Reflections  

The furry face of evil — On April 24, Congress gave us an instructive little display on how seriously they take your liberty and your money:

Washington (CNN) — In what may be the first appearance of a Muppet before a congressional committee, "Sesame Street" favorite Elmo donned his best suit and tie and took his cause to Capitol Hill.

The red, furry friend to toddlers everywhere gave evidence before the Education Appropriations Subcommittee to urge more spending on music research and musical instruments for school programs.

The Washington Times gave this account of Elmo's testimony:

"Please Congress, help Elmo's friends find the music in them," Elmo pleaded. He added, "I love you, Congress." "And my grandchildren love you too, Elmo," said Rep. Ralph Regula, Ohio Republican and the panel's chairman.

A grown man talking to a goddamned puppet is bad enough. But a grown man who's a congressman talking to a puppet while he's trying to decide how much of our money to spend? Thomas Jefferson would gouge his own eyes out and wander Pennsylvania Avenue gibbering like a madman if he could see what we've sunk to. It's hard to keep your sense of humor about it when our political culture goes far beyond satire. — Gene Healy

Nomenclatural note — If naming sports teams after Indian tribes is an unacceptable insult, shouldn't we also change the names of other things named after Indians? Like Utah, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming . . . — Dave Kopel

Making the world safe for hypocrisy — Hillary Clinton famously observed that the 1980s was "the decade of greed," epitomized by former President Reagan's accepting fees totaling $2 million for public speaking after he left office. Now it turns out that Sen. Clinton's husband Bill, who entertained us as president in the non-greedy 1990s, has accepted some $9.2 million in speaker's fees in his first year out of office.

Lest you think that the first family emeritus is being hypocritical, Julia Payne, the former president's spokeswoman, explained the fees in these words: "The paid speaking engagements by the former president are not instances where he goes in and out and makes this kind of money. He delivers a very thoughtful and compelling speech on globalization and he will also take questions from the audiences."

Oh, now I see. — R.W. Bradford

Frisking Al Gore — Here is the true index of the dominance of modern liberalism. Al Gore tries to get onto an airplane, and he gets searched. To determine whether he's a terrorist. Al Gore. Late Democratic nominee for president. He is searched, to determine whether he is an Islamic terrorist. Well, why is he being searched? Because, according to the foundational doctrine of modern liberal political correctness, everyone must be treated precisely the same, even or especially when there is no reason to do so. As a result, if you are in line to board a flight to Kansas City, and there's Al Gore in the line, and there's also a Saudi Arabian citizen, male, age 27, sweating and twitching and grabbing his balls like it's the last time he'll ever touch them, he and Al Gore have the same chance of being searched.

Of course, this is grossly offensive to 99% of Americans of every age, ethnicity, and political perspective. But it's the practice of the government — which, by the way, is allegedly conservative. You've heard the old expression, "We are all Marxists now." How about, "We are all modern liberal idiots now?"

As for Al Gore, I take it back. I hope he gets searched every time he gets on a plane. And I hope they find the evidence: the idiotic ideas that produced these idiotic policies. — Stephen Cox

Defining racism down — "A black person cannot be racist." Or so said Michael Moore in his May Newsweek website interview. He was promoting his new book "Stupid White Men."

It is possible that Moore was trying to be funny. I wonder what Reginald Denny would say if he were asked to tell us which aspect of Moore's quip he found to be the most amusing. Joking or not, Moore, who happens to be white, went on to explain his statement this way: "Racism means that you have the political power to back up your prejudice, and to enforce and to make certain that your prejudices become either law or the way your society functions."

Oh, now I get it. This newspeak definition has been circulating on campuses for years, though no reputable dictionary has joined the campaign to help hijack English by publishing this tortured definition. On a still night by the glow of the tube, however, one can hear the tom-toms of political correctness growing louder and sense the spines of the publishers growing weaker.

Consider the now-defunct South African system of apartheid. Many of its proponents probably fulfilled the requirements of Moore's definition. When the proponents of apartheid lost political power, however, they also lost the ability to translate their beliefs into law. Michael Moore may not like it, but by his truncated definition, in South Africa today a Boer person cannot be racist.

Don't blame me; it's not my definition. — Scott Chambers

Fly the defenseless skies — The Federal Aviation Administration opposes the proposal from airline pilots that they be allowed to carry hand guns on aircraft — one policy that could have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I hope pilots start making the following announcement at the beginning of each flight:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I hope you enjoyed standing in line for two hours while a minimum wage grunt poked and prodded and felt you up. All this special treatment is courtesy of the FAA, which refuses to allow us trained, military professionals the ability to defend our ships from terrorists. If we were trusted to defend this aircraft, just as much as we are trusted to bring you home safe, most of the security precautions such as taking off your shoes and intrusive x-ray machines would have been irrelevant. Finally, I would like to remind you that in the unlikely event of a hostile takeover of this airplane, the United States Air Force has been instructed to shoot us out of the sky; at which point you will all be free to smoke during our very final descent. Thank you for flying Defenseless Air." — Tim Slagle

Defining liberty — A perennial argument of libertarians is over how to define themselves to the public. Over time, the favorite has been the non-coercion principle. This unfortunately spawns a swarm of questions — about national survival in a war, or in an AIDS epidemic, or how to deal with lead pollution from gasoline, or the labeling of food and drugs, how to build roads, or how to pay for police, courts, and national defense. The main problem with the non-coercion principle is that it leads directly to a position that must obviously be compromised.

To focus on specific issues is to become too radical in another respect. Libertarians become the champions of gambling, prostitution, pornography, racial discrimination, usury, greed, hate, abortion, cigarettes, drugs, guns, and riding motorcycles without helmets. Well, we are opposed to prohibiting those things, or most of them, but that does not mean we are for them, and want proudly to wear them as badges.

What, then? I think what distinguishes libertarians in this culture is the principle of self-responsibility. It is the idea that each able person has to provide for himself, his spouse, and his children; that the risks of disease and old age are an individual and family problem, and that the very least, food, housing, and medical care should not be given away by the government to able adults. It is that to shield an able person from the risks and obstacles of life is to bore them and weaken them, and to make life trivial.

That idea distinguishes all libertarians, radical and not-so-radical, from the mainstream. It focuses attention not on the battles they have mostly won, such as free speech or the free market, but issues they continue to lose, such as free medicine. It gives libertarians common cause with some conservatives, a group that often says it's for self-responsibility but often isn't. And most of all, it gives them an ideal that is personal as well as political.

The writer who has come closest to this idea is Charles Murray, who, not incidentally, has made a name for himself outside the libertarian ghetto. Perhaps one reason is that his message is the right one. — Bruce Ramsey

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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