Reflections  

Them dumb clods? — My friend Larry Sechrest has taken a lot of flack in his home town of Alpine for writing in the January Liberty ("A Strange Little Town in Texas") that people there are, well, pretty stupid. "The students here are among the worst to be found anywhere," he wrote. "I am prepared to defend to the death the proposition that Sul Ross, and this area of Texas more generally, is the proud home of some of the dumbest clods on the planet."

Apparently, some of those dumb clods took him literally: his car was vandalized and he got two death threats.

I suspect Sechrest has fallen prey to the common tendency of intellectuals to believe that all intelligence is reflected in literacy and numeracy, and to conclude that the subliterate and subnumerate are ignorant or stupid. Many kinds of knowledge are neither verbal nor numerical, but a good many intellectuals don't appreciate them or even know that they exist. It takes complex and specialized knowledge to chase down a steer and rope him, a talent that I suspect may be present in some of the "clods" that Sechrest wrote about in Liberty.

Any intelligent person who has watched a professional basketball game or two has noted that a good point guard employs a tremendous amount of complex intelligence in running his team's offense — despite the fact that he may be hard-pressed to put together a coherent sentence in a post-game interview. — R.W. Bradford

Doublespeak.gov — Who would have thought that an Internet domain name could be a great joke unto itself? The Department of Justice has created lifeandliberty.gov — a website that promotes and defends the Patriot Act.

Adding insult to injury — or, as the case may be, hilarity to horror — a banner atop the page quotes the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted . . ." John Ashcroft's webmaster picked a convenient place to stick that ellipsis. The next words in the Declaration declare that governments "deriv[e] their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." Even Ashcroft, I suppose, couldn't stomach that much hypocrisy. — Patrick Quealy

New Tyranny for Old — This is a reflection no one will like.

Am I hard-hearted? Am I lacking in the spirit of romance?

I don't think so. But the recent spectacle of thousands of people lining up in a nondescript government corridor so that a San Francisco city official with a political point to make would license them to be married didn't make me want to weep for joy, despite the testimony of city officials that it had that kind of effect on them.

I guess that counting future voters has a softening influence. I, however, am just a private citizen, and any mob makes me nervous. The fact that the mob consisted of gays and lesbians didn't make me feel any better than I would have felt if the same number of hets had taken leave of the same number of senses.

Marriage is a contract. Anyone should be able to make one. It's a different thing to say that marriage of one kind or another should be sanctioned by the state. That's a relatively new thing in human history.

Here's another issue. The tangible benefits of homosexual marriage, the benefits that gay partners could not get through normal civil procedures, such as writing a god-damned will, or simply by living together and enjoying each other's company, consist almost entirely of the ability to claim the health insurance benefits provided by one's spouse's employer and the ability to claim one's spouse's Social Security income after he or she has died. OK. The first benefit is a tax that you impose on your spouse's company by means of the government's decision to license your marriage. The second benefit is a tax that you impose on everybody else, in the same manner. Don't pretend that claiming these benefits is some kind of high moral enterprise.

I'd say pretty much the same thing about straight couples who get married in order to do this kind of thing. Either an employer wants to extend coverage to spouses or domestic partners — as many employers do — in order to buy the services of the working spouse, or the benefits are politically mandated and the nonworking spouse is ripping the employer off. As for Social Security, the benefits that it accords to spouses were originally intended to care for women who, in days of yore, were much less likely to have good jobs and pension benefits than their husbands. This logic falls far short of covering Steve, of Adam and Steve, Inc. — just as short as it falls in the case of nonworking modern heterosexuals. A nice set of entitlements you have there, Grandma.

Some other obvious problems are associated with the way in which gay marriage was suddenly "legalized" by the mayor of San Francisco. Suppose that "marriage: only hets need apply" is unconstitutional, yet another one of those things that weren't unconstitutional when any part of the Constitution was written but now, magically, are. Or just suppose it's a bad law. I'm not superstitious about law. But I don't want to see a mayor, not even the mayor of San Francisco, declaring a law null and void, just because he feels like it. Tomorrow he may feel like nullifying some other laws, laws that protect my life and property. That's why we have a constitutional system — to keep officials from doing any damned thing they feel like.

And what are we to think of the lemminglike character of the rush to marriage in San Francisco? I'll tell you what I think. I think there is far too much made of weddings in this country to begin with. A friend of mine just paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding. A middle-class friend. As if he could afford it. As if anybody could afford it. But the idea that thousands of gay and lesbian couples had spent every moment of their lives waiting, hoping, and praying to prove their love in the only way possible, then rushed in a mob to do so, a minute after the chance presented itself — this idea staggers the imagination.

Very few people are desperate to get married. They may be desperate for sex, love, or companionship, but those are separable commodities. Once people have secured them, their lust for weddings visibly declines. What we saw in the Retirement Home for Thirty-Five Year Olds wasn't marriage as romance but marriage as a political demonstration, a party thrown to affront "George Bush," a demon who was lurking everywhere in the prenuptial speeches that the happy couples lavished on the press. How touching. Don't forget the rice.

