Martin Harris

Martin Harris is an architect, and a property rights and education advocate.

Here's an easy one: what do Wake County, North Carolina, (Raleigh is the big city there) and Chittenden County, Vermont, (Burlington is the not-quite-so-big city here) now have in common? Answer: both have school districts eager to assault the next beachhead in the diversity wars; having defeated racial segregation (sort of) in public education, the next objective is economic segregation. The new catch-phrase is Socio-Economic Status, or SES. The new idea is that it's public education's duty to make sure rich kids and not-rich kids are suitably mixed in the classroom and on the playground.

Actually, the same initiatives are under way elsewhere: Baltimore, San Francisco, Las Vegas. And always the argument is the same: that poor kids benefit from sitting within the "radiated aura" of rich kids, and that rich kids benefit from doing the radiation and observing the resulting changes. Those with fairly long memories will remember the same arguments underlying Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision which ended de jure (but not de facto) racial segregation in schools but set in motion waves of middle-class white flight from cities across the country as parents made their own decisions about how much radiation they wanted in their own kids' classrooms. Boston, for example, saw much of its middle-class vote with its feet and leave, resulting in its minority school enrollment growing from 30 percent of the total before the court-ordered busing that triggered white middle-class flight, to 86 percent today. If you're interested, you can find the statistics on larger urban school district minority enrollment percentages in the annual National Digest of Educational Statistics. In the 2005 edition, for example, Wake County, North Carolina, shows up as 41.7 percent minority. Burlington is too small to be included but would be, statistically, near zero; therefore, it's safe to say, Burlington experienced statistically near zero white flight as a result of the Brown decision.

It's not my intent here to comment, favorably or adversely, on the middle-class white flight to the suburbs which ensued from Brown; it is my intent to observe that it did happen, and to predict that the same forces that triggered it will emerge, again, when parents are forced to confront the new face of mandatory classroom diversity, SES. This time, I'd predict, Burlington won't get off as easily as it did last time. With 22.6 percent of its school enrollment coming from Food-Stamp-entitled families (the state average is 10.8 percent) Burlington is already statistically poorer than the rest of the state, illustrating that a modest amount of middle-class/middle-income flight from the City has already happened. In this way it's somewhat like Raleigh, North Carolina, already having experienced middle-class flight for one integration reason, its magnet-school program having failed to attract the middle-class back to city schools, and now facing more of the same exodus for another diversity-theory reason, one might reasonably ask whether it's prudent for a school district to, knowingly, engage in forms of social engineering it has already been told by past history, will result in fewer of the students it considers to have "radiant auras" to remain enrolled.

One might well ask why public schools should be in the "radiant aura" business anyway. Just that question was recently posed by Abigail Thernstrom, presently Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and author of a number of studies on school integration and its various outcomes, ranging from middle-class flight (observed) to changes in student achievement (not observed). Here's her rhetorical question -- beforehand, you know the answer is no.

Did moving kids around the city to get the racial numbers right have a positive impact on how much math kids learned? Surely that is the bottom line that truly matters. The Seattle School Board simply ignored that question.

My prediction is that, regarding "moving kids around the city to get the SES numbers right," the Burlington School Board will do likewise, history to the contrary notwithstanding. And middle-class flight will then ensue. *

"You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips." --Oliver Goldsmith

Chris Lyon

Chris Lyon is a young Marine who has already fought in Fallujah, Iraq, and will going back to Iraq next year.

When, in the breadth of time and space

Our Nation calls to war

The heroes of our High Schools

And the brawlers from the Bar . . .

When Freedom's flame is threatened

In lands across the sea

We gird ourselves for one more fight

Whilst THEY bicker constantly . . .

No wound so cruel as those that come

From our own home and town

Or when the Gods of the Golden Screen

See fit to tear us down.

So Let's raise a glass to the heavens

To the Faithful and the Few

Those who answered, all unswerving,

When the call to battle blew . . .

For the empty place at the table,

For the Grieving and the Grace

For the candle by the picture,

And the Salvation of our race.

Harry Neuwirth

Harry Neuwirth writes from Salem, Oregn.

There are many reproductive variants in nature, but in humankind, generational momentum resides exclusively in the union of man and woman however casually achieved. From this union children are born and families established, yet the definition of family is frequently and sophistically warped beyond recognition by semanticists and social engineers. The patently obvious fact, the-nose-on-your-face truth, is that the social unit providing the highest assurance of mutual self-interest among its members along with the love and stability that arise from that mutuality is the organic family of father, mother, and children. Only from such stable, confident families can a stable, confident society emerge and sustain itself.

We know perfectly well that such organic families are not always successful; that many families are sundered by the inevitable disagreements inherent in all human relationships, finding critical mass in the emotionally immature whose standard response to disagreement is a stubborn unwillingness to understand, compromise, or forgive. Yet of all conceivable freely-joined human relationships, the traditional family has the greatest potential for success if only because, at the outset of such a union, all members share common objectives and motives. Such voluntary union alongside the freedom to pursue lives of their own choosing is the essence of liberty and the highest assurance of societal success.

Yet standing on the weak argument that some families fail, activists naively suggest that the best interests of individuals and society lie in an assault on the family by the "full resources of the human village," the village thence becoming the fundamental institution in child-rearing as well as in the establishment of social mores and the definition of individual maturity.

Advocates of the village are correct in one respect only: Future social stability depends upon the maturity of the children who will grow up to populate that society. But they are radically wrong in suggesting that the same egocentrism that sometimes infects organic families does not poison the village surrounding them to an even greater degree. Dysfunctional marriages and the families that devolve from them will not be made wholesome by merging them into a society-at-large where the same attributes of dysfunctionality stand in even greater proportion.

These same advocates have blinded themselves to the obvious fact that our free enterprise system thrives on competition, minimizing mutuality in society-at-large. The family is an appropriate antidote to that competitive village. Simply opening "family" to a greater number of participants is a trip into the quicksands of politics.

The best we could hope for in a U.S. consisting of familial villages would be to embrace a common denominator -- under law and the pressure of public opinion -- lower than the one that exists across the spectrum of families today. The traditional American family is the social corollary of free enterprise in the business community, or in the fifty states functioning as they should in our constitutional republic: Each sovereign in its sphere; each providing examples of success and failure; each providing competitive energy to lift the nation and its families to the highest levels of economic, cultural, moral, and personal success. And yes, some will provide examples of failure to avoid in future.

Certainly families fail, sometimes tragically. But most have succeeded, and that level of success would escalate dramatically if public opinion and public policy insisted that all family members meet their responsibilities. But sadly, as responsibility has migrated toward our state and national capitals, responsibility at the local level has diminished proportionately. The most local of all institutions, family, has the most to lose in that transition, a transition that is eviscerating family, potentially transforming it into an exclusively biological unit that will fail to provide the love, inspiration, and discipline that inspire success in democratic institutions.

Destroy America? Destroy family.

Destroy family? Make father irrelevant.

Destroy family? Make mother independent of the economic realities that have driven civilization from the day we came down out of the trees.

Destroy family? Provide children with protection independent of mom, dad, and siblings.

Destroy family? Encourage gay and lesbian marriage and parenthood as did Multnomah County, Oregon, circuit court judge Eric Bloch declaring that the putative female father of a child to a lesbian couple must appear on the birth certificate as such: "Hi grampa; have you had your mammogram this year?" *

"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper." --Robert E. Lee

Robert L. Woodson Sr.

Robert L. Woodson is founder and president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, an empowerment organization that helps low-income self-help groups. He is the author of hundreds of articles and several books. This speech was given at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania. This article was reprinted from Vision & Values, a publication of Grove City College.

