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Ruminations on the Road by Steven Yates
Author’s note: a few months back I put together a "column" of fragments that were obviously not going to expand into columns but seemed too interesting to allow to languish in C-drive subspace indefinitely. The result, judging by reader response, was a startling success. Any number of readers wanted more. On a recent road trip from Auburn, Alabama to Columbia, South Carolina (where I will be relocating in about a month, having accomplished what I set out to accomplish for the Mises Institute) I found myself penning some new fragments. While again some were junk, others seemed worth saving. I present the latter here. Wednesday, January 29, 2003. Interstate-85. The biggest joke on interstate highways today is the speed limit. Try obeying it to the letter. Drive at the government-prescribed speed, and everyone passes you. Literally. If you accelerate to a velocity ten miles over the speed limit, perhaps three quarters of the rest of traffic passes you. There are obviously not enough police prowling the miles of near-desolate highway to catch everyone going over 70 mph. Nor – I am assuming – would that many police be desirable in whatever is left of our once free society. Of course, if you go fast enough long enough, you’ll be stopped. It’s called the law of averages. Driving a flashy car also decreases your odds of driving at high speeds, or so I am told. I am not saying, of course, that people ought to drive at absurdly high speeds – although it is clear that other things being equal, many Americans can drive at high speeds on interstate highways and do so safely. It depends on your car, the amount of traffic, weather conditions, road conditions, and so on. Believe it or not, many Americans seem able to balance these different considerations. It is, as usual, the Nanny State, that would convince us otherwise. The Nanny State is built up on the assumption that individuals cannot exercise personal responsibility and must be taken care of. The result is that we are being "lawed" to death. And without reducing the number of automobile accidents to any significant degree. Wouldn’t the sensible thing to do be simply to get rid of laws that cannot be enforced in any consistent way and which, in any event, few drivers appear to take seriously? SUVs are cool! Two hours into flight: I know of people who complain bitterly about driving in and around Atlanta. I’ve never been one of them. Admittedly the highways around the South’s largest city are hectic. It is true that you have to watch everything and everyone, all the time, because as Detective Phil Fish used to say on the old Barney Miller spin-off, "It’s a jungle out there!" I grew up in Atlanta. It is true that Atlanta isn’t the same place. But then again, neither is any other city. However, Atlanta’s city government was corrupt then and remains corrupt now. So not everything changes. Most city governments seem to be cesspools of corruption. The tendency of power to corrupt seems to be a cultural universal. For frequent details and updates, check out radio talk show host Neal Boortz’s daily commentaries – even though Boortz will annoy you with his let’s-kick-Saddam’s-butt-ism. He understands that Democrats are the evil party but he doesn’t quite understand that Republicans are (usually) the stupid party. Which is why things keep getting more and more centralized no matter which party is in charge. Oops, got off the subject there. In case you haven’t noticed, I have trouble leaving political commentary alone for any length of time. But back to driving. I find the drive through or around Atlanta invigorating. A sense of life and energy animates the whole environment. When watching the traffic, which by the way includes beaucoups of cars that look like they were just driven off the lot, I have trouble believing the Romans on the Potomac when they tell me the economy is in the dumps. Of course, to the extent the economy is in the dumps, they are the ones who put it there. Out here in the real world, people are still going about their daily affairs, still buying and selling, still producing, still trying to figure out their taxes, still working out in the gym to burn off the frustration afterwards. None of that saps the energy of Atlanta. Maybe it’s the sprawl. If so, then long live sprawl! Augusta. I stopped in a Waffle House for a sandwich. One of the things I enjoy doing when traveling is having a look at the local newspaper – or whatever passes for such. The Augusta Chronicle contained a letter to the editor on the controversy that has had Augusta on the map for the past year: the Augusta National Golf Club’s steadfast refusal to admit women into its ranks. The letter argued that the same reasoning used today by ANGC spokesmen to refuse membership to women would have been used 40 years ago to refuse membership to blacks. Of course, the implication is that such a refusal would be openly racist and hence unacceptable. Arguing by analogy, the letter writer concluded that the ANGC should admit women now. And in another 40 years, said spokespersons will look back on the present with embarrassment. I found myself thinking of that lost concept: property rights – versus the interpretation of "rights" held today by feminists and other leftist groups. The latter holds that all doors must be open to all groups, and in accordance with their percentage in the population. Sayeth a website by the feminist National Council of Women’s Organizations, "the club has a moral obligation to open its doors