Right Wing Nut House

It’s been an article of faith for conservatives since before Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated War on Poverty was announced in 1964 that the goals of government social programs that benefit the poor should be geared toward helping the recipients of such aid achieve eventual independence so that they could live productive lives and contribute to society. What emerged from the flurry of legislation proposed by LBJ and his anti-poverty gurus was a nightmare of generational dependency that lowered self esteem, destroyed families, led to an epidemic of teenage pregnancy, and contributed to a breakdown in values that made recipients easy prey for the siren song of drug addiction and the criminal lifestyle. This has been the de rigueur of conservative critiques of the welfare state.

Condemning several generations of poor, mostly black people to lives of invisible desperation was forseen by one of the most thoughtful men of 20th century public life, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan made himself the bane of liberals and conservatives alike during his quarter century of service in the Senate. Prior to that, Moynihan had served in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Administrations, putting his brilliant mind to work on the problems associated with poverty and dependence. George Will called him “the most penetrating political intellect to come from New York since Alexander Hamilton.”

Moynihan was the architect of many of the social safety net programs conservatives love to hate; relaxation of AFDC rules, WIC, housing subsidies, and changes in a vast array of existing social programs were all either proposed or strenuously backed by Moynihan during his service in government. But perhaps his greatest contribution came from a book he wrote in 1965 entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. In the starkest terms possible, Moynihan laid out the case not for the elimination of social programs helping the poor, but a redirecting of priorities that would end dependence and help the rapidly developing “underclass” (a term he coined) achieve independence from government. For daring to point out the bleak statistics for black families at the time, he was skewered by the more radical anti-poverty warriors who were moving government programs toward an entirely different goal; a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI).

Some of the statistics Moynihan used in his book were frightening; 26% of children born out of wedlock (a staggering 70% today), a divorce rate of 23% (nearly 70% today), and single parent households at nearly 40% for black familes (almost 80% today).

But Moynihan’s critique went beyond the numbers. His analysis went to the heart of the importance of family in any society:

More than most social scientists, Moynihan, steeped in history and anthropology, understood what families do. They “shape their children’s character and ability,” he wrote. “By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child.” What children learned in the “disorganized home[s]” of the ghetto, as he described through his forest of graphs, was that adults do not finish school, get jobs, or, in the case of men, take care of their children or obey the law. Marriage, on the other hand, provides a “stable home” for children to learn common virtues. Implicit in Moynihan’s analysis was that marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children’s prospects. Single mothers in the ghetto, on the other hand, tended to drift into pregnancy, often more than once and by more than one man, and to float through the chaos around them. Such mothers are unlikely to “shape their children’s character and ability” in ways that lead to upward mobility. Separate and unequal families, in other words, meant that blacks would have their liberty, but that they would be strangers to equality. Hence Moynihan’s conclusion: “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure.”

This kind of thinking eventually led Moynihan to another inescapable conclusion. By breeding dependence on government for subsistence, we will make it impossible for the poor to take care of themselves:

Millions of people, Moynihan notes, have for generations become accustomed to living outside the circle of social responsibility and economic productivity. Under the AFDC program alone, started sixty years ago to provide temporary help to a relative handful of widows and jobless women with children, well over half the families receiving benefits now begin as AFDC families. In almost all cases, these are women with children born out of wedlock, and Moynihan notes that “there are millions of families in just this circumstance.”

A major political problem, and it is also a compassion problem, is that most of the country is untouched by this catastrophe. Those who are on AFDC for a short time are more or less evenly distributed across the land, while those who are more or less permanently on the dole are concentrated in the cities. In 1993, Moynihan notes, 59 percent of the children in Atlanta, 66 percent in Cleveland, 55 percent in Miami, 57 percent in Philadelphia, and 66 percent in Newark were receiving AFDC. Most of these children and their mothers have never known and possibly will never know any other way of life than living on welfare. In many cases, the mothers and grandmothers of these mothers never knew anything but welfare.

In 1996 as Congress prepared for welfare reform, many conservatives believed that Moynihan would join an effort the Senator himself had been pushing for since he arrived in Washington 20 years earlier. Instead, Moynihan ended up issuing dire warnings that millions would become homeless as well as this prescient take on the effect of welfare reform on young, black males:

Young males of the welfare-dependent mainly black urban underclass “can be horrid to themselves, horrid to one another, horrid to the rest of us.” Dismantle the defense system of the welfare status quo and you loose them upon society.

