Speak Out for Li Shaomin

July 1st, 2001

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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.”
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Canadian Health Care and Growing Dependence on the State

June 17th, 2001

Sydney, Australia. — One of the more pleasant duties of my occupation is the occasional opportunity to attend international conferences and exchange scientific ideas with new colleagues and colleagues that have grown into friends. Many times the most productive exchanges occur over lunch and dinner. The sated feeling of a full stomach induces an aura of comfort conducive to open and frank exchanges. Scientists become willing to quietly speculate about ideas and notions they might not feel comfortable committing to in a formal forum.These occasions also provide opportunities to come to understand different societies and cultures. Certainly, scientists generally come from similar classes in their respective societies. Nonetheless, they generally adopt the ideas and prejudices that underpin their societies. Moreover, since scientists and engineers typically occupy privileged positions, they are consequently more likely to defend current social structures.

In is in this context, that I enjoyed a pleasant dinner with a group of Americans and Canadians at a Spanish restaurant in Sydney, Australia as the conversation drifted to differences between American and Canadian medical care. OK, OK, I might have pushed the conversation there.

My Canadian friends were at one time proud of government-provided universal medical care, while at the same time they admitted certain difficulties. There tends to be a shortage of doctors that often increases the wait for medical care. Care may be free, but it is rationed by time. However, Canadians have learned to be patient patients and generally accept inconvenience as one price for their health care system.

I asked what happens if someone has to wait for a heart operation? Well, I was told, if a patient needs one they get one, but the doctor, not the patient, is the one who decides what is needed. If a patient is not willing to accept the same risk as the doctor is, a patient cannot even pay a private doctor for separate treatment. The Canadian government does not permit private medical facilities that would require an overnight stay. The idea is that if a doctor offers his services privately, then he is taking them away from the pool of services available to the state. Patients must travel to the United States if they desire more medical care. The United States provides Canada a safety valve for alternative care.

If a Canadian doctor errs and you die while waiting for a heart operation because the doctor assigned you too low a priority, he or she is less liable to a lawsuit than a doctor would be in the United States. Of course, the health care system, the Canadian HMO if you will, is not liable at all. If the state health care system misallocates resources in a way that denies a patient services when needed, it is not accountable to the patient for this miscalculation. This is an interesting point to consider as we debate in the US the level of HMO legal liability. As long as there is a private component to the health care system, legal accountability is at least possible.

My Canadian friends explained that doctors are allocated to different provinces by the government. They seem to accept this heavy handedness without question, so I asked whether they considered it presumptuous of the government to tell doctors where to practice. Their response was that the government contributed to the education of doctors and therefore had a right to decide where they could practice. There are no private universities in Canada so the government is the source of doctors.

My Canadian friends had no response to the observation that by the same argument, the fact that the state provides a free public education would entitle the state to tell everyone, not just doctors, where they can live and what jobs they can occupy.

What is scary is not that my Canadian friends are somehow indifferent to the ever-expanding power and intrusiveness of the state, but rather that these people are not unlike me. They have much the same temperament and interests. Under only slightly different conditions, our places could be exchanged. It is chilling to realize how fragile appreciation of freedom and independence is; how easy it is to willing exchange personal freedom for security and to accept the role of sheep with the government as benevolent shepherd.

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Fourth Amendment Searches with Thermal Imagers

June 11th, 2001

On June 11, 2001, the Supreme Court took another step in defining the Constitutional protections offered by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches” in an age of rapidly improving and intrusive surveillance technology. The case involved one Danny Lee Kyllo. It seems that Kyllo was an avid indoor horticulturalist. Unfortunately, Kyllo devoted his botanical skills to raising marijuana plants rather than roses.

The indoor cultivation of marijuana requires high intensity lamps. On the basis of tips that Kyllo was involved in marijuana transactions and had larger than average electric bills, but without bothering to secure a warrant from a judge, the authorities arranged for Kyllo’s house to be scanned by an Agema Thermovision 210 thermal imager. The imager revealed the increased heat emanating from the house indirectly indicating the presence of the marijuana lamps. Using this additional information, the police persuaded a judge to issue a search warrant. The results of that search provided evidence used to convict Kyllo.

