Showing papers in "Policy Review in 1994"

Immigration or the Welfare State

Abstract: Immigration has recently become a lightning rod for America's deepest fears of social chaos and national decline. Millions worry that immigration is rapidly transforming America into a third-world country, with crowded, violent cities, under-educated and low-skilled labor, and an ethnic spoils system replacing America's tradition of constitutionalism and individual rights. Concerns are rising that immigrants are abusing the generosity of our welfare state, and will become an enormous burden on taxpayers. And because a large number of immigrants are Spanish-speaking, many Americans fear that continued immigration, especially from south of the border, will result in the balkanization of our country into different language and ethnic groups, ultimately leading to the sort of social tensions afflicting countries from Canada to Ukraine to, in the worst case, Bosnia. These are legitimate concerns, but the problems that Americans rightly fear are not due to immigration itself, but to the wrong-minded social policies of our government. State-sponsored affirmative action, bilingual education, and multiculturalism are promoting dangerous levels of ethnic group tensions and conflict. And our welfare system is breeding pathological levels of crime and dependency--not primarily among immigrants but among native-born whites and blacks. A country in which 22 percent of white children and 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock need not look to immigrants as the source of social breakdown. The underlying problems are government policies whose emphasis on group rights promote ethnic tensions and a welfare state that encourages individuals to destroy their own families. IMMIGRANT BLESSING With proper government policies, immigrants are a blessing. We saw this with earlier waves of immigration, as America absorbed and assimilated tens of millions of foreign immigrants of every language, religion, and ethnicity. By 1900, some 20 percent of America's total population was foreign-born, and an additional 10 percent arrived in the following decade. Today's immigration rate is only a fraction of this level. Millions of impoverished, poorly educated Jews, Slavs, and Italians became proud and productive Americans through a public school system that emphasized English language skills and American culture, and a society that provided economic opportunity rather than government entitlement. The Ellis Island tradition was harsh but fair: Immigrants with illnesses, or who were otherwise likely to become a burden on society were excluded, while those with willing hands were allowed through the Golden Door. This is the tradition to which America should return. Even today, despite government policies that foster dependency, the immigration of the last three decades has still been a strong net positive for the American economy. Anyone walking the streets of New York City or most other major urban centers sees that the majority of the shops are owned and operated by immigrant entrepreneurs, often in ethnically defined categories--Korean grocers, Indian newsstands, Chinese restaurants. It is obvious that most of these shops would simply not exist without immigrant families willing to put in long hours of poorly paid labor to maintain and expand them, in the process improving our cities. In Los Angeles, the vast majority of hotel and restaurant employees are hardworking Hispanic immigrants, most here illegally, and anyone who believes that these unpleasant jobs would otherwise be filled by either native-born blacks or whites is living in a fantasy world. The same applies to nearly all of the traditional lower-rung working-class jobs in Southern California, including the nannies and gardeners whose widespread employment occasionally embarrasses the upper-middle-class Zoe Bairds of this world, even as it enables their professional careers by freeing them from domestic chores. The only means of making a job as a restaurant busboy even remotely attractive to a native-born American would be to raise the wage to $10 or $12 per hour, at which level the job would cease to exist--this is Economics 101. …

Ante Freeze: Stop the State Bidding Wars for Big Businesses

Abstract: At the University of Alabama's Legion Field, there's a long, rich tradition of victory. At the stadium, legendary football coach Bear Bryant and his Crimson Tide posted on of the most successful records in sports history. Now the stadium is the site for yet another Alabama trophy: A huge, $75,000 Mercedes-Benz hood ornament perched atop the scoreboard. While intended to celebrate the German car company's recent decision to locate a $300 million manufacturing plant near Tuscaloosa, it has instead before symbol of how much, in money and self-respect, the state had to give up to win the high-stakes bidding war for the plant. Not only did Alabama pony up a package of special tax breaks and other goodies for Mercedes valued at roughly $250 million, but it also agreed to buy more than 2,500 of the company's cars for state use. As the details of the deal have leaked out since its announcements last September, citizens have expressed second thoughts about it. "There are a lot of people in Alabama who think we gave the farm away," says state legislator Johnny Cagle. Among state residents, says Auburn University professor Wayne Flynt, reaction to the Mercedes deal has "gone from euphoria to fright." Clinching The Deal Alabama's purported Mercedes coup is only one of the latest skirmishes in the bidding wars raging among states to recruit high-profile corporations, particularly manufactures, using taxpayer-backed bonds, tax abatements, special training and infrastructure subsidies, and other sweeteners to clinch the deal. The dollar-amounts continue to rise--the Mercedes deal is thought to be the largest one ever--and so does the controversy. While many economists, taxpayers, and public-interest groups have dried foul, elected officials, economic development strategists, and big-business leaders essentially have shrugged their soldiers. It's just the way things are done these days, they say. I'm surprised not so much by the intensification of the bidding--wars which, given the potential for governors and other officials to gain political points from high-profit recruitments, seemed inevitable--but instead by the complacency of those in the business world and elsewhere who see no conflict between their free-market principles and special tax breaks for big business. For example, Theodore Von Cannon, who heads Birmingham's Metropolitan Development Board and helped lure Mercedes to Alabama, recently remarked, "as long as we have a free-enterprise system, there is not much you can do " to avoid giving away incentive packages." Corporate Welfare Dealmaking continues in spite of the controversy. The state of Virginia recently established a "partnership" with the Disney Corporation to erect a new theme park south of Washington, D.C., near the site of historic Bull Run. Virginia's new governor, Republican George Alllen, was determined to bag the theme park for his state, and convinced the legislature to provide part of the infrastructure nd other concessions Disney demanded--a package worth over $160 million. Conservative commentators have praised such bidding wars. Rush Limbaugh has spoken favorably about the recent cut-throat competition between New York, Connecticut, and new Jersey to attract or keep firms such as First Chicago Corporation, Prudential Securities, and the New York Mercantile Exchange by using special tax breaks. And George Will wrote in Newsweek last September that efforts to restrain the bidding wars (proposed by Illinois Governor Jim Edgar) would be "too bad." Ironically, the kind of big-ticket incentives packages companies are getting today offer no check on the growth of government; indeed, they are an important reason why the state and local tax burdens on the average small business owner or taxpayer are getting heavier. Nor is the sort of "corporate welfare" provided by activist state governors a recipe of real economic growth. Yes, a few big employers may move to a state offering lavish incentive packages, thereby providing photo opportunities and ribbon-cutting ceremonies for image-conscious politicians. …

By the People: The Old Values of the New Citizenship

Abstract: Out of the ashes of George Bush's defeat in 1992 has come a bold new strategy for American conservatism. The strategy, called the "new citizenship," builds on the scholarship of Robert Nisbet, Michael Novak, Peter Berger, Richard John Neuhaus, and other leading conservative thinkers. Its goal is the reconstruction of civil society, the return of America to the self-governing republic described by Alexis de Tocqueville and envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Its social vision contrasts sharply with the similar-sounding but profoundly different rhetoric of "national community" espoused by President Clinton. Michael Joyce, president of the Bradley Foundation, has been the principal architect of this new strategy. Pointing to the signs of massive discontent among American voters toward our major governing institutions - the immense popularity of Ross Perot's radical, populist call to return government directly to the people, the success of term limits and tax-and-spending limits in referendums across the nation, exit polls showing widespread skepticism about government's intentions and programs-Joyce has argued that "Americans are sick and tired of being told they're incompetent to run their own affairs." Speaking before The Heritage Foundation in December 1992, Joyce articulated his vision for conservatism in the next generation: Americans are eager to seize control of their daily lives again - to make critical life choices for themselves, based on their own common sense and folk wisdom - to assume once again the status of proud, independent, self-governing citizens intended for them by the Founders. Americans, he went on, are "sick and tired of being treated as helpless, pathetic victims of social forces that are beyond their understanding or control...of being treated as passive clients by arrogant, paternalistic social scientist, therapists, professionals, and bureaucrats." Under the "new citizenship" strategy, conservatives would empower families to take back their schools and neighborhoods, to make key decisions about education and health care and the character of their communities. Two themes are emerging from the new citizenship concept. A "resistance" theme calls for rolling back the incursions of the therapeutic state into the everyday lives of Americans by challenging the political hegemony of the "helping" and "caring" professions and bureaucracies. This requires dramatizing their status as entrenched, corrupt special interests more concerned about advancing narrow ideological agendas and protecting political prerogatives than about serving the public. Common Sense, Everyday Wisdom Resistance also means challenging the cultural hegemony of "expert" knowledge on behalf of the common sense, everyday wisdom of the average American. It includes a strong critique of the new moral code of our elites - in particular, the central place accorded untrammeled self-expression - on behalf of traditional values like self-discipline, personal responsibility, and moral integrity. The larger and more ambitious "restoration" theme calls for nothing less than revitalizing the institutions and values of American civil society. Through our vast, pluralistic network of civic institutions, as Tocqueville noted many years before, Americans had always been able to harness private energies to countless public tasks. At the same time, civic associations and groupings helped sustain order and public morality, and generally leaven the materialistic individualism of commercial democracy with an inclination toward broader citizenly duties. The traditional, local institutions of civil society - families, schools, churches, neighborhoods, and other "mediating structures" - had allowed the exercise of genuine citizenship and cultivated character for the next generation. That the institutions and values of civil society are deeply imperiled and desperately in need of resuscitation today is a conviction widely shared across the political spectrum. …

