| Fred Smith is
president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
|
|
Sensitize this! — News reports of
the recent tragedy in Mississippi where an irate white shot to death five of his
coworkers consistently mentioned the shooter's alleged strong biases against
blacks (four of his victims were African-Americans). Only a few reports mentioned
that the individual was in the midst of company-mandated sensitivity training
when he grabbed a shotgun and blasted away at his classmates. Maybe there is
something wrong with the idea of coercing everyone into a PC utopia. — Fred
Smith
| Ted Roberts is a
freelance humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. |
|
Is that the Fourth Amendment in your pocket, or . . . ?
— Down here in Bamaland we libertarians guard the
ramparts of freedom with all the vigilance of an Alabama coach scouting the
AuburnŠSouthern Cal game. Our ramparts, as we speak, are under siege by a
governor — a "conservative" Republican who is proposing an amendment to the
state constitution. It is all about taxes, as usual. He wants to lift a billion
and a half bucks from our wallets. And he's billed as a penny-pinching
Republican! Good lord, what would a Democrat do to our wallets, purses, and bank
accounts? Of course, in California terms this is small potatoes, but we
Alabamians hate taxes worse than sin. In fact, we say taxation is sin.
So we're under stress here in Bamaland. Auburn lost to Southern Cal last week
and Alabama has a new coach who looks and talks like an honest man. That's bad
news, gridiron-wise. How's he gonna win if he don't cheat? Maybe the guv should
coach the football team and let our new coach run the state.
Like I say, we're under stress. So, one of my local libertarian friends,
trying to stay afloat in this fiscal and football maelstrom, has come up with an
idea worthy of imitation. He has printed the Bill of Rights on a small thin metal
plate that fits in your shirt or coat pocket. (Are you getting it yet?)
You book a flight. (Has the light bulb flashed yet?)
You go to the airport with that tell-tale metallic freedom bell in your
pocket. (Get it now?)
You jump in the line and, uh-oh, the alarm goes off!
"Oh, it must be my Bill of Rights accorded me by the U.S. Constitution," you
remark with an ingratiating smile. You pull it out and hold it under the nose of
your inquisitor. You point to Amendment Four, which is highlighted in red.
Naturally, it decries "unreasonable searches and seizures."
The rest of the script, after your brief pedagogic lecture, is up to your
passion and belligerency and your dread of small confined spaces. — Ted
Roberts
| Jo Ann Skousen
is a writer and critic living in New York. |
|
9/11, goats, and atonement — It is
September 11 and, predictably, all the networks are replaying the shocking events
of two years ago. Somber newscasters interview family members of those who died
in the attacks, asking how they have coped. More than one newscaster has intoned,
"We must make certain that not one of their children lacks tuition money for
college, that none of their widows has to worry about how to pay the rent." My
response is an outraged "Why?" Why are the survivors of this attack entitled to
millions in financial support? Is it because death has caused them financial
hardship? Is it because their loved ones endured a horrific death?
A dear friend of mine just endured the death of her husband from brain cancer.
She took an unpaid leave of absence to nurse him during his illness. Who is going
to pay her mortgage this month? Her granddaughters are heartsick at the loss of
their beloved Papa. Where is their tuition guarantee? They feel shock and inertia
as life goes on around them. Where is their national outpouring of sympathy and
shared grief?
As I write this, children are somberly reading the names of all those who died
on September 11, 2001. Correction: all those who died in the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001. Many hundreds of others died of various causes that same day,
unsung deaths whose losses are felt just as deeply by their survivors. Where is
their tribute? It is where it should be: at home, or at gravesides, or in quiet
walks — in private.
Somber-faced newscasters call those who died in the Twin Towers and at the
Pentagon "heroes." They are no such thing. A hero is one who courageously chooses
to risk his or her own safety to rescue or protect another. Certainly some of
those who died in the attacks were true heroes. The firefighters, the police
officers, and many individuals who delayed their own rush to safety in order to
help another are indeed heroes. But most of those who died were victims, not
heroes, people who unwittingly went to glory by being in their usual places at
the wrong time.
Call them heroes if you must, but the real reason that we as a nation are
lionizing those who died in the terrorist attacks is because subconsciously we
have made them our scapegoats. In Biblical times, on the Day of Atonement the
Israelites would put "all their transgressions in all their sins . . . upon the
head of the goat, and send him away . . . into the wilderness." The goat was not
guilty of the sins he carried, but he wasn't a hero, either. He just happened to
be standing in the wrong part of the pen when the priest was choosing the
scapegoat. And in that sense, I suppose, he was a hero to all the other goats,
the ones who weren't "chosen."