Introduction

One of the fundamental moral underpinnings of America is Biblical: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me" (Matthew 25:40 KJV). Until the 1930s, the care of the least among us was in the hands of our ethnic and religious groups and the local institutions they controlled. Government did not intervene in the dynamics of families or the networks that supported them. But the stock market crash and resulting economic failure of the Great Depression exhausted neighborhood support systems across the nation, and for the first time the government intervened in the economy on a large scale. Within time, the programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that started as "ambulance services" morphed into "transportation systems." However, even with those changes, the moral traditions of American culture remained intact until the storms of the 1960s.

The War on Poverty

In the 1960s, the welfare state was enlarged into the "War on Poverty." President Lyndon Baines Johnson dramatically increased the amount of money spent addressing poverty. In the 1930s, federal money went to the individual. In the 1960s, the money went to "services." This was a major paradigm shift. From it arose the poverty-industrial complex -- an entire industry revolving around pathology. A huge provider industry evolved psychologists, social workers, and counselors; for every problem there was a different master's degree holder to solve that problem.

Unfortunately, providers tended to ask not which problems were solvable but which ones were fundable, which is to say that providers were rewarded not for solving problems but for the proliferation of problems. This is not to argue that everything that was done was harmful. When Bobby Kennedy made his trip to Appalachia, he found starving children. In Florida, elderly people died with no food in their stomachs. Child nutrition programs and elder care eliminated the more pernicious forms of poverty.

Nor has there been malicious intent on the part of the providers. Those who go into the fields of psychology or sociology certainly don't go into them for the money. This was a situation where there was no willful intent to injure, but it was a misguided intent, resulting in programs and policies that were misguided. The helping hand inadvertently injured. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his Letters From Prison, the most difficult behavior to confront is folly, not malice. It is very difficult to confront folly if someone is doing something with the intent to help without realizing that they actually are producing injury.

The welfare laws that grew from these poison roots offered perverse incentives. With resources going to services instead of individuals, people became government clients, sapping them of independence, dignity, and initiative. A married couple could not live in public housing. This destabilized marriage. If an unmarried woman receiving public assistance married a man who was gainfully employed, her benefits would be ended. This pulled another plank from the incentive to marry and establish a household. Out-of-wedlock births dramatically increased, particularly in the black community. In 1962, 85 percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising a family. Today, only about 47 percent of homes have a married man and woman raising children. It also provided a disincentive to seek steady employment. Rent was fixed at 30 percent of income for people receiving public assistance. This clause had the effect of making people reluctant to take certain jobs or promotions for fear of pricing themselves out of affordable housing.

Social Injustice

Another major policy fallacy was that social injustice racism was a primary cause of the problems of poverty. In order to challenge the faulty assumptions of the 1960s, we need to look at black America before that decade. From 1940 to 1970 the poverty rate dropped from 87 to 30 percent, a reduction of two-thirds. In contrast, the poverty rate has only declined from 30 to 24 percent in the past 35 years, despite the presence of armies of social workers and mountains of money.

The core of the black community in the hundred years between the end of the Civil War and the War on Poverty was the family, a belief in God and business formation. Up until 1965, the marriage rate for blacks was over 80 percent. In fact, during the Depression, the black marriage rate was higher than that of whites. In the first 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans accumulated a personal wealth of $700 million. They owned over 40,000 businesses, 40,000 churches, and 937,000 farms. The literacy rate climbed from five to 70 percent. Black commercial enclaves in Durham, North Carolina, and the Greenwood Avenue section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were together known as the Negro Wall Street. Blacks in both districts turned harsh Jim Crow laws to their advantage by using their entrepreneurial skills to serve a segregated community. Black Durham survived as a thriving economic center until federal and state urban renewal programs wiped out most of Durham's black business district.

The fundamental flaw in the approach toward poverty in the black community was the insistence that anything all black was automatically bad. Sixties radicals interpreted separate to be inherently unequal rather than strategically unequal. They renounced the values of family, faith, and self-reliance in favor of revenge, the redistribution of wealth, and the embrace of a political spoils system. These assumptions were taking root at just the time the civil rights movement was reaching its apex and becoming a race grievance industry. The movement wanted to make the case that segregation was harmful. It needed the federal government to intervene in the states. Unfortunately, for this to happen, the story of successful black entrepreneurship had to be abandoned or ignored. Black universities and colleges severed the technical assistance they provided black businesses and ceased publication of journals that described their triumphs. The leaders of the civil rights movement portrayed blacks as hapless victims of an omnipotent system. The good that came from the civil rights movement was the replacement of Jim Crow laws with more equitable statutes. The bad news that resulted from the civil rights movement was that blacks were cut off from their heritage of success, and the stereotype of blacks as a perpetual victim class was institutionalized. The War on Poverty broke down the moral immune system of low-income black neighborhoods and made them breeding grounds of dysfunction. The resulting social chaos has been predictable.

As the racial and sexual revolutions merged with the rising welfare state, they formed a perfect storm that continues to demolish family structures. Racial prejudice continues to be a problem in the United States. However, it is not the most important problem facing even the black community. Continuing to focus on race and supporting those who profit from maintaining a grievance industry is keeping this nation from addressing some threatening fundamental problems. If racial reconciliation were immediately possible, it still would not answer the high rates of black-on-black homicide and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. But investment in those grassroots institutions that bring about moral and spiritual healing can address those problems, and at the same time, racial reconciliation will be a natural byproduct.

Joseph and Pharaoh

If the public and private sectors are to refocus their efforts on poverty so that their contribution will have a positive impact, several crucial questions must be answered: Who are the true experts of social revitalization? What principles should guide funding decisions? What qualities are common to all effective programs? Unfortunately, as a nation, we are prone to place our trust in irrelevant authority. Just as commercials lead consumers to believe that sports stars are experts on nutrition or footwear, there are those who would have us believe that the MBAs and sociologists in distant universities can provide expert advice in salvaging our inner-city neighborhoods. But the solutions to the problems of our nation's Harlems will never be found in the Harvards of this nation.

The good news is that solutions do exist. Today, among the ruins of inner-city neighborhoods, there are embers of health and restoration in grassroots leaders that we call "Josephs." Joseph, you remember, was one of 13 children born to his father. And Joseph was blessed with being able to interpret dreams. But his brothers were angry at him when Joseph said that he dreamed he saw them bowing down to him; as a consequence they faked his death and sold him into slavery. Joseph languished for many years as a slave, but in every situation as a slave Joseph became the best slave. When he was falsely imprisoned, he became the best prisoner. In the depths of the dungeon, Joseph accepted his fate and served faithfully. He was, even in prison, raised to a position of leadership and was placed in charge of the other prisoners. Years later, when the pharaoh himself was troubled by ominous dreams which none of his counselors or astrologers could interpret, he heard about Joseph and his ability to explain dreams.

When the pharaoh described his dreams to Joseph, he responded that they were portents that seven years of bountiful harvest would be followed by seven years of famine. He advised that during the prosperous years they needed to store and prepare for the famine. The pharaoh was not deterred by the fact that Joseph was not of the same ethnicity, that he came from a "dysfunctional Hebrew family," or that he was a prisoner. He trusted and followed Joseph's advice, appointing him to administer his harvest with power second only to himself. When the famine came, pharaoh's was the only land that was prepared.

Today, in communities throughout the nation, hundreds of modern-day Josephs are at work restoring spiritual health in their neighborhoods, guiding others to lives of value and fulfillment. Although Joseph was betrayed and treated unjustly, he held firmly to the belief that God could work through any situation and, even in the worst circumstances, he continued to serve without resentment. He never yielded to bitterness, and his attitude determined his availability to God. Likewise, our modern-day Josephs have faced adversity and injustice without bitterness or resentment.