What a terrible reflection all this makes on the long struggle of homosexuals to throw off the chains of social disapproval and find their own way in society, no matter what other people think. That struggle, which was waged with great courage and horrible losses throughout the past two hundred years, has resulted in the elimination of every significant legal restriction on the dignity and happiness of gay people. It is an enormous victory for individualism. Evidently, however, the collectivist psychology remains. Homosexuals are not equal — at least in the minds of many homosexuals — unless they are licensed by the state. — Stephen Cox

Claptrap saves lives — live in the Pacific Northwest, a Mecca of that special brand of liberal who is so "enlightened" that he manages to answer the deepest problems of humanity in the space allotted by a 3"x12" bumper sticker. These bumper stickers attempt to mass-produce profundity, and are almost always pretentious, if not downright stupid. "War is not the answer" and "Visualize World Peace" are two of my favorite specimens. The quintessential example, however, is "Art Saves Lives." I could understand "Art is Beautiful," or even "Art Makes Life Worth Living," but "Art Saves Lives" blows me away. To a large extent, the history of humanity is the history of the struggle against hunger, war, and oppression. Today, millions of people labor just to get enough to eat, are at the mercy of natural phenomena, or live at the whims of tyrants. Maybe from the comfort of an affluent, Pacific Northwest community one can contrive to equate art with survival; maybe a romantic, self-congratulatory appraisal of what it means to be alive has some pull. That environment, however, is not the world. I have no doubt that these people are well intentioned. I don't think they mean to belittle the horror that for so many is the reality of survival. After all, art is beautiful and expressive; art, it could be argued, is what makes us human. But penicillin saves lives. Food saves lives. The rule of law saves lives.

Maybe I'm reading too much into a bumper sticker, but I don't believe it is a coincidence that the same people who put that bumper sticker on their car are often the people who believe that opening a "dialogue," an "exchange of ideas," is the solution to humanity's problems. It's a nice sentiment, one that certainly works in their neighborhoods, where everyone's needs are met, and everyone acknowledges the same basic codes of social behavior. Maybe someday the world will be a place where such approaches will work; maybe someday art will save lives. But that is not the case today, and I'm pretty sure there's a large segment of America that doesn't know it. — Andrew W. Jones

Safe until November — Is there going to be a draft? The question is in the air; Time magazine prominently discussed it in its turn-of-the-year issue. And there is evidence that plans are being slowly and quietly laid to impose one. By now, most people have heard that the government advertised late last year for volunteers to serve as members of Selective Service System Local Boards. Local Boards are groups of five citizen volunteers who, upon imposition of a draft, decide who in their community will receive deferments, postponements, or exemption from military service. The Bush administration denied that the timing of the advertisement had any significance, but when media began to comment, the ad abruptly disappeared from the website of the SSS. It has since reappeared on the front page of the site, but with a disclaimer: "There is NO connection between this ongoing, routine public outreach to compensate for natural board attrition and current international events."

Meanwhile, the SSS has requested $28 million in its 2004 budget, which is $5 million more than it got last year. Although this is not proof that the draft is coming, it does indicate that the SSS will be expanding. Also indicative is a report by GovExec.com: "The Army's plan to temporarily increase its force levels by 30,000 soldiers could become permanent if a handful of senators can garner support for new draft legislation likely to be included in the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill." A back door draft measure?

So far, the military has avoided using a draft by satisfying its manpower demands through "stop-loss" orders. Since last November, the Army has extended its stop-loss orders to cover active-duty soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing some 7,000 soldiers from either retiring or being discharged. But stop-loss orders are a short-term fix, at best. Already the murmuring of discontent within military ranks (not to mention their families) is rising. Enlistment is falling due to such draconian measures.

On the state level, there have been unmistakable moves in that direction. For example, in Alaska, Selective Service registration is now a requirement to get a Permanent Fund check — the annual "oil dividend" check that amounted to over $1,000 last year. Almost every eligible Alaskan registers for the check. The state plans to turn information from dividend applications over to the feds, who will automatically register the eligible Alaska males who haven't yet signed up.

No one expects such a dramatic and controversial move as the imposition of a draft prior to the November elections. Until November, everything Bush does will be about re-election. The Bush administration wants to explode any political bombshells right here and right now while there are several months of recovery time possible, which is why it is acting in February rather than in October to defuse claims that the president was AWOL during part of his stint with the Texas National Guard. The clumsiness with which the administration is proceeding may negate the strategy, of course, but I'm betting (and I think they are too) that people will soon be bored with hearing about Bush's military dental records. Nothing short of a sleazy sex scandal or the spousal murder of a pregnant wife can sustain public interest for a period extending into months.

