by Steven Yates
July 27, 2002
(Author's note: When writing I often end up with fragments ranging in length from one or two sentences to several paragraphs. Many aren't worth saving, but some seem to be. Most never develop into anything of article length, but it has dawned on me that they might find interested readers nevertheless. So here, in no particular order or arrangement, is a sampling. Most are recent; a few are older.)
Has anyone noticed how both the federal government and the national news media dump on corporations such as WorldCom following evidence of financial misdeeds; yet federal agencies can "misplace" billions with no one saying a word? A prime culprit here is the U.S. Department of Education where I've heard figures as high as $18 billion that have been lost. Somehow, this situation indicates the need for government regulation of business.
Inquiry: could it be that some of the anxiety triggered by corporate collapses and falling stocks is due to three unconscious realizations: (1) that the so-called new economy did not repeal economic law, popular government-fed and Fed-fed misconceptions to the contrary; (2) that massive influxes of easy, Fed-created credit lead to pseudo as opposed to real prosperity (because real wealth cannot be generated out of thin air), and (3) that corporate welfare is as much a snare and a delusion as welfare for individuals?
Recently we have seen a lot of news coverage of so-called pedophile priests – at least some of whom aren't pedophiles at all but ordinary homosexuals. But we'll let that go for the moment: are these men being hung out to dry in the national news media because they are pedophiles or because they are priests? I've yet to hear the phrase innocent until proven guilty applied in one of these circumstances.
The other morning something made me recall a question I asked my father when I was a little kid, maybe five years old. "How come people have to pay for things?" I don't recall what my father said, but it strikes me that such a question is a fairly obvious one for inquisitive children to ask eventually, and could be the perfect springboard for parents (assuming they understand the subject themselves) to begin systematic instruction in the principles of free market economics.
Joe Sobran has written a number of interesting and provocative columns about an entity he and Tom Bethell described a few years back and called the Hive. The Hive is an informal group whose members participate in education, the media, etc., to take this country closer and closer to socialism without necessarily taking marching orders from someone at the top of a hierarchy of conspirators. Sobran writes: "Except for its Communist minority, the Hive has never been directed by commands from above. Instead it uses peer pressure, verbal signals, and the amorphous power of u2018public opinion.' It accustoms the general public to accepting its definitions of discrete u2018issues,' couched in reformist, seemingly u2018pragmatic' language, so that the bees – the agents of the Hive – range from conscious ideologues to passive dupes."
So does this mean there is no "conspiracy" – no one at the top directing traffic leftward? Not necessarily. All it means is that the CFR-types don't have to direct all the traffic, not by any means. Once a significant fraction of those with influence are convinced, and once a significant fraction of the public has been brainwashed to go with the group, there is no need. Government schools have been experimenting with behavior modification programs for decades, as John Taylor Gatto (in, for example, The Underground History of American Education) and others have shown in great detail. These programs were created under the auspices of an educational elite, once called the Education Trust, which actually goes back to the time of Woodrow Wilson and borrowed freely from the behaviorism of Watson, Thorndike and Skinner. The long-term goal of the Education Trust was to create a docile, compliant population that would not only submit to rule by an elite but would actually love their rules. The instrument was government schools. Government schools accordingly began to ratchet up emphasis on the group – group identity, group activity, group thinking – as well as feelings (the "affective domain"). Simultaneously they assaulted the independent individual and logical thought (the "cognitive domain"). The liberal arts curriculum was slowly gutted, since at its ideal best a liberal arts curriculum aims at teaching individuals how to think instead of how to obey. Subjects like philosophy and literature are capable of threatening this when they are more than language games.
It stands to reason that some of these efforts would be wildly successful, and that we would see the emergence of large numbers of people who automatically carry forward the agenda of the centralizers without being given explicit instructions by anyone. This is Joe Sobran's Hive. It is what it is because its informal membership has become completely immersed in the group-oriented mindset, totally sold on the idea that the State has replaced God, and all that this calls forth.
Not long ago I had cause to compare some current logic texts that are considered pretty good and often used, such as Irving Copi's classic text Introduction to Logic and Patrick Hurley's more recent A Concise Introduction to Logic, with a text originally published in 1934 which drew the praise of none other than Ludwig Von Mises himself: Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel's An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method.