The answers to many of the most pressing problems that America now faces can be found in the men and women who have come out of prison, who live in drug-infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods, some of whom have fallen themselves, but have been able to recover through their faith in God. There are countless examples of these Josephs who have been called to responsibility from jails, from drugs, from crime, from prostitution. Their authority is attested to, not by their position and prestige in society, but by the thousands of lives they have been able to reach and change.

These neighborhood Josephs go unrecognized, unappreciated and underutilized. They are working with individuals that all the other conventional service deliverers have given up on. They take only the worst cases and they work with meager resources, yet their effectiveness eclipses that of conventional professional remedies. For 23 years the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise has acted like a Geiger counter sweeping these neighborhoods for these two types of Josephs: those who come from lives of crime and degradation as well as others who have never committed a crime. They are the natural antibodies in their communities. And once we find them, we bring them together so they begin to form an immune system in their communities. We assist them the way the human immune system is assisted, by providing them with the kind of resources that strengthen them. We provide training, technical assistance, and access to material resources so that this immune system can grow and begin to transform from within the neighborhood and make dramatic improvements in the lives of the people living there. Why haven't we heard more about these leaders? Elitism has caused us to dismiss the possibility of remedies emerging from low-income neighborhoods. With silent prejudice, faith-based strategies are dismissed out of hand in spite of their consistent track records of effectiveness. In addition to many overtly faith-based programs, there are many grassroots leaders whose outreach is motivated by a heartfelt spirit of service but is not affiliated with any particular religion or faith.

Modern-Day Josephs

There are a number of defining characteristics that modern-day Josephs have in common:

1. Their programs are open to all comers. The grassroots leaders do not target their services exclusively to individuals of any particular race or background. Help is offered, instead, on the basis of the need a person has and his or her desire to change.

2. Neighborhood healers have the same ZIP code as the people they serve. They have firsthand knowledge of the problems they live with and they have a personal stake in the success of their solutions.

3. Their approach is flexible. They know that every person cannot be reached in exactly the same way.

4. Effective grassroots programs contain an essential element of reciprocity. They do not practice blind charity but require something in return from the individuals they serve. They recognize that treating them only as "clients" would result in their becoming poor citizens.

5. Clear behavioral guidelines and discipline are an important part of their programs.

6. Grassroots healers fulfill the role of a parent, providing not only authority and structure, but also the love that is necessary for an individual to undergo healing, growth and development. Like a parent, their love is unconditional and resilient, in spite of backsliding and even in the face of betrayal.

7. Grassroots leaders are committed for the long haul. Most of them began their outreach with their own meager resources. They are committed for a lifetime, not for the duration of a grant that funds a program.

8. They are on call virtually 24 hours a day, in contrast to a therapist who comes once a week for a 45-minute session, or staff who come from a 9-to-5 job and then return to their distant homes.

9. The healing they offer involves an immersion in an environment of care and mutual support with a community of individuals.

10. These Josephs are united in a brotherhood of service. They are eager to share ideas and strategies. They offer earnest support to each other in times of struggle and sincerely celebrate one another's victories.

Although today's Josephs deserve to be heeded by modern-day pharaohs (political leaders and leaders of the business and philanthropic community), their effectiveness is not dependent on such recognition. Long before support or acknowledgement came from the others, our nation's neighborhood healers committed themselves to lives of service and they engendered miraculous changes in the lives they touched. Though these grassroots leaders accomplished extraordinary feats with little support, an alliance between today's Josephs and pharaohs could provide the support that is needed to allow their transforming efforts to expand and further develop to benefit the entire society.

Applying Market Principles to the Social Economy

This type of partnership requires a major overhaul in how we view the poor. Many policymakers on both the Left and the Right see the poor as hopelessly lost in a sea of pathology with few personal redeeming qualities. This view falsely concludes that only certified social workers can solve social problems. By contrast, the marketplace is "results oriented" and expects a return. If a person like Bill Gates with genius and drive were in the "social economy," he would be discounted because he lacks the proper academic qualifications.

We must look for nonconventional solutions in nontraditional places. We do not hesitate to do that in our business economy. In the marketplace, workable solutions are embraced wherever they exist. If a teenage computer hacker develops software that has capacities beyond those of well-trained computer specialists, he is rewarded. In like manner we look for cures in the roots and herbs of the rain forests of Brazil and New Guinea. Some of our most important discoveries have come about because someone did not focus on the source of the discovery but looked at the content of what was produced. Regardless of the certifications, education, or "legitimacy" of social service providers, if their "solutions" have not had a measurably positive impact on a problem that neighborhood-based efforts have effectively addressed, we must remove the blindfolds of bias and embrace the strategies that work, no matter how untutored the source of the information may be.

Next, organizations need to measure outcomes, not process. Trillions of dollars of public and private funds have been spent on failed programs because of a disregard for outcomes. Too many sponsors of private sector initiatives, carrying on the legacy of the public sector programs, have placed little emphasis on evaluation of their effectiveness.

We must beware of top-down collaboratives. Collaboration has been the buzzword in a multitude of multimillion-dollar experiments of private sector social service initiatives and community revitalization efforts. However, the purported paradigm shift to "collaborative strategies" had little impact, not because it was underfunded, but because collaborative community building did not use a fundamentally different approach. Essentially, like their public sector counterparts, these initiatives were designed and conceived from the top down.

Put another way, the main failure of the public sector approach was not that its strategies were fragmented but the fact that its programs were designed by professionals in distant bureaucracies and then parachuted into low-income communities. This approach excluded the advice and insight of indigenous grass roots leaders who have the vision, creativity, and commitment to forge innovative, workable solutions to the societal crises that permeate not only our nation's inner cities, but rural and suburban communities as well. Their bold entrepreneurship is in need of one thing: support from venture capitalists of the corporate arena who recognize their potential and are willing to invest capital to strengthen the organizational structure and management skills that are necessary to expand their remarkably effective outreach.

Finally, we should invest in initiatives designed to create "marketable character"; i.e., good potential employees and citizens. For many individuals, poverty is a result of the choices they make. Without a change in character they will not be ready to take advantage of job training or other programs designed to integrate them into mainstream society. Faith-based grassroots leaders act as "character coaches" or "moral mentors." They have the ability to transform hearts and instill values, resulting in individuals who are drug free, work ready and positively motivated to be good employees. As an executive of a major telecommunications company once wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary, "I can train a worker to properly handle a PC board; I can't train him to show up to work sober or to respect authority."

Conclusion

The National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise strongly believes that such efforts should be built upon the bedrock of successful, life-transforming abilities of neighborhood and faith-based organizations, and that private and government resources should be brought to that base in a creative fashion. Neighborhood-based programs, particularly those that are faith-based, have proved they can solve problems such as substance abuse, youth crime and violence, and the kind of internal despair that are more acute in low-income communities but that are increasingly cutting across all societal lines. And these solutions forged in the crucible of poverty -- the front lines of our nation's culture wars -- can be exported to the gilded ghettoes of suburbia and rural white America. *

"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all . . . are essential to the well-being of a family." --Samuel Adams

Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Each presidential election some well-intending politician like Senator Barack Obama reminds us of the injustice of millions of Americans living without health care and of how he plans, if elected, to sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of his first term in office.

The intentions may be good, but why should any government offer free health care to people who do not care for their own health, except perhaps for congenital problems, diseases, and accidents?

It makes as much sense to offer a universal dental care system to people who refuse to brush their teeth or a universal auto insurance system to demolition derby drivers.

Our current educational system is a fitting example of what would become of a universal health care system. Unless a student is actively engaged in his own education by taking rigorous courses and studying, it does not matter what school he attends, whether or not he is hooked-up to a computer or whom he has for teachers. This is why it is important for parents to help their children develop good habits before they leave home to rule themselves.

Whatever happened to President Kennedy's, "Ask not what your country can do for you, [but] ask what you can do for your country?"

