President Reagan: Lion in Winter
By Richard Reeves
WASHINGTON -- Just after 2:30 p.m. on a sunny afternoon 25 years ago, March 30, 1981, a speeding limousine with sirens screaming all around careened off 17th Street and turned right into the oncoming traffic of Pennsylvania Avenue.
"Go to GW!" a man named Parr had shouted to the driver just as the limousine was headed for the gates of the White House. Jerry Parr was the head of President Reagan's Secret Service detail that day -- and he had just realized the president was bleeding to death.
Although he had lost half of his blood after taking a shot in the chest from a crazed young man named John Hinckley, Reagan pushed away helping hands and walked the 20 feet or so into George Washington University Hospital's emergency room. When the doors closed behind him, Reagan collapsed to the floor in a pool of his own blood.
"Oh my God, we've lost him," Parr said. "Lord, be with him. Let him live."
He did not die, of course. If he had, the country and the world would almost certainly have been significantly different than they are today. Amazing things happened in the 1980s and beyond because Ronald Reagan wanted them to happen.
He survived because his own courage was matched by the heroism and skill of the young doctors and nurses who rushed to his aid in trauma Bay 5 of the emergency room that day. Many of those doctors gathered at the hospital on Thursday to talk about what they did that long afternoon and the frightening days that followed. And the time was more frightening than the world ever knew. Both the White House and hospital officials combined to optimistically manage the news of the 70-year-old president who had lost half his blood, and because of a bullet they could not find, a flattened .22 slug 1 inch behind his heart.
But the attending doctors who did the real work knew none of that. They had been trained to act almost automatically in crisis, and that training paid off. The only non-medical thought that Dr. Joseph Giordano said he had as the unconscious president was rolled toward the operating room was that the suit he was cutting off the bleeding man must have cost $300 (actually, it cost a lot more than that), and he wondered if there would be trouble about that.
It was Dr. Giordano, from my hometown of Jersey City, who famously answered a question Reagan asked as he briefly regained consciousness in the operating room. Looking at Giordano, Reagan said: "I hope you're a Republican." Giordano, who was not, said: "Mr. President, we're all Republicans today."
They saved his life. My role at the Thursday meeting at the hospital was to talk with them about what might have happened if Reagan had not survived on that day, the 70th day of his presidency. First, of course, he would barely be remembered today, the fate of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, who died of pneumonia in 1841 on his 30th day in the White House.
Reagan, a bull of a man, was standing before a joint session of Congress only 28 days later, receiving one of the most robust welcomes that any American had ever experienced. "That was almost worth being shot," he quipped later.
His heroism (and great political skills) were rewarded with the tax cuts and military buildup he always wanted. Critics, me among them, thought he used his gift for turning issues into emotions to make both the poor and rich believe they deserved their fates. He changed the way people thought, for better or worse, a definition of greatness. He united the various strains of conservatism -- traditional, economic, social, religious, libertarian -- to make Republicans the governing party of the country as Franklin Delano Roosevelt had made Democrats the governing party 50 years before.
After six years, his presidency seemed to be effectively over, brought down by the lies and foolishness of the Iran-Contra affair. But his greatest triumph was actually still to come. With a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who almost miraculously shared Reagan's conviction that communism was doomed to fail because of its own inherent contradictions, Reagan presided over the beginning of the end of that dangerous or "evil" ideology.
Soviet officials, watching him in closed negotiations with Gorbachev, called him "the lion in winter." So he was, and it was Dr. Giordano and his team who gave him that winter and helped change the history of the century.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
From The Washington Post:
Roberto Clemente: Baseball's Latino Jackie Robinson
By David Maraniss
It borders on sacrilege to consider another baseball player in the same lofty realm of sociological importance as Jackie Robinson, who broke the major league color line nearly 60 years ago, but if anyone belongs up there with the fearless and incandescent Dodger, it might be Roberto Clemente.
Most athletes fade into oblivion after their playing days, but Clemente's story has grown in the decades after his death. There is even a movement now to have his No. 21 retired from the game and honored at major league ballparks alongside Robinson's No. 42, its proponents arguing that Clemente carries the same legendary status in the Latino world as Robinson does for African-Americans and people of any color shamed by the racism that kept blacks out of America's pastime until 1947. However that debate - the literal application of symbolism - plays out, the larger comparison of Robinson and Clemente is fascinating, especially in light of the recent dominance of Spanish-speaking players and the corresponding decline of black Americans in organized baseball. Clemente was both Latino and black, an intensely proud and passionate man who struggled furiously to succeed amid the crosscurrents of race, language and culture.
Born near the sugar cane fields of Carolina, Puerto Rico, on Aug. 18, 1934, Roberto Clemente Walker played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 18 seasons before dying in a plane crash on New Year's Eve, 1972, while trying to deliver medical aid and food to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. Like Robinson, he was a stirring athlete whose charismatic style lifted his team and transcended the statistics that define the game.
His totals were exceptional enough (exactly 3,000 hits, the magic number to assure enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, along with a .317 career batting average and 12 Gold Gloves as the league's finest right fielder), but again like Robinson, he was great and inimitable while not the all-time best. And unlike Robinson, Clemente was not the first of his kind. Several Latinos, white-skinned Cubans, had already played in the majors. The first Puerto Rican to make it was Hiram Bithorn, a burly pitcher from Santurce who won 18 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1943. There were also a few black Latino stars preceding Clemente, including the dashing outfielder Minnie Minoso from Cuba and fellow Puerto Rican Vic Power, a balletic first baseman.
Yet Clemente alone has emerged as the seminal figure in the baseball history of Latinos. There is a stadium named for Hiram Bithorn in San Juan, but few know the rest of his story, how he suffered a mental collapse after that one fine year in Chicago and eventually was shot to death, penniless and alone, by a corrupt cop in rural Mexico. Clemente's memory still burns bright in all of Latin America. When the Baltimore Orioles went to Havana in 1999, they learned that Clemente was as honored there as any Cuban. Ozzie Guillen, the Venezuelan who managed the Chicago White Sox to the World Series championship last season, revealed afterward that he kept a shrine at his home for Clemente, whom he admired above all others. In Nicaragua and in Puerto Rico, the island he always came back to, he is regarded with the reverence of a saint, a perspective reflected by a 30-foot-long cenotaph in Carolina where one panel portrays him holding a lamb. Partly this is because of how he died - on a humanitarian mission to help strangers, the plane plunging into the sea, his body never found. And partly it is because of how he lived and played - with the same relentless force, and pride in who he was and where he came from, that fueled Jackie Robinson.