The former texts do not even come close to Cohen and Nagel's book in level of sophistication! As its authors spent pages developing topics that are treated (if at all) in just two or three sentences in today's logic texts, I dare say that the average undergraduate today would not find Cohen and Nagel's text comprehensible. Yet An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method was once used in undergraduate logic courses.
And folks wonder why some of us go on and on about the dumbing down of education in these United States.
Several times now, both on the Web and elsewhere, I have encountered the following remark by the left wing columnist Julianne Malveaux about Justice Clarence Thomas – who has always been sort of a hero of mine and who may be the only person on the current U.S. Supreme Court who actually has a legal philosophy: "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease. . . . He's an absolutely reprehensible person."
It strikes me that this is an absolutely reprehensible thing for any human being to say about another human being. But can you just imagine the media explosion that would rock the nation if any white columnist were to say something like this about, say, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton?
Libertarians often complain that they are not taken seriously by any of the major-party folks or by the news media. Oftentimes these complaints are justified.
However, I once had a passing acquaintance with a man who lived in Columbia, South Carolina, and considered himself a libertarian. I would estimate his age at around 55. He could frequently be seen on city streets – usually those full of shops, sidewalk cafes, bars and other places that catered to university students. His hair, black and streaked with gray, was most of the way down his back. He nearly always wore a blue T-shirt with the national Libertarian Party logo on it – the one with the Statue of Liberty alongside the words Libertarian Party. However, the shirt never looked like it had been washed in the past month. The same for the man's torn and faded jeans. The man showed up at local Libertarian Party meetings dressed like this!
What kind of an advertisement for libertarianism is that?
A good starting point for at least some libertarians who want to be taken seriously – I would think – is to clean themselves up. Get rid of that long hair. Replace the dirty T-shirt with a clean white shirt with buttons down the front. Do not show up at official functions without a tie (and don't wear a Rush Limbaugh tie!). Put on a decent pair of neatly pressed trousers. One need not put on a tuxedo or even a three-pieced suit. One just needs to look like a professional adult, not a person stuck in terminal adolescence.
This won't guarantee, of course, that the libertarian is taken serious by the "mainstream." Many libertarian ideasu2014abolishing the income tax, for example, or getting rid of the U.S. Department of Educationu2014are, after all, pretty radical sounding to most people's ears, and almost certain to be seen as a threat to those wielding most of the power in American society as it has developed over the past several decades. However, a libertarian who looks like a throwback to the hippie generation almost guarantees himself not being taken seriously. And he hurts the freedom movement, which will be dismissed in the "mainstream" as a collection of terminal adolescents.
The cynic may be right nine times out of ten; his belief that he is right ten times out of ten is his downfall. [Written sometime around 1995.]
An informal list of people who chap my rosy-red behind:
Academic feminists at prestigious universities, hired through affirmative action programs, tenured and promoted to senior-level positions (and paid accordingly), who whine incessantly about how mistreated they are by "the patriarchy."
Diversity social engineers at universities who respond to supposed racial incidents by building "cultural diversity centers," as has been done at Auburn University. These centers celebrate every culture except the one that built this country. Has it occurred to its builders that incidents might be occurring because white male students are slowly getting fed up with being treated like the scum of the earth, and are taking the only avenue of protest open to them – short of simply not attending public universities?
Any Hollywood celebrity who says that the government ought to do more to help the poor. Barbra Streisand made such a remark back in the early 1990s. Rush Limbaugh reasonably responded with ridicule. The average Hollywood celebrity has far more money, after all, than the average taxpayer. If Hollywood celebs are "feeling your pain," then perhaps they ought to get up off their butts and do something to help the poor. They have vastly more resources, after all, than the average taxpayer. I doubt any taxpayers will stand in their way.
The Democratic Party.
The Republican Party, except for Ron Paul.
Anyone who says he is a libertarian but draws a government paycheck.
Anyone who says he is a libertarian but favors more overseas intervention in the name of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism."
Anyone who says he is a libertarian but favors educational vouchers.
Michael Jackson. Enough said.
Morris Dees. Ditto.
Richard Simmons.
July 27, 2002
Goodnight, Irene