This point is evident in Michael Moore's recently released movie, "Sicko," in which he documents the failings of the American health care system. Michael Moore is a good one hundred pounds overweight and he thinks every resident of America must have free, universal health care for life. Reality check: Yo, Michael, you are the problem.

A clear-thinking politician ought to propose a pro-rated national medical coverage plan that is free for all citizens who exercise regularly, do not smoke, drink in moderation, and do not let their weight vary more than five pounds a year. Let those for whom obesity is not a congenital defect pay for their own health insurance in full.

The essence of American democracy is rooted in self-governance, in the people's ability to take control of their own lives in a meaningful and moral way.

American politicians are becoming more like jovial matre d's who want to accommodate our every desire than leaders who challenge us to do what is in our own best interest and therefore America's. It seems they are more concerned with speaking in effective sound bites, as well as their appearance, as measured by the cost of some haircuts.

In all of this, I am reminded of Socrates' discussion of politicians in a city, state, or nation of self-indulgent citizens:

And isn't it also amusing that they consider their worst enemy to be the person who tells them the truth, namely, that until they give up drunkenness, overeating, lechery, and idleness, no medicine, cautery, or surgery, no charms, amulets, or anything else of that kind will do them any good? . . . The person who is honored and considered wise in important matters by such badly governed cities is the one who serves them most pleasantly, indulges them, flatters them, anticipates their wishes, and is clever in fulfilling them.

Socrates' point was driven home while I was seated in my doctor's waiting room. An overweight gentleman beside me greeted an equally overweight gentleman who entered the office. They struck up a conversation, and I learned they were both there for their annual check-up and knew the doctor was once again going to prescribe exercise and dieting to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol levels. They laughed and their conversation turned to the topic of having lunch after their appointment at some local steak buffet with a name like Steaks R Us. Oh, well.

Imagine the frustration of physicians whose days are filled with seeing patients whose problems result from drunkenness, gluttony, promiscuity, and sloth. I suspect the patient's worst enemy would be the person who tells them the truth.

It is time our politicians acted more like leaders who spoke the truth, rather than panderers who put on a face and act as if they are our friends.

And so it goes. *

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

Paul Kengor

Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins, 2006), associate professor of Political Science, and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. This article is part four in a series of four.

A central factor in how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, and did so with greater support along the way than the current president, was his ability to find means to undermine the enemy without losing thousands of American lives. An intriguing example, one that has eluded history, is the Farewell Dossier.

This top-secret effort was part of the devastating strategy of economic warfare pursued by Reagan and a handful of intimate advisers -- a strategy so sensitive that those involved publicly denied that a campaign was underway. A central architect of that effort, National Security Adviser Bill Clark, was confronted on the covert strategy by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, who whispered to him at a diplomatic function, "You have declared war on us, economic war." Clark could only answer Dobrynin two decades later, once the Soviet Union imploded: "Yes, we had."

The Farewell Dossier became part of this campaign.

This super-secret initiative was entrusted to an enigmatic NSC staffer named Gus Weiss, whom I interviewed several times before he died in November 2003. Nearing the end of his life, Weiss wanted to discuss this effort "that no one knows about." Here is how it unfolded:

The Reagan administration suspected that Soviet intelligence was stealing critical technology from the West. Not until 1981, however, was an organized Soviet program discovered, when French intelligence obtained the services of a 53-year-old defector named Colonel Vladimir Vetrov. Vetrov became known as "Farewell."

Farewell photographed 4,000 KGB documents, fully revealing the Soviet espionage program. In July 1981, Francois Mitterand -- in a rare example of French cooperation in Reagan's economic war -- told Reagan about Vetrov and offered the intelligence to the United States. Reagan gratefully accepted.

Reagan then asked CIA director Bill Casey to consider how to best use Farewell's material. That fall, Gus Weiss was cleared to read it.

Weiss learned that the KGB had created a unit called Directorate T, tasked to plumb the R&D of Western nations. Directorate T's operating arm was named Line X. Through this apparatus, said Weiss, "a master plan" was developed to acquire American high-tech products and know-how.

The material Weiss read confirmed his worst nightmares: Line X had been so successful, said Weiss, "that the Soviet military and civil sectors were in large measure running their research on that of the West, particularly the United States." Radar, machine tools, semiconductors-much of which went into Soviet defense.

Colonel Vetrov spilled the beans on Directorate T, divulging the names of over 200 Line X officers stationed throughout the West and more than 100 leads on Line X activities.

Weiss planned an ingenious response: Thanks to Farewell, Reagan's NSC was in possession of a Line X shopping list of Soviet-needed technology. Weiss offered a suggestion: U.S. counter-intelligence could supply some of these technologies, but with a fatal catch: the products would appear genuine but would prove defective.

Impressed, Casey took Weiss's plan to Reagan in January 1982. Reagan immediately gave the go-ahead. There were no written memoranda on the project, which would require close cooperation between Casey's CIA, Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger's Pentagon, and suppliers who would modify key products and make them available to Line X.

By mid-1982, shipments of defective products were arriving in the USSR -- contrived computer chips that found their way into Soviet military hardware, flawed turbines, faulty plans for chemical plants, and more. The results were at times literally explosive:

In one dramatic example only recently shared by NSC staffer Tom Reed to Washington Post reporter David Hoffman; in the summer of 1982 rigged software triggered a huge explosion in the gigantic Siberian gas pipeline -- an extremely expensive project designed to provide the USSR with essential hard currency. The software was designed to pass Soviet quality-acceptance tests, to work temporarily, and then to malfunction. The software that ran the pumps, turbines, and valves in the pipeline was programmed to produce pressures beyond the capacity of the pipeline's joints.

According to Reed, U.S. satellites picked up the explosion, which was so enormous that NORAD feared a small nuclear device had been detonated.

Ironically, Reagan had spent two years trying to get Western European leaders to join him in blocking construction of the pipeline; they refused. At last, he found a device.

Today, it is easy to oversimplify comparisons between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and to commend Reagan for not losing lives in his war against global Communism while assailing Bush for losses in his war against global terrorism. These are two totally different enemies.

Nonetheless, Reagan's use of economic warfare represents the sort of ingenuity a modern president needs to fight and win, especially in a nation with understandably little tolerance for body bags, and with political opponents in constant attack mode. From the graveyard of history and through the past voices of Ronald Reagan, Bill Casey, Cap Weinberger, and Gus Weiss, the Farewell Dossier should speak to George W. Bush and his team. It is now up to the current president to search the Middle East for his own Farewell, and the courage to use him. *

"If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man -- it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil." --James A. Garfield

Ross Terrill

Ross Terrill was born in Australia and served in the Australian army in 1957-58. He has degrees from Wesley College and the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is the author of nine books, including biographies of Mao Zedong and Madame Mao, and, most recently, The New Chinese Empire, which won the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

How should we deal with China in the coming years? Do we oppose China, or can we coax it into the so-called international community? Simply put, we should stand up for freedom. The United States represents a beacon of hope to a new generation of Chinese who live in a Leninist regime supervising a semi-capitalist society -- an arrangement that so far has never lasted for a sustained period. If we are going to deal with China properly in the coming years, we have to confront this contradiction.

Whether desirable or not, China is rising: Try to spend a day shopping without coming home with Chinese-made products. Adopt a baby and it may well be from China. Asian-American students comprise 50 percent or more of the student body at numerous American colleges. China's GDP quadrupled in Deng Xiaoping's two decades from 1978 to 1992. Since then it has been growing even faster at 10-11 percent per year. Foreign trade increased tenfold during Deng's reign. China's economic advance has led to military expansion, diplomatic sophistication, a relentless quest for markets, enormous oil consumption, an enhanced capacity to import, and swelling nationalism.