to women." If the concept of private property rights was (1) understood, (2) believed, and (3) protected rather than infringed upon by the institutions of government and the legions of activists, then it would be clear that the decision whom to admit to the ANGC would be up to the ANGC. It would not be considered anyone else’s business. Those excluded – for whatever reason – could petition for membership, of course, but if the club turned them down, that would be the end of it. On the other hand, if they wanted to start their own organization, no one would stop them. This, of course, is beyond feminist groups, who can only organize around the feminist agenda and are probably incapable of organizing an entity like the ANGC that serves the broader public. Columbia. In my hotel room I finally sat down to read the copy of George W. Bush’s "State of the Union" speech I’d taken off the Internet that morning. (I’d been spared the torture of listening to it the night before by a phone call from my girlfriend whom I would see in a day or so.) I also had with me a copy of Lew Rockwell’s article – as an antidote, in case I needed it. Try as I might, I can’t improve on Lew’s observations. One line in Bush’s text continues to haunt me, however – especially in light of all the debate over the Bush tax cut: "Lower taxes and greater investment will help this economy expand. More jobs mean more taxpayers, and higher revenues to our government. The best way to address the deficit and move toward a balanced budget is to encourage economic growth, and to show some spending discipline in Washington, D.C." (Italics mine.) Go back and read the italicized line again. It’s very important. It points directly at the financial philosophy guiding the Bush regime, which is the financial philosophy of Rome on the Potomac. According to this philosophy, the raison d’être for an expanding economy is not so that individuals may find or create new opportunities to flourish, increasing their own long-term prosperity, but to better feed the hungry State. Now that we have lost our Constitutional republic, the State’s rulers see themselves as entitled to whatever percentage of our incomes they see fit to claim. Never mind that we earned it and they didn’t. So the more people working, the more revenue they can exact through coercive taxation. Of course, it’s all fiat money anyway. We should never deceive ourselves by thinking that politicians want a healthy economy because they are concerned about the well being of citizens. A healthy economy, at least as that term is now understood, is desirable to our elite classes because it enables them to fund their various agendas. That evening, Rev. Robert Slimp of Columbia’s Red Shirt Reading Circle, a discussion group that has met in a downtown restaurant once a month for years now, presented the most comprehensive account I’ve encountered of how political correctness has destroyed the entire Southern African region. Rev. Slimp is more than qualified to present on the topic, because he spent time there and knows (or knew) some of the major players personally. He covered much of the past 400 years of the region’s history. Those attending were able to review the founding of Capetown and eventually the settling of regions such as Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Rev. Slimp observed, among other things, that the geological and mineralogical riches that made Cecil Rhodes billions in diamonds were discovered not by African tribesmen who had lived there all along but by the white settlers. The region was well on its way to becoming one of the most prosperous in the world. Everyone – the British, the Dutch-derived Afrikaaners, and the native black populations – was benefiting. Not anymore. Rhodesia has become Zimbabwe. The South Africa of "white minority rule" has become the South Africa of Nelson Mandela’s socialist African National Congress (ANC). Today, of course, the region is on a downward spiral. Zimbabwe is now a place where whites who have not already fled are driven from their land. More than 200 white farmers have been jailed for resisting, even though the country’s own courts have called the seizures of their farms illegal. Many of these people hold British passports, but Britain’s Tony Blair has done nothing. The global forces of political correctness have seen to it that little of this makes it into the mainstream Western media. Meanwhile, official calls for ethnic cleansing have spread to South Africa, where one can hear chants of "Kill the Boer, kill the Farmer!" These, by the way, are not considered instances of "hate speech." Since 1994, the year the ANC took power, over 1,400 white farmers and their families have lost their lives to gangs of thugs. "Interestingly," writes Slimp, "in 85 percent of the killings, not one item was stolen from the farms and farm houses." Over half the remaining commercial farmers have fled the country. The region is now threatened with a massive famine. Whites live behind the walls of gated communities protected by militia-like units. They dare not go out at night. Again, there is a near-blackout on the situation in the mainstream Western media. And apartheid was supposed to have been the evil. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman, is also waging war on other blacks. Their crime: being members of the wrong tribe. It should be obvious that Mugabe is a more brutal tyrant than Saddam Hussein ever thought of being. But instead of threatening him and working to oust him from power, the U.S. government (i.e., the U.S. taxpayer) is funding him! Rev. Slimp reported last year that in 1999 Mugabe’s genocidal regime got $9.3 million in foreign aid, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. In 2000 he received $12.6 million. In 2001, he was given $13.7 million. But then again, lest we forget, Robert Mugabe isn’t sitting on top of one of the world’s largest oil reserves. Thursday, January 30. Scouting around for apartment communities. Where does one start? There are dozens if not hundreds of them. I find myself thinking about a population of citizens so overtaxed and employers so overregulated that many who would otherwise be able to do so cannot afford houses. Of course, I am told that the housing market is booming. How many payments are being made up front, however, and how many of these purchases are just adding to our skyrocketing consumer debt? A friend of mine in Columbia is buying a house. I know she can’t really afford it, because I know what her salary is. She has the service-sector job I vacated, and her expenses are roughly the same as mine. An enormous and growing percentage of the American public is struggling financially amidst the plethora of service-sector jobs. In addition to the huge costs of expansionist government, there is immigration – another of those issues you will learn about on the Web, not from Dan Rather or Peter Jennings. The plain truth is, both governmental and corporate elites like our porous borders. Near-unlimited immigration pleases Romans on the Potomac, because few Hispanic illegals and Third World immigrants have any idea what is in the U.S. Constitution. Once nationalized and made citizens (something Bush the Younger would still like to do, under the very strange assumption that they will magically become Republicans), nearly all will vote for still more expansions in the central government. Many corporations, on the other hand, like immigration because it supplies cheap labor and thus drives down wages. As usual, the American middle class – mostly WASPs and their families – takes the hit. Those who have chosen to live within their financial means, roughly speaking, live in apartments. Friday, January 31. Today more evidence surfaced that property rights is an utterly alien concept in early 21st century America. When setting about the task of leasing an apartment, one’s personal safety is obviously a concern even if political correctness has yet to bring this country to the level of tribalism Southern Africa has reached. Legitimate concerns, however, still go beyond how well lighted the place is at night, whether the doors have deadbolt locks, and other factors my grandparents’ and even my parents’ generation didn’t much worry over when they were my age. I want to learn something of the population in any apartment community where I am a prospective tenant about to sign a long-term lease. No one would tell me anything definite. In fact, legally the leasing agent’s hands are tied. One openly cited the federal Fair Housing Act. Under federal law, no leasing agent can say anything about the racial makeup of a community – and this is the case for real estate agents showing houses as well. She could not even tell me how many were professional, marriage couples or even how many had children. She was forbidden by law to tell me much of anything along these lines. Leasing agents can lose their jobs for transgressing these boundaries erected by the Omnipotent State. Now whose property is this? Does it belong to the Omnipotent State? Again, one would almost think so, since it is the entity repressing free communication between private individuals considering a business transaction, effectively muzzling leasing agents and keeping prospective tenants in the dark about who their new neighbors are. Rome on the Potomac wants to protect us all from terrorists. Gee, I feel safer already. Saturday, February 1. The most significant event of the day, of course, was also the worst disaster for the space program since the Challenger exploded on take-off almost exactly 17 years ago. I am referring, of course, to the space shuttle Columbia’s disintegration over Texas at roughly 8 a.m. central time during its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Seven more astronauts lost their lives. While watching the images on television Saturday morning I began to ponder just how dangerous space travel really is. Human beings going into space are literally sitting on top of a controlled explosion – a bomb, in other words. Nothing less can generate the energy necessary to accelerate something as massive as a space shuttle to escape velocity, which is approximately seven miles per second or 25,000 miles per hour. For this reason, takeoff is considered the most hazardous part of space flight. It is not surprising that the evidence is pointing toward the possibility that the Columbia’s thermal tiles, designed to protect the shuttle and its interior from the extreme, 3,000-degree heat generated during re-entry, were damaged during takeoff. (Very possibly, it was an effort to make the space shuttle more "environmentally friendly" that indirectly led to last weekend’s tragedy.) Given all this, a question arises: should anyone in his right mind entrust something so dangerous, where there is literally no room for error, to the federal government? It is probably by the grace of God alone that we have only lost seventeen astronauts to NASA’s blunders. Come to think of it, outer space itself is dangerous. We have a strong instinct to explore the universe, because we want to know what’s out there. The more we learn, the more we discover we