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Title: THE FEDERALIST
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27 October 2003
Federalist No.
03-44
Monday Brief
CONTENTS:
The
Foundation
Insight
ICTUS Imprimis
Family
Culture
Liberty
The Gipper
Opinion in Brief
Government
Re: The Left
Political
Futures
For the Record
Reader Comments
The Last Word
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THE FOUNDATION
"The truth is, that, even with the most secure
tenure of
office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too
firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public
liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the
passions, and
politics, and prejudices of the day." --Joseph Story
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INSIGHT
"[M]ore and more we need understanding and appreciation
of those principles upon which the republic was founded. What were those
'self-evident' truths that so many risked all for, fought for, suffered and
died
for? What was the source of their courage? Who were those people? I don't
think we can ever know enough about them." --David McCullough
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ICTUS IMPRIMIS
"Every logical position will eventually lead you into
trouble, and heresy, and chaos. Every logical position is consistent, but
it is
logic which is in the human mind, not God's logic. The human mind is
finite and
cannot grasp eternity, and therefore the finite mind sees the infinite as not
graspable coherently. If we could grasp it all coherently, without
contradiction, we would be God. The person who insists on being logical to the
end winds up in a mess. I am not saying that we should not be rational. I am
not anti-intellectual. I am saying that the intellect by itself is helpless to
arrive at total truth." --Kenneth L. Pike
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FAMILY
"At the rate our government schools are going, they'll
be holding teen wedding ceremonies during recess if we're not careful. The
government sure knows how to pile on the programs. Do you think it ever
occurred to education policymakers that the reason we now have teen day care is
because we started teaching sex education in the first place? I don't think
this thought occurred to [former] First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, author of
'It Takes A Village'. Sorry Hillary --school is no substitute for a child's
family. According to African tradition, the village you mention in your book
refers to private citizens tending to the needs of neighbors. Sort of like
being our brother's keeper. Like all good government socialiasts, the [former]
First Lady has stretched the concept 'It takes a village to raise a child' to
mean that government can usurp authority over parents." --Star Parker
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CULTURE
"Unfortunately, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and
Clark expedition, which charted President Thomas Jefferson's prescient
Louisiana
Purchase and opened up the American West, is getting a lukewarm reception as it
makes its way across the country, tracing the footsteps of this historic
journey. Tepid crowds are greeting the re-enactors, which shouldn't be a
surprise in the wake of academia's roughly 40-year assault on what used to pass
for conventional American history. Is it any wonder that with a curriculum
that
reduces the accomplishments of Jefferson and the other Founders to 'slave
owners' the Corps of Discovery would be viewed as a less-than-noble lot? ...
Just ask Emily Isaacs, age 10, a fifth-grader.... Did you study Lewis and Clark
in school? 'We did a little bit,' she said sheepishly, 'last year.' What can
you tell me about them? 'I can't think of anything,' she said after an awkward
silence. And while she didn't know much about Lewis and Clark, she knew a lot
about Columbus. 'He brought over diseases,' she said eagerly. It reminded me
of the time I asked my nephew what he'd learned in school about World War II.
'Well, I know the Germans were bad,' he said with equal trepidation. 'But I
know we were bad, too.' In their defense, neither is the class dunce. They're
merely repeating what passes for history these days."
