Frank’s Case Book

Many people are Conservatives by default. Their parents were of a Conservative bent and they followed along the same path without much thought. Others grow to embrace their ideological heritage after thoughtful consideration.

For some not born to Conservatism, a key event fertilizes Liberal ground and a new Conservative blossoms from an unexpected place. Peggy Noonan, Conservative pundit and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, grew up in a working-class Democratic family in the Northeast. In the 1960’s, she realized that many fellow students who opposed the War in Vietnam did not do so out of love for America, but out of hate. The war was not only a mistake, but also evidence of the fundamental corruptness of America. This clash with her patriotic upbringing was the beginning of her political transformation.

Perhaps no one has journeyed quite as far from the dark side to the side of goodness and light or has as much to tell us about the Left as David Horowitz. Horowitz was a “red-diaper” baby raised in the forties by two committed Communists, Phillip and Blanche Horowitz. His father was a public school teacher who was suspended by the New York school system for refusing to say whether he was a Communist. Phillip was later given a cash settlement to make up for the suspension. The elder Horowitz even traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a political pilgrimage. Young David’s upbringing included Marxist instruction and even involvement in the protest of the Rosenbergs’ execution for espionage. No one could have better Leftist credentials.

Even as a young man, Horowitz was a proficient polemicist who debated from the Left in college. As an adult, he shored up his socialist credentials with six years of research and writing in London and worked for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. When he returned to the United States, he was a charter member of the so-called New Left and a writer and an editor for a flagship of the Left, Ramparts magazine.

In his book Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, Horowitz chronicles his transformation from the New Leftist to a Reagan Republican. Actually, the odyssey began with an unlikely event. After the death of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khruschev came to power. The effort to solidify Khruschev’s hold over the Soviet Union required undermining the legacy of his predecessor. The Khruschev Report documented the cruelty and crimes of Stalin.

It is not remarkable that one totalitarian ruler built his reputation on the bones of another. The reaction of the Marxists in the West, however, is remarkable. With few exceptions and without much self-reflection, the Left embraced Khruschev and the Khruschev Report and its repudiation of Stalin with the same fierce loyalty they one lavished on Stalin.

Young Horowitz perceived this hypocrisy and devoted his early adult years to trying to reconcile the contradiction. In his writings, Horowitz tried unsuccessfully to recast socialism in a way that could avoid the excesses of Stalin. Is there an inherent tendency, he wondered, for Marxist regimes to become destructive of individual rights?

What also bothered Horowitz is that few on the Left even felt a need to address the question. Most were satisfied to just criticize corporate America and the West. Nonetheless, Horowitz worried about this large snag in the political cloth of socialism. This snag was the first flaw that unraveled Horowitz’s Leftist views and would later lead to what he labeled as “second thoughts.”

While at Ramparts, Horowitz became a confidant of Huey Newton of the notorious Black Panthers. To the Left, the Panthers represented the front lines of a coming guerilla war to bring about revolution in the United States.

For a while, Hororwitz overlooked his discomfort with the drugs and petty criminality of the Panthers. Part of the revolutionary doctrine at the time held that flaunting conventional laws was in itself an important revolutionary act.

This all changed when Betty Van Patter was killed while working as a bookkeeper for a community organization run by the Panthers. According to Horowitz, Van Patter asked too many questions and was killed by the Panthers. Horowitz was especially devastated since he had recommended Van Patter for the position.

The Left, many of them friends and acquaintances of Horowitz and Van Patter, turned aside and avoided looking at the obvious complicity of the Panthers. If the Panthers were linked to the murder, it would be a set back to the movement. The consequences for any particular individual could not stand in the way of the revolution. The Left just closed its eyes and forgot about Betty Van Patter.

Horowitz could not forget. Van Patter’s death pulled on the earlier snag of his earlier doubts about the practical consequences of the absolute loyalty required of the Left. Suddenly, the inability of the Left to address or even admit the brutality of the North Vietnamese, Communist China, and Cuba now played out in a very immediate and personal way. In the words of Horowitz:

“How could the Left be reformed, if it refused to confront itself? How could it propose to change the world, if it was unwilling to ask whether it ideas were valid? How could it transform the world if it couldn’t transform itself.”