What is China trying to do and to be? As a free society, America trumpets its goals. By contrast, China tends to hide its goals. Its stated aims are peace and development. Its real aims are to sustain its economic growth, have a tranquil set of borders for that purpose (China has 14 borders), eclipse the United States in East Asia, and regain "lost" territory. (Taiwan is only one of the territories that, because the Chinese emperor once possessed it, the Chinese government believes should return to China.) While Beijing does enormous business with us, it regularly launches anti-American diatribes. And while it advocates a world free of arms, it has lined up 800 missiles opposite Taiwan.

The prospect of China achieving its international aims -- especially outstripping the U.S. and expanding its territory -- depends on two things: the future of its political system, and whether the United States and other countries acquiesce in China's rise. The popular idea is that China is in transition from Communism to freedom, as we heard when President Clinton went to China in 1998 and said, "China is moving to join the thriving Community of free democracies." Others say that Communism hasn't yet been abandoned in China, but a seamless transition is in the works: As long as China continues its reforms, lets the private sector grow, fulfills its pledges to the World Trade Organization and replaces the whim of a single leader with general rules and regulations, then the world will wake up one morning and see that China, like Poland or Mongolia, has truly ended Communist rule.

But reform can be illusory. The Hungarian reformers of the late 1960s believed in open-ended reform, and ultimately that led to the collapse of socialism. But Communist reform can be intended merely to streamline socialism. I think this is the view of the Chinese Communist party. We might think or hope that such reforms will undermine Communism. Certainly many Chinese privately hope for this. But in and of themselves, reforms could for a time strengthen the system.

Three Futures

There are three possibilities for China's next quarter-century. One is that there will be no transition to a different political system. What we see now -- commercialized Leninism -- is what we will see in another 25 years. The Communist party will buy off the Chinese people with a better material way of life. There will be no rule of law if this happens, but rather continued repression. The second possibility is democracy. According to this view, the new society and the new economy will produce new liberalized politics. The third possibility is that the contradictions of China today mean that the country is headed for fracture. An authoritarian state and a free economy are simply incompatible in this view, and explosion lies down the road.

The argument that commercialized Leninism will continue goes something like this: First, the Communist leaders have no plans to abandon it, since they profit from it. Second, Beijing -- which wants economic but not political change -- has learned from Mikhail Gorbachev's mistake. Gorbachev tried to start with political change and then did not deliver the economic goods to the Soviet people. Third, China now has the economic muscle to pacify the losers of its reform era, such as farmers and a massive army of unemployed workers. Fourth, the Chinese state is more resourceful because of its long tradition of domestic imperial rule. Fifth, there is a lack of fanaticism: Chinese dictatorships have never been theocratic, and still have a pragmatic streak today. Finally, the leadership is more than willing to play the national glory card: space missions, the Olympic games, and Communist archaeologists' attempts to prove that China is 5,000 years old (which it isn't), thus older than India. The regime thinks these achievements will keep the Chinese people happy.

The main reason to doubt that commercialized Leninism will survive is simple: It has never survived before. And besides, success is not solely in the Chinese leadership's hands. They have unleashed forces that may deny them their goal. For example, entry into the World Trade Organization is a very complicated step. As American banks start to lend Chinese currency to Chinese citizens at rates different from Chinese Communist banks, what will be the effects? China has promised to allow foreign banks to expand this policy, but will it? And how will Chinese banks manage with the resulting hugely reduced deposits? Another factor to consider: Last year, 57 percent of China's exports were produced by joint-venture enterprises, which means foreign money is behind this boom. What will be the implications of that? Will foreign investment continue at a high level?

There are other reasons to doubt that the current system will last. Since Beijing has told its people that economic success is now the measure of Communism's success, one severe recession might be enough to finish it off. And do not forget that the loss of the American market, due to any Sino-American rupture, would mean the loss of 30 percent of China's exports, and that would probably end the regime. Finally, economic freedom and political freedom cannot be separated for long. It was not for nothing that Adam Smith described his ideas about the free economy as a system of natural liberty, or that Friedrich Hayek called his book about the futility of centralized economic planning The Road to Serfdom.

What are the reasons for thinking that China will transform itself into a democracy? There are some hopeful signs: Other former Leninist states have adopted some form of democracy. In fact, against the predictions of many, democracy has also taken root in parts of Chinese civilization, in Taiwan and to a degree in Hong Kong. Nor is this unprecedented. There were flickers of democracy in early 20th century China, but they were overwhelmed by warlordism and the second Sino-Japanese war. Certain preconditions of democracy do exist in China: One can buy a house (though not the land it stands on); education is at respectable levels; there is limited diversification of information; and professionals such as lawyers and journalists are pushing for autonomy.

Several factors, however, oppose a transition to democracy. Rural hinterland China is a world away from the new economy of eastern, coastal, urban China. An ingrained respect for hierarchy dominates society. Village elections have been tried, but people often don't vote for what they want -- rather they vote as the Communist party secretary or the clan power holders tell them. Furthermore, it is very hard to envision national democracy in China. For example, an attempt to found a farmer's party in China would in fact lead to multiple farmer's parties in the 28 provinces (some of these with more than 100 million people). Political pluralism would bring out the astonishing and potentially dangerous diversity among the Chinese people, which authoritarianism holds in check.

Another barrier to effective democracy is the fact that 250 million Chinese are illiterate, as measured by a very low government standard that requires knowledge of a mere 400 Chinese characters. Also, there is no national spoken language. Those who speak Mandarin can't be understood in south China. The Cantonese of south China is as different from Mandarin as Swedish is from English. Non-Chinese tongues dominate the western half of China: Turkic tongues to the west, Tibetan to the southwest, Mongol to the northwest. In sum, an attempt at democracy in China could initially produce a mess, and many bright Chinese bureaucrats know that to be true.

What is the possibility of fracture, of China breaking into pieces? The problem of governance looms large. Take the population of the United States and add that of Russia, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil, and all of Western Europe, and this is still well short of China's population of 1.3 billion. Historically, the western half of the country is not Chinese at all. It has been at various times a Tibetan kingdom, part of Mongolia and a Turkic state linked with what we now call Central Asia. Economic development in Tibet and the Muslim west could embolden these minority peoples; cell phones make it easier for them to organize; plane tickets to Mecca come within reach for devout Muslims. Indeed, Chinese leaders have often talked among themselves about the dangers of civil war or fracture.

What mitigates against fracture? Most important is the fact that China's population is 92 percent Chinese. By contrast, the Soviet Union was only 50 percent Russian. Furthermore, China experienced disunity in the past, and its people as well as its government are more wary of disunity than is true in most other countries.

How and why would the political system change? There has to be a trigger in the form of a crisis in at least two of three areas: society at large, the Communist party leadership, and international relations. The current regime has lasted as long as it has because it hasn't had such a crisis in decades.

Chinese society may experience a crisis due to the substantial and ongoing religious revival or because of the undoubted high level of farmer dissatisfaction. But even taking social upheaval as a given, there is no split at the top of the Communist party at the moment, nor does a grave international challenge loom. This is not to say that there have not been horrendous splits in the party in the past: When Mao died in 1976, his widow intended to succeed him, but so did Deng Xiaoping, who was under house arrest. Meanwhile, the politburo was split pretty much down the middle. Two rival coups d'etat were planned, and eventually Deng triumphed. The Chinese public did not know of this struggle until it was over. Had this power struggle occurred in public in the context of social turbulence and an international challenge, things might well have turned out differently in the late 1970s.

However, if the military, which is not friendly to the United States, triggered some kind of dislocation in Chinese-U.S. relations, then there would be an interaction between all three of the spheres I mentioned. The Chinese economy (and therefore the society) would be affected, and some members of the Chinese leadership would oppose this rupture with Washington. This would lead to an interaction between an international crisis, social turbulence, and a major disagreement at the top of the Chinese government. The confluence of all three, or even two, would almost certainly cause political change.