Later, the priest would burn "the fat of the sin offering . . . upon the
altar," celebrating the community's escape from the consequences of their actions
during the year. Could our rush to award millions of dollars to the family
members of those who died be a similar burning of "the fat of the sin offering"?
Are we assuaging our guilt that it was them, and not us? In so doing, are we not
mimicking the attackers themselves, who promised the suicide bombers that their
families will be cared for financially for the rest of their lives? — Jo Ann
Skousen
| Thomas Fuller is
an assistant editor at Liberty. |
|
The Hermeneutics of Hulk Hogan — As
a kid in the '80s, I liked to watch professional wrestling: The Iron Sheik, Big
John Studd, George "The Animal" Steele, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, and,
of course, Hulk Hogan. At first, I believed the action in the ring was real.
Then, when that became unbelievable, I started telling myself that only the "bad
guys'" matches were faked. But it was incredible to me — impossible —
that Hulk Hogan would ever wrestle in a fixed bout. No way.
I was so loyal to the Hulkster because he was a hero. He didn't cheat, didn't
quit, and didn't lose. You could count on him. Every Wrestlemania, no matter the
odds, one way or another, he'd come out on top. And he didn't do it with drugs,
or with brass knuckles hidden in his boot. No. By God, Old Glory, and Apple Pie,
he did it with grit. And with his 24" pythons.
In those days, the world of pro wrestling was Manichean. Hogan was
unambiguously good, strong, and brave. His enemies, though possessed of low
cunning they sometimes used to don a guise of virtue, were unambiguously evil.
Each week, when Hogan came from behind to beat those thugs, it was a moral
victory.
I'm convinced now that '80s wrestling, like so much of '80s pop culture aimed
at boys and young men, was a microcosm of the Cold War. The bad guys represented
the Soviets and their satellites. The good guys were NATO. Hogan himself was
emblematic of the indomitable spirit of the U.S.A. Part refashioned Vietnam vet,
fighting down the ghost of that war again and again, part everyman, part
prefigured phoenix, clad in yellow and red like flame, symbolizing both the fear
of nuclear annihilation and the fantasy that America would rise from the ashes of
any ballistic holocaust, Hulk Hogan was unstoppable by necessity.
In fact, by the end of his reign in the World Wrestling Federation, fans were
beginning to turn against Hogan, largely because of his very invincibility. That
he never lost (except as the prequel to some more spectacular victory) began to
wear away at the illusion in the ring. No real warrior is that powerful, fans
viscerated. Therefore Hogan cannot be a real warrior. Therefore his battles
cannot be real. Therefore . . . none of it is real. Hogan had to go, and he did
— to a rival wrestling company, where he became a bad guy.
Luckily for my sense of order in the universe, I stopped watching wrestling
before Hogan's fall. It wasn't a conscious decision, just the natural result of
waning interest and waxing incredulity.
Then, a couple of years ago, I started watching pro wrestling again. The world
had changed. Only one of the wrestlers I recognized from childhood was still
working, and he was a villain. Sort of. It didn't take me long watching
21st-century wrestling to realize that the battle lines were no longer clearly
drawn. Villains were more sympathetic characters than I was used to. Heroes
weren't heroes because of their character, their fighting spirit, or anything
like that. They were heroes, as far as I could tell, just because they beat up on
women less often, looked prettier while slamming people through tables, and had
the crowd behind them. In other words, the good guys were just the wrestlers the
mob cheered for that week.
As a wrestling fan returning from the golden era of the '80s, I found it hard
to root for anyone, which made watching wrestling a lot less fun. But the crowds
of people in the arenas didn't seem to share my ambivalence. Their unmitigated
enthusiasm for the amoral avatars of postmodern wrestling at first struck me as
odd, then intriguing, and now has become a little unsettling.
Why has the world of professional wrestling changed so much? I can think of
two possible explanations:
- Postmodern wrestling fans are participating in the show more actively than
their '80s counterparts. They know it's all a fantasy, and they're perfectly
willing for their fantasy to be morally ambiguous. They neither desire nor need
virtuous heroes because, rather than suspending their disbelief, they're lucidly
playing with it. If this is the case, there's no ill omen to be augured here.
- That pro wrestling is as popular as it is, even though it now functions
without reference to traditional moral categories, indicates American virtue is
dead. Jefferson and Frederick Jackson Turner were right. Modern and postmodern
life have taken us beyond some point of no return. Nothing that mattered to the
Founders matters to these Last Men. There will be no rebuilding the institutions
of liberty, because the foundation has rotted out. Orwell, socialist that he was,
was far too generous when he suggested, "If there is hope . . . it lies in the
proles."
Well . . . there is a third possibility. Perhaps I'm taking World Wrestling
Entertainment a bit too seriously. — Thomas Fuller
| | | |
