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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
CONGRESS ACTION: March 11, 2001
=================
NO EASY FIXES: There are no easy fixes to school shootings, but its not hard
to diagnose the problem. Root cause leftists, usually so eager to blame
society for individual criminality, are reluctant to do so in these cases
because if they did, they would have to hold themselves responsible. The
shootings are not "inexplicable", as one newspaper editorial put it. They are
all too predictable, because we have created a culture of death, and we have
taught our children well that life is cheap and expendable. If that 15 year
old in California had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and she killed that
life by abortion, it would be considered simply routine. For sick and aged
relatives we call for death with dignity. Video games desensitize children to
killing, as they pile up points along with the body count. Moral relativists
rise up in righteous indignation if anyone dares discuss morality in public
life, and civil libertarians treat religious values as plagues from which
society must be protected. We used to value life, now we glorify death. A
generation ago the value of each individual life was celebrated in the movie
"It's a Wonderful Life". Today such a movie would be mocked as hopelessly
trite. In our alleged sophistication, anti-social misfits become heroes in
offerings from Hollywood; and depravity of image, lyric, and artist sells
music videos. The past eight years of unpunished illegality in high public
office has taught our cynical youth (and many adults) that what is right is
whatever you can get away with; and even if you don't get away with it, it's
OK if it gains you media notoriety. There is no personal accountability for
the consequences of our acts, there are only excuses. Even in outright
criminality, the victim is soon forgotten and the criminal becomes the
victim. We know well the names of the killers in these incidents. Does anyone
remember the names of the dead?
The usual snake-oil salesmen have come out of the woodwork peddling the
usual, demonstrably useless nostrums of more gun control law, claiming that
criminals still have ready access to guns; in effect, admitting that decades
of gun control laws are useless in preventing criminals from getting guns.
Which defenders of the Second Amendment have been saying all along. The fact
is that a generation ago, guns were far more readily available, yet no child
ever thought of shooting up his school with one because he knew it was
morally wrong. Parents, teachers, and other adults used to be willing and
able to discourage and even punish anti-social behavior without too much
concern over harming the little recalcitrant's self esteem. To do so now
would be an invitation to a lawsuit. Today there is no such thing as absolute
right and wrong. Anti-social behavior is defended as self expression. Self
control over one's emotions and actions, previously considered a virtue, is
now a hurdle to be overcome. Nonconforming individuality, if perverse enough,
might even rate an appearance on a TV talk show. We think we have a God given
right never be inconvenienced by life's little obstacles; and if we are ever
offended we assume victim status, entitled to seek whatever redress satisfies
our emotional needs. Abortion is a Constitutional right, death with dignity
has growing support, and explicit violence from movies, videos, and video
games translates into cash in the bank. Those are the choices we make as a
free society, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that those choices
come without consequences. The self-absorbed vanity and arrogance of the
boomer generation, by rejecting traditional morality and the cultural norms
that have evolved over centuries, has sown the wind, and society is now
reaping the whirlwind. No, you cultural elitists, it isn't the gun. It's you.
WHO REALLY WON?: George Bush won the presidency, and republicans control the
Congress, but one might never know that from some of the policies being
pursued in Washington. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) campaigned primarily on
campaign finance reform, and got trounced. Yet he claims that loss gave him a
mandate to pursue his assault on free speech and freedom of association,
despite being overwhelmingly rejected by voters. Some people abuse their
Constitutional rights, so McCain is now echoing Bill Clinton's attempts to
limit everyone's Constitutional rights ("When we got organized as a country
and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights,
giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed
that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. When
personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." -- Bill
Clinton, March 22, 1994). Civil libertarians have long objected to McCain's
pernicious campaign finance reform, and recently even democrats have begun
voicing concerns over the McCain-Feingold "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of
2001" (S.27). But the media loves the McCain-Feingold destruction of freedom
(it gives them more power), and showers its sponsors with laudatory acclaim.
So McCain bulls ahead, sanctimoniously convinced of the rectitude of his own
freedom-destroying vision.
A significant factor in Bush's electoral victory was his advocacy of
significant tax cuts, which he is now trying to implement. But republicans in
Congress seem determined to reduce the size of that tax cut to the point of
irrelevancy, or to impose a "trigger" so that a tax cut never happens at all
if Congress simply goes on a spending spree. Egged on media scolding and
inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom, mealy-mouthed republican tax writers
and so-called "moderates" in the Senate have adopted classic democrat
rhetoric. "We" can't afford it (note that the "we" with whom republicans now
identify are not "We, the People" but "We, the Government"). It might lead to
deficits like in the 1980s (apparently oblivious to the fact that those
deficits were caused by profligate congressional spending, not tax cuts).
It's not progressive enough (meaning that those who pay very little in taxes
don't get to stick their hands deeply enough into the pockets of those who
do). "I don't think we can live with the 4%" (referring to Bush's proposed 4%
boost in government spending), said Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the
Senate budget committee. He went on to say that "Some functions of government
just can't take as big a cut as they're talking about." When was the last
time anyone in Congress worried whether your family budget could take the cut
when they raised your taxes? Most of those "functions of government" that the
Senator blathers about should take a far bigger cut -- like down to zero --
because most have no business being functions of government in the first
place. Read the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
Finally, Christine Todd Whitman, Bush's new EPA head, seems determined to do
exactly what the Clinton-Gore EPA wanted to do -- severely restrict energy
use to comply with the never ratified Kyoto global warming treaty. This even
though scientists can't agree on whether the planet is warming, and if it is
whether human activity has anything at all to do with it, whether restricting
human produced carbon dioxide and other gases will have any effect at all
(beyond destroying our economy), or even whether a few degrees of warming is
a bad thing. The difference between what Gore would have done, and what
Whitman is trying to do -- with the apparent support of President Bush -- is
negligible. So much so that Whitman won warm praise from radical
environmental groups at a recent European meeting.