I don't think the Communist party's monopoly on power will last beyond 20 years. But neither do I think China will break up into pieces. The Communist party may itself break up, which would lead to political competition between the different pieces. I think there will be a somewhat freer political order over this time frame, but not democracy.

The Role of the U.S.

The United States should do two main things in dealing with China: First, seek full engagement, especially with China's private sector. Second, seek to preserve an equilibrium in East Asia that discourages Beijing from expansionism. No contradiction exists between these two policies.

Opposing authoritarianism on principle and yet engaging with an emerging China is a contradiction we can and should live with. China's rise is to be welcomed in many ways. It is a market for our products. It is culturally enriching for China and America to interact. What is more, if China did break up into pieces, it would benefit Russia and Japan, not the United States. What would not be good for us is a China that keeps on rising but remains a dictatorship with unending territorial claims -- including parts of Siberia and many southern islands stretching to Indonesia -- makes a vassal out of Burma, threatens Tibet, represses religion, arrests people for what they write on the Internet, and locks up pro-democracy leaders. This kind of China, if it still exists in 20 years, would not be stable nor a friend to the United States. We do want an accommodating relationship with China, if we can have it. But because of the political nature of China, tomorrow is unknown. We have to engage fully, but keep ourselves and our allies strong. The United States should not allow China to become the number one power in the world, and indeed, President Bush has welcomed Japan's new assertiveness and held out a hand to India precisely in order to signal that stance.

Alas, some people are so hostile to President Bush -- and to America -- that they hope China will become the world's leading power. Many think we have become unworthy of the role. Of course this has been said before. It was said after our withdrawal from Vietnam. But within five years we elected Ronald Reagan, who didn't think we were unworthy at all. It was predicted in the 1980s when Japan was supposed to become the world's leading economy. Paul Kennedy, in his much acclaimed book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, said we were suffering from "imperial overstretch" and predicted we would decline. Well, what fell down was not the United States but the Soviet Union, and there is no comparison between America's economy today and Japan's. Some said the collapse of the Soviet Union would end any American need for global strength. But this never happened, and there is no sign that it will.

Of course, China would fill the vacuum if the U.S. ever left East Asia. But otherwise, China's rise will be limited. The Chinese leaders -- who are not reckless people -- can count the numbers. They observed the Gulf War and saw our military technology. I think they are aware of the large gap between American power and their own. However, I do worry at times that authoritarian China has an advantage over the U.S. It can take the long view, hiding its aims; it can pull the strings of Chinese public opinion; it can set the agenda of international organizations with an eye to weakening the U.S., while doing nothing itself to implement the resulting policies. It has access to an open American society that far outstrips our access to Chinese society.

But, in the final analysis, no dictatorship is strong if the U.S. retains the will to stand against it, as we did against the Soviet Union. The average lifespan of the Leninist regimes in Europe was 27 years. The Chinese Communist regime is 57 years old, 17 years short of the lifespan of the Soviet Union. We should talk back to the Chinese when they question our open society, and openly criticize Chinese repression. Above all, we should continue to be a beacon for freedom, with dignity and patience, but also with tenacity and with no apologies. *

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." --Justice Robert H. Jackson

Edith Muesing Ellwood

With two degrees in political science, Edith Muesing Ellwood has pursued a career in political and social science research. She has written two books and numerous articles on technological culture and its political ramifications and is in the process of researching her third book.

The Russian people are at the point of subordinating many of their personal freedoms and individual rights to the power of the presidency for security reasons and to assert Russia's national identity apart from the West. The reasons democratic individualism has faded in Russia are based upon Russia's history of authoritarianism and the current attempts to return to order at the expense of the degree of democracy achieved.

Because of Russia's history of authoritarianism, it is difficult for Russians to understand democracy. Democracy presents a challenge to the Russian people, who were controlled by Communist propaganda for decades. Under Communism, and for that matter under the preceding centuries of czarist rule, Russians obeyed the orders of the state instead of expressing their free individual will through participation in a democratic political process.

Many Russian citizens do not appreciate what the democratic values of freedom and equality can do for them. They are concerned with order, particularly because of the corruption and chaos of the years of attempted democracy under Boris Yeltsin. They support Vladimir Putin for his law-based predictability even though he has tampered with their individual liberties.

When the presidential election was held on March 26, 2000, Putin won. He had previously served as prime minister of Russia and then acting president following Yeltsin's resignation. He won a second full term without difficulty in the March 2004 presidential election, which has been criticized because Putin unfairly and undemocratically controlled the media through United Russia, Putin's political party. Putin manipulated public opinion in the 2003 and 2004 elections in regard to Chechnya and privatization, the results of which might have been different if fraudulent control had not been exercised.

As a result of the plunge in living standards with the advent of democracy as well as the public's close association to the order of Russia's past, Putin was authorized by the people to assert extra power. It was seen by average citizens, soon also faced with the threat of terrorism, as a legitimate step to restore economic well-being to a troubled land. Boris Yeltsin was blamed for leading Russia to the ill-defined concepts of a market economy and Western democracy.

With Yeltsin's departure from government, Russia's "economy has grown by two thirds, helped by a fifty percent rise in oil production and a global ballooning of oil prices."1 As a result, the average Russian citizen is content with life and with democracy in a diminishing form.

With a terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of school children in the Russian town of Belsan, Putin proposed restructuring all three branches of government on September 13, 2004. He asserted greater presidential control over the judiciary and mobilized support for the government by strengthening political parties and evoking the views of private organizations in his favor. The threat of terrorism was interpreted by Putin to be so great that the elements of democracy had to be subordinated to a strong fist controlling terrorist aggression.

There were attempts made at democracy before 1991. It is worth noting them as the emergence of popular representation although they were brief and failed. Czar Nicholas II agreed to codify certain civil rights into the October Manifesto of 1905 and proposed Russia's first representative assembly. Unfortunately, the assembly never passed any reforms. Then, after the fall of the czar in March 1917, Menshevik leader Alexander Kerensky proclaimed the state to be a democratic republic. The republic's Constituent Assembly accompanied Russia's first free election. This attempt at democracy ended when the Bolsheviks overthrew the government in November 1917. The Communist Party then controlled the Russian people for seven decades with propaganda aimed at motivating them into compliance.

To understand why democracy is difficult for the Russian people to comprehend and protect, one must realize that under Communism the Russian people were indoctrinated to worship the state. The Soviet Union was legitimized as an "ideocracy, a system ruled by an idea."2 Russians entered the 20th century embedded in propaganda. They acted as objects among objects with no free will. The people were enveloped in Communism due to the orders from the high echelons of the state. To the average Russian, Marxist-Leninism was the absolute truth.

Historically, as part of the Soviet Union, Russia's laws protected the community and state rather than individual rights. What V. I. Lenin did with his doctrine of Marxist-Leninism was to bring about a social revolution in what became the Soviet Union. He used his interpretation of Marxism to inspire the greatly outnumbered industrial population to cooperate with a basically peasant society through the Communist Revolution.

To the extent that Putin has promoted order and distinction from the West, freedom has diminished. Today, the Russian military establishment is, in general, opposed to Putin's infamous private police force, which is considered by some as comparable to Hitler's S.S. in Germany during the 1930s and 40s. In contrast, when Putin was intent on democratic reform fifteen years ago, he was also faced with strong opposition from the military, which effected his course of action.

In a democracy, along with granting such fundamental freedoms as speech, press, religion, and assembly, the government calls on the individual to act with self-restraint to protect the freedoms of each and all others. Civil liberties are protected by a constitution and other laws so that no single group or individual has the political power to curtail the rights of others.