In the Puerto Rico of Roberto Clemente's childhood, there were no legal or overt social barriers separating the races. Years before they integrated the majors, American blacks, led by Josh Gibson, the fearsome slugger of the Negro Leagues, played in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Clemente rooted for the San Juan Senadores, and his idol as a teen-ager was Monte Irvin, a graceful outfielder who was just getting a shot with the New York Giants after starring for 10 seasons with the Newark Eagles. Irvin recalled decades later that young Clemente, shy and without a ticket, would get into the games by carrying Irvin's suit bag to the locker room - a small gesture that captures the longstanding symbiotic relationship of blacks and Latinos in baseball. Puerto Rico also served as the training ground for the first black manager in the majors, Frank Robinson, who got his start with the Santurce Cangrejeros, eventually broke the managerial color barrier with the Cleveland Indians in 1975, and now three decades later is in the dugout for the Washington Nationals.
When Clemente began his baseball migration to the mainland, he followed in Jackie Robinson's footsteps. He was signed by the same Brooklyn Dodgers and like Robinson was sent to play for its AAA club, the Montreal Royals. The following winter, when the Dodgers failed to protect him on its 40-man roster, he was stolen by Pittsburgh in a supplemental draft, and it was for the Pirates in 1955 that he began his major league career. Eight years had passed since Robinson had desegregated the game, and the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, took note of the gains that had been made by what the paper called "Tan Stars."
By 1955 there were 28 black regulars on major league teams, including future Hall of Famers Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Willie Mays, along with 13 black rookies. Five years later the Courier reported there were 49 blacks on National League rosters and 15 in the American League. The numbers would increase year by year into the mid-1970s.
From the start of his career, Clemente faced a double barrel of discrimination as a Spanish-speaking black man, and constantly raged against the inequities he faced. During Florida spring training for his first seven years with the Pirates, he was forced to live with a black family in the Dunbar Heights section of Fort Myers while his white teammates enjoyed hotel rooms downtown. When the team held its annual spring golf outing at the local country club, Clemente and his few black teammates were not invited. He found it humiliating to have to stay on the team bus while his white teammates stopped at roadside restaurants on Grapefruit League road trips, and finally forced the Pirates' management to let the black players travel in their own station wagon. Enduring spring training, he once said, was like being in prison.
He was also infuriated by stereotypes. In a Life magazine preview of the 1960 World Series, in which he got a hit in every game of Pittsburgh's stunning upset of the New York Yankees, he was criticized for what was called his "Latin American variety of showboating" - although the example used was of him rounding third base and barreling over his coach on the way toward an inside-the-park home run, a play that might have been seen as an example of grit and determination if he had been a white player.
And he hated being quoted in broken English by sportswriters who did not know a word of Spanish. When he drove in the winning run and was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1961 All-Star Game in San Francisco, the headline in the Pittsburgh Press the next day read "I GET HEET" and the wire service account quoted Clemente as saying, "When I come to plate in lass eening ... I 'ope that Weelhelm (Hoyt Wilhelm) peetch me outside. ..."
Late in his career, Clemente got his sweet revenge, and he did so in a way that solidified his reputation as the most revered of Latino ballplayers. The moment came in the locker room after the seventh game of the 1971 World Series. The Pirates had defeated the favored Baltimore Orioles with Clemente playing brilliantly at the plate, on the base paths and in the field - an all-round performance that the pitch-perfect baseball writer Roger Angell described as "something close to the level of absolute perfection."
For all of his career to that point, Clemente had felt misunderstood and underappreciated. Now he had proven himself, and the network microphones and cameras, and the nation's attention, were focused on him alone. And what did Clemente do? He said that before he answered any questions he wanted to say a few words of thanks in Spanish to his aging parents back in Carolina. The symbolic meaning of that moment reverberated throughout the Spanish-speaking world and down through the years.
That same year, 1971, the Pirates broke another barrier by fielding the first all-black and Latino lineup in major league history: Rennie Stennett at second, Gene Clines in center, Clemente in right, Willie Stargell in left, Manny Sanguillen catching, Dave Cash at third, Al Oliver at first, Jackie Hernandez at short and Dock Ellis on the mound. Nearly a quarter century after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, the racial transformation of baseball was so advanced that the moment went virtually unnoticed. It turned out to be not a sign of things to come, but an unlikely turning point.
Over the next three decades, the number of African-Americans in baseball declined steadily, down from more than 23 percent to below 9 percent today. The Houston Astros last year went to the World Series without a single black American on its roster. Basketball, which could be played more easily in urban settings, and football, which offered more speed and action, became more appealing to young black athletes.
The number of Latinos, by contrast, rose dramatically over the same period. Last year there were 204 Latinos in the majors, about one-fourth of all players. Rodriguez, Martinez, Ramirez, Ortiz, Guerrero, Tejada, Rivera - these are the names of 21st century baseball. And some will end up in Cooperstown, joining the six Latinos already there: Tony Perez of Cuba, Rod Carew of Panama, Luis Aparicio of Venezuela, Juan Marichal of the Dominican Republic, Orlando Cepeda of Puerto Rico and the legend among them, paving the way into the Hall of Fame for others to follow, the only player besides Lou Gehrig enshrined before the normal five-year waiting period - Roberto Clemente.
Baseball certainly will undergo more transformations this century. The sport is already declining in Clemente's Puerto Rico, overtaken by basketball and faster-paced sports, for the same reasons that led black Americans away from baseball. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela far surpass Puerto Rico now in the number of major leaguers. A new wave is coming from Japan and Korea, and perhaps China after that.
But through it all, Clemente's role cannot diminish. The mythic aspects of baseball usually draw on the cliches of the innocent past, the nostalgia for how things were. Fields of green. Fathers and sons. But Clemente's myth, like Jackie Robinson's, arcs the other way, to the future, not the past, to what people hope they can become.
David Maraniss, an associate editor of The Washington Post, is author of "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero," to be released by Simon & Schuster later this month. Author email: maranissd@washpost.com
Roberto Clemente: Baseball's Latino Jackie Robinson
By David Maraniss
It borders on sacrilege to consider another baseball player in the same lofty realm of sociological importance as Jackie Robinson, who broke the major league color line nearly 60 years ago, but if anyone belongs up there with the fearless and incandescent Dodger, it might be Roberto Clemente.
Most athletes fade into oblivion after their playing days, but Clemente's story has grown in the decades after his death. There is even a movement now to have his No. 21 retired from the game and honored at major league ballparks alongside Robinson's No. 42, its proponents arguing that Clemente carries the same legendary status in the Latino world as Robinson does for African-Americans and people of any color shamed by the racism that kept blacks out of America's pastime until 1947. However that debate - the literal application of symbolism - plays out, the larger comparison of Robinson and Clemente is fascinating, especially in light of the recent dominance of Spanish-speaking players and the corresponding decline of black Americans in organized baseball. Clemente was both Latino and black, an intensely proud and passionate man who struggled furiously to succeed amid the crosscurrents of race, language and culture.