You Just Can't Take It Anymore: America's Property Rights Revolt

Abstract: Outraged citizens staged a grass-roots tax revolt in the late 1970s that forced lawmakers to cut taxes, reversed the prevailing orthodoxy about taxes in intellectual circles, elected dozens of state and federal anti-tax lawmakers, and helped catapult Ronald Reagan into the White House. The resulting 1980s tax cuts touched off the longest peacetime economic boom in American history and led other nations to trim taxes and spending. Meet the grass-roots rebels of the 1990s: The private property rights movement. Like the early tax rebels, these activists were often strangers to politics until the government disrupted their lives. Their cause promises to have similarly dramatic results. Indeed, the property rights revolt already is changing the political calculus in Washington. There are more than 500 active property rights groups across the country, with a total of some 2 million members. They have helped thwart the environmental agenda in Congress and several federal agencies, successfully pushed legislation in a more than a dozen state legislatures, helped elect at least a score of state and federal lawmakers, and won key cases in the courts, including two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases. Like supply-side economics, the movement has touched off a paradigm shift in the way many view property rights. All of these accomplishments from a movement that didn't exist five years ago. STALLED PLOWS, DASHED HOPES If the property rights revolt succeeds, vast areas of federal regulation would have to be reexamined. Why? Because courts and legislatures are increasingly requiring compensation for government rules that reduce property values. Federal regulators would be forced--often for the first time--to weigh the costs and benefits of regulation. Many rules would not pass the test. The property rights movement would touch off the biggest reduction in government regulation in more than a century. "This is the unfinished business of the Reagan Revolution," says James C. Miller III, head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan. In 1989, President Bush's "no net loss of the nation's remaining wetlands" pledge produced an arbitrary and confusing set of wetlands regulations--creating, in effect, a national zoning law. Wetland regulation, originally designed to protect swamps, became so broadly defined that, with a few computer keystrokes, almost 75 million acres of private land suddenly became wetlands. Bush's most important environmental campaign promise fueled a massive regulatory expansion. It soon stalled plows in farmer's fields, idled home builders on small plots, and snatched away the dreams of people who bought land decades before hoping only to build their modest homes. ON THE RETREAT Wetlands regulations sparked a national grass-roots movement against a broad array of environmental and other government-imposed land-use restrictions. Within a few years, environmentalists faced a full-scale revolt against many of the laws and regulations they cherish. Even today, with environmental guru Al Gore a heartbeat away from the presidency, the environmental movement is having trouble raising money, hanging on to members, and winning in the legislative arena. To be sure, the environmental grip on federal legislation remains secure--there is little danger at present of any major environmental programs being repealed or dramatically scaled back. However, on most significant pieces of environmental legislation up for reauthorization this Congress, the greens have been unable to expand their agenda for federal control of privately owned land and resources. The National Resources Defense Council's Erik Olson, in a now-infamous March 4, 1994 memo with six of the most influential environmental lobbyists in Washington, recommended all but killing the ambitious environmental legislative agenda for 1994. If environmental bills are debated, he said, they could be amended in ways the environmentalists would dislike. …

Poor Suffering Bastards. An Anthropologist Looks at Illegitimacy.

Abstract: HE HAS NO RELATIVES' "Bastard" has always been a pejorative term. The word is a Spanish idiom: bastardo, or "pack-saddle child"; the French term is fils de bast, the child of the saddle bag, implying rootlessness. An alternative etymology derived from the Saxon "base" or lowly, and "start" or origin. Being a bastard was to be a "natural" child, lying outside of society. The name is an insult, "bastard" being associated with mongrel or inferior breeds of animals. The inferiority derived from improper mixture, or blending. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a phrase from 1641, "To beget and bring forth mules, a bastard brood." Spurious, adulterated, debased, corrupt, unauthorized, and counterfeit are other connotations of the word. Our colloquial language expresses this concern. Consider how the word "bastard" has come to mean someone heartless, cruel, or prone to cheat. We are not alone in this judgment. A Navajo saying captures well the universal stigma that attaches to illegitimate offspring. Do Ahalyada, they call them, "those who care for nothing." The worst social characterization the Navajo can offer of a thoughtless, deviant man is the charge that "he acts as if he has. no relatives." This phrase tells us that being embedded in relationships, in a network of legitimated and recognized kinsmen, is a powerful reinforcement for moral action. A man with no relatives, the Navajo feel, is a man with no concern for the shame or honor that his behavior might bring upon those he loves. He acts, therefore, without control or humanity. European countries of the Middle Ages felt the same, regarding illegitimate children as virtual outlaws. They called them filii nulii, those "without relatives." We see a similar phenomenon in modem America. People concerned about the reactions of relatives behave differently than do people who are "atomized" as anonymous strangers. The husband at a distant convention, or the tourist abroad, may do things under the cover of anonymity that would bring embarrassment were they done in front of one's mother, wife, children, or in-laws. A culture of bastards is a world of hardened carelessness. DOMESTICATE THE MALE That women domesticate men who marry them has been widely noted; indeed "groom" derives from guma, Indo-European for servant. In addition, children domesticate both men and women. In American cities the presence of children has become a "miner's canary" for social health; where we find children playing, there we find safety for ourselves. Consider how we feel in a potentially threatening neighborhood where two young males approach. There is a relief that comes from seeing them hand-in-hand with a young child. We recognize instinctively that males caring for children are not seeking violence. Neighborhoods without fathers, by contrast, are seedbeds for predators. Without a female and a male who consider themselves responsible for children, the stable features of social continuity are not constructed. Without marriage, there are fewer relatives--fewer people to help when things go wrong, fewer people to set a moral example. Children are any society's greatest hope, at the same time that they are its greatest threat. Since citizenship, as with any art, is made and not born, children are the most consequential social investment. Bastards are undercapitalized. And they die for it. Shakespeare's Timon shouts in his rage, "Spare not the babe ... think it a bastard ... and mince it sam remorse." This is not just a Western prejudice. In cultural contexts far removed the vulnerability of the bastard is a troubling theme. For the Nyakyusa of Tanzania, reports Monica Wilson, being illegitimate is dangerous. Nyakyusa ancestors jealously guard procreation, and must sanction childbirth. But if a man fails to legitimate his children, he is powerless to intercede for them when the ancestors cause disease. The agony for a father of bastards is that his negligence may kill them. …

From Pluribus to Unum: Immigration and the Founding Fathers

Abstract: Americans torn by conflicting impulses on the question of immigration may find it helpful to consult the thoughts of the Founding Fathers. The Founders were also torn. They favored open immigration, and yet they worried that the new republic would be endangered if large numbers of foreigners arrived without learning the English language and embracing America's cultural and political institutions. The Founders resolved the dilemma by insisting on the rapid assimilation of newcomers. Men and women would be free to come to America from every country in the world - but only if they became Americans. From the beginning, Americans wanted to share the blessings of liberty they had secured for themselves with the rest of mankind. The Declaration of Independence cited, as one of its principal grievances against George III, that "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, [and] refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither." The Constitution called upon Congress to establish a uniform naturalization law, and the young republic placed virtually no restrictions on immigration. Even as they favored plentiful immigration, however, the Founders worried that foreign ideas and influences might undermine America's republican institutions. They feared that concentrations of foreign populations on American soil might exacerbate the risk of factional and sectional conflict. To minimize these dangers, the Founders thought carefully about allowing foreigners to become Americans. The challenge was to make a myriad of peoples into one nation. In this effort the Founders largely succeeded. The lesson for our times is that a free nation can sustain high levels of immigration if it labors carefully at the hard task of making citizens. Second Land of Promise The American Revolution, and its experiment in republican government, gave fresh meaning to the concept of the New World as an escape from the Old. Thomas Paine, himself a recent immigrant when he wrote Common Sense in 1776, called America "the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe." The thought of America as a political refuge was nothing new to the people of New England; their Puritan ancestors had emigrated to escape religious persecution. Now, political asylum was part of the very idea of the nation. George Washington wrote in 1785, "let the poor, the needy and oppressed of the Earth, and those who want Land, resort to the fertile plains of our western country, the Second Land of Promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment." The Founders expected and welcomed a large influx of immigration. "Those who live under arbitrary power do nevertheless approve of Liberty, and wish for it," Benjamin Franklin wrote John Jay from Paris in 1777. "... [T]hey almost despair of recovering it in Europe; they read the translations of our separate colony constitutions with rapture; and there are such numbers everywhere, who talk of removing to America, with their families and fortunes, as soon as peace and our independence shall be established, that 'tis generally believed we shall have a prodigious addition of strength, wealth, and arts from the emigrations of Europe." There was also an expectation that the best immigrants would add to the moral capital of the growing country, bringing with them the attributes necessary for the workings of free government. America promised advantages to those "who are determined to be sober, industrious and virtuous members of Society," Washington told a Dutch correspondent in 1788. "And it must not be concealed," he added, "that a knowledge that these are the general characteristics of your compatriots would be a principal reason to consider their advent as a valuable acquisition to our infant settlements." Economic freedom and the prospect of prosperity would also be a great inducement, adding population and material wealth to the new nation. …

Education's Long March: The Choice Revolution Shifts to the States.