When the Communist Sandanistas threatened to make Nicaragua into another repressive, dictatorial Cuba, Horowitz finally made public the transformation he had been undergoing for a decade and endorsed Ronald Reagan’s anti-Sandanista policies.

Horowitz is now as polemically active on the Right as he was once was on the Left. Not unexpectedly, many of his former allies and friends turned on him with a vengeance, some even suggesting that perhaps he was a CIA agent. In academia and left-leaning cultural circles he was no longer welcome. Horowitz contrasts the viciousness with which he was attacked by the Left for his apostasy with the relative forgiveness granted Gary Wills and Barry Lind whose political journeys were in the exact opposite directions as Horowitz’s.

What Horowitz faced is the inherent flaw in the socialist vision. Socialism views humans as perfectible if only provided with the right political and economic circumstances. Humans, we are told, can look to themselves to solve the problems of greed, envy, pride and the other sins that have burdened mankind. Socialism is always pointing to the vision of a utopian future and thus finds it easier to overlook casualties along the way.

The Conservative intuition is rooted in the past with the notion that the past provides a reliable guide to human nature. Humans have great capacities for both good and evil and governments are instituted to protect us from each other. Indeed, according to James Madison, “Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.” This is a warning that the Left fails to acknowledge.

Madison added, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. If men were angels there would be no need for government.”

The Left agrees with the latter statement and argues that the state will ultimately wither away as men become angels. However, in socialist states, people do not become angels and the degree of government management and intrusiveness increases. Madison and the Founders, by contrast, created a government with checks and balances to prevent tyranny. Under the US Constitution, not only was human imperfection conceded it was counted on. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition” as a means to protect ourselves from each other.

As a consequence of their view of human nature, Conservatives ironically have proven more willing to forgive than those on the activist Left. What impressed Horowitz in his political odyssey was

“… the tolerance of conservatives I knew for human faults and failings, including my own. Some conservatives were like the flinty puritans of liberal caricature, but most of my new acquaintances and political associates were not. Over time, their tolerance became intelligible to me. What made one conservative was the recognition of the human capacity for evil, for just plain screwing up. That was why the rules were important. Not because conservatives expected no one to break them. But because having rules that were respected made it harder for people to do so. This was a more subtle — in the long run more trustworthy — form of compassion than liberals’ softness of heart.”

Not many people would have the intellectual depth and the emotional courage to make the political journey that David Horowitz did. Conservatives are better off because of it.

“And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life haith reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great has passed away.”
— William Wordsworth, On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic , 1807.

Venezia, Italia, October, 2000. Venice in October is pleasantly cool and devoid of the pressing intensity of international crowds which swarm the island city like locusts in the summer. While still murky, the waters of the canal lack their summer odor. The gradual onset of the quiet of winter serves as a metaphor for the decline of this few square kilometers of land along the Adriatic Coast from economic and cultural domination to amusement park status. There is more than a touch of sadness and remorse in Venice, the queen of cities, that is now reduced to a quaint tourist attraction invaded by both McDonald’s and Burger King. Five hundred years ago, Venice dominated Occidental economics and culture. Venice is now an echo of itself, retailing glimpses of its past greatness to largely uninformed tourists.

The dominance of Venice was more than just a consequence of geography. Certainly, it was protected from invasion by its location at the center of a lagoon off the European coast. Certainly, Venice was conveniently situated to as act as a middleman between Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the riches of the East. However, in many ways, Venice’s greatness rested in its unique government.

Roughly three hundred patricians ruled the city by appointing a ruling council of ten that controlled executive functions. The famous doges of Venice were primarily figureheads whose influence was proportional to their intelligence and persuasiveness. More importantly, Venice established the necessary infrastructure for a prosperous commercial society. Law limited fraudulent transactions, while an agency of government regulated weights and measures. Courts to mediate disputes were established. This should serve as a reminder to Libertarians that free markets do not necessarily arise spontaneously, but can be nurtured by government institutions.