The issue before the US Supreme Court was whether the use of the imager constituted a search. If it was a search of a home without a warrant, then the evidence from the imager could not be presented to a judge to secure a warrant or used in a trial against Kyllo. If the use of the imager is considered the gathering of information that is “in plain view,” then its use is “presumptively reasonable.”

Writing for the majority in a close 5-4 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia found that the use of the thermal imager to scan a private home is indeed a search and requires a search warrant. Scalia’s reasoning relies on Silverman v. United States (1961) that argued that the essential core of the Fourth Amendment “stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home [and] there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Kyllo was at home and Scalia argues that in the home there is reasonable assumption of privacy that was violated by the scanner.

Justice Paul Stevens, dissenting, tried to draw a distinction between “through the wall surveillance” and “off the wall surveillance” but the only thing off the wall was Stevens’s reasoning. Stevens argued that the thermal imager was detecting emanations from the house not really looking into the home. But his distinction was one without a difference. If a device amplifies the senses and allows the authorities to determine what is happening in a house in a way that would normally require a more direct conventional search, the use of the device really is a search. Moreover, Scalia responded that even if this particular thermal imager provided crude images, “the rule we adopt must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or development.”

One reason that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, according to Scalia, is because thermal imagers are not “in general use.” This is the one important flaw in Scalia’s argument. Technology will inevitably improve. If consumer video cameras in the future have infrared imaging capabilities, then any passerby could detect hot spots in a house. This being the case, the reasonability of the expectation of privacy erodes and the zone of personal privacy shrinks.

What is also interesting about this case is the way the court divided. In the past, Justice Stevens has been more likely to side against law enforcement authorities. Yet in this case he found that the use of a thermal imager did not constitute a search under the rules of the Fourth Amendment. On the other hand, Scalia and Thomas, who have been less inclined to shackle law enforcement authorities, are clearly fearful of a world open to high-tech government intrusion.

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American Unilateralism

June 10th, 2001

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.” — Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

As President George W. Bush crosses the Atlantic to consult with European allies, he brings with him a unilateralist view that is likely to rankle Europeans. Then again, it is hard to remember when Europeans were happy with Americans. Inherent in this tension is the self-interpretative view Americans have of themselves.

Americans have always identified themselves as special and exceptional, a chosen people, a symbol of freedom unto the world. America did not represent just another country or a piece of land, but a new opportunity to create a world unencumbered by the evil tyrannies shackling Europe. When Puritans landed in the New World they believed they were establishing a new order. John Winthrop, evoked Biblical symbolism (Matthew, 5:14) when he forecast that, “We shall be a as a City on a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us…” Perhaps none said it better than Thomas Paine who argued in favor of American independence by proclaiming that “We have it in our power to begin the world again.”

This American exceptionalism was expressed in the idea that the United States had a “manifest destiny” to occupy North America. In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan staked out America’s divine right of “…manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given for us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federaltive development of self government entrusted to us.” Though pursuit of this destiny often proved an excuse for cruelty to and devastation of indigenous peoples, in its most noble embodiment if meant confident fidelity to American aspirations for freedom and individuality.

For the first years of American history, American exceptionalism meant from a practical standpoint the separation of the United States from the rest of the world while it engaged in internal development. Americans traded with the world, but did not engage it politically. We were too good to be sullied by European intrigue. This attitude changed with the World Wars and the Cold War when American uniqueness proved the difference between post-war prosperity and a long descent into darkness.

After only 90 years of existence, it was not clear whether the United States would survive at it strove to expunge the stain of slavery. At times this confidence in American exceptionalism wavered. During the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression or even during the doldrums of the 1970s, America seemed in decline.

This American confidence and self-identity as a chosen people elicits admiration and anger, particularly from Europeans out of which much of the American tradition has emerged. Much of the world admires American prosperity while at the same time tries to console itself with the notion of moral superiority over the United States. Europeans disapprove of us because they cannot stand the fact that they love us so much.