don’t know. But we haven’t found a single corner of galactic real estate out there that would sustain human life. The other planets are too hot or too cold, either dry, mostly airless stones or enormous spheres wrapped in thick, poisonous atmospheres. Astronomers have now detected some 91 planetary systems and documented what appear to be 105 extrasolar planets (although not all the objects detected have been fully verified as such). Many of these are more massive than Jupiter, the largest of the "gas giants" in our own solar system. Nothing discovered out there so far will support life. At least as we understand it. Colonizing other worlds remains, for the time being, a romance of science fiction. The enormity (and expense) of the real thing would dwarf our efforts to send up astronauts in a shuttle and bring them down safely. It would be a whole lot more dangerous, although I believe that someday there will appear adventurous souls willing to assume all the risks (hopefully without depending on the taxpayers). I am increasingly dubious that I will live to see it. A melancholy thought. Scientists are searching for evidence of Earthlike worlds out there – under the assumption that such worlds exist to be discovered and that life may exist on some of them (and philosophy professors tell me that science makes no a priori assumptions about its subject matter!). Detecting worlds the size of Earth will take much higher resolution equipment than we have now, however. Unless, of course, the Vulcans land next year. Or, in case you prefer Babylon 5 to Star Trek, the Vorlons. Or unless whoever crashed that sucker near Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947 decides to pay us another visit. That would settle the issue. Maybe. But in all seriousness, for all we know we could be alone. It is logically possible, after all, that Earth is utterly unique. I personally don’t think so. To paraphrase Ellie Arroway’s comment in the movie Contact with a Christian twist: I just can’t see God wasting all that space. But life looks to be, at best, an exceedingly – astoundingly – rare phenomenon outside the imaginations of science fiction writers and filmmakers. Perhaps, in this light, we would do well to treat human life and the conditions for its flourishing on Earth in a less cavalier fashion. Even here, under ordinary temperatures and pressures, life isn’t simply given but is sustained through a specific course of action. In animals, this action is instinctive and automatic, but in human beings, it results from conscious consideration and deliberation – something sacrosanct in a free society. The best knowledge we have in economics informs us that certain policies and societal states of affairs (free inquiry, free markets) tend to improve life, while others (war, socialism) destroy it. These are general remarks. There is no way of predicting in advance what human beings will do when given freedom: what they will discover, what they will invent. No one predicted the personal computer. Not even Orwell. Each person’s life has the potential to be something unique. It would be nice if our supposed leaders would dwell on such things before, and not after, they decide to turn Iraq into the world’s largest outdoor parking lot, killing countless people who would probably not voluntarily support Saddam Hussein. I could pray that all the world’s dictators, would-be dictators, gang members, terrorists, thugs and other destroyers of life might have, at some point in their lives, a moment of clarity during which they "see" things from this genuinely universal perspective – and see both the general rareness and specific uniqueness of what their actions would snuff out. Sunday, February 2. The Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis once wrote: "Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses." (I thank Rev. E. Ray Moore for the quote, though he didn’t supply a source.) Egads! What if Lewis were around today to have witnessed the disaster (for children, that is) that was OBE – or School-to-Work or the more recent power grab underway in the wake of George W. Bush’s much-touted No Child Left Alo – uh, I mean, Behind. Or South Carolina’s pathetic First Steps program. This brain abortion of former governor Jim Hodges has cost South Carolina taxpayers $37 million each year, while threatening to put private education providers out of business from having funded their state-sponsored competitors. All this during a worsening budget crisis. Hodges also brought state-sponsored gambling into South Carolina in the form of a lottery "for our public schools." Needless to say, that money has disappeared as completely as if funneled down one of those black holes the astronomers talk about. South Carolinians voted for that turkey. They were warned. Some things really should be left to families, entrepreneurs and private associations including churches. The education of children is one of them. Children are too important to be left in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. It takes a family to raise a child. Sorry, Hillary. Monday, February 3. West Columbia. Lunch with none other than Maurice Bessinger, who remains a major thorn in the side of Columbia’s politically correct. In 2001 Bessinger completed his autobiography, Defending My Heritage: The Maurice Bessinger Story. It was published just over a year ago. This work tells how Bessinger grew up not far from Orangeburg, South Carolina, a poor farm boy who learned what work was very early in life. He later learned the restaurant business from his father Joseph