Abstract: After 12 years of Republican rhetoric promoting school vouchers, a Democrat - championed by the teachers' unions that regard private school choice as unmitigated evil - wins the White House. In California, a voucher initiative goes down to defeat by a margin of more than two to one. Ten years after vouchers moved to die center of the education debate, just one state has pushed through a pilot program, limited to one percent of the students in one city. Have we heard the death knell for private school choice? Patient Persistence Not at all. In fact, the silence in Washington is deceiving, masking a groundswell of pro-voucher activity and advocacy in cities and states across the country. Even after last year's landslide loss in California - as the National Education Association's (NEA) morning-after press release trumpeted, the nineteenth defeat for a voucher initiative since 1966 - prospects for new voucher programs have never been better. The NEA, in spite of its post-ballot bravado, is on the defensive; like General Lee's army in the final year of the Civil War, it may be winning all the way to Appomattox. The reason: Even in losing efforts, the arguments for vouchers are beginning to have a cumulative effect. Public schools aren't getting any better, and even more important, the hypocrisy of anti-choice forces is beginning to penetrate the public mind. Chelsea Clinton's enrollment at Washington's Sidwell Friends School was a high-profile confirmation of the strong predilection for private schooling on the part of parents who, in their professional and political lives, oppose private school choice for others. This practice goes well beyond the liberal elite; in a number of cities, public school teachers are twice as likely as the average family to send their own children to private schools. As Polly Williams - the black Milwaukee welfare mother turned state legislator who championed the country's only court-sanctioned voucher program - observes: "Bill Clinton shouldn't be the only person in public housing who gets to send his kid to private school." Observers who wish to understand the future of the voucher movement must look beyond the state-wide referenda campaigns, which have produced a string of landslide losses, to the small but unmistakable signs of the movement's vitality. In the few places where small gains have been made, private school choice takes tenacious root. Ironically for imperial Republicans grown used to a perpetual hold on the presidency, the progress of private school choice may just revive one's faith in Federalism. The prospect of achieving radical ends by incremental means is emerging - provided pro-voucher forces cultivate patience and persistence. Clinton Backpedaling Polly Williams often waves around copies of a letter written in October 1990, one month after her Parental Choice Program began. "I'm fascinated by that proposal ...." writes her correspondent. "I'm concerned that the traditional Democratic Party establishment has not given you more encouragement. The visionary is rarely embraced by the status quo." The letter's author, then-Governor Bill Clinton, soon learned that private school choice was politically incorrect. Chastened by presidential ambition and the political realities of a potent public education lobby that would supply one in eight delegates to the Democratic National Convention - along with an army of door-knockers, envelope-stuffers and, ultimately, voters in the 1992 Presidential campaign - Clinton did an about-face on vouchers. On education policy, his New Democrat centrism took the form of support for "public-school only" choice. Yet support for even this half-measure evaporated upon entering the Oval Office; in Clinton's first speech to the NEA as president, he was already backpedaling. Choice - even the tepid public school choice candidate Clinton had talked about - was not mentioned. …

Condom Nation. Government Sex Education Promotes Teen Pregnancy.

Abstract: During the debate over her confirmation last year, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders sketched her strategy for combating teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases with her usual sledgehammer bluntness: "I tell every girl that when she goes out on a date--put a condom in her purse." Dr. Elders lamented that schools teach youngsters how to drive but "don't tell them what to do in the back seat." In fact, they do, and have been doing so for decades in the form of explicit sex-education programs and school-based clinics. And that is the problem. Premarital sexual activity and pregnancy have increased in step with the increase in the programs. One of every 10 teenage girls in the United States now becomes pregnant each year. Studies published by the government family planners indicate that these problems are very likely the result of their programs. For example, one such study found that contraceptive education increased the odds of 14-year-olds starting intercourse by 50 percent. SEX EDUCATION FOR ALL None of these facts has ruffled Dr. Elders and her allies in the Clinton Administration. Dr. Elders has called for greatly expanding the government commitment to comprehensive sex education from kindergarten through 12th grade, though the surgeon general prefers starting at age three. She wants free contraceptives and abortion referrals through schools and clinics. In his first weeks of office, President Clinton extended the services of federal family-planning clinics and increased their budgets by $100 million. His proposal for health-care reform gives a prominent place to school clinics. The Clinton administration's expansion of family planning is only the most recent step in a long march of government-engineered sex education. In 1964 a private coalition of educators and activists founded the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to "expand the scope of sex education to all age levels and groups." Since then, its curriculum has helped form the basis for sex-ed guidelines in most public schools. In 1965 Congress began to subsidize birth control for the poor. Beginning in 1967, Congress enacted program after program to extend government birth control. This culminated in the Adolescent Pregnancy Act of 1978, which specifically targeted teenagers, even though they were covered in other programs. Today, sex education is taught from kindergarten through college throughout the nation. In New York, second-graders stand before their classes to name and point to their genital organs. In California, children model genital organs in clay and fit condoms on cucumbers. From such books as Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, children are learning alternative forms of sexual expression--including oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, and homosexuality. At the same time, government-supported "family planning" clinics have blanketed the country, providing young, unmarried men and women with pills, condoms, and abortions--usually without parental notification. School-based clinics, 24 of them in Arkansas alone, often make condoms and other birth-control devices available to children, and even refer teenage girls for abortions without their parents knowledge. The number of school-based clinics has grown from 12 in 1980 to at least 325 in 1993, according to the Center for Population Options. All told, federal and state expenditures for contraceptive services increased from $350 million in 1980 to $645 million in 1992-not including abortions, sterilizations, and most sex education. A RECORD OF FAILURE It is bad enough that public money is being used to advance a sexuality agenda that many families find objectionable. What is inexplicable is that these government efforts continue--trumpeted by our nation's chief medical officer--in the face of mounting and irrefutably negative evidence. Proponents of sex education argue that government family planning increases the use of contraceptives. …

Wizards of Ooze: Lawyers Shouldn't Be the Only Ones Cleaning Up under Superfund

Abstract: This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance; which gives to monied might, the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give - who does not often give - warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!" Charles Dickens wrote these words 142 years ago in his novel Bleak House, but he could easily have been describing the legal quagmire known as Superfund. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980, was intended to be a temporary program. It was supposed to ensure the rapid cleanup of what has been elegantly called the detritus of the Industrial Revolution: the many sites where hazardous wastes were left buried in the ground, leaching into groundwater, threatening homes and neighborhoods. Instead, Superfund has become the environmental equivalent of the Defense Department's $600 toilet seat. Environmentalists have an enormous stake in making certain Superfund is reformed thoroughly and quickly, for if the American people begin to regard it as a "typical" environmental program, public support for environmental protection could erode precipitously. Toxic Liabilities Superfund has failed in its mission of cleaning up hazardous waste sites across the nation. After more than a dozen years and nearly $30 billion dollars ($12 billion in federal appropriations, $7 billion collected from parties, and $10 billion in litigation expenses), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concedes that cleanup has been completed at fewer than 200 of the 2,000 sites that pose the greatest threat to public health. But this failure is not the result of idleness; Superfund has been a bonanza for lawyers and consultants. A recent Rand Corporation report found that at studied sites nearly one-third of the money spent has gone to "transaction costs" rather than to cleanup itself. Nor is there any end in sight. Its ultimate costs are now credibly projected from $100 billion to $700 billion. In my own state of California, we see monuments to Superfund all around us. Public officials in Oakland have complained to me that fear of toxic liability is holding up redevelopment of that city's downtown. Under Superfund rules, the purchaser of a property is liable for cleanup costs of any hazardous wastes that may be found there. The result is to sharply discourage investment in industrial inner cities; business executives tell me it is much less risky to develop property in pristine exurban areas that have not yet been industrialized. This incentive system makes no environmental sense whatsoever. After over a decade of delay, cleanup is only now beginning at the McColl site in Fullerton. During the early and mid-1940's, various refinery wastes including acidic sludge from aviation fuel for the World War II effort were disposed into pits or sumps. A lifetime later, toxic black waste continues to ooze into a residential neighborhood, rejected by the earth. Why the slowdown? Because Superfund's application of liability to a small number of companies with "deep pockets' is an open invitation to time-consuming litigation. In the McColl case, the Environmental Protection Agency tried to make a small number of parties liable for a cleanup that will cost $80 to $100 million. The idea was that those defendants would in turn sue other parties - including the U.S. government - for their share of the cleanup costs. But cleanup was continually put off, as various defendants wrangled in court over how much they would pay. …