Born near the sugar cane fields of Carolina, Puerto Rico, on Aug. 18, 1934, Roberto Clemente Walker played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 18 seasons before dying in a plane crash on New Year's Eve, 1972, while trying to deliver medical aid and food to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. Like Robinson, he was a stirring athlete whose charismatic style lifted his team and transcended the statistics that define the game.
His totals were exceptional enough (exactly 3,000 hits, the magic number to assure enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, along with a .317 career batting average and 12 Gold Gloves as the league's finest right fielder), but again like Robinson, he was great and inimitable while not the all-time best. And unlike Robinson, Clemente was not the first of his kind. Several Latinos, white-skinned Cubans, had already played in the majors. The first Puerto Rican to make it was Hiram Bithorn, a burly pitcher from Santurce who won 18 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1943. There were also a few black Latino stars preceding Clemente, including the dashing outfielder Minnie Minoso from Cuba and fellow Puerto Rican Vic Power, a balletic first baseman.
Yet Clemente alone has emerged as the seminal figure in the baseball history of Latinos. There is a stadium named for Hiram Bithorn in San Juan, but few know the rest of his story, how he suffered a mental collapse after that one fine year in Chicago and eventually was shot to death, penniless and alone, by a corrupt cop in rural Mexico. Clemente's memory still burns bright in all of Latin America. When the Baltimore Orioles went to Havana in 1999, they learned that Clemente was as honored there as any Cuban. Ozzie Guillen, the Venezuelan who managed the Chicago White Sox to the World Series championship last season, revealed afterward that he kept a shrine at his home for Clemente, whom he admired above all others. In Nicaragua and in Puerto Rico, the island he always came back to, he is regarded with the reverence of a saint, a perspective reflected by a 30-foot-long cenotaph in Carolina where one panel portrays him holding a lamb. Partly this is because of how he died - on a humanitarian mission to help strangers, the plane plunging into the sea, his body never found. And partly it is because of how he lived and played - with the same relentless force, and pride in who he was and where he came from, that fueled Jackie Robinson.
In the Puerto Rico of Roberto Clemente's childhood, there were no legal or overt social barriers separating the races. Years before they integrated the majors, American blacks, led by Josh Gibson, the fearsome slugger of the Negro Leagues, played in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Clemente rooted for the San Juan Senadores, and his idol as a teen-ager was Monte Irvin, a graceful outfielder who was just getting a shot with the New York Giants after starring for 10 seasons with the Newark Eagles. Irvin recalled decades later that young Clemente, shy and without a ticket, would get into the games by carrying Irvin's suit bag to the locker room - a small gesture that captures the longstanding symbiotic relationship of blacks and Latinos in baseball. Puerto Rico also served as the training ground for the first black manager in the majors, Frank Robinson, who got his start with the Santurce Cangrejeros, eventually broke the managerial color barrier with the Cleveland Indians in 1975, and now three decades later is in the dugout for the Washington Nationals.
When Clemente began his baseball migration to the mainland, he followed in Jackie Robinson's footsteps. He was signed by the same Brooklyn Dodgers and like Robinson was sent to play for its AAA club, the Montreal Royals. The following winter, when the Dodgers failed to protect him on its 40-man roster, he was stolen by Pittsburgh in a supplemental draft, and it was for the Pirates in 1955 that he began his major league career. Eight years had passed since Robinson had desegregated the game, and the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, took note of the gains that had been made by what the paper called "Tan Stars."
By 1955 there were 28 black regulars on major league teams, including future Hall of Famers Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Willie Mays, along with 13 black rookies. Five years later the Courier reported there were 49 blacks on National League rosters and 15 in the American League. The numbers would increase year by year into the mid-1970s.
From the start of his career, Clemente faced a double barrel of discrimination as a Spanish-speaking black man, and constantly raged against the inequities he faced. During Florida spring training for his first seven years with the Pirates, he was forced to live with a black family in the Dunbar Heights section of Fort Myers while his white teammates enjoyed hotel rooms downtown. When the team held its annual spring golf outing at the local country club, Clemente and his few black teammates were not invited. He found it humiliating to have to stay on the team bus while his white teammates stopped at roadside restaurants on Grapefruit League road trips, and finally forced the Pirates' management to let the black players travel in their own station wagon. Enduring spring training, he once said, was like being in prison.
He was also infuriated by stereotypes. In a Life magazine preview of the 1960 World Series, in which he got a hit in every game of Pittsburgh's stunning upset of the New York Yankees, he was criticized for what was called his "Latin American variety of showboating" - although the example used was of him rounding third base and barreling over his coach on the way toward an inside-the-park home run, a play that might have been seen as an example of grit and determination if he had been a white player.
And he hated being quoted in broken English by sportswriters who did not know a word of Spanish. When he drove in the winning run and was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1961 All-Star Game in San Francisco, the headline in the Pittsburgh Press the next day read "I GET HEET" and the wire service account quoted Clemente as saying, "When I come to plate in lass eening ... I 'ope that Weelhelm (Hoyt Wilhelm) peetch me outside. ..."
Late in his career, Clemente got his sweet revenge, and he did so in a way that solidified his reputation as the most revered of Latino ballplayers. The moment came in the locker room after the seventh game of the 1971 World Series. The Pirates had defeated the favored Baltimore Orioles with Clemente playing brilliantly at the plate, on the base paths and in the field - an all-round performance that the pitch-perfect baseball writer Roger Angell described as "something close to the level of absolute perfection."
For all of his career to that point, Clemente had felt misunderstood and underappreciated. Now he had proven himself, and the network microphones and cameras, and the nation's attention, were focused on him alone. And what did Clemente do? He said that before he answered any questions he wanted to say a few words of thanks in Spanish to his aging parents back in Carolina. The symbolic meaning of that moment reverberated throughout the Spanish-speaking world and down through the years.
That same year, 1971, the Pirates broke another barrier by fielding the first all-black and Latino lineup in major league history: Rennie Stennett at second, Gene Clines in center, Clemente in right, Willie Stargell in left, Manny Sanguillen catching, Dave Cash at third, Al Oliver at first, Jackie Hernandez at short and Dock Ellis on the mound. Nearly a quarter century after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, the racial transformation of baseball was so advanced that the moment went virtually unnoticed. It turned out to be not a sign of things to come, but an unlikely turning point.
Over the next three decades, the number of African-Americans in baseball declined steadily, down from more than 23 percent to below 9 percent today. The Houston Astros last year went to the World Series without a single black American on its roster. Basketball, which could be played more easily in urban settings, and football, which offered more speed and action, became more appealing to young black athletes.