Most revealingly and depressingly, Moynihan concludes his declaration by drawing an analogy with the “deinstitutionalization” of mental patients in the 1960s and 1970s. That fatal step resulted in the hundreds of thousands of “homeless” wandering our streets in alcoholic and drug-induced stupor. But most of them are not dangerous. The thugs who do “horrid things” carry knives and guns. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” according to Kennan, were ideological and nationalistic. The sources of welfare conduct, according to Moynihan, are in congenital criminality and general social incompetence. In both cases, there is nothing to be done for it except containment.

In short, Moynihan had gone from advocating independence for welfare recipients to pushing for “containing” the problem. In other words, maintaining the status quo.

For containment is precisely what the government had been doing since at least 1968 when the blue ribbon panel charged with investigating the urban riots that nearly destroyed the inner cities in the late 1960’s cited “two Americas” as the major cause of black frustration and anger. Headed up by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, the Commission determined that virulent white racism was the cause of black rioting and that the solution was radical income redistribution.

What happened next was again predicted by conservatives. In order to oversee this income redistribution, a huge bureaucracy was created along with an alphabet soup of agencies that worked hand in hand with a growing number of anti-poverty NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations) - including groups like the Black Panthers and the notorious Black P-Stone Nation in Chicago who were little more than street gangs. In effect, the federal government was involved in a protection racket believing that they were solving the income inequity problem of black versus white by creating dependence.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. All these income distribution schemes did was hasten the destruction of the black family which led to a vicious cycle of more dependency, more frustration, and more anger. Even the welfare reform of the 1990’s did little to change what had become a national shame; a permanent underclass unable to escape the ravages of poverty. Millions of young men have grown up, lived, fought, and died in the streets who didn’t have to all because the compassion merchants and anti-poverty bullies have failed to grasp the debilitating effects of dependence on government and the causal relationship between that dependence and the “otherness” felt by African Americans in general but especially by young black men.

This feeling of being separate takes many forms. In education, it has created a culture where black achievement is frowned on by some lest a student appear too “white.” It has also created seperate ideals with regards to employment, relationships, and neighborhood.

Has dependence also created a separate attitude on the part of the underclass toward the law?

The explosion of anarchy and mayhem in New Orleans will be studied for years and answers may never be found. But whatever the reason, it goes far beyond a “few malcontents” taking advantage of a lack of law enforcement. If it were a small number, it wouldn’t take 15,000 National Guardsmen to restore some semblance of order. Nor would people out for a lark be shooting at helicopters evacuating desperately sick people from hospitals. Something much deeper was at work in New Orleans, something beyond the disaster, beyond even the harsh and reportedly brutal treatment of young black men by the New Orleans Police Department in the past.

An economic determinist would point out that the looters were lashing out at whites by stealing their possessions and engaging in other criminal acts. This was what the Kerner Commission found back in 1968. The problem with that assumption is that cities have changed dramatically in the last 40 years. Where New Orleans used to have a majority of white people as citizens it is now 2/3 black. The people have elected a black Mayor. A black Police Superintendent has been named. Black elected officials permeate the government. The question then arises; if nearly 70% of the population is black in a city run by a black government, why were so many involved in lawless activity?

Clearly, race is not the answer. There must be something else at work besides color. Part of the explanation must be this “otherness” felt by young black men who have different perception of the law and how it doesn’t apply to them. Growing up as they have in a totally dependent environment where food, shelter, clothing - life itself - is dispensed by a formless, shapeless government, they have carved out a separate existence to achieve a twisted kind of independence and freedom. It’s all they’ve got.

Do we have the courage to discuss this otherness issue without the usual namecalling into which every single conversation regarding race degenerates? Jeff Goldstein has a challenge:

Rich Lowry [of NRO] sees the writing on the wall and is wary of what he presumes will be the “toxic and unhealthy” “post-catastrophe debate.” But I welcome it, suspecting as I do that any attempt to racialize this catastrophe will result—after the inevitable and necessary public debate—in a huge setback to the identity politics movement.

Bring it on.

Since the beginning of the republic we’ve failed to talk about the issue of race. If indeed the hurricane strips away the politics that prevent such a discussion, I’m all for it. As Goldstein says… Bring it on.