Bessinger, then fought in the Korean War. Afterwards he returned to his native state "to marry the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life." He also began his life’s work, building up his chain of barbecue restaurants, which after a few ventures in other places came to be located in and around the area native South Carolinians call the Midlands. The chapters in Bessinger’s book offer statements rather than regular chapter titles. They seem addressed to young people at the start of their careers, and offer consistently sound advice. Here are some samples: "If You Take Care of Your Customers, They Will Take Care of You," "There Is Power in Secrecy," "The Most Important Thing in This World Is a Stable, Loving Family," "Identify What You Do Well, and Make It Happen," "Moral, Inalienable Rights Come From God, Not Government," "Courageous, Independent Voices Are Threats To Power," and "When In Battle, Stand On God’s Promises." These serve as a backdrop for Bessinger’s account of his early struggles against efforts by both radical activists and then the government itself to force him to integrate his restaurants. He was told by one activist in the early 1960s: "We’re gonna make you integrate!" The point here is very important. Again the issue isn’t race but property rights: again versus their forcible violation, discussed in what is probably the boldest chapter in Defending My Heritage. No one who reads this book honestly can accuse Bessinger of being a racist. If there is any validity to the picture he paints of Southern culture prior to the civil rights era, then relations between the races were better before that era than they became afterwards. Whites and blacks may have been segregated, but they didn’t hate each other and sometimes helped each other – particularly as the vast majority of both were extremely poor. Here’s the fifty-dollar question: does a property owner – such as a restauranteur – have the right to determine for himself, based on his best perceptions of what pleases his customers, who he serves in his restaurant? Bessinger thought so, and tells how he won the only battle ever fought against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a lower court – although the decision was reversed by a higher court and the U.S. Supreme Court let the reversal stand. He went on to work for George Wallace, managing more than one of his campaigns in South Carolina. He calls Wallace "one of the most courageous politicians and potential national leaders of our period in history." Wallace, in Bessinger’s view, was a fighter with the potential to change history by reversing the progress toward global government. Instead, he was "shot down like a dog." Here, Bessinger makes one of his more provocative claims – that the attempt on Wallace’s life was the product of a conspiracy. Obviously we don’t have proof of this, but Wallace was dead set against the continued consolidation of power in central government, a term he’d used openly. He had a growing following, and clearly represented a threat to those who wanted a global empire. Bessinger converted to Christianity and withdrew for the time being from politics. During this period of his life he founded a ministry while continuing building up a business that created several hundred jobs. He didn’t take a single cent from any governmental entity. By the end of the 1980s he had been written about in magazines such as People and Southern Living. Late in the 1990s he won a number of awards, and was the U.S. Small Business Association’s South Carolina Entrepreneurial Success Award Recipient one year. His products were on the verge of obtaining national and even international distribution. The milk soured after he rallied to the defense of the Confederate flag, eventually flying it over his restaurants after it was removed from South Carolina’s State House in 2000. What ensued was a systematic effort to destroy the man both personally and professionally. The forces of political correctness worked through local media, corporations and (Bessinger remains convinced) organizations such as the S.C. Chamber of Commerce. Bessinger lost 98 percent of his wholesale business, which required the distribution of his products to customers through large grocery chains and "superstores" like Wal-Mart. He now sells them through independent distributors and over his website. Bessinger hasn’t lost any of his spirit despite continuing attacks in the media, from other local corporations such as SCANA, and a recent snub by newly-elected "respectable Republican" Governor Mark Sanford. As he said in his book, "God seems to have picked me for one of His biggest battles in South Carolina – to fight, that is, for the Constitution, for truth and for honor." Here’s to Mr. B, as his loyal employees call him. May he keep fighting the good fight and making his unique mustard-based barbecue sauce, surely a source of pride to South Carolina even if the p.c. crowd refuses to partake. As for Defending My Heritage: if you are a Southerner you need to read this book. If you are not a Southerner but believe in Christianity and Constitutionally limited government – or are worried about the expansionism or those with globalist aspirations – you should read it. It is chockfull of surprises. I have barely scratched the surface here. Tuesday, February 4. Back to Auburn – and to the hundreds of anxiously awaiting emails. February 8, 2003
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
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Steven
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