The number of Latinos, by contrast, rose dramatically over the same period. Last year there were 204 Latinos in the majors, about one-fourth of all players. Rodriguez, Martinez, Ramirez, Ortiz, Guerrero, Tejada, Rivera - these are the names of 21st century baseball. And some will end up in Cooperstown, joining the six Latinos already there: Tony Perez of Cuba, Rod Carew of Panama, Luis Aparicio of Venezuela, Juan Marichal of the Dominican Republic, Orlando Cepeda of Puerto Rico and the legend among them, paving the way into the Hall of Fame for others to follow, the only player besides Lou Gehrig enshrined before the normal five-year waiting period - Roberto Clemente.
Baseball certainly will undergo more transformations this century. The sport is already declining in Clemente's Puerto Rico, overtaken by basketball and faster-paced sports, for the same reasons that led black Americans away from baseball. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela far surpass Puerto Rico now in the number of major leaguers. A new wave is coming from Japan and Korea, and perhaps China after that.
But through it all, Clemente's role cannot diminish. The mythic aspects of baseball usually draw on the cliches of the innocent past, the nostalgia for how things were. Fields of green. Fathers and sons. But Clemente's myth, like Jackie Robinson's, arcs the other way, to the future, not the past, to what people hope they can become.
David Maraniss, an associate editor of The Washington Post, is author of "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero," to be released by Simon & Schuster later this month. Author email: maranissd@washpost.com
Thursday, March 30, 2006
The Bible and U2
Bono and his band often work scriptural references into their songs, and the resulting poetry—and music—is irresistible to listeners … whether they're people of faith or spiritual seekers. A book excerpt.
By Christian Scharen | posted 03/27/06
Editor's note: The following article is an excerpt from the new book, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (Brazos Press).
***
Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of GOD. Over art, literature, reason, the way in to my spirit was a combination of words and music. As a result the book of Psalms always felt open to me and led me to the poetry of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the book of John …
—Bono, Introduction to the Psalms
One clear indication that Bono and U2 know the Scriptures well is that they sing in the same phrases and patterns as the Scriptures. U2 often borrows lyrics straight from the Bible—a practice most clearly exemplified on their 1983 album War, which closes with the song "40" taken from Psalm 40 and a refrain from Psalm 6.
Like many U2 fans, I was drawn into thinking about the connections of their songs to the Bible through their practice of closing concerts with "40." The feeling of a crowd of thousands singing "how long to sing this song" at the top of their lungs is awesome, sending shivers down my spine in a way that, if I may be honest, happens less often than I'd like in church. If you have attended one of those concerts, or even if you've only heard it on their first live album, Under a Blood Red Sky, you understand the incredible connection U2 makes through this simple revival of an ancient psalm. The crowd goes on and on singing "how long to sing this song," long after U2's four members have left the concert hall and said goodnight.
If U2 had only recorded Psalm 40 on an album and then used it as a standard concert closer for a number of years, it would have been remarkable in the world of rock and roll. Yet their creative use of Psalm 40 is only the tip of the iceberg as I begin this section considering the role of Scripture in the studio and live music of U2 over the years. Many songs include either direct quotations or allusions to specific passages of scripture. For example, in the powerful live performances of "The End of the World" from their early 1990s album Achtung Baby, Bono plays the part of Judas and the Edge plays the role of Jesus as they explore this great story of desire and betrayal from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14. And on their 2004 album How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the song "Crumbs from Your Table" is a direct reference to parables from the Gospels of Matthew, chapter 15, and Luke, chapter 16, that set a tone for the song as a whole.
They've quoted the Scriptures all along in songs, interviews, and in live performances, but the influence of Scripture runs deeper still. The Scriptures have so deeply shaped the way they speak that the quotation marks often fall away. The Scriptures offer poetic modes of truthful speech about God and the world.
Without a sense of the wideness and wildness of the Bible, you can still love U2 as a great rock and roll band. Yet without that sense of Scripture in U2's work, you would miss how, again and again, U2 is pointing beyond themselves to a deeper dimension of life, the dimension of the soul, where one meets face to face with, in Bono's words, "a force of love and logic behind the universe."
Drawing Their Fish in the Sand
One of the most common icons for Jesus is the symbol of the fish. This symbol has been used since the earliest Christian communities, and it is found among the oldest Christian art in the catacombs where Christians gathered to worship during times of persecution. The symbol recalls Jesus's acts of feeding the many people who came to him hungering for food, mercy, healing, and a vision of a renewed and just society.
The symbol recalls as well the moments when Jesus visited the disciples after his resurrection. In some accounts, Jesus asked the disciples for fish to eat (John 21). They gave it to him in disbelief at his living presence standing and eating before them. From ancient catacomb art to depictions in stained glass and stone sculpture in grand cathedrals to small fish decals glued to the back of cars, this symbol has stood for centuries as an icon pointing to Jesus Christ.
Angela Pancella, a lead writer for the fabulous U2 fan website @U2.com, created a section of the site titled "Drawing Their Fish in the Sand." She tops the column dedicated to scriptural references in U2 songs with this quote from Bono:
"We've found different ways of expressing [our faith], and recognized the power of the media to manipulate such signs. Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It's there for people who are interested. It shouldn't be there for people who aren't."
Bono's reference makes sense once one understands a bit of church history.
During the early years of the Christian church, there were waves of harsh persecution by the Romans. At these times, it was dangerous to be public about one's Christian faith. As a protection, when a Christian met someone new, he or she would draw a single arc in the sand. If the other person was a Christian, he or she would complete the drawing of a fish with the second arc. If the second person was not a Christian, the ambiguity of the drawing would not reveal the first person as a person of faith.
A glance down the list of scriptural quotes and allusions in songs from "I Will Follow" to "Grace" makes clear that although U2 is deeply shaped by the world of Scripture, they also commonly use Scripture in such a way that their songs are iconic, pointing toward deeper things, toward the soul, rather than speaking directly and simply about issues of faith as so much of contemporary Christian music does.
This means that U2's songs are multi-layered, written in modes of poetry and accessible from many angles, not all of them dependent on seeing "the fish in the sand." While one might catch direct references to God, Jesus, and other explicitly religious themes, more often than not they write out of the world of Scripture implicitly—that is, without explicit religious terms or quotations from the Bible—in order to speak the truth they see in the world.
Bono put it this way: "I enjoy the test of trying to keep hold of what's sacred, and still being awake, walking around, breaking through the plate glass window. It's one thing being in that holy huddle; it's another thing taking yourself out there into the world."
So often Christians fall into the trap of only speaking about the world of Scripture. Bono, on the other hand, reminds us that the Scripture is not about itself, but about mixed up people seeking to look at the world through the eyes of love, as God does. And in large part, Bono draws on Scripture at its most powerful; that is, he draws upon its poetry.
