. Undoubtedly, there were Islamic victims among the dead at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These families are no less saddened by their losses.

After the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, we perhaps deserved a short respite from history. Over the last decade, we could afford a little self-indulgence in pursuit of our private lives. We were awoken from this diversion on September 11, 2001. Each generation has its challenge. We now have a higher collective purpose to pursue. This challenge will define our generation and the kind of world we will leave our children.

In many ways, a visit to a college dorm is not appreciably different from a visit would have been twenty years ago. Sure the clothes, haircuts, and music have changed. Computers have replaced stereos as the appliance of choice. Yet, a modern dorm is still filled with post-adolescent boys a little t0o big for their rooms and pretty coeds who have discovered to their chagrin that there is not enough closet space in the rooms. After only a week, the dorms acquire the pungent aroma of a gym as dirty laundry accumulates. Ears are assaulted with music set at volumes deliberately loud enough to keep pests, like adults, away.However, in one radically important way dorms are very different from their counterparts of only a half-a-dozen years ago. College dorms are now drenched in a shower of ubiquitous bandwidth, from cable television hookups to broadband Internet connections. It is not surprising, therefore, that dorms represent laboratories where we might anticipate the consequences of such bandwidth before it is universally deployed in society at large.

Perhaps one of the first noticed consequences is the sharing of copyrighted digital versions of music across the Internet. When limited to the maximum transmission rate of 56K bits per second over dialup connections, it might take over 20 minutes to download a typical song, even with compression. This inconvenience was a significant barrier to Internet exchanges of copyrighted materials. At universities, bandwidths many times greater than a dialup connection decimated such inconveniences. Transmissions times were reduced to seconds and students began to accumulate entire libraries of music on their hard disks.

This free exchange of music radically reduces the incentive of people to purchase music. In the long run, if the creators of music are not compensated for their efforts they will be disinclined to create. Fearful of a potential drainage of revenue, the music industry sent forth a phalanx of lawyers to do battle with Napster, the clearinghouse for much of this music exchange. The lawyers succeeded in subduing Napster. One can no longer share copyrighted material via Napster.

Nonetheless, such exchanges continue unabated. Schemes for exchange have sprouted faster than any litigation could suppress. These alternate schemes involve peer-to-peer exchanges rather than easily isolated servers or the servers reside offshore, outside the easy reach of attorneys. It is clear the music industry will not be able to sustain its economic model solely through litigation. Rather than standing in the road while the truck of technology rushes forward, the music industry should hitch a ride and embrace the new technology.

Perhaps the experience with video recorded movies can serve as an example. At first, the movie industry fretted that the ease of copying of video tapes would depress movie attendance and movie video sales. Ultimately, the rise of inexpensive video tape rentals made movie copying more of a chore than simply borrowing a video from a store. Moreover, such stores offered the latest releases and the tapes were of uniformly higher quality than bootleg copies. Video duplication technology did not destroy the music industry. Rather it now provides an important source of revenue. Movies that died after only short runs in theaters had new lives as video rentals. Niche movies could be marketed to narrower audiences.

The ubiquitous high bandwidth that now enables unauthorized music duplication and transmission may render such replication unnecessary. Imagine if the music industry established its own network of high-speed music servers. For a modest subscription free, any computer on the network could have instant access to virtually any song that was ever recorded. With nearly instant, uniformly high-quality access, there would be little need to spend the time to download, organize, and maintain music libraries. New recordings would be available earlier and targeted to niche audiences. Sure duplication would continue at some rate, but if subscription rates were reasonable, there would be less incentive to bother with duplication.

As high bandwidth enters wireless networks, such a system would be even more valuable. Rather than downloading songs to a MP3 player, a single device, via a wireless connection, would have access anywhere to a music library far more extensive than could ever fit into a single portable device.

There are still technical barriers to such a future. However, the sooner the music industry and the entertainment industry in general embrace such a vision, the sooner they will realize the potential profits. Hire a few more engineers and a few less lawyers.

There are few people in American journalism whose political acumen and experience are as well respected as Elizabeth Drew’s. For the past 40 years, she has observed and thoughtfully written about the American political system. Although she is an old-school Liberal, she has a reputation for trenchant analysis of political figures irrespective of political affiliation.Yet, no one is perfect. It was the weekend before the 1980 presidential election between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. On the political commentary television program Agronsky and Company, she was asked to handicap the upcoming election. She thought it was “too close to call.” Despite the fact that polls were already indicating a Reagan landslide only days away, this Liberal political expert could not bring herself to acknowledge that Ronald Reagan would almost certainly win the pending election. She could not bring herself to believe that the country was about to elect not only a Conservative, but the most important Conservative spokesman of a generation as President of the United States.