Europeans love to ridicule the United States for its crassness, but hunger for American music and movies. Europeans fancy themselves as the stewards of western culture and a caring society, but lack the creativity of American culture and suffer under the burdens of their welfare states. Europeans lecture Americans on economics, while capital continues to flow from Europe to the United States. It must be infuriating for Europeans to proclaim concern for workers, while they labor with double-digit unemployment rates, while freer markets in the US produce low unemployment rates. Europeans neglect to support a US place on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, while the commission finds a place for China, Libya, and the Sudan.

In a recent essay, Charles Krauthammer argues that George W. Bush is tacking back to American unilateralism in part based on an American understanding of its own uniqueness and importance. Consult, be polite, but act in American interests. For example, while the Europeans have failed to ratify the Kyoto accords on carbon dioxide emissions, they are angry when President Bush states the obvious that the accords are dead. One might have thought that a 95-0 defeat in the Senate for the treaty would have been sufficient warning to Europeans, but it wasn’t. American explicit rejection of the Kyoto accords actually creates political cover for European governments reluctant to embrace the accords. European leaders get to criticize American at little political expense.

George Bush is pushing for missile defense, while Europeans, perhaps more vulnerable to missile strikes from rogue nations, fight what they see as renewed American militarism. Half the time they confidently assert that such a system cannot work and the other half of the time they fret that a protected America would disengage from European defenses.

America, under George W. Bush, refuses to have its interests forgotten in a faux multilateralism that ignores real issues and undermines American and in the long run European interests. What is generally good for the United States will benefit free nations everywhere. When you occupy the City on the Hill, many will be envious. Perhaps more will be inspired.

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American Happiness

June 8th, 2001

“The necessity of pursing true happiness (is) the foundation of our liberty.” — John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690.

But he answered one of them, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” — Matthew, 20:13-16.

Facts and information are like blocks of carbon. They can be either black bits of charcoal covering everything with a choking and obscuring dust. Or, if placed under the pressure and heat of test and scrutiny, they can be gleaming bits of diamond whose every facet illuminates. Because of the complexity of humanity social science information and data must undergo the longest journey from dust to diamond.

Philosophers have long struggled on the definition of happiness. Aristotle suggested that happiness was the full use of one’s abilities for a constructive purpose, all in all not such a bad definition. What is clear is that societies that nurture happiness seem to be serving their members most effectively.

A recent study out of the Harvard University Business School and London School of Economics by Alberto Alesina, Rafael Di Tella, and Robert MacCulloch suggests that measures of happiness between societies may in some measure be a function of outlook and attitude. They found profound differences between the ways that Americans and Europeans view economic inequality.

In the United States over the last two decades, not only has there been an increase in wealth but it has been accompanied by a significant increase in economic inequality. Nonetheless, Americans appear to be going their own happy way. In general, happiness as measured by surveys of different groups has not changed in the face of this inequality. The authors found rich Leftists to be the only group in the United States upset with the inequality. But then again rich Leftist are notorious whiners. The study also found that in Europe, by contrast, “inequality makes the poor unhappy, as well as the Leftists unhappy.”

The authors suggest that the differences between Europe and the United States have to do with the perception of social mobility. In the United States, people, even if poor, aspire to be rich and consider it a sufficiently likely possibility that they do not wish to punish the rich. It this belief in social mobility and opportunity that distinguishes Americans from Europeans. Americans, as a group, believe in possibilities, while Europeans are more likely to feel trapped by class and circumstances. Ironically, the highly regulated economic structures required to redistribute wealth and income calcifies social structures and makes it more and more difficult to increase wealth at the lower end.

This suggests that if leaders of the Democratic Party like Representative Richard Gephardt and Senator Thomas Daschle really wish to make the lives of their constituents happier, they would worker harder to increase opportunity and wealth and labor less at harping on economic distinctions. For example, when considering the recent tax reduction bill, the real question should have been whether the bill increased social mobility rather than whether the rich would benefit.

