Reflections  

Taking up arms, at last — On Aug. 2, 2002, former President Clinton told an audience in Toronto, "If the Iraqis ever invaded Israel, I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die."

Question: How many sarcastic remarks can be made about that declaration? Answer: an infinite number.

Here are the first ten that occurred to me.

1. It had better be a pretty wide ditch.
2. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to Iraqi public relations.
3. I remember that former President Jefferson once said, "If the Spanish ever invaded France, I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die."
4. So much for Democratic policies on gun control.
5. Well, it's better than spending the night with Hillary.
6. It all depends on the meaning of the word "fight."
7. He's finally doing his draft board proud.
8. I think he's given up on the Nobel Prize for Peace.
9. Dang! I didn't know that Ontario had liberalized its drug laws!
10. Maybe he meant that word that rhymes with "ditch."

— Stephen Cox

Judicial Watch — Normally I am as happy as the next guy when a politician is sent to the hoosegow. After all, if a person were honest, why would he go into politics?

But I won't join the mass celebration of the conviction of Rep. James Traficant and his subsequent move from the House of Representatives to the Big House. It's not that I doubt that Traficant was guilty of the charges against him — it seems pretty likely that he used congressional staffers for private work. What I don't like is the fact that Traficant alone among the 535 members of Congress has been singled out and punished for this misdeed.

A couple of years ago, I had occasion to spend some time with a group of young congressional staffers and ex-staffers. As the night and the booze flowed on, the conversation turned again and again to the shenanigans of members of Congress, shenanigans consisting mostly of using the resources of office for private advantage. Practically everyone was sharing stories about bosses' or former bosses' malfeasance of this sort.

With his goofy hairpiece, incoherent conspiracy theories, and customary peroration of "Beam me up, Scotty!" Traficant was very different from the blow-dried, suck-up-to-the-special-interests confidence men who inhabit the House of Representatives. But what cost him his job and his freedom was his refusal to play the political game. He couldn't be counted on to maintain the pretense that Congress is the deliberative body of a free republic. For that he was singled out and his job and his freedom torn from him.

So I overcame my temptation to say, "One down, 534 to go!" In my book, Traficant was at worst a harmless eccentric. I'd be happy to see him behind bars, but only after 533 former colleagues were incarcerated.

Make that 534. It's worth noting that Bill Clinton survived similar charges, even after evidence was made public that he had compounded his crimes with perjury. Last Sunday's paper included a brief note that author Jeffrey Archer was serving a sentence for perjury in a civil case — something that, when proof of Clinton's perjury was made public, over 200 members of Congress assured us never happens. — R.W. Bradford

Musing on a construction delay — There was a time when I worried about America turning into a police state. But not so much, anymore. Nowadays it's construction workers I worry about.

When I was a kid, police directed traffic. We even had a name for them. We called them traffic cops. We knew they were the law and, like it or not, they had the authority, we didn't, and it was a good idea to mind.

But not anymore.

Nowadays, there you are, tootling down some street you've tootled down dozens of times before, on your way to some important appointment you have calculated exactly how long it takes to get to, and a blonde with a pony tail, a yellow hardhat, and an international-orange safety vest steps in front of your car with a stop-sign-on-a-stick. What I want to know is, do I have to be polite to her?

And if I weren't? Would it be a life-altering mistake, like being rude to an airport employee?

And, what about the foremen? I've always been under the impression that flaggers are the lowest-paid, least-skilled workers on a project. What if I were rude to a construction worker and she called over the foreman and I was rude to him? What then?

Would they drag me from the car and tie me up with dry-wall tape?

If I resisted, would they club me into submission with their two-liter steel thermos bottles? Would they just plant a nail gun on my lifeless body to show they had only been protecting themselves when they stapled me to death?

What if I wasn't rude, what if I just ignored her?

Would she jump into her 4X4 and give chase?

If she couldn't catch me, would she radio ahead to other construction workers to make the intercept? ("You can dodge and you can flee, but you can't outrun my old CB.")

What if I didn't stop for them, either? Would I become an interstate fugitive from construction projects?

Would my picture show up in job shacks all over the country, making life a living hell until a special team of Federal Job-Site Enforcement Authorities finally hunted me down?

What if I didn't just run by her, but ran over her?

Would that be one of the 60 or so federal crimes that carry the death penalty, like killing an on-duty cop?

What if I wanted to direct traffic? Could I just buy a hardhat, and an orange vest, and stand in the road and make cars go where I want?

Or do I have to take some kind of class, first? Do I have to attend the Construction Academy and formally take an oath to "Swerve and Deflect" before society will entrust me with a stop-sign-on-a-stick?

What if I haven't been sworn in and decide to direct traffic, anyway? What is the penalty in this state for impersonating a construction worker?

Or does the real power lie with the paving contractor? Does he have to deputize me before I can stand in the street and tell people where to go?

There's probably more to this than I've thought about, but I have to break it off. The blonde in the pony tail and the yellow hardhat just turned her sign to SLOW and the cars ahead of me are starting to ease forward. — William E. Merritt

Mao tse-Thatcher vs. Deng Xiao-Blair — A recent article in the often interesting "Arts and Ideas" section of The New York Times reports on the intellectual debates in China. Reporter Joseph Kahn says that the dominant faction is "what the Chinese call neoliberal. Its proponents argue that China should complete its economic and social evolution that began under Mr. Deng [Xiaoping] by selling off state companies, shrinking the government, strictly enforcing property rights, and letting the market work its magic. The neoliberals in some ways tend to echo Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher." The other faction calls itself the New Left. (One wonders just how different are the Chinese words for "neoliberal" and "new left.") "Many in this school want the government to reduce inequality, provide a social safety net and intervene more in the market to tame the economic cycle." Libertarians would take issue with both sides, especially since Kahn says that some neoliberals like the Pinochet model — an undemocratic government that can take bold actions to deregulate the economy without worrying too much about popular opposition.

But look at it this way: in Red China, as we used to call it, 26 years after the death of Mao Zedong, the political debate sounds like a debate between Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. What an astounding development! One billion people are moving into the global economy and slowly being liberated from the backbreaking labor that has been their lot since time immemorial.

Perhaps an even more intriguing indicator is a report that comes to me from a devotee of a Houston Rockets bulletin board. The hapless Rockets used their no. 1 draft pick to draft 7-foot-5 Yao Ming from China. The Chinese government said that Yao could play in the NBA but would owe half his immense salary to the Chinese state. And young Chinese basketball fans are coming to the bulletin board and complaining that such a demand is outrageous. My correspondent, a journalist with a liberal periodical who must remain anonymous, says, "I wonder where these well-indoctrinated kids of communism got the false consciousness that having to surrender 50% of your income is wrong?"

Now, intellectuals and basketball fans with access to the Internet probably don't make up one percent of China's citizens. But these reports should give us some reason for hope as we confront the dismal state of American politics in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era. — David Boaz

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