Veil of Tears: The Church Is Part of Our Divorce Problem - and Solution

Abstract: The breakup of the American family - six out of 10 marriages now end in separation or divorce - finally seems to be causing alarm among nearly all sectors of society. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's recent article in the Atlantic affirms that the dissolution of two-parent families "dramatically undermines our society." William Bennett, senior fellow of cultural studies at The Heritage Foundation, has documented profound social regression over the last generation: divorces have tripled; teen suicide rates have tripled; illegitimacy quadrupled; child abuse has jumped five-fold; violent crime soared seven-fold. However, the family-values debate has been sterile because both liberals and conservatives point almost exclusively to the federal government to help strengthen families - in the form of tax deductions, better child-support enforcement, and Head Start programs for preschoolers. But the central reason for the dissolution of two-parent families is that couples no longer marry for life, and the federal government can do nothing to strengthen marriage commitment. Historically, that has been the job of organized religion, and it is doing a poor job indeed. Blessing Machine Indeed, the church is part of America's divorce problem. Three-fourths, of all first marriages are blessed by pastors, priests, or rabbis. Yet, according to a recent University of Wisconsin study measuring divorce and separation, 60 percent of new marriages are failing. Clearly, organized religion has access to most young couples, but it acts as a "blessing machine" that has no more impact on those getting married than a Justice of the Peace. Too many churches have simply become "wedding factories" with a rented chapel, a hired pastor, and an organist. Most churches prepare couples for elaborate weddings - costing $16,000 on average in 1992 - not for life-long marriages. On the other hand, the very access most churches have to most marriages is also a source of hope. Some churches really are doing an outstanding job of preparing couples for marriage or of sustaining existing marriages. They are the exception, however, and the complicity of organized religion in family breakup first must be understood. The failure of organized religion has occurred on moral and practical levels - both in terms of church teaching on sex and sexuality and in real-life preparation for marriage and support for existing marriages. On a range of sexual issues, too many churches have succumbed to the modern ethos of free-wheeling, individualistic sexual expression - almost anything goes. Despite the official teaching from Rome, for example, only a third of all Catholics believe premarital sex is wrong, a full 58 percent consider it harmless. Mainline Protestants also closely mirror society's sexual mores. Among Lutherans, for example, only 38 percent consider premarital sex harmful, while 55 percent condone it. Even the country's largest conservative Protestant denomination - the Southern Baptists - disapproves of premarital sex by only a slim majority, 53 percent. Chastity Pays Dividends Attitudes like these among the church-going make defending the case for chastity sound pretty quaint. But with over 1 million teenagers getting pregnant each year, it is clear that our children are not learning the discipline needed for life-long commitment. Moreover, there is clear sociological evidence that chastity pays dividends toward a lasting marriage: A study by the National Center for Health Statistics and the University of Maryland showed that those who are sexually active before marriage are 71 percent more likely to divorce than those who are virgins on their wedding night. The religious community is equally, if not more ambivalent about unmarried couples who are living under the same roof. Catholic priests tend to sidestep the issue in premarital counseling sessions, as does much of the Protestant community. …

Serfdom USA: How Far Have We Traveled Down Hayek's "Road?" (Author Friedrich Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom')

Abstract: The free world celebrates two special 50th anniversaries this year. One is of D-Day, the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany's evil empire. The other is the publication of The Road to Setfdom, by Friedrich Hayek, which warned that Britain, America and other free nations that were expanding the welfare state and adopting centralized economic controls were unintentionally traveling down the same road to serfdom that led to fascism in Germany and communism in Russia. Hayek's Road, and his later works such as The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation and Liberty, are among the most influential books in modern conservatism. To mark its semicentennial, Policy Review, asked some of America's most thoughtful students of freedom to answer whether our country has moved closer or further from serfdom in the 50 years since Hayek's prophecy. Dick Armey Certainly we've travelled further down the road to serfdom since 1944, but that's really, not the interesting question. The real issue is, in which direction on that road are we heading now? I believe we have just made a screeching U-turn and are now heading back toward freedom - but Washington doesn't know it yet. Ironically, things in this country began to go wrong at the precise moment Hayek was writing. That's when our statists conceived income-tax withholding, the scheme that made our modern leviathan possible. In the old days, when free Americans paid their taxes out of their own wallets, there was a limit to how much revenue our statists could raise without having a rebellion on their hands. People could see how much they paid the government, and judge if the return was worth it. But once World War II gave the statists an excuse to take our money from our paychecks before we even touched it, the obscene growth of the government became inexorable. Today, we are staggering beneath a bloated government that spends over $24,000 for each household in America, an amount equal to almost 40 percent of the nation's economy. Every cent a typical American earns from New Year's Day to May 5 he in effect surrenders to the government. Throw in the hidden cost of government regulations - a concealed tax of over a half-trillion dollars a year - and it is not until July 13 that he stops working for the political class and begins working for himself. Young families with children suffer the cruelest burden. When millions of American couples need a second income, they need it not to support their children, but to support the government. Yes, we are indeed frighteningly close to serfdom. But liberation is at hand. For all the gloom of the Clinton term, we must remember that a paradigm-shattering revolution has just taken place. In the signal events of the 1980s - from the collapse of communism to the Reagan economic boom to the rise of the computer - the idea of economic freedom has been overwhelming vindicated. The intellectual foundation of statism has turned to dust. This revolution has been so sudden and sweeping that few in Washington have yet grasped its full meaning - which is why the Clinton plan to nationalize our health care is actually taken seriously. But when the true significance of the 1980s freedom revolution sinks in, politics, culture - indeed, the entire human outlook - will change. Capitalism will lose its century-old connotation of materialism and greed, and will at last be recognized as an unambiguous good, the only system compatible with our creative human natures. The redistributionist pessimism of today's elites will give way, to a new populist optimism of growth and opportunity. Policies that restrict economic freedom will suddenly seem backwards and reactionary; those that expand it will be seen as enlightened and progressive. And the Clinton administration will be remembered as an anomaly, the last gasp of a cause that had already, been lost. Once this shift takes place - by 1996, I predict - we will then be able to advance a true Hayekian agenda, including a flat tax, radical spending cuts, the end of the public school monopoly, a free market health-care system, and the elimination of the family-destroying welfare dole. …

Be Fruitful and Multiply: An Inner-City Pastor Turns Kids on to Math.

Abstract: As tough neighborhoods go, the south side of Chicago is legendary. The area is plagued by poverty and unemployment. Crime is rampant. A two-mile stretch of public housing highrises is mostly run by drug gangs. Sirens and gunfire are so commonplace that they have become background noises. Empty liquor bottles and crack vials litter sidewalks; the streets are strangely empty, even at lunchtime. Located in a particularly rough patch of the south side is the William D. Hinton school, a public elementary school with several hundred students ranging from prekindergarten to 8th grade. Hinton students, overwhelmingly from poor, minority, single-parent households, are products of the extreme stresses of inner-city life: alcoholism, drug abuse, neglect, poverty, and violence. Yet in spite of the school's grim circumstances, something extraordinary is happening at Hinton. Every Tuesday and Friday, as soon as the last bell rings, some 25 students rush to take over an empty classroom. They pull homework out of backpacks and start comparing notes; a rowdy debate ensues over who did the assignment correctly. But the dispute ends as their instructor, a welldressed young African American, arrives to begin the class. The kids immediately settle down, take their seats, and wait quietly for class to begin. The instructor produces today's tools - a large box of chemicals and instructions for a science experiment. The lesson that follows involves a complicated investigation: How to dispose of toxic waste, in this case a lethal level of copper-chloride solution, without polluting the water system. The group will spend the next two hours examining this question in one of the hottest after-school programs in Chicago, the Urban Pioneers. The popularity of the program has amazed even its sponsors: In the two years Urban Pioneers has been operating, it has attracted nearly 200 participants in six inner-city schools. These 5th- through 8th-graders spend four hours per week exploring the world of science and mathematics through hands-on experiments. The kids work hard; homework is assigned at each session and good behavior is demanded. Yet new members keep joining. The results have been remarkable. Says Sharon Bean, the principal at Hinton School, "When the Urban Pioneer organizers came to me, I nearly laughed them out of the building. You want these kids to stay after school and do math and science? You've got to be kidding.' But now kids who were discipline problems have turned around. Parents we have never seen are becoming involved in the school for the first time. And these kids have new horizons. This program has changed their lives." Hands-on Learning The Urban Pioneers program is a component of the Chicago Urban League's Black Churches Project (BCP), established by the League in 1988. Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, Access 2000 - a group of local universities, foundations, and businesses - and the Chicago Urban League, the goal of the BCP is to get young black students interested in science, engineering, and math. The program's original goal was to provide math and science tutoring to students in low-income areas. But in 1992 the Urban League introduced a new curriculum that emphasizes hands-on participation in science experiments that integrate many learning skills. The curriculum is designed so that each progressive lesson draws on knowledge from previous experiments: A continual reinforcement of learning. Jerry McNeely, the coordinator of the Black Churches Program and director of Urban Pioneers, is convinced that the sooner students are turned on to math and science the less likely they will be to fall behind later. He views the elementary school program as vital to students developing a long-lasting interest in the sciences, one that hopefully will lead to graduate degrees. McNeely studied engineering and finance at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and received a master's from Northwestem University's Divinity School. …

William Bennett's "Spiritual Despair": Is America in Revolt against God?