Venice’s gradual decline was precipitated by its loss of a monopoly on Eastern trade as the Dutch and others found alternative routes to the Orient. The Venetians did not adapt and inevitably loss its military and economic power. In addition, they devoted far too many resources to maintaining a military dominance over neighbors.

The United States in the latter half of the twentieth century has found itself in cultural and economic ascendancy. Its geographic isolation between two oceans protected it at its inception. Its relatively free economy permitted a shift from an agricultural to industrial economy. Continued dominance and success depends on the ability of the United States to lead the world in the Internet-linked, knowledge based economy.

In this new economy, the United States enjoys only the advantages of economic flexibility and entrepreneurship. These advantages do not depend on natural resources or geographical advantages. Even small countries can play an important part in this new economy. Supportive tax and regulatory codes and American creative culture can maintain the American head start.

Neither Venice nor the United States is guaranteed perpetual dominance. It is only by continued adaptation to a changing economic environment that the United States will flourish. It is quite possible that this period could mark a new ascendancy for the United Stated or the beginning of its gradual decline.

Note: Venice could have become as economically aggressive as Hong Kong or Taiwan. It is heartening for Venetians to see Venice grasping at the new economy. This change is evident in a small shop barely visible on the west tern side of Campo de San Stefano.

As you walk into the modest shop you pass five meters through a narrow corridor. The corridor empties into a large room populated by more than forty Gateway computers connected to the Internet via a T1 connection. For $7.00/hour, you can browse the Internet and send and receive e-mail. Phones on the wall will connect you to international numbers at $0.25/minute. This is in sharp contrast to the $3.00 per minute rate at the unresponsive, but more ostentatious, American Express office a short distance away. If Venice is to be more than a tourist attraction, it will be lead by the same spirit that created the Internet Cafe.

Virtually veryone has seen the historic 1948 photograph of Harry S. Truman grasping the front page of the Chicago Tribune that erroneously declared in large type “Dewey Beats Truman.” The paper wanted to be the first to publish and made the mistake of believing polls.After that polling embarrassment, there were recriminations and self-examination. Despite the fact that Truman won by two million votes, the story in the Electoral College was much closer. The switch of 30,000 votes, distributed the right way would have given an Electoral College victory to Dewey. Nonetheless, there was no excuse on the part of pollsters and the newspapers in the rush to judgment. Dewey, a liberal Republican, was popular in intellectual circles and perhaps the papers were letting their wishes get ahead of their practical assessments.

The mispredictions by Roper and Gallup were not the same as the problems with the Literary Digest. After polling its subscribers, by no means a representative cross section of voters, the publishers predicted that Alfred Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. Landon lost all but two states and the Literary Digest went out of business. It is heartening that foolishness at least used to have consequences.

It turns out that the key mistake of the pollsters in 1948 was to stop polling two weeks before the election. No one considered the possibility of a last minute surge towards Truman. Some polls used data compiled as late as August 1948. In addition, pollsters were too cavalier in their treatment of undecided voters. They just allotted the undecided to the candidates in the same proportion as the decided vote. [1]

All modern pollsters know these lessons. However, the costs of conducting well thought out polls with statistically significant numbers of respondents tempt people into taking shortcuts. The Newsweek Poll is a modern example of how not to conduct a poll and as a consequence its results are volatile and not credible. That is why Newsweek can claim one week that Gore has a 14-point lead and a week later that Gore’s lead has plummeted to 2 percentage points. Even given the volatility of a complacent polity, this is too much of a change in too short a period of time. It is the sort of change one expects after a political convention, not a week where the big news is a minor release of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.

A polling organization can pay for lists of registered voters. This cost money so Newsweek obtains less expensive, more general lists, and asks voters if they are registered. One does not always get truthful answers. Even more importantly reputable pollsters must take the time to cull from respondents, likely voters. Various organizations have different ways to do this. Basically they ask respondents if they voted in the last election. There is a strong correlation between voting in the past and future voting. However, if pollsters want to save money they will stick with registered voters or spend less time assessing whether a registered voter is likely to vote.