This does not make Elizabeth Drew a fool, but a human. She is limited, like us all, in her ability to see beyond her beliefs, passions, and hopes, unable sometimes to distinguish between wishes and facts. It is precisely this effect that makes the Liberal bias in the national media so problematic.

Of course, the media are not monolithic. Small town newspapers and local television stations around the country tend to reflect the biases and outlooks of their local communities. There are plenty of Conservative editorial pages and journalists around the country. However, there can be little doubt that the national media centered in New York City and Washington, DC are far to the left of the country as a whole. Even if they merely reflected the local populations of New York and Washington, they would be to the left of the great major of Americans.

The fact that the journalists in the national media are dominantly Liberal is really beyond serious question. Evidence was clear as far back as 1981 when the S. R. Lichter and Stanley Rothman queried 240 journalists working for the national media and found that 81% percent voted for the Democratic candidate for president for every election from 1964 to 1972. More recently, Thomas Edsall, political reporter for the Washington Post cites 2001 Kaiser/Public Perspective survey that, “only a tiny fraction of the media identifies itself as Republican (4%) or Conservative (6%). This is in direct contrast to the public, which identifies itself as 24% Republican and 35% Conservative…”

A survey of over 1000 journalists in 1996 by the American Association of Newspaper Editors found that 61% of newsroom staffers identified themselves as Liberal/Democratic while only 15% were Conservative/Republican. Further, the larger the newspaper, the more liberal the staff was likely to be. A survey by Freedom Forum, a “nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people,” found that 89% of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 while 43% of the voting public did. Even the self-described Liberal Jack Germond, political commentator and former political correspondent for the now-defunct Washington Star and the Baltimore Sun, conceded in the September 1, 2001 broadcast of Inside Washington that more reporters are Liberal.

FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), a left-leaning media-monitoring group has tried to counter the mountain of evidence suggesting that journalists are Liberal at surveys of its own. However, these surveys, perhaps deliberately, do not query about abortion, affirmative action, or other social issues where differences between journalists and the rest of the population are most dramatic. Instead, they asked questions about international trade agreements like NAFTA where the difference are more between populism and elitism as opposed to Conservative or Liberal. Using an issue that both President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich agreed upon does not seem like an effective tool for discriminating between Liberals and Conservatives.

Despite the labors of groups like FAIR to suggest that members of the media are Conservative, perceptions of the public at large tell a different story. In a 1998 Gallup Poll sponsored by the American Journalism Review, twice as many people perceived a liberal bias as opposed to a conservative media bias. A Freedom Forum poll agreed with the Gallup results with respect to Liberal bias save the latter poll found the public perceived only a slight Democratic bias in the media.

The problem of dominance of Liberals in the press is not that journalists gather in secret cabals to deliberately slant news. Of course, there are a few who engage in a studied and deliberate slanting of the news, but the most common bias is the inadvertent bias of agenda. Liberal journalists find certain issues important and pursue them to the exclusion of others and certain groups are portrayed more sympathetically. Liberal media will seek out the National Organization for Women for comments on the women’s perspective, not because they represent a majority of women. They do not. Rather, these journalists are more likely to know and respect members of the group.

It is these Liberal journalists who will report for days on Matthew Shepard, a homosexual who was brutally beaten to death, because the crime represents a metaphor for an issue they feel passionately about. It is these journalists who will, the same time, ignore the brutal rape and murder of a 13-year-old boy by two homosexuals as not important as a national story.

It is Liberal journalists, unfettered by a Conservative critique by their peers, who will refer to Kenneth Starr as the Republican independent prosecutor, while rarely mentioning the fact that Gary Condit is a Democrat. CNN has even inadvertently called Condit a Republican. Others suggest Condit is a Conservative, while rankings of Conservative and Liberal interest groups place him to the slightly to the left of center.

It is these journalists who unfairly associated the Conservative ascent of the Newt Gingrich Congress with the Oklahoma bombing by an anti-government fanatic. These same journalists would never make the same dreadful mistake of associating the fanatical anti-technology killer Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, with Al Gore’s environmentalism.

This problem is less of a concern for Conservatives in the media. It is not that Conservatives are smarter or morally superior. Rather it is that they know that their ideas will receive greater scrutiny. Conservatives are not burdened by the tyranny of unspoken and unquestioned assumptions that can blind their Liberal counterparts. Liberal journalists do not have the friction of incredulity of peers against which to hone their work. The real solution is for there to be greater representation in newsrooms by Conservatives, providing a real diversity of perspective.

Robert Samuelson in a recent op/ed piece represented a lonely voice in the wilderness questioning the appointment of Howell Raines, the very Liberal and passionate New York Times editorial page editor as the executive editor of the paper. It is Raines who will now choose what issues to cover, how to deploy reporters and what ultimately gets reported as news by what is arguably the nation’s most influential paper.