Abstract: America's worsening social pathologies--crime, welfare dependency, illegitimacy--have convinced many on both sides of the political aisle that the nation is in a stage of deep cultural decline. Writing in the Winter Issue of Policy Review, former Education Secretary William Bennett identifies the old vice acedia--"a corruption of the heart, a turning away in the soul"--as the source of this decline. In his article, "America's Revolt Against God," Mr. Bennett argues that America is validating on a national scale the ancient insight that private belief in God, or a lack of such belief, carries with it profound public consequences. And therein lies the nub of the problem: The political process is simply unable to address the deeper cultural issues at stake. Mr. Bennett warns that "it is foolish, and futile, to rely primarily on politics to solve moral, cultural, and spiritual afflictions." Though he calls for a stronger connection between our deepest moral beliefs and our legislative agenda, Mr. Bennett insists that without the revitalization of vibrant faith, political reform cannot reverse the tide of cultural drift. "If I am right and the chief problem we face is spiritual impoverishment, then the solution depends, finally, on spiritual renewal,' he says. Mr. Bennett's article provoked the following comments. ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE Professor of history, Emory University. According to William Bennett, Americans suffer from a spiritual decay that has left us singly and collectively without a sense of purpose. Mr. Bennett's diagnosis is essentially sound, but in divorcing our spiritual crisis from our material abundance, he risks oversimplification. Mr. Bennett properly discounts the notion that material deprivation accounts from the proliferation of crime, illegitimacy, and family breakdown. As a nation we do enjoy unprecedented material prosperity, although, demonstrably, share pitiably in it. But our collective prosperity does not justify a dismissal of social and economic issues from the discussion. In effectively easing the consciences of the truly prosperous Mr. Bennett opens himself to the charge of sleight of hand. For, if material deprivation cannot explain our moral and spiritual bankruptcy, our material prosperity, may. The notion that it is impossible to have too much of a good thing comports poorly with the dictates of a demanding God. Although Christians have suggested that we leave Caesar's matters to Caesar, they have also worried about the ability of camels to pass through the eyes of needles. Mr. Bennett here uncharacteristically slights the special responsibility of the affluent. In embracing prosperity as the ultimate sign of individual worth and personal freedom as the ultimate human goal, our elite is sending a message that the poor have embraced to their own disadvantage. like it or not, we do have an elite--economic and political as well as cultural. Every society does. Like it or not, our nation has been built on a tradition of individual responsibility. Not every nation has. Today our fanatical devotion to egalitarianism masks the significance of our elite, just as our growing devotion to victimization undermines individual responsibility. Up to this point, Mr. Bennett and I presumably agree. But we apparently differ on the moral and political lessons to be drawn. Mr. Bennett knows that the moral failures he deplores cut across class and political lines, as does the willingness to redress them. He is less willing to acknowledge that individual moral effort will not alone do the trick. Deploring the free market in morals, Mr. Bennett nonetheless celebrates the free market in commodities, without answering those who fear that the one may depend upon the other. When the workings of the free market demand a constant titillation of the senses and an unremitting pressure to define the self by commodities, then restraint, self-discipline, and deferred gratification become economic sins. …

Make Way for Ducklings: The Sky Is Not Falling on America's Birds

Abstract: Many environmentalists measure the health of the earth by observing the status of its wildlife. America's birds have long been an important source of concern. Songbirds, we hear, are disappearing; habitats are being destroyed; and extinction threatens countless species. A close look at the skies, however, should astound even Chicken Little: There are perhaps 1 to 2 billion more songbirds in the United States now than at the time of the Pilgrims, according to Roger Tory Peterson, the nation's dean of birding. And while four native species of birds have gone extinct in the last 500 years, most notably the passenger pigeon, scores of species have flourished or rebounded from population nadirs in the 20th century, many with the help of man. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Breeding Bird Survey, a majority of the 254 birds tracked between 1966 and 1991 have increased in population, including the wood duck, loon, great blue heron, Canada goose, osprey, purple martin, robin, Eastern bluebird, and Baltimore oriole. In MIT's Technology Review, author and civil engineer Samuel Florman examines this phenomenon: "Considering the speed and voracity with which the United States was developed, one looks for reasons why the destruction was not worse. We could have exterminated most of our wild birds--for food, for feathers, for sport, for egg and nest collections, or through destruction of habitat--but we haven't." THE EAGLE HAS LANDED The reason, according to Mr. Peterson in the same Technology Review article, is that "we seem to sober up at the eleventh hour, so we establish laws, game regulations, soil conservation practices, national forests, national parks, sanctuaries, and wildlife refugees." The ban on DDT, for example, saved many species, including the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. The bald eagle, down to 417 pairs in the lower 48 states in 1963, now numbers some 3,000 pairs. Game regulations such as bag limits and hunting seasons also have contributed significantly to the recovery of many species. In the early 1900s, there were only 30,000 wild turkeys. Today there are over 4 million. "Human development has serendipitously helped many species of birds to thrive," says Mr. Florman. Chimney swifts, phoebes, swallows, and nighthawks have all flourished in the partly cleared timberland "edges" that juxtapose developed areas. The peregrine falcon now thrives on skyscraper ledges in cities such as Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles. Unlike many migratory birds in the wild, the pigeons eaten by peregrine falcons in the city are also free of DDT, giving the city falcons an advantage over their country cousins. STEWARDSHIP IS FOR THE BIRDS The turnaround of many bird populations--and the sustained health of others like the bald eagle and the wild turkey--is a tribute to responsible environmental stewardship. Numerous birds and their habitats have been "adopted" by private organizations, such as the North American Bluebird Society (NABS) or the Loon Preservation Committee (LPC). Others, including the wood duck, peregrine falcon, and the red-cockaded woodpecker, have thrived because of successful habitat management by private groups such as Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, and the Tall Timbers Foundation. The grass-roots efforts of bird-loving organizations like these have been pivotal in the recovery of many species. Some of the most effective stewards of birds are hunters. According to Doug MacCleery, assistant director for timber management at the U.S. Forest Service, "If we'd had an endangered species list at the turn of the century, wood ducks and wild turkeys would have been on it." This is no longer the case. While the elimination of market hunting has helped bring both of these birds back, it is groups like The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) and Ducks Unlimited (DU)--most of whose members are avid hunters--that keep duck and wild turkey populations high. …

Power Failure: Let's Pull the Plug on Federal Energy Programs

Abstract: As the Clinton administration tries to sell the American people on the merits of government-driven industrial policies, it would be useful to examine one such effort - the U.S. Department of Energy. The department's current objective, as outlined by the Clinton administration, is to provide the "institutional leadership necessary to achieve efficiency in energy use." Don't be deceived: That's bureaucratic shorthand for a national industrial program. Assembled long before President Clinton took over, the DOE and its predecessors have been on a 30-year quest to manage the energy market by subsidizing the development of various technologies. By any measure, however - be it in dollars, quads, or kilowatts - the DOE's efforts have failed. The department's entire mission rests on a flawed premise: The notion that government-sponsored scientific and technological ventures can and should be applied to steer market decisions toward the goals of federal regulators. If the historical record is any guide, the recently announced clean-car initiative undertaken by the White House and the Big Three automakers will not break the pattern of failure in the statist pursuit of industrial policy. Since 1980, the United States has spent more than $50 billion of taxpayer money (in 1992 dollars) to develop energy production conservation technologies that have either failed technically or lacked market appeal. How does the government perpetuate this problem? Program-by-program. A Renewable Failure From 1980 to 1992, American taxpayers spent almost $6 billion on the development of renewable technologies. Such technologies include solar and geothermal powers, biomass, wind-generated energy, municipal solid waste burning, photovoltaics, and, most substantially, hydro-power. The renewables program, which has enjoyed a significant increase in funding in the last five years, is supposed to make renewable power sources competitive with more traditional forms of energy. It has failed. In its 1980 Annual Report to Congress, the Energy Information Administration EIA) - an independent arm of the DOE responsible for the collection and publication of energy-related data-indicated that it was optimistic about the chances for renewable technologies to penetrate the market. It wrote glowingly that: "The new energy technologies ... have attracted much attention, perhaps because they seem to promise supplies of energy that are virtually unlimited and cheap, with no major environmental problems." EIA was not stingy in its forecasts for renewables either. It projected that domestic energy production from renewables would rise from 3 quads to 3.6 quads from 1978 to 1990. A "quad" is short for quadrillion British Thermal Units, or BTUs, a standard measure of energy consumption on a national level. The forecast was wildly wrong; renewable energy production actually declined. In 1980 renewables accounted for slightly more than 3 quads in an economy that consumed about 76 quads. In 1992 renewables accounted for 2.7 quads in an economy that consumed roughly 82 quads. The reason for the drop is that nearly all renewable technologies are unable to compete with other energy sources. They had been propped up by a tax break granted in 1978, which expired in the latter part of the Reagan administration. Thus, in die last 12 years the federal government has spent $6 billion on renewables, while production by renewable energy sources has dropped by more than 10 percent. Ignition Point As big as the disaster in renewable energy has been, the fusion program has been worse. The taxpayers have been funding this fiasco for more than 40 years; since 1980, the federal government has spent more than $7 billion on its fusion program. Yet the program has never produced a single watt of electricity. Then-secretary of Energy James Watkins, who worked on the program in the 1950s, recommended in 1991 that it be pared back. …