It ought to be said, therefore, that rather than providing a distraction from the world, poetry lends itself to telling the truth about the world, and this is exactly what makes Scripture so dynamic as a force shaping the songs of U2. It is not the kind of truth telling offered in math. That 2+2=4 is true has clear meaning for us and is not the subject of much debate.
As biblical scholar Ellen Davis writes, the Bible's poets tell truth in a different way. They seek "to open the world to us through the artful use of words. They invite us to be patient and curious about the word choices they make. They speak to us at multiple levels, in suggestive ways, rather than through rational explanations."
I want us to ask questions about the word choices U2 makes as they draw from Scripture and how these word choices open the truth of God's world.
Modes of Scripture's Voice
While U2 has changed over time in the way they draw on Scripture in their songs, many key emphases have remained constant. For instance, the song "40" hints at how profound the voice of the Psalms has been for U2. Their songbook is, to some fans, the embodiment of a contemporary book of psalms, full of the honesty and passion that fills the Psalms of old.
Prophetic speech, too, has been there from early on. This mode was present in early live performances of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," with Bono running around stage waving a white flag to symbolize the song's call for the end of fighting and the coming of a hoped-for peace. But the 1990s found them shifting from the mixture of the sacred and erotic in Proverbs and the Song of Songs to an embrace of irony and life's vanity in Ecclesiastes. And their latest work simply shows a maturing of vision that reveals complex, layered visions that draw on the voices of Scripture in profound and provocative ways.
Singing Scripture has offered a powerful way for the band to speak truthfully about the complex reality of both desiring God and yet looking full on at the world in all its messiness.
***
In his book, Scharen goes on to offer what he calls "interpretations of the major voices of Scripture that echo in U2's songs." The subsequent chapters explore how different types of Scripture—psalms, wisdom, prophecy, parable, and apocalypse—give shape to U2's songs. The author says he does his best "to show I'm not reading Scripture into songs where it doesn't belong, but rather highlighting an important aspect of these songs in order to gain a deeper appreciation of them. The Bible, despite its reputation in some circles, is not a 'rule book' for the moral judgments of the fundamentalists. The Bible is actually a wild place, full of flawed heroes, the worst villains, powerful poetry, and that most amazing reality of all at the center of it—grace."
***
Bono and his band often work scriptural references into their songs, and the resulting poetry—and music—is irresistible to listeners … whether they're people of faith or spiritual seekers. A book excerpt.
By Christian Scharen | posted 03/27/06
Editor's note: The following article is an excerpt from the new book, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (Brazos Press).
***
Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of GOD. Over art, literature, reason, the way in to my spirit was a combination of words and music. As a result the book of Psalms always felt open to me and led me to the poetry of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the book of John …
—Bono, Introduction to the Psalms
One clear indication that Bono and U2 know the Scriptures well is that they sing in the same phrases and patterns as the Scriptures. U2 often borrows lyrics straight from the Bible—a practice most clearly exemplified on their 1983 album War, which closes with the song "40" taken from Psalm 40 and a refrain from Psalm 6.
Like many U2 fans, I was drawn into thinking about the connections of their songs to the Bible through their practice of closing concerts with "40." The feeling of a crowd of thousands singing "how long to sing this song" at the top of their lungs is awesome, sending shivers down my spine in a way that, if I may be honest, happens less often than I'd like in church. If you have attended one of those concerts, or even if you've only heard it on their first live album, Under a Blood Red Sky, you understand the incredible connection U2 makes through this simple revival of an ancient psalm. The crowd goes on and on singing "how long to sing this song," long after U2's four members have left the concert hall and said goodnight.
If U2 had only recorded Psalm 40 on an album and then used it as a standard concert closer for a number of years, it would have been remarkable in the world of rock and roll. Yet their creative use of Psalm 40 is only the tip of the iceberg as I begin this section considering the role of Scripture in the studio and live music of U2 over the years. Many songs include either direct quotations or allusions to specific passages of scripture. For example, in the powerful live performances of "The End of the World" from their early 1990s album Achtung Baby, Bono plays the part of Judas and the Edge plays the role of Jesus as they explore this great story of desire and betrayal from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14. And on their 2004 album How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the song "Crumbs from Your Table" is a direct reference to parables from the Gospels of Matthew, chapter 15, and Luke, chapter 16, that set a tone for the song as a whole.
They've quoted the Scriptures all along in songs, interviews, and in live performances, but the influence of Scripture runs deeper still. The Scriptures have so deeply shaped the way they speak that the quotation marks often fall away. The Scriptures offer poetic modes of truthful speech about God and the world.
Without a sense of the wideness and wildness of the Bible, you can still love U2 as a great rock and roll band. Yet without that sense of Scripture in U2's work, you would miss how, again and again, U2 is pointing beyond themselves to a deeper dimension of life, the dimension of the soul, where one meets face to face with, in Bono's words, "a force of love and logic behind the universe."
Drawing Their Fish in the Sand
One of the most common icons for Jesus is the symbol of the fish. This symbol has been used since the earliest Christian communities, and it is found among the oldest Christian art in the catacombs where Christians gathered to worship during times of persecution. The symbol recalls Jesus's acts of feeding the many people who came to him hungering for food, mercy, healing, and a vision of a renewed and just society.
The symbol recalls as well the moments when Jesus visited the disciples after his resurrection. In some accounts, Jesus asked the disciples for fish to eat (John 21). They gave it to him in disbelief at his living presence standing and eating before them. From ancient catacomb art to depictions in stained glass and stone sculpture in grand cathedrals to small fish decals glued to the back of cars, this symbol has stood for centuries as an icon pointing to Jesus Christ.
Angela Pancella, a lead writer for the fabulous U2 fan website @U2.com, created a section of the site titled "Drawing Their Fish in the Sand." She tops the column dedicated to scriptural references in U2 songs with this quote from Bono:
"We've found different ways of expressing [our faith], and recognized the power of the media to manipulate such signs. Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It's there for people who are interested. It shouldn't be there for people who aren't."
Bono's reference makes sense once one understands a bit of church history.
During the early years of the Christian church, there were waves of harsh persecution by the Romans. At these times, it was dangerous to be public about one's Christian faith. As a protection, when a Christian met someone new, he or she would draw a single arc in the sand. If the other person was a Christian, he or she would complete the drawing of a fish with the second arc. If the second person was not a Christian, the ambiguity of the drawing would not reveal the first person as a person of faith.
A glance down the list of scriptural quotes and allusions in songs from "I Will Follow" to "Grace" makes clear that although U2 is deeply shaped by the world of Scripture, they also commonly use Scripture in such a way that their songs are iconic, pointing toward deeper things, toward the soul, rather than speaking directly and simply about issues of faith as so much of contemporary Christian music does.