Pollsters must also consider at what time they query respondents. Newsweek stops its polling at 8:30 PM Eastern Time to save money. However, as a consequence, they only sample people who are at home during the day in Western Time Zone states. By contrast, the Battleground Poll, only polls Monday through Thursday because weekend activities make weekend polls notoriously unreliable.

One way to estimate future polling performance is past performance. In 1996, Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole by 8 percentage points. This was a significant popular vote win for Clinton, but far less than the 18-point margin predicted by CBS News and the 12-point difference found by the Harris, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, and ABC Polls. Two polls did conspicuously well, the Reuters/Zogby Poll and the Battleground Poll. They were within a percentage point of the final outcome.

The Zogby Poll is the brainchild of John Zogby who realized that many Conservatives do not like to respond to polls. His polling techniques attempt to compensate for this. The Battleground poll is a cooperative venture between Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. This week Zogby has Gore up by two points, while the Battleground Poll has Bush up by five points. Interestingly, the Battleground Poll still finds 21% of likely voters undecided.

It is clear that this election is still close. The Reuters/Zogby and the Battleground Polls appear to be the ones to watch.

On February 26, 1989, the CBS news show 60 Minutes ran a segment on Alar, a chemical sprayed on fruit to enhance its growth. Extremely high doses of the chemical caused cancer in animals. The hand wringing began in earnest. Grocery stores rejected apples treated with Alar and many farmers suffered economically.

Congress held anxious hearings. Actress Meryl Streep marshaled her considerable persuasive skills and furrowed her brow in concern for America’s most helpless citizens, its children, as she testified before Congress. It was a situation ripe for political exploitation by the political Left. On one side there are greedy chemical companies. On the other side are young vulnerable children innocently eating tainted apples. Streep even founded a group call “Mothers and Others” to carry on her crusade against pesticides threatening children.

It turns out that one would have to eat bushels of apples daily over a lifetime to incur a significant risk of cancer. It is even more ironic that untreated apples are more susceptible to naturally forming toxins. Not treating apples properly can actually prove to be more of a health threat.

This last week the National Institute of Health and Human Development released a longitudinal study tracking 1,300 children from a variety of locations around the country. It turns out that toddlers committed to day care have a significantly greater likelihood by kindergarten of being aggressive and disobedient. As one of the investigators Jay Belsky, explained, “There is a constant dose-response relationship between time in care and problem behavior, especially those involving aggression and behavior.” This finding held for children from both affluent and poor homes and for children from rural and urban areas.

What is most amazing about the study is that people seem so surprised at the conclusions. Until recently, it would have been the conventional wisdom that most parents care more for and are better for their children than any third party. The study is credible because it is so consistent with common experience. Anyone who spends significant time with young children can generally distinguish the day care children from children cared for by a stay-at-home parent.

In the wake of this new study, where is Meryl Streep now? Where is the concern for the welfare of children? Where are the Congressional hearings? Where are the foundations dedicated to protecting children from third-party day care?

Of course, the difference here is that calling into question the efficacy of day care conflicts with the effort by the women’s movement to enlarge the range of choices for women. If day care somehow harms children, parents who place their children in day care appear to be placing personal enrichment ahead of the welfare of their children. Studies of the kind just released are inconvenient. Unfortunately some people are so thoroughly afflicted with the women’s movement ideology that the therapy of evidence is insufficient.

The chance of a child becoming ill from Alar is far far smaller than the odds of experiencing negative behavior modification from day care. However, day care advocates warn us not to jump to hasty conclusions based on this new study. Don’t they sound an awful lot like defensive chemical companies?

Does this new study indicate that children who spend time in day care are condemned to be emotionally crippled psychopaths? Of course not. However, if the Left is so concerned about children, why are they not clamoring for public policies to not only broaden possibilities for day care, but also to enable the choice of having one parent stay at home?

All other things being equal, it is better to have fewer chemicals on fruit. However, the benefits of a safe and ample food supply must be weighed against the dangers. By the same token, day care is sometimes the only option for single parents. Quality day care needs to be available. However, make no mistake. Whatever benefits there are to day care for parents, day care is generally a second best option for children. You cannot care for children and be unconcerned about the long-term consequences of having so many youngsters consigned to third-party day care.