If Bush is reelected, then I expect a draft to be imposed in early '05. If Kerry is elected, then probably not. I say "probably" because Kerry is not opposed in principle but merely pragmatically to imposing a draft. — Wendy McElroy

Ron Crickenberger, RIP — My friend Jacqueline called to me as she was checking her email. She had disturbing news about the Libertarian Party's former political director. "Ron Crickenberger has cancer . . . melanoma, in two lymph glands and in his bones. And it's inoperable."

"Oh Christ," I said. "He's dead."

I immediately regretted saying such a thing, even in private. But my little medical education told me that much. In terms of what it does to the human body and the relative rapidity with which it does it, advanced metastasizing melanoma is as close to a shotgun blast as any cancer can aspire to be. To paint you a picture, it starts when one of those little sun freckles turns purple and begins to grow tentacles like the fever dream of a hack science fiction writer. Its tentacles invade the lymph system, and from there every healthy organ of the body is as wide open as the harem after all the palace's defenders are dead.

I write that just so you understand what it does to the victim, the family, and their bank account; and so you understand and perhaps feel relief that within 24 hours of my friend getting that email, Ron was dead. He is survived by his partner, Noelle, and two children.

Ron was the LP's political director from 1997 until he was laid off last year. It was a strategic position for him. He was one of a very few activists who understood what makes a political party different from a think tank like Cato or an educational nonprofit like Advocates for Self-Government, or Liberty or the Elks Club or the Episcopal Church, for that matter. A party participates in elections. It targets elections that are within the reach of its limited resources. It nurtures a farm team of competent local officials who can seek higher office, and uses various means to keep the incompetent and "off-message" out of races and out of public view.

Ron was a political operator, as opposed to the rest of us mere activists and dilettantes. Campaigns & Elections magazine named him a rising star in 2000, despite the fact that he insisted on laboring for such a weird little political boutique. And he was more willing to stand up for his beliefs than most of the characters who show up for party meetings to hear themselves talk. Picture 50 or so libertarians staging a "street protest" of the drug war, in Orange County back in 2000, at the close of the LP convention, and a cop car rolls by slowly. The deputy in the right hand seat ostentatiously rolls up his window, so we can see he's not threatened by our rhetoric. I'm carrying a sign and it droops a little bit because I'm at bottom a bourgeois son of the suburbs who craves approval from such authority figures. Suddenly Ron is in my face, and he's shouting at the deputy. I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but now it sounds like "You can't handle the truth!" when I play it back in my head. Except not stolen from Jack Nicholson, and not on any script. Just the indignation of one guy trying to change the world and not getting a lot of help doing it.

I was one of those who wasn't a huge help to Ron. In fact, the night before I had selfishly hogged a joint he was trying to share with someone else. Without an offer. I just kind of grabbed it and inhaled it. It was rude. I don't even claim the mitigation of already being baked . . . and drunk. Fortunately that was not our only interaction. I would call him up from the headquarters of my local LP to his office in D.C. with some panicky and unreasonable request, and he'd be the voice of reason. We agreed that the drug war should play more of a role, not less, as a wedge issue for the LP, although it wasn't like I did any lobbying on our collective behalf. His advocacy of the drug war strategy, on the other hand, might have been one reason the LP decided not to continue its employment relationship with him after the 2002 election.

After his employment (and his health insurance) ended, Ron wanted to do some contract work, maybe for state parties. Since I was a staffer at one such state party, he asked to examine copies of any contracts I'd signed, and I emailed him one. Doing that made me wonder for a second about our mutual condition. He an LP former staffer, myself a soon-to-be-former state party staffer, wandering around the country and singing for our suppers in a party that, it was becoming clear, had already reached its high water mark. He thanked me later and when I had to discontinue my own employment relationship, I assumed I wouldn't hear from him again. Sadly, I was right.

So, it's 2004, another presidential year, and the party is not growing at all like it has in all previous presidential years. McCain-Feingold has slashed its revenues. Ron's gone, many activists have been defeated or have defected to the Republicans, and I was conned into a Libertarians for Dean mirage. Where does the movement go from here?

If the party were a survivor of a plane crash in the mountains, it would have been dispatched, mourned, and cannibalized to sustain the stronger survivors by now. Unfortunately, the party's future won't be that simple or pretty. A lot of people make a huge emotional investment in the party, at least until it's burned out of them. The idealistic and the competent will have to continue their forced alliance with its egotists, frauds, incompetents, and insane. A lot of time and talent is going to continue to go into the LP, with some transient successes here and there, but no particular impact on the continuing crisis. (I hate to say this, but a city councilman elected in some small town isn't going stop the wars in Iraq, on Drugs, or on individual liberty, and besides he probably could have gotten elected easier without the party.) And although it's blasphemous and cruel (to Ron, who probably wouldn't agree with a word in this obit) to parallel the man's fate with the party's, I'll say this in public.

The LP: it's dead. — Brien Bartels

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