Russia's Spiritual Wilderness: Freedom Cannot Take Root without Moral Renewal

Abstract: Three years after the exhilarating collapse of centralized Communism, Russia still has a long way to go before it will be a free and democratic country. Even optimists claim the country borders on the ungovernable. Democratic reformers are paralyzed by division into competing factions in the parliament. The old nomenklatura still have a chokehold on the country; they have new business cards, but they are still in power. While there has been enormous liberalization in elections, religious freedom, and privatization, there is still no rule of law, no clear definition of property rights, and in much of the country no real democracy. Bureaucratization is actually worse than it was under the Communists. MAFIA IN THE "WILD EAST" Russian society has largely disintegrated to a Hobbesian rule. Organized crime touches at least half of all economic transactions. Criminals are in collusion with the old KGB and Communist Party structures, comprising a multilevel network known as the mafia. Some segments specialize in forging documents, reconnaissance, executions, or illegal currency transactions; others traffic in drugs and weapons. Competing gangs battle each other in shootouts, giving today's Russia its "Wild East" character. Those who refuse to do business with the mafia may discover their kiosk burned down the next day, a car bomb waiting for them, or an assassin's bullet. Confiscatory tax rates have not only stunted entrepreneurial impulses, they serve as a serious inducement to tax evasion and collusion with the mafia. Businesses pay at least 55 percent of net income, and can incur rates as high as 120 percent. Members of law enforcement and tax collection agencies are paid off to collaborate, making an extremely effective net for coercing cooperation. A contract for mafia protection is cheaper and more reliable than counting on the corrupt police or the choked courts for justice. Mafia fees have become a normal price of doing business. But, "once you are in, the only way to end the relationship is to die," as one Russian put it baldly. Faced with chaos bordering on anarchy, a quarter of Russia's voters chose ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party in the last election. He appealed to their frustration at the economic disintegration following Communism's collapse, as well as their yearning for respected status abroad. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has called Zhirinovsky "an evil caricature of a Russian patriot." His fisticuffs in parliament, bullyboy blustering, and threats to nuke enemies amuse Russians used to grey politicians. But Zhirinovsky is not to be dismissed as merely a buffoon. Diplomatic sources and analysts from Russia, Germany and America have confirmed that Zhirinovsky did not simply appear like a comet on Russia's political horizon. In the last days of the Gorbachev era, substantial sums of money were reportedly funneled to establish his party as a new political home in the event that the communist structure would collapse. Indeed it did, and the allegations since of KGB funding refuse to go away. "Zhirinovsky was a KGB creature from the very outset," claims an official from Russia's Ministry of the Interior. Collaborating with the KGB are the old military-industrial complex, the core of directors of state-owned companies, and segments of the army, who have thrown their support behind Zhirinovsky to regain their old power. PROMISING SIGNS Even if, as observers predict, Zhirinovsky's personal popularity drops sharply, his fascist ideology has deep roots in the Russian population. Fascism's appeal, however, may diminish in the light of promising signs on Russia's economic horizon. Inflation, which threatened to escalate into hyperinflation, has been tamed to a monthly rate below 10 percent this July and August, down from last year's monthly high of 35 percent, defusing some of the more dangerous political volatility. Voucher privatization has put 60 percent of industry into private hands over the past two years. …

Yes We Kenosha: With Can-Do Capitalism, a Wisconsin Town Busts out of the Rustbelt

Abstract: Early in 1988 Kenosha, Wisconsin became the symbol for the media of all that is supposedly wrong with American capitalism. In January that year, the Chrysler Corporation announced that two days before Christmas, it would close the nation's oldest car factory, laying off 5,500 workers. The plant employed 40 percent of Kenosha's manufacturing workforce, and news accounts were universal in predicting doom for the rustbelt community. A man dressed as the Grim Reaper paced somberly in front of the auto plant as CNN reported the closure. "This is a journey into misery," an autoworker told the network. "God knows what will happen to this community," a state senator told the Milwaukee CBS affiliate. Democratic presidential hopefuls rushed to Kenosha to attack this symbol of the "decade of greed." Jesse Jackson called for a "worker's bill of rights" and denounced the "economic violence" of Chrysler and the American economy under Ronald Reagan. Michael Dukakis wrote to Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca asking him to save the plant. And Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) accused the corporation of raw profiteering. But the liberal Democrats, and their friends in the national media, just didn't get it. Today, six years after the last car rolled off the line, Kenosha has gone from bust to boomtown: Unemployment has been halved, per capita income is up, and new housing starts have soared. This community has become a testament to the resiliency of market capitalism, traditional values, and conservative economic policies. Kenosha is a special tribute to the tax-cutting policies of Wisconsin under Governor Tommy Thompson. JOBLESS RATE HALVED "There is no doubt in my mind that we're doing better," says Rick Nemeth, who bought his own tavern after he was laid off. "I have learned that initiative pays off. You're not going to make money overnight, but now I wake up every morning and I am happy with my life." During his 20 years on the assembly-line, Nemeth never made more than $24,000 in a year; today he earns more than $40,000. And Nemeth is not an exception: Since Chrysler pulled out in December 1988, the unemployment rate has averaged 5.7 percent, less than half the mean of 11.6 percent during the five years preceding the shutdown. Moreover, average annual wages in the community have risen nearly $2,000 per person. The turnaround came as no surprise to University of Wisconsin-Parkside economist Dick Keehn, who has studied the local economy for almost 25 years, and had predicted the coming boom. In fact, Keehn had urged the community to rid itself of the plant for nearly a decade in order to improve the rustbelt economy. The economist's reasoning is simple: Since 1959, when the Simmons mattress company left Kenosha, the auto plant, which had been run by the American Motors Corporation (AMC) before being taken over by Chrysler in 1987, had single-handedly dominated the local labor market. In fact, the region's second largest private employers had hired only one-tenth to one-third the number of workers on the car company's payroll, which reached 16,000 under AMC in the 1960s and topped $130 million in the 1980s. This domination of the labor pool by a single company, whose payroll fluctuated dramatically, destabilized the entire region. Smaller companies frequently lost workers to the auto plant, which paid inflated union wages, and new companies were discouraged from moving to the unstable community. SMALL BUSINESSES THRIVE The excessive union wages in Kenosha, which in 1985 were $1.65 higher per hour than Chrysler workers across the nation and rated the "least competitive" in the industry, drove jobs away from southeastern Wisconsin. United Auto Worker (UAW) projections in 1988--that the plant closing would force 15,000 people out of work by 1990--were therefore grossly inflated. Instead, that year, only 3,100 people were jobless in the entire county; the shutdown had provided a market where small businesses could compete. …

Thy Brother's Keeper: The Mutual Aid Tradition of American Fraternal Orders

Abstract: With the collapse of the Clinton health plan, Americans can go back to the drawing board in finding a way to provide low-cost health insurance to the working poor It is not necessary to raise taxes, levy price controls, impose employer mandates, or establish a byzantine federal bureaucracy to offer such assistance A useful model for low-cost health insurance for the working class may be found in the fraternal organizations of America's past COLONIAL BROTHERHOOD Fraternal organizations are as old our as history-indeed, the first of these groups came to America with the colonists The most important fraternal society to take root in the colonies was the Freemasons, known today as the Masons, a secret society imported from Britain The first American Masonic lodge opened in Boston in 1733 Primarily a social organization, members of the Freemasons shared a desire for fraternity, secrecy, and ritual; but an important element of the commitment to the lodge was a pledge of mutual aid to fellow members in times of need Freemasonry was considered a sign of respectability among the colonists, as it had been in Britain Recruitment in the early years was from the elite of colonial society, and included a number of the Founding Fathers Many independent Masonic lodges had been established by the dawn of the American Revolution, generally in larger cities The Revolution spread the Freemasons throughout the colonies as initiates flocked to special traveling lodges chartered for their troops Meanwhile, revolutionary leaders such as George Washington and Paul Revere, both avid Freemasons, widened the appeal of membership The Revolution quickened a trend, already underway by the 1750s, to broaden the base of Mason brotherhood beyond a narrow upper crust; artisans and skilled workers joined in large numbers Charitable funds to be used for the good of needy members were common among the lodges, financed by an annual assessment of those belonging to each lodge The Freemasons, beginning a trend that would reach into the 20th century, used these funds to assist sick or needy members and their families, as well as support orphans of members and pay for member funerals Masonic principles dictated that charitable giving should favor brethren; to "prefer a poor Brother that is a good Man and true, before any other poor people in the same circumstances," according to an early tract In addition to financial help, Freemason brothers enjoyed such intangible benefits as character references, employment information, and temporary lodging Freemasonry remained popular among America's political leaders; 14 US presidents have been members, from George Washington to Gerald R Ford CENTER OF COMMUNITY Based on the Masonic model, other groups sprang to life throughout the 19th century These included both secret societies, such as the Elks and the Odd Fellows, and a large number of fraternal insurance societies The fraternal orders' memberships were not as broad-based or large as the secret societies, and generally were centered around a particular occupation, but shared with secret societies a system of lodge organization, a democratic form of internal government, ritual, and mutual aid for members and their families The major difference between the two types of groups was that secret societies usually did not provide formal insurance policies to their members, while insurance coverage was a key benefit of fraternal society membership Insurance coverage was still rare in the 19th century; many Americans with any type of insurance were covered through their affiliation with a fraternal organization The insurance provided by these groups was invariably some form of death benefit These payments began as small sums, often just enough to pay for a funeral As membership spread and the actuarial base grew, benefits increased as well, but were always viewed as a supplement to other means of support--a way to help the family get back on its feet after the death of the bread-winner …

The Living Dead: What the Dickens Are College Students Reading?.