Europeans like to chide Americans for working too hard and not knowing how to enjoy life. Europeans consider it a sign of social regression that all Americans are not guaranteed five weeks of vacation. Well, vacations can make life enjoyable. Who can deny the pleasure in sitting at a cafe on a Paris street or eating a delicious meal on Venice’s Grand Canal? Nonetheless, the data suggest that the balance between work and play struck by Americans makes life happier for Americans. Perhaps we should not make too much of this. If Europeans believe they know how to live better than Americans, let them continue in this fiction. After all a sense of superiority over Americans is one of the few pleasures all Europeans appear to enjoy. We should not rob them of this small delight.

Perhaps even more interesting are factors that contribute to happiness within the United States. For example, married people are happier than single people and religious people are happier than non-religious people. This latter fact makes Karl Marx’s statement, “The first requisite for the people’s happiness is the abolition of religion.” look particularly foolish retrospect. Yet there is not too much that Marx wrote that does not appear foolish in retrospect. The data do suggest that the government can nurture happiness in the United States by encouraging marriage (read eliminate the marriage tax penalty) and allowing an open field for private religious activity (read make donations tax deductible for those who do not itemize their deductions).

Samuelson, Robert, “Poverty v. Inequality,” AP, May 3, 2001.

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Gay Jesus on Campus

June 3rd, 2001

The ascent of the doctrine of political correctness on college campuses has been well documented by Dinesh D’Souza in Illiberal Education: Political Correctness and the College Experience, Roger Kimball in Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education, and others. In a seminal work, The Closing of the American Mind, philosopher Allan Bloom provided the intellectual underpinning for the proposition that too often “higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today students.”

Their charter and nature ought to make universities intellectual free-fire zones where no idea is so repugnant, so inane, so unconventional or so brilliant that it cannot find a forum for expression. Freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are necessary prerequisites of academic freedom.

Unfortunately, many universities, fearful that protected groups might have their exquisitely delicate sensitivities offended, have instituted speech codes. The courts have been fairly consistent in striking down these codes as violations of the First Amendment, so they are often disguised as anti-harassment policies.

Rather than championing free speech, much intellectual energy on campuses has been devoted to devising subtle ways of enabling the thought police, without overtly violating the First Amendment. The Left have turned the ethos on campuses upside down. Free inquiry has too often been replaced by a Liberal orthodoxy no less repressive in its own way, than the Catholic Church’s silencing of Galileo for his suggestion that the Earth revolved around the Sun. It is not realistic to hide behind the notion that feelings need to be protected. Civil debate about fundamental and important issues will often and ought to evoke profound discomfort. Protecting people from intellectual and emotional distress hinders intellectual and emotional growth.

However, there are certain groups that appear to deserve no respectful deference, and are so retrograde that offending and insulting their beliefs is not only tolerated but considered evidence of open-mindedness. One such group is Conservative Christians.

The Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne is allowing performances of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi on campus. The play is set in Corpus Christi, Texas, but is not a very subtle retelling of the story of Jesus Christ. One of the main themes is the baseless assertion that Christ and his disciples were practicing homosexuals. Although the play’s defenders suggest that the play is a respectful and sympathetic account of one man’s theology and not meant to offend, the play is deliberately provocative. One cannot use the dialogue “F*** God” and honestly contend that people will not be offended. The play represents bad history and morally corrupt theology that is deliberately offensive to many Christians. If you believe the reviews, it does not even represent good drama.

Chancellor Michael Wartell defends allowing the play’s performance as part of the university’s charter of academic freedom on campus. Blind squirrels sometimes happen upon a nut and in this case Wartell is correct. Foolish ideas have a necessary place on campus. However, would Wartell mount the same difficult barricades if the play were offensive to the gay community? Would Wartell allow the performance of a play on campus that portrayed Matthew Shepard, the gay man brutally murdered in Wyoming, in a negative light? I would not bet on it.

This incident makes clear the double standard with regard to free speech and academic freedom on college campuses. Some ideas are protected with admirable vigilance, while others are suppressed or even prohibited. If you are Conservative or Christian your ideas can be lampooned and ridiculed with impunity. If you are a member of a protected group and adhere to the conventional orthodoxy you are not even asked to feel uncomfortable. Ironically, in the long run, such treatment will toughen Conservatives; hone their arguments and ideology, while the intellectual muscles of the Left will atrophy from disuse. Ideas that require suppression to survive will in the long run be recognized for their vacuousness.