In theory, democracy is realized when individuals function in and interact in society to influence the outcome of government policies for all, through a structure that is accessible to all. Russia's democracy has tempered its authoritarianism partly through Boris Yeltsin's vision of balancing and separating the powers of the president, judiciary, and legislature. However, many Russians today, when questioned, admit they feel powerless. In Russia, the right to speak out against the government is restricted because, in general, Putin loyalists are in control of the media and in control of the police.

The Russians have difficulty envisioning how freedom and equality can coexist with order. Under Soviet Communism the freedom and equality of each individual was not even discussed let alone practiced. The renowned scholar Erich Fromm wrote in his book, Man For Himself, that:

. . . in the authoritarian orientation, the power of will and creation are the privilege of those in control. Those subject to the leader are means to his end and, consequently, his property and used by him for his own purposes.3

Democracy becomes an option only when such supremacy is questioned. In the Soviet Union, citizens reacted to the fall of their economy prior to the union's dissolution. They ceased being objects of the Communist authority and became instead, subjects expressing their discontent.

It remains to be seen if Russians can realize the benefits that the freedoms of democracy can provide them with, in particular, the right to express a political opinion in opposition to the state leadership. With the advent of reforms in Russia starting in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the seeds for democratic thought and active dissent against authoritarianism and oppression began.

In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet economy declined, leaving room for political and economic change. In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet president. Gorbachev oversaw the establishment of a new parliamentary system and a new presidency.

There was now an elected president with a fixed term of office, a line of succession . . . and a two-term limit. There were provisions for impeaching the ruler, for passing legislation against his will, and for overriding his veto.4

It is Gorbachev's legacy that he inspired the Russian people with terminology that planted the seeds for dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of fifteen new states. Importantly, Gorbachev discussed the "individual" as having merit in society.

In his book Perestroika Gorbachev stated a belief in lifting the individual spiritually, respecting the individual, and giving him or her moral strength. He felt that the individual must know and feel that his or her contribution to society is important and must be treated with respect and trust.

Under Gorbachev's presidency, the Soviet Union was still trying to maintain its existence. Yet, Gorbachev paved the way for the dramatic changes to follow. Importantly, the election of March 1989 was the first time power shifted away from the Communist Party. Future elections made it all but impossible for the Communists to reinstate their authority. This was the beginning of a chance for the people to have a voice in the input and output of governmental decision-making.

Boris Yeltsin, in the liberating atmosphere of the late 1980s, made his way to the top of the government power structure. In 1991 there was an attempted coup with chaos in the top of government circles. Yeltsin dissolved the Soviet Union. Russia became a nation on its own with Yeltsin as its president. For the first time the Russian people were able to assert themselves. Under new leadership they began an attempt at democracy.

In December 1993, the Federal Assembly, a 628-member parliament was established. It consisted of two chambers: the 450-member State Duma (lower house) and the 178-member Federation Council (upper house). The Federation Council exercises less power than the State Duma. In the election of 1996 voter turnout was high. Russian citizens felt enough effectiveness to vote and express their political choices. International observers declared the election to be free and democratic. As free subjects, the Russians were trying to assert their own self-determination.

To its credit, during its 2001 session, the Duma passed reforms which included a Criminal Procedure Code. The reforms were a step forward in fostering human rights and brought Russia closer to the freedom and democracy of the West. Unfortunately, at present Russia is trying to divorce itself from Western democracy. Its democracy is flawed because there is no long-term governmental vision that would bring the people through a reform process.5 As subjects, most people are finding self-assertion difficult and find it easy to some extent to revert back to being objects of manipulation by those in power -- Putin and his loyal followers.

Because the Russian constitution restricts a person holding the office of president to two terms, there will be a major election in Russia in 2008. Putin loyalists are competing for the position. Dmitri Medvedev, the first deputy prime minister, although not declaring his candidacy, is nevertheless a front-runner to succeed Putin. Among others there is also Sergei Ivanov, who became Russia's first civilian to lead the country's military in 2001 and is now serving as first deputy prime minister, the same rank and title as Medvedev.

However, there is also a minority speaking out, because the groundwork for dissent in favor of democracy exists. Some Russians have the strength of will to dissent in the name of freedom and democracy. A rally of several thousand people was held on March 3, 2007, in the heart of St. Petersburg's tourist district. It was held in advance of local elections scheduled for March 11th. Speaking out on behalf of democracy, a prime leader of the rally, Mikhail A. Kasyanov, told the large group:

I congratulate you for overcoming your fear. We will have victory when we get our Russia back. We have 364 days before the election in 2008.6

Kasyanov was an organizer of another protest in Moscow in April 2007 that resulted in numerous arrests by the police. The people as individuals exerted stood for democracy despite suppression.

A poll conducted by Michael McFaul in Russia measured the electorate's opinion of democracy. The results showed that over 60 percent of those surveyed support the ideal of democracy while 85 percent believed in the importance of freedom of expression.7

Between 1998 and 2003 a sample of Russians was surveyed by Ellen Carnaghan of Saint Louis University. Even though they didn't fully grasp what democracy is, a strong majority of those interviewed said they favor democracy. When asked if government officials should serve the interests of the majority, or if individuals should enjoy personal freedoms, or if elections should give citizens the opportunity to choose among competing candidates, they replied "yes."8

Russia may never mirror the United States or Western Europe in political and governmental form. In the West, liberal values have a long history. There is little precedence for democratic individualism in Russia. Yet, there is dissent in favor of democracy. It has not yet died. Whether it will take hold or be destroyed remains to be seen. The election of 2008 is around the corner both in the United States and in Russia. *

"[A] wise and frugal government . . . shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." --Thomas Jefferson

Endnotes

1. Steven R. Weisman, "Russia Is Needed, But It's Not There," New York Times, sec. 4 (April 9, 2006): 1+.

2. Richard Pipes, Communism: A History (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 155.

3. Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (New York: Fawcett Premier, 1975), 153.

4. Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York: Random House, 1990), 485.

5. Zoltan Barany, "The Politics of Russia's Elusive Defense Reform," Political Science Quarterly 121, no. 4 (Winter 2006-07): 629.

6. Andrew E. Kramer, "Police and Protestors Clash in St. Petersburg," New York Times, sec. 1 (March 4, 2007): 4.

7. Michael McFaul, "Russian Democracy: Is There a Future?" (Event Transcript) Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Publication (January 18, 2001): 1-20, Available from http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publicanon.cfm?ctype=event_reports&item_id=16.

8. Ellen Carnaghan, "Do Russians Dislike Democracy?" Political Science and Politics XL, no. 1 (January 2007): 61.

We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 6/9/07 to 9/14/07): Ariel, Nancy M. Bannick, Nephi Barlow, Douglas W. Barr, John G. Barrett, Harry S. Barrows, Bud & Carol Belz, Charles Benscheidt, James L. Blilie, Priscilla L. Buckley, D. J. Cahill, Terry Cahill, Dino Casali, W. Edward Chyoweth, John Alden Clark, William D. Collingwood, Gary E. Culver, Peter R. DeMarco, Fransic P. Destefano, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Neil Eckles, Nicholas Falco, Joseph C. Firey, Reuben M. Freitas, James R. Gaines, John B. Gardner, Robert W. Garhwait, Jane F. Gelderman, Joseph H. Grant, Hollis J. Griffin, Joyce Griffin, Alene D. Haines, Weston N. Hammel, John H. Hearding, Thomas E. Heatley, Bernhard Heersink, Norman G. P. Helgeson, Jaren E. Hiller, H. Ray Hodges, John A. Howard, Donald C. Ingram, D. Paul Jennings, Robert Keldsen, Bruse G. Kelley, Gloria Knoblauch, Reuben A. Larso, James A. Lee, Herbert London, Francis P. Markoe, Curtis Dean Mason, Paul Maxwell, Stanley C. McDonald, Woodbridge C. Metcalf, King Odell, Valentime Polkowski, Steven B. Roorda, Michael J. Ryan, Matthew J. Sawyer, Mr. & Mrs. Richard P. Schonland, Irene L. Schultz, Harry Richard Schumache, Paul Sopko, Richard J. Stasiak, Carl G. Stevenson, Clifford W. Stone, Kenneth R. Thelen, Julian Tonning, Eugene & Diane Watson, Gaylord T. Willett, Piers Woodriff.