This means that U2's songs are multi-layered, written in modes of poetry and accessible from many angles, not all of them dependent on seeing "the fish in the sand." While one might catch direct references to God, Jesus, and other explicitly religious themes, more often than not they write out of the world of Scripture implicitly—that is, without explicit religious terms or quotations from the Bible—in order to speak the truth they see in the world.
Bono put it this way: "I enjoy the test of trying to keep hold of what's sacred, and still being awake, walking around, breaking through the plate glass window. It's one thing being in that holy huddle; it's another thing taking yourself out there into the world."
So often Christians fall into the trap of only speaking about the world of Scripture. Bono, on the other hand, reminds us that the Scripture is not about itself, but about mixed up people seeking to look at the world through the eyes of love, as God does. And in large part, Bono draws on Scripture at its most powerful; that is, he draws upon its poetry.
It ought to be said, therefore, that rather than providing a distraction from the world, poetry lends itself to telling the truth about the world, and this is exactly what makes Scripture so dynamic as a force shaping the songs of U2. It is not the kind of truth telling offered in math. That 2+2=4 is true has clear meaning for us and is not the subject of much debate.
As biblical scholar Ellen Davis writes, the Bible's poets tell truth in a different way. They seek "to open the world to us through the artful use of words. They invite us to be patient and curious about the word choices they make. They speak to us at multiple levels, in suggestive ways, rather than through rational explanations."
I want us to ask questions about the word choices U2 makes as they draw from Scripture and how these word choices open the truth of God's world.
Modes of Scripture's Voice
While U2 has changed over time in the way they draw on Scripture in their songs, many key emphases have remained constant. For instance, the song "40" hints at how profound the voice of the Psalms has been for U2. Their songbook is, to some fans, the embodiment of a contemporary book of psalms, full of the honesty and passion that fills the Psalms of old.
Prophetic speech, too, has been there from early on. This mode was present in early live performances of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," with Bono running around stage waving a white flag to symbolize the song's call for the end of fighting and the coming of a hoped-for peace. But the 1990s found them shifting from the mixture of the sacred and erotic in Proverbs and the Song of Songs to an embrace of irony and life's vanity in Ecclesiastes. And their latest work simply shows a maturing of vision that reveals complex, layered visions that draw on the voices of Scripture in profound and provocative ways.
Singing Scripture has offered a powerful way for the band to speak truthfully about the complex reality of both desiring God and yet looking full on at the world in all its messiness.
***
In his book, Scharen goes on to offer what he calls "interpretations of the major voices of Scripture that echo in U2's songs." The subsequent chapters explore how different types of Scripture—psalms, wisdom, prophecy, parable, and apocalypse—give shape to U2's songs. The author says he does his best "to show I'm not reading Scripture into songs where it doesn't belong, but rather highlighting an important aspect of these songs in order to gain a deeper appreciation of them. The Bible, despite its reputation in some circles, is not a 'rule book' for the moral judgments of the fundamentalists. The Bible is actually a wild place, full of flawed heroes, the worst villains, powerful poetry, and that most amazing reality of all at the center of it—grace."
***
Mexican Illegals vs. American Voters
By Tony Blankley
Washington Times | March 30, 2006
It is lucky America has more than two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary Committeemen — and probably a majority of the Senate — are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.
National polling data could not be more emphatic — and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.
Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.
I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of." The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.
But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town). It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. ( I guess ignorance loves company.) Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and The Washington Post — Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively — laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.
Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest-worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes: "Gosh, they're all bad ideas ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking, many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate, many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished ... [It] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ? Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits ... [Moreover], [i]t's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants.
"The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, from which this is taken.) Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote : "Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ? As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came.' " Mr. Krugman also observed — citing a leading Harvard study — "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays — and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants." Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.
Under such circumstances, advocates of guest-worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic.
When the slandered ones include not only The Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.
The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph.
So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators — and hasten your political demise.
By Tony Blankley
Washington Times | March 30, 2006
It is lucky America has more than two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary Committeemen — and probably a majority of the Senate — are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.
National polling data could not be more emphatic — and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.
Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.
I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of." The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.
But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town). It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. ( I guess ignorance loves company.) Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and The Washington Post — Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively — laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.
Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest-worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes: "Gosh, they're all bad ideas ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking, many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate, many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished ... [It] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ? Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits ... [Moreover], [i]t's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants.
"The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, from which this is taken.) Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote : "Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ? As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came.' " Mr. Krugman also observed — citing a leading Harvard study — "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays — and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants." Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.
Under such circumstances, advocates of guest-worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic.
When the slandered ones include not only The Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.
The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph.
So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators — and hasten your political demise.
From Slate:
The Erring Republican Authority
Kevin Phillips is wrong about everything. Why is he taken so seriously?
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006, at 3:31 PM ET
In 1969, an obscure Republican political strategist named Kevin Phillips published a nerdy, statistics-laden book titled The Emerging Republican Majority that offered a Machiavellian analysis of how the GOP could use the issue of race to win over working-class Democrats and ensure future political dominance. In the years since, almost every aspect of that description has been turned around. Phillips long ago left behind both obscurity and conservatism, becoming one of our most ubiquitous political commentators and one of the most left-wing. His biennial books have become illogical, dizzying screeds. And his diagnoses, predictions, and advice to Democrats have been consistently, embarrassingly wrong.
Phillips' faults are on full, gaseous display in his latest jeremiad, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. The book was No. 1 on Amazon before being released and has already been widely praised by liberals, who continue to welcome Phillips as a fresh convert to their side decades after his defection from the right. Alan Brinkley, a distinguished historian who should know better, last week praised American Theocracy in the lead essay of the New York Times Book Review as "frighteningly persuasive" and "a harrowing picture of national danger … that none should ignore." Time calls the book "indispensable."
Let me help dispense with it. Phillips' argument is that oil dependency, Christian fundamentalism, and excessive debt are destroying the country. He is not wrong that these are dangers. But he wildly misunderstands, distorts, and overstates all of them.
The Phillips method is to begin a chapter with a boldly stated thesis: America invaded Iraq to seize its oil. Having gotten your attention, he departs on a pompous, pedantic history tour: tar in the Bible, medieval mineralogy, Italian olive oil, the Basque whaling trade, the British carve-up of the Middle East, the rise of the automobile, and so on. Thirty pages later, having presented no evidence and answered no objections (So, why did the oil companies oppose the Iraq war?), he restates his claim more hyperbolically: "During the first George W. Bush administration, that reliance [on automobiles] dictated an attempt to turn the Persian Gulf into an American filling station so as to maintain high energy consumption." At least Michael Moore tries to make us laugh when he says stuff like this.