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Jeffords Leaves

May 27th, 2001

The last words of the quintessential act of American rebellion, the Declaration of Independence, are “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont recently bolted the GOP to give Democrats the control of the Senate by one vote. Jeffords’s honor may have remained intact with this admittedly smaller act of rebellion, but likely, the prospects for his life and fortune, far from being at risk, stood to be enhanced. You may give Jeffords credit for sincerity, but certainly not for courage. Jeffords would have been courageous if he had switched when Republicans controlled the Senate and the move may have cost him politically.

Careful examination by groups as diverse as the American Taxpayers Union and Americans for Democratic Action shows that Senate voting records really do form a bi-model distribution. Democrats, even Conservative ones, tend to vote one way, and Republicans, even Liberal ones, tend to vote another way. Even purported Democratic Conservatives like John Breaux of Louisiana very often vote with their more Liberal Democratic compatriots. There are a handful of Republicans, most noticeably Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Olympia Snowe from Maine, who really do wander the barren and dangerous no man’s land of “moderation.” Jeffords’s voting record could really put him honorably in either party, but he would by no means be a mainstream Democrat. It will be interesting to see if Jeffords’s voting record changes now as a declared Independent.

Jeffords is personally popular in his own state so party affiliation provides at best only a slight advantage or impediment with Vermont voters. However, quitting the GOP and voting with Democrats gives Jeffords some important advantages. Term limit restrictions on committee chairs would have deprived Jeffords of the chair of the education committee. Because of his crucial switch, he was able to negotiate with Democrats for a critical environmental committee chairmanship. Just think of it, an Independent, selected to chair a Senate committee.

Jeffords argues that President George Bush is more Conservative as a President that he ran as a candidate. It is unclear what particular part of the Bush platform, his tax cut or his education initiatives surprised Jeffords. Bush’s legislative program is pretty much what he promised in his campaign. Bush was after all a “compassionate Conservative.” What did Jeffords expect, a Liberal?

Much is made of the fact that Bush neglected to invite Jeffords to a White House ceremony honoring a Vermont teacher as a small slap on the wrist for working against the Bush tax plan. If such a small act would cause Jeffords to switch political parties, it would imply a sorry petulance inconsistent with the dignity Jeffords wishes to project.

A more plausible reason for switching is that his political leverage is greatest now. As a Republican, he was just one member of a party led from the White House. The Democratic power base, by contrast, is now the Senate. If Strom Thurmond, straddling one hundred years of age, were to become incapacitated and be replaced by a Democrat selected by a Democratic governor, Jeffords would loose leverage in negotiations to switch parties. Sure, the Democrats would have welcomed his abandonment of the GOP, but they would have had to make fewer concessions to him given the majority they already would have.

When Senator Phil Gramm switched from a Democrat to a Republican, he resigned and submitted his name to the Texas voters for approval under the auspices of his adopted party. When Senator Ben Nighthorse-Campbell rose from a Democrat to a Republican, he, like Jeffords, who descended in the opposite direction, did not bother to resubmit his name for voter approval. It should be noted that when Nighthorse-Campbell switched, current Democratic leader Tom Daschle criticized Nighthorse-Campbell for not doing the “honorable” thing and calling for a special election. Neither Nighthorse-Campbell nor Jeffords did anything disreputable in leaving their parties, but certainly, Gramm has set the standard for party-switching honor.

The loss of the Senate is surely an important set back for Republicans. However, Democrats may find (as Republicans have) that it is often easier to be the party in opposition than to labor under the responsibilities of leadership. In addition, if the Senate proves too obstructionist it may become a convenient political target for Republicans. Democrats should be careful what they wish for, lest they get it.

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A Place in the Square

May 20th, 2001

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” — First Amendment to the US Constitution.

“The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.” — Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819.