Angus MacDonald

There are two theories of global warming. One study, based on sediment deposits, going back thousands of years, has located marine fossils in Vermont, Quebec, Ontario, and Michigan. The oceans covered much of what we know as farmland. This warm period was followed by an ice age. The 10th to the 14th centuries have been called the Medieval Warm Period, followed by the little ice age of the 13th and 14th to the midst of the 19th century. If I understand correctly the literature, we are in a warm age compared with thousands of years ago. Stillwater, Minnesota, was once covered by ice a mile thick. There is a rhythm to climate changes we do not understand and to which we must adjust. Vermont and New York City may one day be submerged. If this should happen, there is nothing we can do but adjust. If this event occurs, it will not be for thousands of years.

The other theory of global warming is supposed to be scientific, though I can find only dogma in the literature I have. The assertion is made that the temperature near earth increased by about one degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century and may increase by 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 A.D. With no scientific knowledge, an increase of one degree does not impress me as significant, though an increase of ten degrees may have significance. A concession is made that an increase in global warming may be the result of solar radiation because of an increase in sunspot activity, but "the scientific consensus identified elevated levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity as the main influence." The fuels used by man that are said to increase global warming are petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Natural gas is a derivative of the search for petroleum and coal. Though it is an important energy source, it can be dismissed if we turn away from petroleum and coal.

We have a lot of coal, enough for another 285 years at the present rate of use, supplying 22 percent of our energy needs, the main use being for electricity. Surface mining provides 63 percent of our coal, and shaft mining provides 32 percent, going down about 1,000 feet. This is done by what is called "room and pillar mining," and is the type of mining that killed several miners this year when the walls collapsed. It is offensive that we have men digging in the dirt, a thousand feet below the surface, where we cannot locate them in need or save them when in danger. There must be a better way to produce energy.

France could lead us to a better way: electricity by nuclear power. In 1974, after the first oil shock, and with few natural resources, the French government decided to go nuclear. They now have a substantial level of energy independence, the lowest electricity cost in Europe, and a extremely low level of carbon emissions. The back-end cost of waste disposal is around 5 percent. France is the world's largest exporter of electricity, it being their forth-largest domestic export item, sending electrical power to Italy and the United Kingdom. An additional factor is that high temperature reactors can produce hydrogen which could supply hydrogen-powered automobiles and trucks.

The United States has a large supply of shale oil that is available for use at the current price of pumped oil, but it may never be used. We could wean ourselves from oil needed for automobiles in as little as ten years if we continue present efforts to produce hydrogen-powered cars. All carmakers are in the race to produce a car with clean fuel and no harmful emissions.

A racecar by BMW that uses 286 horsepower and goes from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds, runs on an ordinary combustion engine that can use either hydrogen or gasoline. We could go from one fuel to another with the switch of a button. The car has under-the-hood fuel cells that refine the hydrogen for use. Until more supplies of hydrogen are available, we could run around town on hydrogen and use gasoline only for long trips where hydrogen stations are rare.

Germany is establishing filling stations near hydrogen generators. Shell Oil and General Motors are constructing hydrogen filling stations in Washington D.C., and Governor Schwarzenegger has called for a hydrogen highway with 150 fuel stops at regular intervals.

All of this sounds wonderful. Clean energy from water! Even it if takes decades to develop infrastructure, the possibility gives us hope. The petroleum economy has been with us for a little more than one hundred years, and has been a great blessing, and it will take time and money to make a successful transition. If we can be successful, we shall take care of the pollution problem. We may still have global warming, but it will not be from any human misuse of the environment. *

"The prevailing spirit of the present age seems to be the spirit of skepticism and captiousness, of suspicion and distrust in private judgment; a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of old paths, because they are old." --Samuel Johnson

The quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.

The following is a summary of the August 2007, issue of the St. Croix Review:

In the Editorial "Jefferson and Lincoln" Angus MacDonald reviews the lives and times of these eminent men who came to epitomize the parties they founded.

Herbert London, in "A Europe That Cannot Listen," writes that the Europeans refuse to understand the threat posed by Islamic terrorists, and they blame the U.S. for inciting the terrorists by fighting back; in "The American Courts as Allies of the Terrorists" he writes that some of the best legal minds in the country are occupied with giving terrorists constitutional protections; in "Democracy's Romantic Alternative" he believes that Western nations must counter the jihadist movement with our own brand of inspiration: one of hope, liberation, and human fulfillment; in "A New Prague Spring" he describes a gathering of heroes -- former political prisoners of the world's worst tyrannies; in "Fake Sentimentality" he looks at the shallow controversies, misplaced emotion, and hand wringing that occupies primetime T.V.; in "The Good Life?" after seeing chubby vacationers lolling on the beach in Hawaii, he concludes that Americans are just having too good a time to be distracted by the unpleasantness in the Middle East.

Allan Brownfeld, in "How the "Ghetto Mindset" Is Harming the Mores, Attitudes and Lifestyles of Both Our Urban Communities and the Larger American Society," shows that the entertainment industry is a contributing malefactor in the self-destruction of this generation of black youth; in "Assessing the Role -- and the Future -- of German Jews, the Fastest Growing Jewish Community in Europe" he describes the surprising rebirth of Jewish life in Germany.

Robert L. Wichterman sees our present clash with Islamists as a resumption of the original conflict more than two hundred years ago in "The Second Time Around."

In "Liberty Revisited" John Howard is guided by Edmund Burke to believe that "manners are more important than laws . . ." Howard believes that the Christian faith has been replaced by a do-your-own-thing ethos that renders good manners, morals, and standards dispensable. Howard believes that faith in God comes before civilized liberty.

Haven Bradford Gow writes about the spirit of religion and the spirit of the gentleman in "What Makes a Country Lovely."

In the "The Six Pillars of Achievement" William Barr sees a weakening faith in God as the source of a spreading cynicism, hedonism, and selfishness in our society. Our past should inspire us to regain our footing, as we have wonderful achievements, and have made historical contributions -- such as our constitution -- to world culture.

In "Reagan Lessons for Bush: Searching for 'Solidarity' in the Middle East," Paul Kengor relates that Reagan and his top advisors considered sending troops into Poland to discourage a looming Soviet invasion, but they decided on a safer, and successful, course of action.

In "'A Turning Point' Twenty-Five Years Ago," Paul Kengor writes of the alliance formed between President Reagan and Pope John Paul II against the Soviet Union, and the reaction of the U.S. press to Reagan's strong words for the Communists.

In "Who Really Pays the Taxes?" David J. Bean reveals all the hidden taxes that we pay.

In his "Writers for Conservatives: 10" Jigs Gardner covers the masterpiece written by Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives Tale. Mr. Gardner believes this to be one of the best novels written in English.

Joseph Fulda castigates clever attorneys who prosecute people because they are less than honest, or because they panic and unwittingly contradict themselves, during intense questioning, even though the original charges are discovered not to have happened in "Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bacanovic, Ms. Stewart, and Mr. Libby."

Del Meyers reviews Who Really Cares -- America's Charity Divide -- Who Gives, Who Doesn't and Why It Matters, by Arthur C. Brooks.