The point is not that Raines will not try to be balanced. It is that there are no institutional safeguards to help Raise see beyond his own perspective. The failure of the New York Times to recognize the necessity for such a counterbalance is just one more piece of evidence cementing the notion that the national media are finding impartiality too difficult a goal to attain.

Though perhaps difficult to answer, the question framing the abortion and embryonic stem cell research debates is easy to pose: At what point from conception on do we ascribe the status of “person” and hence recognize the rights of embryos and fetuses? Once this question is answered, conclusions about abortion and embryonic stem cell research follow like water off a ledge.For those who conclude that personhood occurs at conception, unless the mother’s life is at risk, the right to life trumps any right a woman has to make decisions about medical treatment. On the other hand, if embryos and fetuses are only human “tissue” and not persons, then there is no moral impediment to the removal and disposal of embryos and fetuses.

In contradiction to many Conservative friends, I have argued that personhood is associated with brain wave activity in the neocortical area of the brain where higher-level mental activities reside. Such activity does not occur until the second trimester. Hence, abortions in the first trimester ought to be permitted by legislative decision. The judicial fiat of Roe v. Wade was not the way to permit first trimester abortions, but that is another story.

In the second trimester and most certainly, the final trimester, termination of pregnancy should occur only in the case when the mother’s life is threatened. Even then, if a fetus can be delivered in a fashion that does not compromise the mother’s life, the baby should be delivered and provided the maximum opportunity to thrive.

Under this framework for ascribing personhood, embryonic stem cell research should not only be permitted, but also federally funded. Stem cells are not, nor are the embryos from which they are derived, persons. If such tissue provides fruitful avenues for important medical research, there is actually a positive ethical obligation to use such cells.

There are some in the pro-life movement, like Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who are both against abortion and yet for embryonic stem cell research. Hatch, has argued that an embryo is not a person until it is implanted in a womb. Surely, that is a tortuous and contrived distinction brought upon by the understandable desire to make ethical room for potentially important medical advances from embryonic stem cell research. If he gave it more thought, Hatch would agree that if it were medically possible to bring an embryo to full term without ever being in womb, he would still ascribe personhood to a late term fetus. The physical position of an embryo or fetus with respect to the womb is irrelevant to personhood. To argue otherwise is to concede inadvertently a distinction crucial to abortion absolutists who would permit abortion at any point in pregnancy. It is illegal to suck the brains out of a late term fetus that is outside the womb, but permissible (and some abortion absolutists argue Constitutionally protected) to do so in a “partial birth” abortion.

Even if one allows for the ethical permissibility of embryonic stem cell research, human stem cells are not a commercial commodity that can be traded and marketed indiscriminately. Just as we do not permit marketing of kidneys, the disposition of stem cells should be regulated. Bill First, Republican Senator from Tennessee and the only doctor in the Senate has proposed a reasoned compromise to the stem cell research question. Though it is perhaps more restrictive than I would propose, President George Bush would still be wise to adopt First’s approach. Essentially, First would

• Restrict research to stem cells from embryos slated for disposal and not created specifically for research.
• Ban cloning.
• Increase research in the use of adult stem cells. This research poses fewer ethical problems.
• Establish an intensive oversight system.

This regime would allow federally-funded embryonic stem research to go forward as we struggle to understand the potentials and hazards of such research.

The 2000 movie The Dish tells the story of Parkes Observatory in Australia used during the Apollo 11 mission to receive television pictures as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and into history. High winds threatened the reception of the moon-walk video as the receiving dish was deployed beyond the wind stresses the dish was certified to take. The movie may have taken a few poetic liberties in the retelling of the story and a more complete history can be found at Parkes Observatory Web Site.

Nonetheless, the movie does capture the sense of the collective international endeavor of the moon trips. President Kennedy’s challenge to travel to the moon within a decade certainly began as a Cold War stunt, but rapidly grew out of its mercenary origins. By the time Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walked on the moon, much of the world was intensely hopeful and interested in their progress. As for many other people, the small-town Australians living in the immediate vicinity of Parkes took a vicarious pleasure and pride in the historic role they were playing.

The story also stands as a contradiction to the intellectually-pure, hard-hearted, chest-beating Libertarian view-point. While it is clear that the free market is probably the most efficient expedient for allocating resources, it is not the only value to consider. Contributing to an enterprise larger in scope than immediate and personal self-interest can serve to the important purpose of cementing a community, a nation, and even the world.

For many of a certain age, the mission to the moon was a life-altering experience that permanently affected the way the world is viewed. For another generation, the Great Depression or World War II remains as the collective enterprise or experience that helps define a particular generational perspective.