Students from a North Carolina Christian school were recently visiting the White House. During a respite, students joined hands and began a prayer on behalf of the President. After a short while, the Secret Service broke up the prayer and reportedly told the group to “take it outside.” Perhaps the moment of prayer was slowing the progress of the tour group or perhaps the Secret Service was just awkward and did not know what to do. The scene was an inconsequential little incident, but it may serve to remind us how uncomfortable religion in public places makes many feel in what Stephen Carter has called the “culture of disbelief.”When Carter wrote the Culture of Disbelief in 1993, the Christian Right, at least the part typified by Pat Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, convinced some that churches were conspiring to institute a theocracy. Religion, many contemporary Americans believe, ought to be treated as a hobby indulged on Sunday mornings, with no real place in serious public discussion. Stephen Carter is a political Liberal and religious believer who, by contrast, laments that religion has been virtually eliminated from the public square, denuding public discussion of an important source of wisdom. When people of faith speak, people squirm.

The first freedom protected by the First Amendment is freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is different and distinct from freedom of speech. It is not just freedom of conscience. The First Amendment protects religious institutions from the state.

The worst political outcome is tyranny and one way to prevent tyranny is to have different and independent centers of authority. Religion is one such center. Religion and spirituality are at their best when they act in resistance. Stephen Carter calls religion a “bulwark against state authority” and suggests that “the idea of religion as an independent moral force … is crucial …to the role of religions as intermediate institutions to which citizens owe a separate allegiance.”

In 1990, the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor warned that Catholic public officials who supported abortion rights might be formally separated from the church, i.e., excommunicated. The action was considered an inappropriate intrusion of religious belief into public debate. Stephen Carter cites New York University law professor Burt Neborne as arguing, “When you accept public office, you’re not a Catholic, you’re not a Jew. You’re an American.” Carter argues it is possible to be both a person of faith and in public office.

Carter contends that Liberals cannot, on the one hand, argue that religious leaders have no business becoming involved in public policy issues, when they did not complain when religious leaders supported positions they favored. There was no claim by Liberals that religions should mind their own business when the Catholic Church in the 1950s threatened to excommunicate public officials who supported segregation. Liberals did not object when Catholic bishops supported the ill-fated nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s. Liberals did not oppose the Southern Baptist Church when it nurtured and supported the civil rights movement. If you accept the legitimacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson in the public square, Rev. Pat Robertson cannot be excluded because of his faith perspective.

Carter’s most trenchent argument is that government has a positive obligation not just to be neutral with respect to religion, but also to be deferential to and accommodate religious observance. When otherwise reasonable legislation comes into conflict with personal religious practice, Carter argues that the state should have to show a compelling interest before restricting such a practice. In a relatively rare act of deference, in Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Supreme Court agreed the state interest in the education of children was not superior to belief by the Amish that they should remove their children from school after the 8th grade. More often, such deference has not been shown. In Employment Division v. Smith, the Court did not respect the rights of members of the Native American Church to use the controlled substance peyote, a religious practice that predates the United States. There is probably not a little religious, let us say “insensitivity,” in the failure to recognize that state should not have prevented the “free exercise of religion” in that case.

If we expect people to be true to their conscience, we must accept that sometimes religiosity informs that conscience. This represents healthy respect for plurality in a democracy. Some people are thoroughly spiritual. They cannot and ought not be asked to separate the core of what they are in exchange for the right to be seriously listened to in the public square.

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Dear Justin

May 12th, 2001

Dear Justin,
It is an important parental prerogative to inspect a child before he leaves home to enter the world. On a cold a day, a parent will check to make sure their youngster has his gloves on, that his head is topped with a hat, and that his coat is secured. Since this high school graduation marks your entry into the world, it is time for your last minute inspection. This check is, of course, a silly indulgence. Most of what parents can help a child with, they have done over the years and any last minute words, no matter how sincerely offered, are likely to be quickly forgotten. A parent might be able to button up a coat at the last minute, but there are no quick adjustments to character. Nonetheless, permit me the illusion that these words will not be lost.

Any burdens you may have, Justin, are burdens of wealth; wealth of intelligence, wealth of humor, and wealth of talent. Those for whom success comes easily often suffer from two aliments: the inability to sympathize with people who are less fortunate and the tendency to become discouraged when faced with unexpected adversity. Empathize with those who have higher personal barriers to overcome and face with courage the inevitable obstacles life will put in your way. Do not loose faith in yourself.