--Wall Street Journal
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LIBERTY
"Over the past three decades, our Founding Fathers
have
fallen on rough times. Disparaged by liberals and slandered by post-modernists
and cultural Marxists, their portraits have been removed from public buildings
and their presence stricken from textbooks. It is possible today for American
students to pass through elementary school and high school, and obtain a
university degree, without gaining any appreciation for the men who founded
their country. The horrendous events of Sept. 11 taught Americans that
denunciations of their heritage have consequences that go beyond the
babbling of
crackpot academics and minority 'leaders.' Patriotism and our flag made a
comeback." --Paul C. Roberts
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THE GIPPER
"Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking
to a
Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of
his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, 'We don't know how
lucky we are.' And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are! I had
someplace to escape to.' In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we
lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on
earth." --Ronald Reagan
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OPINION IN BRIEF
"Supply-siders differ from demand-siders in that they
stand with the tradition of classical economics, which focuses on the
production, that is, supply of goods. This is in contradistinction to
Keynesian
economists who focus on the demand for them. Supply-side economists recognize
that an economic transaction requires both the supplier of goods and a buyer or
demand for them. But they go on to say that supply is more crucial. Demand is
easy; the trick to a good economy is not in figuring out ways to get people to
demand more, because human demand is infinite. The trick to successful
economic
growth consists in creating an environment in which incentives are provided to
produce new goods and services. Supply-siders believe that government
policy is
best focused on eliminating disincentives toward or disruptions of the
processes
by which entrepreneurs produce their products. They focus on taxation,
monetary
policy and regulation. Although the supply-side school is principally
associated in the public mind with tax cuts, supply-side economists recognize
that monetary and regulatory policy can be every bit as detrimental to the
process of wealth creation as high taxes." --Jerry Bowyer, from his new book,
"The Bush Boom" --definitely required reading for informed fiscal
conservatives.
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GOVERNMENT
"In a free society, government has the
responsibility of
protecting us from others, but not from ourselves. Before government got into
the business of protecting us from ourselves, we did have a greater measure of
protection from others. Yesteryear's children rode their bikes or walked to a
friend's house, knocked on the door and let themselves in. Many families
didn't
lock doors until the last family member was home for the evening, and they did
that in poor neighborhoods like the one I grew up in. Yesteryear, when we went
off to school, parents might have worried about our crossing streets safely.
Today's parents have a different set of worries, such as whether their child
will be shot, stabbed, robbed, raped or given drugs in school. During the
pre-1960 years, neighborhoods --including poor neighborhoods --were safe enough
for women to walk the streets after dark. In fact, in places like Harlem,
N.Y.,
hot, humid nights saw children and adults sleeping on fire escapes and
rooftops.
Doing the same today might lead to arrest for attempted suicide. Speaking of
crime, if children did have a scrape with the law, our parents sided with the
police. Don't you wonder how so many Americans made it without today's
oppressive, caring, nanny government?" --Walter Williams
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RE: THE LEFT
"Liberal-left activist groups with pretty names
like the
People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People all understand that
much of what they want cannot be enacted into law by legislators who have to
face the voters at the next election. It can only be enacted into law from the
judicial bench by judges with lifetime jobs, pretending to 'interpret' the law
when in fact they are creating law. Judges who oppose having courts engaging in
social engineering are likely to find their own nominations opposed by liberal
special interest groups, whether their names are Robert Bork, Clarence
Thomas or
Janice Rogers Brown. And, since the real reasons for opposition to such judges
cannot be admitted publicly, phony reasons have to be concocted --and repeated
endlessly through the media until they become 'well-known facts.'....The
character assassins have perfected their art over the years --the dramatic
demonstrations staged for the media, the damning charges, the strident
rhetoric,
the sly innuendo. The question is whether the administration that nominates
people for judicial appointments is similarly skilled and similarly
dedicated to
defending them in the arena of public opinion....Is there any game plan in the
White House or the Justice Department to get the truth out about Justice Janice
Rogers Brown or will the lies have a field day? If there is a plan, there is
still no sign of it at this eleventh hour. --Thomas Sowell
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POLITICAL FUTURES
"The administration's critics would be more credible if
they had a few doubts of their own concerning their own judgments, such as
their
reiterated insistence that only mendacity can explain the failure, so far, to
find weapons of mass destruction. After all, they say, Rumsfeld, the president
and Secretary of State Colin Powell repeatedly asserted that Iraq's weapons
programs posed an 'imminent' threat. Such assertions by those three officials
may have numbered...zero. Rumsfeld is more bemused than angered, and certainly
not shocked, that critics profess themselves shocked and angered because he,
Powell and the president supposedly said, repeatedly, something that
none of them actually ever said. ... The
remarkable souring of political argument in 2003 continues as some Democrats,
with their calculated extravagance, insist there was 'no plan' for postwar
Iraq.
