Reflections  

Labour vs. women in labor — Obama: are you listening? More than four out of ten maternity units in Britain are turning away women in labor. With no Tories to blame, the National Health Service bureaucrats are, of course, opting to stress the bright side. According to the London Daily Mail (March 20), a cold-blooded spokesman for the NHS has pontificated that "it is difficult to predict precisely when a mother will go into labour and sometimes, at times of peak demand, maternity units do temporarily divert women to nearby facilities. When this does happen it is often only for a few hours and to ensure mother and baby can receive the best care possible." — David T. Beito

Win-win — The Washington state House of Representatives recently amended Senate Bill 6809, which creates a sales-tax break for low-income families. Under the amended terms, the bill must be approved or declined anew with each budget. (The state, of course, has droit du seigneur, if not ius primae noctis.)

The budget will always have room for a committee, with expense accounts, to "study the issue." The legislators will always have time to prattle about the great work they're doing for "disadvantaged families." And best of all, every two years the legislature will have an excuse to claim they have to raise taxes to pay for it.

It is, in short, the perfect bill. — Mark Rand

Doing Kermit — It never fails: every year, round about spring break, an article appears in newspapers across the land — and, though the dateline might change, though the words may be slightly different, it is the same article every time. Parents! Your children are whacked out on this drug! Right this minute! Check the garage!

The article includes, in various permutations, the following elements: one, an anecdote of dubious provenance about how the substance in question is responsible for killing or seriously injuring some teenager who, apart from its nefarious effects, would surely have gone on to be, at the very least, Supreme Court Chief Justice; two, a statement from a sheriff's deputy or other low-ranking governmental official about how this anecdotal evidence is "only the tip of the iceberg"; three, a list of "street names" for the drug that have never been used by anyone under 35; four, a list of signs you — yes, you!— can look for to see if your kids — yes, your kids! — are partaking; and fifth, a list of the drug's supposedly mindblowing effects, to ensure that, if your kids for some reason aren't huffing, snorting, popping, chugging, blasting, or mainlining the drug, they'll start doing so just as soon as they read that article (or hear about it secondhand, at even greater exaggeration).

An example, from the Washington Post. This one has killed "82 youths since 1995"; including a 13-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy. The number per year has been tailing off but, says Robin L. Toblin, of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (note that, among all those words, there's no title, only an "of"), "It's not known whether fewer children are undertaking the activity or fewer media are reporting." Children killing themselves through hazardous behavior? The media would never report that! It's a blackout! which, coincidentally, is one of the street names, along with "scarf game" and "space monkey." The symptoms include "bloodshot eyes, severe headaches, and disorientation after spending time alone," which could also mean you're yelling at your kid while he's shaking off a migraine. But then, of course, he wouldn't just have gotten the "cool and dreamy feeling" that Toblin assures us accompanies — go on, guess — the supercool activity of choking himself.

Now, this article is a bit of an anomaly, since there is one component missing. The language of the drug scare may have become pervasive enough that asphyxiation can be presented like inhalant abuse, but as there's not actually a substance involved, there's nothing in particular to be banned. And without that, there's a lot of legislators left without a grandstand.

Fortunately for them, there's another terrifying substance making the rounds — "the new marijuana," even: salvia divinorum. It has, of course, contributed to the suicide of a teen in Delaware (contributed, since none was found in his system at autopsy); and, as Mike Strain, Louisiana's Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner and former legislator, notes, that's enough to ban it: "You save one child and it's worth it."

The article (this one from something called the Treasure Coast Palm) adds: "Called nicknames like Sally-D, Magic Mint and Diviner's Sage, salvia is a hallucinogen that gives users an out-of-body sense of traveling through time and space or merging with inanimate objects." It's a description that could be applied to any hallucinatory drug; as if, failing to find out anything more specific, the writer fell back on the advertisements — Fly through space! Experience immortality! — circulated by online sellers of the drug.