I take a backseat to no one when it comes to love and respect for the flag of the United States of America.

The single most inspiring sight in my life was the shot of that huge flag being erected over the still smoking ruins of the World Trade Center. It was a supercharged Iwo Jima, as electrifying a patriotic moment as perhaps Francis Scott Keye’s relief and pride at seeing the flag flying over Fort McHenry. When grown men can cry like a baby at the sight of a piece of cloth fluttering in the smoky, windswept wound that was ground zero, something more is at play in the human heart than simple love of country. There is faith. A faith as deep as any religious belief in what that flag represents.

A little bit of that flag was torn up today. The Congress decided that the United States government will be able to tell you what kind of political speech is acceptable:

The House of Representatives approved, for the fifth time, a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the U.S. flag, setting the stage for a close vote in the Senate, which has previously rejected the measure.

The House approved the proposal by 286-130, more than the two- thirds necessary to pass constitutional amendments.

The amendment allows Congress to pass laws prohibiting destruction of the flag as part of protests. A constitutional amendment is necessary because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that laws forbidding flag desecration violate the free speech protections of the First Amendment.

Yes people who burn the flag are lowlife scum not worthy to clean the boots of the lowliest private in the United States army. Yes they should be shunned by society for the cowardly wretches they are. Yes there is a special place in hell for people who burn the symbol of the country that gives them the freedom to desecrate the memories of all those who gave their lives in defense of that flag and whose widows and orphans feel a special, searing pain when that emblem of freedom becomes fodder for their sick political hate speech.

But arrest them? For what? For what they’re thinking, that’s what. If we were to start arresting people for stupidity the flag burners would have an awful lot of company.

What it boils down to is this. Free speech must be virtually absolute. If it isn’t, it’s not free speech. Once the government starts deciding what’s acceptable political speech there’s no turning back. In order to regulate speech at all, there must be some compelling reason - child porn or shouting “fire” in a crowded theater are two examples - otherwise, we’re not free.

It’s that simple.

Besides, it’s crazy to muck around with the Constitution. It’s been amended 17 times in 216 years since the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) were ratified in 1791. To modify that document to prevent one form of political expression is just asking for trouble. Who is to say that the amendment couldn’t be used to justify outlawing another form of political expression, one that you and I might agree with but a majority of the country finds distasteful?

The fact is I don’t trust the government to regulate political speech. They’re trying to do it with blogs and I don’t like it. It’s insidious. It’s dangerous. And it’s wrong.

The people who desecrate the flag by burning it are not worth defending. But what the flag stands for is. That’s why I sincerely hope that cooler heads prevail in the Senate and this amendment is consigned to the trash bin where it belongs.

UPDATE

Here’s a roundup of some reaction. I was surprised and pleased that so many conservative bloggers are opposed to the amendment. What’s kind of funny is that many believe they’re the only rightwingers who think that way. Also noticed: Those on the right feel compelled to to state at the outset (as I did) that they love the flag and are not defending the scumbags who burn it. Predictably, those on the left don’t bother to do anything but bash Republicans although it’s worth pointing out that the 77 Democrats who voted for the amendment are the ones who put it over the 2/3 majority necessary for passage.

The only decent defense of the amendment I found comes via The Corner

The good thing about being a conservative is that we don’t have to dream about some of the laws we would like enacted. As it turns out we wrote a flag protection act in 1968. We enforced it, and the States did the same until it was struck down. The period until the late ’80s when it was struck down were not dark days for free speech nor did red white and blue paper napkins and ties go the way of the hoop skirt. Burning the flag was seen as an invitation to a fight and it was reasonably prohibited.

The Supreme Court in the past has indeed restricted speech as it relates to “fighting words” - words that by themselves would cause violence. But it has consistently held that symbols like the swastika and even the hoods worn by Klansmen are protected speech.

From Corante: “How to Ensure More American Flags Are Burned”

How many reported flag burnings were there last year in the US according to an anti-flag burning group that tracks such things? One. The idiocy of those fostering this unpatriotic amendment is staggering.

Slobokan: “You can’t Legislate Respect”

While I agree that burning the U.S. flag is disrespectful to America, I also think that it’s impossible to legislate respect. We do not need laws on the books what tell us what to think, when to think, and how to think it.