Abstract: There's a dirty little secret in the multicultural halls of American universities: dead white males are alive and well. Although many contemporary African-American, Latin, and Asian authors are being introduced, a close look at college reading lists and publishers' best sellers reveals that classics remain an essential part of the English curriculum at most schools and a top choice for book buyers. Auburn University, Harvard University, Mt. Holyoke College, Oral Roberts University, and Smith College are just a few of the hundreds of colleges where Shakespeare, Hemingway, Hawthorne, and Homer still are required reading. In 1991, Reading Lists for College-Bound Students was published as the definitive answer to what books are most recommended by America's top colleges - and the answer was classics. What are the classic texts that remain popular today? Thomas J. Slakey, dean of St. John's College, a school whose curriculum is organized around the study of classic texts, says that the so-called great books are "those texts that over time have proved best at forcing their readers to rethink fundamental questions, and at helping them understand themselves and the world around them." Adam Bellow, senior editor of Macmillan Free Press, says that American classics like Moly Dick and The Scarlet Letter are the "mental furniture" of American life. They "convey a sense of American civilization in its formative stages and are of great moral and literary importance," says Mr. Bellow. Classics appeal to Americans of all ages and have become the mainstay of the publishing business. Many publishing houses, such as Viking Penguin, W. W. Norton, and Random House, are responding to the high demand for classics by publishing new collections of older titles. W. W. Norton, for example, will be adding Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and selected essays of John Locke to its line of Critical Editions in spring 1994. Also at W. W. Norton, such popular titles as Kate Chopin's Awakening and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness are being released in their second and third editions. At Reader's Digest, the World's Best Reading Series, which is composed solely of classics, is in its 10th year of publication and still gaining in popularity. Dead Poets' Society The Library of America, created in 1979 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is dedicated solely to publishing America's greatest writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Jack London, Richard Wright, and Flannery O'Connor. Hanna Berkovitch, editor in chief of Library of America, says that in choosing classic American titles, she looks for "an established reputation, a work that has stood the test of time." And she only publishes authors who are dead. Sixty-seven titles have been published in the series so far, and the top-selling authors include Abraham Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. There is a literal mass market for classics: Flannery O'Connor. Collected Writings topped the Chicago Tribune local best-seller list in fall 1988, and Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings has over 100,000 copies in print. Despite the robust popular sales of the classics, many insist that multicultural tides represent the wave of the future. Gary Carey, editor of Cliffs Notes - the company that produces the yellow-and-black study guides hidden in student book bags - says that "education is going multicultural everywhere." Carey believes that the new multicultural titles soon will move into the top 100-selling titles, displacing many classic texts. So far, however, the 10 top-selling titles at Cliffs Notes are all classics. The Scarlet Letter, Hamlet and Macbeth have been the three best-selling titles since Cliffs Notes began in 1958. …

Gurus of Gab: Talk Radio Stars Are Changing America

Abstract: In an increasingly bureaucratic, mobile, and even unfriendly America, talk radio functions as the last neighborhood in town. We communicate, kitchen-table style, with some of all types of Americans and they with us. We are the lightning rods for anger and sadness and views ranging from the enlightened to the moronic. We find our audiences often as youths and grow with them into adulthood; I think of 10-year-old Seth who called me in 1976 when I began on the air, and who periodically has checked in from college, law school, and now from his home with his kids in the background. At one level, talk radio entertains. Its hosts, like its audiences, run the full gamut - from insightful to inane. Some intend only to shock or amuse. At another level, talk radio informs. It can expose ideas for what they are, bring important facts to light, give a hearing to all sides of an issue. In a word, educate. Finally, talk radio activates. It can move people to get involved, locally or nationally, in the issues of the day. It can prompt a listener to invade the arena of ideas - and the politics they generate - and to become a player, a participant, a citizen. No, talk radio hosts are not preachers, and our programs are not revival meetings. But with one in six Americans listening regularly to talk radio, we're both a resource and a soapbox for millions. The popularity of talk radio reminds us that Americans still prefer talking to fighting. And though our national conversations are not always civil, talk radio helps ensure that at least we'll keep having them. Policy Review, has asked several of my colleagues to explain how they have helped educate and activate listeners, whether on issues in their own backyards, or coming out of Washington, D.C. These are their stories. Raoul Lowery Contreras KOGO, San Diego, CA At one of the many funerals I attend in my extended family of hundreds, a grandmotherly woman held my hand in both of hers, looked at me with tears in her eves, and said in Spanish, "You say the things that have been in my heart for years. Thank you." Recently a city government executive invited me to be the commencement speaker at the graduation of the Leadership Institute, a foundation funded course for Mexican-American business and professional people that teaches leadership. Welcome to some of the fringe benefits of hosting a daily talk radio show aimed at Latinos. Six years ago, when I decided to try my hand at writing and sold my first op-ed articles, I thought I had inched into the opinion-shaping world of mass media. To some extent, I had. But my recent move into radio - with a six-day-a-week talk show on a station with a potential audience of 20 million people - dwarfs the impact of newspaper columns. Talk radio provides an incredible "bully pulpit" for talk show hosts. My favorite topic, one of special concern to so many Southern Californians, is economic development for Latinos. Unlike so many Latin-American leaders, I am very critical of welfare on my show and the effect it has on Mexican-American families. More than that, I am trying to bring a message of hope to the Spanish-speaking community. In the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush presidencies, the number of Latino-owned businesses increased nationally from about 100,000 to over 300,000-the greatest economic leap forward of any group in American history. In California alone, according to the First Interstate Bank, there are 135,000 Latino-owned businesses, with 87,000 in Southern California. Many people simply don't like these facts. One evening I launched a program with a presentation of why Mexican Americans should be conservative free enterprisers. One listener was infuriated by my views because she said that a Mexican Republican is like being a black Republican, i.e., bad. But whatever some opinion leaders or others may think about Mexican Republicans, the facts are that 75 percent of all Mexican Americans live above the official poverty level and most own their own homes. …

From Sorry to Surry: Family and Faith Revive a Poor Rural Community

Abstract: Twenty-five years ago, it was called Sorry County. The education system was in shambles, the area was economically depressed, and black residents - 64 percent of the county's population - were shut out of the political process. Today, in Surry County, Virginia, 90 percent of high school graduates go on to further education or training after high school, the community has new medical and recreation centers, and blacks hold a majority on the school board and the county board of supervisors. What happened? Surry County residents decided to take charge of their lives, and the result has been a vastly improved school system, a low crime rate, a county where the citizens respect one another, and a place where the family and the community come first. A short ferry ride across the James River brings visitors to Surry, a rural, wooded county in southeastern Virginia. Dotted with cotton fields, Surry resembles a typical county in the Southern "black belt." The population has remained stable at 6,000 residents for over 200 years. Surry residents are hard-working, religious, and mostly black. Until 1971, they lived in what Don Anderson, founder of the National Association for the Southern Poor, calls the "apartheid south": They had a majority of the population, but no representation in the government. The Assembly Concept Mr. Anderson's organization, which he founded in 1967, is responsible for promoting a self-help style of governing through a Jeffersonian-based representation structure called an assembly. To promote local, grassroots politics, Thomas Jefferson favored subdividing counties into wards, where "each small ward would thus become a republic within itself, and every man in the state would thus become an acting member of the common government." Such a system of local government compels citizen involvement. Indeed, this notion of representation and self-help, embodied in the assemblies, has helped many Southern counties, including Surry, get back on track. Assemblies now help mobilize the poor in 41 counties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. "The wit of man cannot devise a more solid base for a free, durable and well-administered republic," Jefferson said. The Surry County Assembly, the first and most successful of its kind, began in 1968. At the time, the scene for blacks in Surry County was a common one in the impoverished south: inadequate housing, hunger, unsanitary conditions and widespread poverty. Houses with running water were the exception, not the rule. The Assembly helped solve the county's biggest problem - the disorganization and disjointedness of the poor. Originally conceived by Mr. Anderson in the 1950s, the assembly works by dividing a community's adult population into conferences of 50-people. Each conference is represented by one person, who works with a committee of seven people. Each of these seven people represent seven additional community members. Thus, a community of 5,000 adults has 50 representatives, with each person working with no more than seven other people. The result is the mobilization of a large group of people, each a part of a very small constituency. "The Assembly brought everyone to a central place. It brought all those minds together," says Charles Pettaway, one of the county's leaders at the time, and the Assembly's first president. At its peak in the mid-seventies, the Surry Assembly consisted of 27 conferences, representing almost 1,500 adults, nearly half the county's adult population. Galvanized by poor schools and lack of representation in the county government, the Assembly went to work. After intense voter-registration and organization efforts, the assembly was able to elect a black majority to the county board of supervisors in 1971. As a result, Surry's majority poor now had political advocates in office for a range of social issues. Says Mr. Pettaway: "We moved this county." Educational Revolution The first thing they moved was the deficient school system. …