No. If drugs could be said to have personalities (bear with me here), salvia would be a prankster. It's the black sheep of the hallucinogen family: first-time users, even fifth-time users, might get nothing, and the next time be completely incapacitated. The main benefit of marijuana is its utter predictability; as Stan's dad said on one of South Park's many great drug episodes, pot "makes you feel fine with being bored." Salvia is extremely unpredictable; anyone thinking of using it as a substitute for marijuana is likely to think that only once.

Of course, no one ever thinks to ask whether children would even bother with this "new marijuana" if the old stuff were legal. No, instead we get the likes of Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, saying: "As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one."

Keep plugging away, Mary. You'll get 'em yet. — Andrew Ferguson

The copper standard — I read in The New York Times that the copper content of the penny — the pre-1982 ones, which were 95% copper — makes them now worth about two cents. Somebody, I suppose, will start pulling them out to be melted, as the 90% silver dimes, quarters, and halves I remember from my youth were pulled out in the late 1960s. The American dollar, which used to be as good as gold, and in my youth was as good as silver, is now expressed in paper, clad copper, nickel, and zinc.

I am not as convinced as some libertarians that a gold coin standard is a problem-free idea. There were panics and resentments when we had it, and the supporters today tend to brush over them. But using precious metals was surely a fine way to ensure that money remained valuable, and that it felt valuable. Recently I put a ten-dollar gold piece in my son's hand, and he said: "That's heavy." Gold has heft. So does silver. It feels good. Even the copper penny was substantial in comparison to the 97.5% zinc ones, which weigh 20% less, and feel almost like the aluminum slugs they used in East Germany.

Modern American currency is not only reduced in value. It looks cheap. The new paper money looks like it was designed by treasury bureaucrats. The coins look and feel cheap, and the designs — the Lincoln Memorial cent, the Jefferson nickel, the Roosevelt dime and the Washington quarter — all are inferior to the designs that preceded them. The new coins that have come out in my adult lifetime — the Eisenhower dollar, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, the Sacajawea dollar, the new Jefferson nickels, and now the John Adams dollars, etc., — are all hideous. These new "golden" dollar coins remind me of Chuck E. Cheese tokens. — Bruce Ramsey

My life for my art — Bar owners in the state of Minnesota have stumbled upon an interesting way around the recently passed smoking ban — the Theater Loophole. Apparently, politically correct lawmakers had decided to protect the performing arts from the oppressive regulations other entertainment venues have learned to live with.

Since live theater occasionally requires performers to smoke, and Minnesotans are purists when it comes to art, the Minnesota law permits an exemption from the indoor smoking ban for live theater performers. Apparently the health risk caused by exposure to SHS (secondhand smoke) is not as important as artistic integrity. It's okay for a bar or two to face bankruptcy from the exodus of smoking patrons, but God forbid we have actors using candy cigarettes during a show at the Guthrie Theater.

So bar owners have devised an interesting way to exploit the loophole: Theater Nights. Breaking the fourth wall of the stage, bars put on a "performance" where everybody in the bar is a part of the improvised show. The scene is a Minneosota bar, where a bunch of blue collar workers stop by after work for a smoke and a drink. The show runs about nine hours, and the dramatic conclusion is when the bartender announces "Last Call."

Local police, who never really liked the idea of enforcing a smoking ordinance in the first place, have respected the performing arts by letting these shows continue uninterrupted. Right now it seems that the only way around the loophole is to ban cigarettes from live performances, or appoint a state board endowed with the power to determine what is and isn't live theater. Either option whiffs of censorship, and is highly distasteful in a state where allegiance to the performing arts is considered paramount.

Don't you love ironic plot twists? — Tim Slagle

An end to illusions — On March 25, Iraqi government forces launched an offensive to clear the city of Basra, which dominates the oil-rich south of the country, of forces loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went to Basra to oversee the battle, which he termed "a decisive and final" one.

President Bush, speaking at Wright-Patterson air base two days after the offensive opened, said the following: "This offensive builds on the security gains of the surge and demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them."

If anyone needed further evidence to show just how dim the president is, the Wright-Pat speech provided it. Bush should've waited to see how the offensive turned out before speaking. Instead, he recklessly threw what little intellectual and moral capital he still possessed behind an untried foreign government and military.