The Anchoress:

Burning the flag is stupid. It is moronic. It is infantile. It is the sort of thing they do in places where America is hated. Some might say you can “love” America and still burn the flag in protest, but I have met a few flag-burners in my day and I never knew a one of them that wasn’t all about simply being a part of something “happening” and provocative. And a few of them regret it, now, all these years later.

Nevertheless, I cannot support this amendment. I think it too is stupid. And moronic. It is the sort of suppressive and insecure thing they do in places where - ironically - America is being asked to bring freedom. Places like Cuba, fer instance.

It took a little doing, but thanks to some good luck (and quick hands) I was able find some discarded notes on the interview done with Senator Robert “Kleagle” Byrd by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times.

While these notes are pretty raw, they do contain some interesting quotes from the Senate’s iconoclastic parliamentarian and sole remaining ex(?)-member of the Klu Klux Klan.

I thought it might be interesting to marry up quotes that were printed in the Times story with some additional verbiage that Ms. Stolberg failed to include. After reading some of these quotes, I think you’ll understand why Ms. Stolberg was reluctant to have them make the final edit. (The material in boldface was not included in the story)

“I’ve forgotten more about the rules and procedures,” Mr. Byrd said in an interview this week, “than most senators will ever know. I’ve also forgotten where the bathroom is which is why I miss Senator Daschle. He used to carry a bucket with him so I wouldn’t have to worry about wandering the halls looking for the head.

Christian conservatives and right-wing bloggers are unearthing his past as a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “I’ve said time and time again that I was wrong about that and I apologize,” Mr. Byrd said. “And I’ve said time and time again I got nothin’ against them darkies jes as long as they knows their place and don’t get too uppity.”

Republicans say Mr. Byrd used procedures to limit debate on three other occasions, though he says he never once “deprived the minority” of “the right to freedom of speech.” “It’s not like ah treated ‘em like nig…like nigg…like commonists or somethin’.”

“These instant constitutional experts want to warp, want to bend, if you will, the Senate’s constitutional purpose with a witch’s brew of half truths, twisted logic and vicious attacks on freedom of speech,” the senator thundered. “I’ve already got the constitution so twisted up it looks like a West Virginia corndodger. Why do they need to get into the act?”

“How sad,” Mr. Byrd declared, lowering his eyes and dragging out his words for dramatic effect, “will be the legacy of those senators who vote to assassinate freedom of speech in the Senate of the United States. What a blotch upon the escutcheon of the great basic liberty of the people. How sad.” “If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a ‘blotchy escutcheon.’ I thought I had most of those removed when I went to see the proctologist.”

For the record, here’s Webster’s definition of “escutcheon”:

1 : a defined area on which armorial bearings are displayed and which usually consists of a shield
2 : a protective or ornamental plate or flange (as around a keyhole)
3 : the part of a ship’s stern on which the name is displayed

If he’s using the word in the context of #3, then we’re talking about “liberty’s ass” which given Senator Kleagle’s past history, explains in graphic imagery just what he’s been doing to his constituents and the Senate for so long.

More chilling news on first amendment freedoms brought to you by the black robed nannies who sit on the Supreme Court:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to shield the news media from being sued for accurately reporting a politician’s false charges against a rival.

Instead, the justices let stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a newspaper can be forced to pay damages for having reported that a city councilman called the mayor and the council president “liars,” “queers” and “child molesters.”

Apparently, it’s just not good enough any more to simply report “the story.” Now reporters have to make sure that any charges bandied about by opposing politicians are actually “true.”

Does this mean I can’t call John Kerry a lying, sniveling, traitorous weasel anymore? Probably:

In their appeal to the high court, lawyers for the paper said news organizations should be allowed to report what public figures say, regardless of whether it is true or false.

Otherwise, they said, for example, the press could not have reported last year on the charges lodged against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth because Kerry’s supporters said their charges were false.

In other words, if this ruling had taken place last year, John Kerry would be in the White House sipping French wine and desperately trying to figure out how to turn the coming victory in Iraq into certain defeat.

Am I missing something here? Is it really this complicated? How can you interpret the First Amendment so narrowly?