Voice of America: Why Liberals Fear Me

Abstract: There are times in one's life that despite all the blood, toil, tears, and sweat expended in the pursuit of excellence, one really should lean back, light up a good cigar, take a sip of an adult beverage, and just savor the moment. My friends, this is one of those times. Thirty years after the inauguration of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; 25 years after Woodstock; two decades after Richard Nixon's resignation; and two years after Democrats secured control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, modern liberalism--exhausted and confused--is on the run. Three decades after Ronald Reagan's brilliant enunciation of conservative ideals at the end of the 1964 campaign, he told me "Now that I've retired from active politics, I don't mind that you've become the number-one, voice for conservatism in our country." And liberal fear is palpable. TARGET NUMERO UNO Thus came the sizzling summer onslaught against me. "He's a showman, a showoff, and a jerk," wrote one pundit. "Chief propagandist for the revolution," said another. A self-serving, hate-mongering liar," railed one writer. "A tool-shed-sized hate monger," said another. "Rush Limbaugh's ideology makes him a political dinosaur, which puts him on the endangered species list," wrote one critic." Judge for yourself about that slabhead, Rush Limbaugh," said another. The assault came from every corner of liberalism--from the White House and the Washington Post, from the New York Times and the New Yorker, from the Nation and the New Republic, from Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times, from C-Span and CNN, from U.S. News & World Report and USA Today, and from National Public Radio, the National Organization for Women, and the National Education Association (I'm leaving many out, but you get the picture). In the month that followed President Clinton's June attack on me, I was mentioned in 1,450 stories, including the South China Morning Post and Agence France Presse, as tracked by a media database service. Liberals have, in fact, elevated me to the role of leading political figure. Target Numero Uno. It is a role I have never sought. My goal has always been to host the most-listened-to radio and television shows in history and, in turn, charge confiscatory advertising rates. But as it happens, not only am I a performer, I am also effectively communicating a body of beliefs that strikes terror into the heart of even the most well-entrenched liberals, shaking them to their core. The interesting question is, Why? Why do liberals fear me? I am not a distinguished member of Congress. I am not running for President. I do not control billions of dollars in taxpayer money. I can enact no policy, law, or regulation to affect a single American citizen's behavior. So why the high level of liberal emotion; This would seem to me to be a legitimate area of inquiry to be pursued by members of the mainstream media--but their own animus has prevented them from solid analysis of this phenomenon. Yet again, I must do their job for them. First, liberals fear me because I threaten their control of the debate. These are the facts: Twenty million people a week listen to my radio program on 659 stations nationwide, on short wave and Armed Forces Radio worldwide, while several million more watch my television show on 250 stations nationally. I am on the air 17-and-a-half hours a week. Add to that 6 million copies sold of my two books, The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So, and 475,000 monthly subscribers to The Limbaugh Letter after just two years in business. What I do in this rather large oeuvre (a little literary lingo, there) is hard for pundits to peg. Media sages have not to this point been confronted with a conservative who is both commentator and entertainer. A conservative who trafficks in satire, of all things--mostly liberal turf until now. A conservative who dares poke fun at liberal sacred cows, and who does so with relish, optimism, and good cheer. …

Kristol Ball: William Kristol Looks at the Future of the GOP

Abstract: William Bennett once commented on the irony that many of the most effective conservative politicians these days are former academics. "Conservatives who come from universities have learned to cope with ideological hostility," Mr. Bennett said. "It isn't such a big shock to meet a group of hostile reporters or hostile members of Congress after you have been dealing with faculty colleagues." It is remarkable how many of the GOP's most influential leaders used to be professors. Newt Gingrich, the next leader of Republicans in the House, taught history. Senator Phil Gramm and Representative Dick Armey were economics professors. Mr. Bennett is an erstwhile philosophy teacher. William Kristol, a former teacher at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is universally regarded as one of the most capable and brilliant political strategists in conservatism. Chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, and previously to Mr. Bennett at the Department of Education, Mr. Kristol last year directed the Bradley Project on the 90s. He is now chairman of a new organization, the Project for the Republican Future, whose goals are to challenge the premises and purposes of liberalism, and to serve as a "strategic nerve center for a network of thinkers, activists, and organizations committed to a coherent agenda of conservative reform." In November 1993, Mr. Kristol talked about Clintonism and its vulnerabilities, and the future of the Republican party in an interview with Policy Review editor Adam Meyerson. Policy Review: The congressional elections of 1994 will probably be the most important elections in this country since the Reagen landslide of 1980. How many seats in the Senate and House should Republicans aim at picking up? What are the most important defining issues for Republican congressional candidates to run on? Kristol: Republicans should aim at picking up a majority in both the House and the Senate. There is no point in setting one's sights any lower. The great opportunity for Republicans will be to run against Clintonism, and to mount a whole-hearted challenge to contemporary liberalism. Running against the Clinton health program will obviously be very important, because it is the grandest and most striking embodiment of contemporary liberalism. But we need to challenge the premises and presumptions of today's liberalism across the board. This means making the case for limited government, and then explaining as well that limited government is more energetic and more effective government. We have to say there are certain things we expect government to do, such as making the streets safe and national defense. And there are certain areas where government is ineffectual or shouldn't be involved in the first place. We have to show how a conservative agenda in areas such as education and health care will address the problems that people are concerned about - without increasing, and in many cases actually reducing, the scope of government. P.R.: Does George Bush bear primary responsibility for the disappointing performance of GOP congressional candidates in 1992? Or has there been a deeper problem in the party, reflected in the GOP's loss of the Senate in 1986, and the failure of Republicans to win many open House seats during the Reagan presidency? What must Republicans do better in 1994 and 1996 if they are to win control of the Congress? Kristol: George Bush has to bear some responsibility for the disappointments of 1992. His departure from Reaganomics was very damaging. But Republicans were hurt as well by the absence of an aggressive conservative reform agenda on a broad range of domestic issues such as health care, crime, and education. This wasn't just George Bush's fault. The party as a whole didn't do as much work as it should have done in some of those areas. P.R.: Many Democrats as well as Republicans are sharply criticizing President Clinton over his performance as commander-in-chief, arguably the most important responsibility of the presidency. …

Reel Politik: Great Conservative Cinema

Abstract: Few institutions exert more influence over American popular culture than the wildly successful Hollywood dream factory. At the same time, many fret over the collapsing moral standards in our culture and accuse the film industry of being a relentless repeat offender. Earthquakes, mudslides, fires, riots, O.J. and Ford Broncos--can anything good come out of Southern California and its cinema empire? The answer is a robust "Yes." There is still much to be admired in our movie-going society, films that challenge us to excellence, inspire us to heroism, shame our consciences, and stir us toward a life-engaging faith. The following viewer's guide reflects some of the best classic and contemporary titles available, films that typify the traditional values of faith, family, and freedom. The guide is selective: You'll find films that 1) you have not seen before, or 2) that you have not seen since the advent of microwave popcorn, or 3) that you may not have considered from the, well, unique perspective of our reviews. We welcome your suggestions; write and let us know your own favorites. ACHIEVEMENT Relying on role models, moral courage, or faith, these bildungsromans have--at their core--characters determined to succeed despite vast opposition. Elephant Man This haunting and beautiful film from director David Lynch portrays a doctor's (Anthony Hopkins) dogged efforts to rescue a disfigured man from the life of circus freak. But it exposes so much more: the narrowness of elitist values, the human spirit transformed through adversity, and the sustaining power of faith. By the time John Hurt's Elephant Man recites the 23rd Psalm, your heart is in your throat. A masterpiece on almost every level. Man Without a Face A mysterious, disfigured recluse (Mel Gibson) becomes an unlikely mentor to a fatherless boy who wants to be a pilot but lacks the discipline and motivation. Together, the two discover the value of friendship and learn to sacrifice, compromise, and mature. Gibson's directorial debut works best at the male-bonding level, providing thoughtful entertainment. My Left Foo With the help of family, a perceptive therapist, and his irrepressible will, cerebral palsy victim Christy Brown reminds us that human achievement has more to do with heart than it does with circumstances. Christy, played by Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar-winning performance, is nearly completely debilitated at birth and quickly labeled hopelessly uneducable. But Christy has a good left foot, and he uses it to paint, write, and otherwise give expression to his brilliant mind. Revealed through flashbacks, the film touchingly leads to a surprise and triumphant ending. An Officer and a Gentleman The Navy tames a working-class playboy. Richard Gere stars as a symbol of American youth and independence (with motorcycle, of course) who learns to be a team player, with a little help both from his drill master and his girlfriend. The military routine marries his raw determination to self-discipline, duty, honor, and, by film's end, domestication. A dramatic display of the great forces that challenge a youth to grow into manhood. The Right Stuff A look at NASA's fly-boys, whose eyes were fixed ultimately on the moon. The Mercury astronauts fight to keep control of their spacecrafts and their personal lives as scientists and the media threaten to reduce them to lab monkeys. In Chuck Yeager--"the best pilot anyone had ever seen"--we witness most clearly the unique American blending of competitiveness, guts, and Yankee ingenuity. Rocky "It doesn't matter if I lose this fight. All I want to do is go the distance," says Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), an underground Philadelphia boxer who gets a shot at the title. Rocky is the big lug everybody loves, who visits pet stores and tries to be a role model for the kids, as best as a loan shark's goon can. While opponent Apollo Creed and the media exploit the event, Rocky trains alone, refusing to get caught up in anything but the task before him. …