Maliki and Bush both came a cropper within days. The offensive stalled almost immediately. Iraqi forces made little progress; many abandoned their weapons and vehicles. While the Basra fighting was on, followers of al-Sadr staged massive demonstrations in Baghdad. Sporadic fighting also occurred in the capital, and the Green Zone underwent daily shelling by rockets and mortars, leading to some deaths. So much for the pacification of Baghdad.

Fighting also broke out in other southern cities such as Kut and Hilla. The Sadrists showed that they remain an untamable force in Iraq. The U.S. Army and Marines could crush them, but as I've stated many times in Liberty's pages, the U.S. leadership will never commit to such a fight, simply because our casualties would be enormous.

The result of Maliki's "final" offensive was humiliation for both his government and the U.S. Before a week was out, Iraqi politicians had to travel to Iran, where al-Sadr was ensconced, and negotiate a settlement that was virtually dictated by the radical cleric.

The Basra defeat revealed the weakness of the Iraqi Army and police. It showed that the surge has failed to undermine the Mahdi Army, the most powerful force in the country. The operation resembled nothing so much as the South Vietnamese incursion into Laos in 1971, which ended similarly in fiasco. The current Iraqi government has been weakened, perhaps fatally so.

Once again, we see U.S. policy in the Middle East teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. This time Bush can't call on an infusion of fresh troops to stabilize the situation. Where Iraq goes from here depends upon the will of Muqtada al-Sadr and his patron, Iran. The next U.S. president will need to reach out to both if it wishes to salvage anything from the Iraq debacle. — Jon Harrison

Charlton Heston, R.I.P. — It seems like there have been a lot of obituaries and memorials to write in the last year or so. In journalism circles, obits are considered the basis of all good reporting. The best ones offer the basic facts of a notable person's life — plus some small bit of insight that requires more than just reporting.

Recently, I received a couple of calls from readers who took issue with my memorial Reflection on William F. Buckley, Jr. I'd written that Buckley's rationalizations against the civil rights movement in the 1960s were one of his significant errors; both callers complained that his states-rights arguments were better than rationalizations. One guessed (correctly, as it turns out) that I'm too young to remember firsthand how "troubled" the mid-1960s were.

I didn't bring up Charlton Heston to those callers, but I should have.

Heston was on the right side of the U.S. Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s. He gave critical moral and financial support to Martin Luther King when King was fighting codified racial segregation and institutional racism in the South. He was friendly with writers and intellectuals like James Baldwin — when Baldwin was writing well about the toll that bigotry and hatred take on human dignity.

Later, when King was gone and a generation of mau-mau artists hijacked the Civil Rights movement, Heston moved on to other political activities. You're probably familiar with his long tenure as head of the National Rifle Association.

To me, a person's understanding of the 2nd Amendment is the clearest test of that person's validity as a libertarian. The 2nd Amendment protects the individual right of a person to arm himself. Period. Arguments about "collective rights" are just statist sophistry. This sophistry is the reason I can't take a group like the ACLU — despite some good work that it does — seriously as a philosophical or political advocate.

Heston supported the clear meaning of the 2nd Amendment. And he did so even though he was mocked in some circles for it. With the early King as one of his models, why would Heston care about the ridicule of peevish minds?

After Heston died in early April, some eulogists said that he was "complex" for having bridged the gap between the Selma marches and the NRA. I doubt Heston would have considered this a complex matter. The right of a man to be treated equally as all others is very close to his right to arm himself so that he and his family aren't beaten or molested.

If more black people living in the South during Jim Crow had been armed, there might have been fewer lynchings.

Of course, the way that Heston earned the money and reputation to afford his "complexity" was as a movie and stage actor. Critics say that he often overacted.

In the 1980s, I saw Heston in a stage version of the Caine Mutiny Court Martial. He played the damaged Captain Queeg, raving about frozen strawberries and rolling ball bearings obsessively in his hand. Maybe he was hamming it up. But, more than 20 years later, I can remember the performance very clearly. Firsthand. — Jim Walsh

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