The question is -- Are republicans acting like left-wing democrats because
they have been cowed by widespread public ignorance and years of media lies,
or is it true that there really isn't any difference between the two parties
when it comes to ignorance of, and disrespect for, the Constitution?
POLLS: Some interesting poll results were recently assembled: A majority of
Floridians oppose funding in their state budget for snow removal in Florida.
A majority of American oppose income tax cuts.
The most recent tax figures from the IRS show that the top 50% of income
earners paid 95.8% of all income taxes in 1998, while the bottom 50% paid
just 4.2% of all income taxes. So when a poll is taken of some allegedly
representative cross-section of the public, asking people who pay virtually
no income taxes whether they want a tax cut is no different from asking
Floridians whether they want to spend money on snow removal. Of course,
people who pay almost no income taxes couldn't care less whether or not those
taxes are cut. Ask only those people who actually pay income taxes whether
they want a tax cut, and a far different picture would emerge. Yet despite
the media claims that "the public" doesn't want tax cuts, little mentioned
was the poll taken immediately after Bush's budget speech, showing that
two-thirds of the nation in fact does want a tax cut of the size proposed by
the President. Left-wing media mouthpieces have magically transformed 67% in
favor of the Bush tax cut into "most people" being against it. Actually there
is no magical transformation of public opinion, and no mystery about it. It's
called media lying.
A PROGRESSIVE FAIRY TALE: Once upon a time, Hillary and Newt went shopping at
George's Electronics Superstore. Newt bought a new VCR for $500, and Hillary
bought a new radio for $50. George had just acquired the business from its
previous owner, Bill, so the following week, he reviewed the store's old
pricing policy. And lo and behold, he discovered that Bill's Electronics
Superstore had been overcharging customers for years (no wonder the previous
owner was able to afford that brand new Lexus). So, being a compassionate
businessman, George decided to refund 10% of the price of all their purchases
to all of his customers. So he announced that he would send Newt back $50 of
his money, and send Hillary back $5 of her money. But Hillary was not happy.
"Refunds for the rich!" she shouted. It was unfair that Newt would get back
$50, while she only got back a measly $5 -- not even enough to buy a new
muffler for her aged Volvo. So Hillary stormed into George's Electronics
Superstore, demanding that George make his refund policy more "progressive"
and more "targeted". Hillary further demanded that George should also send a
refund to her friend Al. Now George thought that last bit was just plain
dumb, since Al had never even bought anything from George's Electronics
Superstore, so what could George refund? But although he was a bit skeptical,
George knew that our nation has a "progressive" tax policy (from each
according to his means, to each according to his needs -- where have we heard
that before?), so he agreed to institute a progressive refund policy, but
only for people who had actually bought merchandise at his store. Under his
newly revised refund policy, he would send Newt back only 5% of what he
spent, and Hillary would get back 15% of what she spent. But Hillary was
still not happy, because Newt would still get back $25, and Hillary would
still only get back $7.50. "Refunds for the rich!" she whined once again.
Whereupon Tom and Dick showed up. Tom and Dick had been the business advisors
for the store's previous owner, Bill. They warned George that to send back
any refunds at all, to anyone, would be a risky scheme, because if he did so,
he would probably send his business deeply into debt, just like it had been
in those terrible years of the 1980s. Well, George knew that back in the
1980s, Ron had owned the Electronics Superstore, not Bill, and he knew that
back then, Tom and Dick had also been the business advisors to the prior
owner Ron. George also knew that Ron's Electronics Superstore had done a
great business during the 1980s, and he knew that the reason it had gone into
debt was because of a host of silly new ideas and pet projects that Tom and
Dick had spent the store's money on during those years, including their goofy
idea of sending money to people like Al who never shopped at the store (Al
was usually too busy watching Rosie on TV to go out shopping). So George
looked Tom and Dick squarely in the eye, and told them "It's the spending,
stupid!" And then he unceremoniously threw them out of his store. Well,
George instituted his refund policy (progressive though it was), and sent
Hillary back $7.50, and sent Newt back $25. Which made Newt so happy that he
went right back to George's Electronics Superstore, and used his $25 refund
to buy new blank videotapes for his new VCR. "Pretty good", thought George,
"I think I'll call it trickle-down economics". So Newt happily taped TV shows
on his new videotapes with his new VCR, George happily experienced an upsurge
of business at his Electronics Superstore, and everyone lived happily ever
after. Except for Tom, Dick, and Hillary, who were last seen wandering off
into the Arkansas sunset muttering something about a "vast right-wing
conspiracy".
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
========================
The School Shooter: FBI Threat Assessment Perspective:
http://www.fbi.gov/library/school/school2.pdf
Legislative text: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c107query.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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