Politicians have been calling each other names for 217 years in this country. Half the fun of reading newspapers here in Chicago is finding the newest epithets hurled against “Little Boss” Daley and his gang of sticky fingered truants who’ve robbed the city blind for years. Now the Tribune and Sun Times are going to have to fact check every allegation. Wouldn’t you love to see the next press conference?

Reporter: Mr. Mayor, you’ve been called a crook, a cheat, a bum, and fairy by Alderman Skijanowitz. Would you care to deny those charges and, if not, is it alright if we print ‘em anyway?

A pox on the Court!

The blogswarm surrounding the C-Net interview yesterday with FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith may prove to be much ado about nothing. This statement from The Campaign Legal Center courtesy of What Attitude Problem:

Washington, D.C. — In a recent interview with CNET, Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith claimed that as a result of new campaign laws and and a recent court decision, online news organizations and bloggers may soon wake up to find their activities regulated by government bureaucrats. That would indeed be troubling, if it were true. Fortunately, Mr. Smith - an avowed opponent of most campaign finance regulation - is simply wrong.

Mr. Smith’s comments are obviously designed to instigate a furor in the blogosphere to pressure Congress to reverse the court decision requiring that paid political ads on the Internet should be treated like any other paid advertisements. Mr. Smith has a right to try to win converts to his anti-regulatory philosophy, but he has an obligation to present the issues fairly and forthrightly, and his comments to CNET fail both tests.

I am not a legal expert. I have, however, been a keen observer of American politics and government for nearly 30 years. I can tell you for a fact that whatever the government can do, is capable of doing, it will try to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s “constitutional” or not. Anyone who’s ever seen a copy of the Federal Register knows that there are literally thousands of rules published every year that infringe on private property rights, individual liberty, and constitutional protections. Unless these rules are challenged during the comment period or in court, they eventually wind up having the force of law.

And you wonder why there are so many lobbyists?

The fact that the current controversy over Mr. Smith’s remarks may be a tempest in a teapot is beside the point. Unless people are willing to stand up and protest even the remote possibility that such rules and regulations governing political speech could be promulgated, the chances are that the “remote possibility” will turn into “virtual certainty.”

This is the nature of government. It’s not bad. It’s not evil. It’s not corrupt. It simply exists to govern. It’s the closest thing to a man-made force of nature around.

And there’s nothing inherently bad about the bureaucracy. Government departments are run by people just like you and me. They have families. They have successes and failures. They have dreams and goals. And most of them are sincerely interested in doing what’s right according to their own lights. They are, however, not perfect.

They can be horribly wrong at times. And if we stand by and do nothing, we pay for their mistakes with a loss of freedom. That’s why it’s so important to protest the idea of regulating political blogs. I have no idea whether this “Campaign Legal Center” has its own political axe to grind or not. It sounds like they don’t like Mr. Smith or anyone else who objects to the regulation of political speech very much. That’s fine. But they’re whistling past the graveyard if they don’t believe that government is at least capable of taking this action.

If making a mountain out of a molehill is the price to pay for maintaining vigilance over a rapacious and overweening government, so be it.

UPDATE: FROM THE “NOT SO FAST” DEPARTMENT

Dan Glover of The National Journal has been kind enough to email his article from today which attempts to quiet the uproar over this issue.

It’s not exactly comforting.

Here’s Glover on Democratic Commission member Danny McDonald:

He acknowledged that whether the law should apply to bloggers in any way most likely will be discussed, especially in light of Smith’s comments. But he added, “It’s all going to be aired publicly, and we’ll have a great discussion about what we should and shouldn’t do.”

I’m so happy to hear that if the law will apply to bloggers “in any way” McDonald reassuringly tells us that “it’s all going to be aired publicly and we’ll have a great discussion about what we should and shouldn’t do.”

Am I an idiot or does that sound like regulation to you? To even suggest that there are things “we should do” only proves there are some Commissioners who would seek to regulate blogs.

Another Commission member Ellen Weintraub is a little more comforting. “The notion that the FEC is going to go out there and shut down blogs is preposterous,” she said. Shut down, no. Regulate? She doesn’t say no, does she.

Other Democratic Commission members are pooh-poohing the idea of regulating bloggers. But McDonald’s comments are indicative that vigilance is necessary.

UPDATE II: BRADLEY SMITH RESPONDS

I received an email from Commssioner Smith defending his remarks against the Campaign Legal Center. You can see my post here.