This fall you journey off to college. In his first year at William and Mary University, Thomas Jefferson overindulged his social life and over spent his personal budget by 50 percent before his natural inclinations to studiousness took over. Avoid the example of Jefferson’s first year and leap to the model of his subsequent years. You have an important obligation to make full and constructive use of your gifts. Meet this obligation first.

You have honored your mother and myself by the young man you have become. At this point, I should point out to you the wonders of the world you now enter. It is perhaps fairer to warn the world of the wonder about to enter it.

Love,
Dad

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The Impact of Free Trade on the Soul

May 5th, 2001

“…There are times when the sacrifice of [the benefits of free trade] is in the broader national interest, or in the interests of preserving some of the values that Americans see as their obligation to export to other, less fortunate nations.” — Irwin M. Stelzer, “The Limits of Free Trade,” The Weekly Standard, April 30, 2001.

The economic case for free and unfettered trade is already well made. Both economic evidence and theory strongly support the conclusion that free trade increases the economic well being of all participants. Much of the increase in wealth in the post WWII era and the post-Cold War period, in particular, were strongly tied to the protocols of free trade. There will certainly be people and industries that are dislocated by the discipline of economic competition. In aggregate, however, wealth is increased and resources are more efficiently utilized. However, economic efficiency and welfare are not the only values against which public policies ought to be weighed. Free trade is more an expedient than an ultimate value.

Domestic labor organizations argue against free trade citing the lack of worker protection in foreign countries, but many times such arguments are motivated less by a concern for foreign workers and more by a fear of competition from poorer people willing to work for less. The AFL-CIO does not spend much political effort fighting for workers’ rights in the Sudan. Sudanese workers are not a competitive threat to American workers.

There are legitimate concerns that different countries might have environmental restrictions that are less stringent than those in the US. Some argue that trade should be used as a lever to compel compliance with US standards. While there is merit in this concern, it must be balanced by the consideration that different countries in different stages of development might reasonably strike a different balance between economic growth and environmental concerns.

In an ironic way, trade restrictions can reasonably be used as leverage to persuade countries to open up their markets. Imposing trade restrictions on countries that erect walls around their markets will mean that in the short run both the US and the other countries will be less well off. However, if such a policy opens up trade, short-term trade restrictions might prove salutary in the long run. However, sometimes even this argument degrades into an excuse for old-fashioned protectionism.

Free trade true believers argue that such trade encourages different countries to become more like us under the implicit assumption that being like us is a good thing. As free trade helps countries become wealthier, they will generally increase both worker and environmental protections. From a political standpoint, the economic discipline of free trade encourages a stable and open legal regime to mediate contractual disputes. The competition caused by free trade forces countries and companies to become more transparent and to loosen up the flow of information, which undermines repressive regimes.

However, the converse is also true. As we trade with other countries we may become, for better or worse, like them. Edwin Black recently published a book entitled, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. The book charges that IBM tabulating machines sold the IBM subsidiary Dehomag were used in the 1933 to 1939 censuses to create a cross-referenced data base of names, addresses, and family histories the Nazis used in implementing their Final Solution. The information from the censuses made the Nazi extermination of Jews more thorough in Germany than in occupied countries. (See Beatty, Jack, “Hitler’s Willing Business Partners,” Atlantic Monthly, April 4, 2001.)

In the 1930s there were already reports of anti-Semitic repression in Nazi Germany, evidence that was overlooked by IBM (and other US companies). The promise of profits made it easier to deliberately overlook inconvenient information. Hitler awarded Thomas J. Watson, the chairman of IBM, the Merit Cross of the Germany Eagle for his efforts.

Even if companies who are involved in trade are not active participants in repression, the promise of profits can cause these companies to avert their gaze from activities as varied as the anti-Semitism of the Nazi to the present day religious repression in the People’s Republic of China. Willingness to engage in trade with repressive regimes may in the long run compel repressive regimes to become less repressive, at least we can hope so. However, the long run can be a very long time and in the mean time our collective souls can be at risk.

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