Phillips is no more coherent on the book's chief subject, "theocracy." He contends that the GOP has become America's first openly religious party, in thrall to Christian "premillenialists" who think the end is nigh. Bush has indeed allied himself with his party's evangelical wing. But while Karl Rove's pander-to-the base strategy got Bush narrowly re-elected, the entente hasn't truly served Bush or the religious right. The appearance of extremism on issues of church-state separation and stem-cell research has helped dig a deep hole for the president and his party, alienating secular and libertarian Republicans uncomfortable with the revival-tent atmosphere. And evangelical power appears to have peaked. Since the Terri Schiavo debacle, the religious right has mainly embarrassed itself by battling evolutionary theory. Phillips doesn't recognize any of this. Nor does he seem to grasp that end-times "Rapture" fantasies and the quest for oil cannot both be the hidden explanation of everything Bush does.
When it comes to economics, Phillips has still less of a clue. The tip-off that he doesn't know what he's talking about comes in the section about oil, when he tries to explain that not all "proven" reserves are available. Drilling may become uneconomic, Phillips notes, if more energy is required to find and extract a barrel of oil than the barrel contains—"at least until the price of oil rises." Sorry, but if it costs more than a barrel of oil to make a barrel of oil, a higher price won't help.
This sort of comment at least prepares us for the obtuseness that follows. Phillips is surely right, if impressively unoriginal, to argue that too much debt is a bad thing. But why must it mean that America is headed the way of Rome? Reagan ran larger deficits in GDP terms than Bush has done, but a more fiscally prudent successor reversed them. Phillips' declinism relies on fatuous anti-market prejudices familiar from his earlier work: that a healthy economy must be based in manufacturing, that free trade and globalization impoverish us, that foreign ownership is treacherous, that industrial policy works, and that a robust financial sector means trouble.
The hostility to Wall Street implicit in the last notion is part and parcel of a condescending, aristo-populism that recalls Gore Vidal without the twinkle. In the Phillips worldview, plutocrats exploit the American proletariat, which supports the policies that keep it miserable out of false consciousness—the poor hicks actually believe Christ is coming to save them. But any potential Marxist rigor swiftly dissipates into a haze of Syriana—paranoia about the Bush dynasty and the CIA, Skull and Bones, the House of Saud, and the discredited October Surprise conspiracy. Have I mentioned that Phillips is an appalling writer? His prose is cliché-ridden, self-referential, maddeningly repetitive, and dull enough to kill weeds.
Once upon a time, Kevin Phillips crunched a lot of numbers to give shrewd, if cynical, political advice to Republicans about capitalizing on white fear of black people. Since switching sides, he has proposed various ways for the liberals to knock down the conservative majority he helped to build. Democrats would be wise to beware of geeks bearing such gifts.
Jacob Weisberg is editor of Slate and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of In an Uncertain World.
The Erring Republican Authority
Kevin Phillips is wrong about everything. Why is he taken so seriously?
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006, at 3:31 PM ET
In 1969, an obscure Republican political strategist named Kevin Phillips published a nerdy, statistics-laden book titled The Emerging Republican Majority that offered a Machiavellian analysis of how the GOP could use the issue of race to win over working-class Democrats and ensure future political dominance. In the years since, almost every aspect of that description has been turned around. Phillips long ago left behind both obscurity and conservatism, becoming one of our most ubiquitous political commentators and one of the most left-wing. His biennial books have become illogical, dizzying screeds. And his diagnoses, predictions, and advice to Democrats have been consistently, embarrassingly wrong.
Phillips' faults are on full, gaseous display in his latest jeremiad, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. The book was No. 1 on Amazon before being released and has already been widely praised by liberals, who continue to welcome Phillips as a fresh convert to their side decades after his defection from the right. Alan Brinkley, a distinguished historian who should know better, last week praised American Theocracy in the lead essay of the New York Times Book Review as "frighteningly persuasive" and "a harrowing picture of national danger … that none should ignore." Time calls the book "indispensable."
Let me help dispense with it. Phillips' argument is that oil dependency, Christian fundamentalism, and excessive debt are destroying the country. He is not wrong that these are dangers. But he wildly misunderstands, distorts, and overstates all of them.
The Phillips method is to begin a chapter with a boldly stated thesis: America invaded Iraq to seize its oil. Having gotten your attention, he departs on a pompous, pedantic history tour: tar in the Bible, medieval mineralogy, Italian olive oil, the Basque whaling trade, the British carve-up of the Middle East, the rise of the automobile, and so on. Thirty pages later, having presented no evidence and answered no objections (So, why did the oil companies oppose the Iraq war?), he restates his claim more hyperbolically: "During the first George W. Bush administration, that reliance [on automobiles] dictated an attempt to turn the Persian Gulf into an American filling station so as to maintain high energy consumption." At least Michael Moore tries to make us laugh when he says stuff like this.
Phillips is no more coherent on the book's chief subject, "theocracy." He contends that the GOP has become America's first openly religious party, in thrall to Christian "premillenialists" who think the end is nigh. Bush has indeed allied himself with his party's evangelical wing. But while Karl Rove's pander-to-the base strategy got Bush narrowly re-elected, the entente hasn't truly served Bush or the religious right. The appearance of extremism on issues of church-state separation and stem-cell research has helped dig a deep hole for the president and his party, alienating secular and libertarian Republicans uncomfortable with the revival-tent atmosphere. And evangelical power appears to have peaked. Since the Terri Schiavo debacle, the religious right has mainly embarrassed itself by battling evolutionary theory. Phillips doesn't recognize any of this. Nor does he seem to grasp that end-times "Rapture" fantasies and the quest for oil cannot both be the hidden explanation of everything Bush does.
When it comes to economics, Phillips has still less of a clue. The tip-off that he doesn't know what he's talking about comes in the section about oil, when he tries to explain that not all "proven" reserves are available. Drilling may become uneconomic, Phillips notes, if more energy is required to find and extract a barrel of oil than the barrel contains—"at least until the price of oil rises." Sorry, but if it costs more than a barrel of oil to make a barrel of oil, a higher price won't help.
This sort of comment at least prepares us for the obtuseness that follows. Phillips is surely right, if impressively unoriginal, to argue that too much debt is a bad thing. But why must it mean that America is headed the way of Rome? Reagan ran larger deficits in GDP terms than Bush has done, but a more fiscally prudent successor reversed them. Phillips' declinism relies on fatuous anti-market prejudices familiar from his earlier work: that a healthy economy must be based in manufacturing, that free trade and globalization impoverish us, that foreign ownership is treacherous, that industrial policy works, and that a robust financial sector means trouble.
The hostility to Wall Street implicit in the last notion is part and parcel of a condescending, aristo-populism that recalls Gore Vidal without the twinkle. In the Phillips worldview, plutocrats exploit the American proletariat, which supports the policies that keep it miserable out of false consciousness—the poor hicks actually believe Christ is coming to save them. But any potential Marxist rigor swiftly dissipates into a haze of Syriana—paranoia about the Bush dynasty and the CIA, Skull and Bones, the House of Saud, and the discredited October Surprise conspiracy. Have I mentioned that Phillips is an appalling writer? His prose is cliché-ridden, self-referential, maddeningly repetitive, and dull enough to kill weeds.