But if that were so, how is it that we have gone, in just six months, from zero
to 85,000 Iraqis participating in providing security? And what
was all that work done with the World
Food
Program before the war? ... Critics correctly fault the mistaken certitude of
some of the administration's prewar pronouncements. But critics indicting the
administration not merely for mistakes but for meretriciousness would do
well to
avoid that in their indictments." --George Will
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FOR THE RECORD
"Clinton said all the same things about Iraq that Bush
did --that Saddam had WMDs, that he would use them, that he was a threat, etc.
But he didn't do anything about it because he couldn't get French and Russian
support for taking any action. Under Clinton, the inspections had ended, and
the sanctions would eventually have ended too --because that's what the French
wanted." --Rich Lowry
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SELECT READER COMMENTS
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)"
The Federalist recently
said of New Hampshire elect Vicky Gene Robinson, 'If Robinson had any sense of
Christian humility, he never would have offered himself as a candidate,
knowingly precipitating this controversy.' It is precisely such insight, far
above the media din and spin, that makes
The
Federalist such a fine source of news and opinion. You conclude:
'The
core issue conflicting the Episcopal and many other denominations, is not
church
unity or tradition or politics or even homosexuality, per se. It is about
Scriptural authority -- the relevance of God's word as received through Holy
Scripture, the historic foundation of the Christian church.' For this reason,
your extraordinarily clear essay on the subject (
http://federalist.com/papers/03-32_paper.asp
) should be read by Christians of
every flavor, not just Episcopalians."
"Help me understand gun
control on
plastic guns (which can go undetected): Scenario---A hijacker uses a
plastic gun
to take over a plane that crashes into a building. Can we then prosecute
him for
having a plastic gun in a federal crime? Great thinkers, those
Dumbo-crats."
"
Federalist No.
03-43
stated that Alger Hiss was the first UN Secretary General. Trygve Halvdan Lie
from Norway was the first Secretary General, elected on 01 February 1946. And
Hiss was not convicted of spying.
Editor's Reply: Indeed -- more
accurately,
Alger Hiss was Secretary General of the San Francisco Conference that organized
the United Nations. He was convicted of perjury (the statue of limitations had
run out on the espionage charges) for lying about giving secret documents to
another Communist spy, Whittaker Chambers. Of his stint in the big house, Hiss
said, "Three years in jail is a good corrective for three years at Harvard." Of
a more recent notable case of perjury, one might conclude three years in prison
might also have been a good corrective for Bill Clintons schooling at
Yale.
"On the issue of spam,
Federalist
No. 03-43 noted that you support this legislation but 'legislating
an end to spam is all but impossible given current technological limitations.'
Tell it to my ISP. I've only received one unsolicited email in the past four
months, my ISP accurately put that one in my Bulk mailbox."
Editor's Reply:
Yes, but interdiction by legislation is very different than interdiction by
your
ISP. We fully support anti-spam legislation, but all good intentions aside,
bulk-mailers will not comport with this legislation and there is no way to
force
compliance as there is, as of yet, no way to accurately identify senders of
such
e-mail who choose to conceal their identity. We wish there was a way to stop
spam via legislation because often times when ISPs intervene, they have a
tendency to indiscriminately kill legitimate e-mail. For example, some 30,000
subscribers on AOL lost their
Federalist
for two weeks when AOL "interpreted" the large number of legitimate
Federalists being sent to their domain
subscribers as "spam."
"It appears
The
Federalist has fallen into a trap -- arguing for First Amendment
rights unless such speech annoys you. Anti-spam legislation is just the latest
encroachment on the First Amendment."
Editor's Reply: You have fallen into
the "elastic constitution" trap. To suggest that unsolicited commercial e-mail
constitutes "speech" in the First Amendment context, is to suggest pornography
is "speech." Canning commercial spam is not an abridgement of speech in the
Constitutional context.
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THE LAST WORD
"Hey, has anyone else noticed that you never see Osama
bin Laden and Ted Kennedy in the same place at once?" --James
Taranto
Lex
et Libertas --Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher,
for the editors and staff. (Please pray on this day, and every day, for our
Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world in defense of our
liberty, and for the families awaiting their safe return.)
--PUBLIUS
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