Unfortunately, such times and moments cannot be easily contrived. Perhaps they cannot be deliberately contrived at all. Renewing a space program as ambitious for our time as the Apollo missions were for their time would probably prove too divisive as different groups vie for resources. Certainly a war or depression offers no pleasant prospect.

As this current generation idles in relative and desultory prosperity, one wonders what if any collective perspective will help define us.

Speak Out for Li Shaomin July 1, 2001

Frank Monaldo

It was over ten years ago in 1989 when a valiant young man stood alone in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in an act of protest. The photograph of the incident has become an apt metaphor of the fundamental conflict in China: the intransigent independence of the individual resisting the crushing dominance of the state. Since that time, Chinese military power, influence, and economic strength have grown, but there has not been a commensurate improvement in political and personal freedom in China.

What made the protest at Tiananmen more poignant for Americans is that the Chinese protestors embraced American symbols as well as ideals in their protest. We have grown accustomed to American flags burned in anger usually by puppets of regimes or other groups run by thugs. The site of paper mache reproductions of the Statue of Liberty reminded Americans of the liberty they enjoy.

A short time after the protests at Tiananmen Square had been ruthlessly squashed, George Bush the elder sent high-level Administration officials to mend bridges with the Chinese government. Americans were rightly upset at this capitulation to Chinese tyranny.

Bush did not want Chinese repression to alter long-term trade and diplomatic relationships with the United States. Diplomacy can work in ways that are not readily apparent to those more concerned with principle than tact. If the private rapprochement had resulted in concessions by the Chinese government that loosened its grip over the private lives of the Chinese, we might be able to say that diplomacy succeeded. Success could justify private diplomacy.

However, rather than learning that internal repression has consequences, the Chinese government learned the virtue of patience. Let things settle down and in the long run the Americans will be so obsessed with the prospect of lucrative commerce that not only will there be no trade restrictions, but Americans will not even make serious vocal complaints. Indeed, if you are sufficiently persistent you might even be able to find an American politician for whom illegal campaign contributions can purchase acquiescence.

George W. Bush has in many ways learned from the mistakes of his father. Where his father was aloof, George W. is avuncular and gregarious. However, George W. has inherited much of his father’s foreign policy apparatus. Although that foreign policy team was successful in its prosecution of the Gulf War, they never found a permanent formula for dealing with China. George W. and may be fated to repeat the same mistakes with respect to China.

As this is written, an American EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft brought down by a hot dog Chinese fighter pilot over international waters, is still being held illegally by the Chinese government bent on extracting the maximum embarrassment. Even if you dismiss the aircraft incident as unfortunate and accidental that is only about a little bit of hardware, consider the plight of Li Shaomin. Li was born in China 45 years ago. Li’s father was a Communist Party member imprisoned for his support of protestors at Tiananmen Square. The elder Li was dismissed from the Party and for a time jailed. Cognizant of the restrictions imposed on Chinese citizens, Li Shaomin decided to become an American citizen in 1995. Li is a distinguished academic earning a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a faculty position at Hong Kong University.

The Chinese security apparatus detained Li while he visited a friend in the Chinese mainland. Despite official and unofficial inquiries, the Chinese government has refused to release Li or provide satisfactory information about this American citizen. The Chinese government has accused Li of espionage. Chinese due process allows him a lawyer, but Li has not been allowed to meet with his attorney.

It is the obligation of the State Department to protect Americans abroad and they do not appear to have done so in this case. Perhaps the State Department, in the words of David Tell of the Weekly Standard, is exercising “an expert enterprise so exquisitely subtle that untutored civilians are very often unable to distinguish it from simple appeasement of Beijing’s Communist rulers.”

Any administration has a positive obligation to speak publicly and forcibly on behalf of human rights around the world and certainly for Americans abroad. We do not even have to impose economic sanctions to make our voice heard. Forget about really painful potential reprisals like revocation of most favored nation status for China. This Administration has not even been willing to oppose the staging of the 2008 Olympics in China. The Chinese will inevitably try to exploit the sports event for its propaganda value in much the same way that Nazi Germany exploited the 1936 Olympics. Even a president as weak and ineffectual as Jimmy Carter was able to muster the courage to have the US boycott the Moscow Olympics. This Administration says it is neutral on the possibility of a Chinese Olympics. George W. must either speak out or provide clear evidence that behind the scenes exhortations are reaping unequivocal changes in Chinese behavior. As Dr. Laura would say, “Now go do the right thing.”
Links:

• Li Shaomin Petition
• Tell, David, “Dear Mr. President,” The Weekly Standard, June 18, 2001.
• Rosett, Claudia, “Do Something, Mr. President,” Opinion Journal, May 24, 2001