Once upon a time, Kevin Phillips crunched a lot of numbers to give shrewd, if cynical, political advice to Republicans about capitalizing on white fear of black people. Since switching sides, he has proposed various ways for the liberals to knock down the conservative majority he helped to build. Democrats would be wise to beware of geeks bearing such gifts.
Jacob Weisberg is editor of Slate and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of In an Uncertain World.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Guests or Gate Crashers? Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing. Phony arguments and phony words are the norm in discussions of immigration policy.
It starts with a refusal to call illegal aliens "illegal aliens" and ends with asking for "guest worker" status for people who are not guests but gate crashers. As for the substantive arguments, they are as phony as the verbal evasions.
What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market.
Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses?
In California, surplus crops grown and harvested by illegal immigrants are often also subsidized by federal water projects which charge the farmers in dry California valleys far less than the cost to the government of providing that water -- and a fraction of what people in Los Angeles or San Francisco pay for the same amount of water.
Surplus crops grown with water supplied at the taxpayers' expense and raised by illegal workers can be grown elsewhere with water provided free of charge from the clouds and raised by American workers paid American wages.
Naturally, when the real costs of those crops have to be paid by the farmers who raise them, less will be grown -- that is, there will not be as much of a surplus going to waste in government-rented storage bins.
With some crops, we don't really "need" any of it. If the United States had not produced a single grain of sugar in the past 50 years, Americans could have gotten all the sugar they wanted and at lower prices, simply by buying it on the world market for half or less of what domestic sugar costs.
Sugar has been in chronic surplus on the world market for generations. It can be grown in the tropics far cheaper than it can be grown in the United States. All the land, labor, and capital that has been spent growing sugar here has been one huge waste.
We don't "need" to grow sugar, with or without illegal workers.
Many people are understandably sympathetic toward Mexican workers who come across the border illegally, not only because of the poverty which drives them from their homelands but also because their willingness to work makes them in demand.
When you see beggars on the street, they are usually white or black, but almost never Mexican. But American immigration laws and policies are not about whether you like or don't like Mexicans, though some demagogues try to play the race card.
For too long, we have bought the argument that being unfortunate entitles you to break the law. The consequence has been disastrous, whether the people allowed to get away with breaking the law are Americans or foreigners.
Legalizing illegal actions is the easy way out, so it is hardly surprising that politicians go for that.
One of the ways of legalizing illegal acts is by the automatic conferring of American citizenship on babies born to illegal aliens in the United States.
The law that made all people born here American citizens made sense when people crossed an ocean and made a commitment to become Americans.
Today, it is just another way of essentially legalizing illegal acts by making it harder to deport those who broke the law.
One of the most bogus of all the bogus arguments for a "guest worker" program is that it is impossible to find all the millions of illegal aliens in the country, so it is impossible to deport them.
If tomorrow someone came up with some brilliant way to identify every illegal alien in the country, it would not make the slightest difference. Right now, those who are identified as illegal, whether at the border, in prisons, at traffic stops or in any of our institutions, face no penalty whatsoever.
Identification is not the problem. Doing nothing is the problem.
By Thomas Sowell
Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing. Phony arguments and phony words are the norm in discussions of immigration policy.
It starts with a refusal to call illegal aliens "illegal aliens" and ends with asking for "guest worker" status for people who are not guests but gate crashers. As for the substantive arguments, they are as phony as the verbal evasions.
What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market.
Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses?
In California, surplus crops grown and harvested by illegal immigrants are often also subsidized by federal water projects which charge the farmers in dry California valleys far less than the cost to the government of providing that water -- and a fraction of what people in Los Angeles or San Francisco pay for the same amount of water.
Surplus crops grown with water supplied at the taxpayers' expense and raised by illegal workers can be grown elsewhere with water provided free of charge from the clouds and raised by American workers paid American wages.
Naturally, when the real costs of those crops have to be paid by the farmers who raise them, less will be grown -- that is, there will not be as much of a surplus going to waste in government-rented storage bins.
With some crops, we don't really "need" any of it. If the United States had not produced a single grain of sugar in the past 50 years, Americans could have gotten all the sugar they wanted and at lower prices, simply by buying it on the world market for half or less of what domestic sugar costs.
Sugar has been in chronic surplus on the world market for generations. It can be grown in the tropics far cheaper than it can be grown in the United States. All the land, labor, and capital that has been spent growing sugar here has been one huge waste.
We don't "need" to grow sugar, with or without illegal workers.
Many people are understandably sympathetic toward Mexican workers who come across the border illegally, not only because of the poverty which drives them from their homelands but also because their willingness to work makes them in demand.
When you see beggars on the street, they are usually white or black, but almost never Mexican. But American immigration laws and policies are not about whether you like or don't like Mexicans, though some demagogues try to play the race card.
For too long, we have bought the argument that being unfortunate entitles you to break the law. The consequence has been disastrous, whether the people allowed to get away with breaking the law are Americans or foreigners.
Legalizing illegal actions is the easy way out, so it is hardly surprising that politicians go for that.
One of the ways of legalizing illegal acts is by the automatic conferring of American citizenship on babies born to illegal aliens in the United States.
The law that made all people born here American citizens made sense when people crossed an ocean and made a commitment to become Americans.
Today, it is just another way of essentially legalizing illegal acts by making it harder to deport those who broke the law.
One of the most bogus of all the bogus arguments for a "guest worker" program is that it is impossible to find all the millions of illegal aliens in the country, so it is impossible to deport them.
If tomorrow someone came up with some brilliant way to identify every illegal alien in the country, it would not make the slightest difference. Right now, those who are identified as illegal, whether at the border, in prisons, at traffic stops or in any of our institutions, face no penalty whatsoever.
Identification is not the problem. Doing nothing is the problem.
Racism Gets a Whitewash
By Michelle Malkin
Few things make liberals more uncomfortable than being confronted with the racism of politically correct minorities.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Autum Ashante, the precocious 7-year-old black nationalist poet, who said white people are "devils and they should be gone." If this daughter of a Nation of Islam activist father had instead been an Aryan supremacist child of a Klan activist, she'd still be all over the network news and pages of pop culture magazines (as a pair of white nationalist teen pop singers, Lamb and Lynx Gaede, have been since last fall). But with rare exceptions, nobody wanted to touch Autum's spoon-fed hatred with a 10-foot-pole. That would be, you know, "intolerant." We have to "respect diversity."
Well, this weekend, militant racism from another protected minority group was on full display. But you wouldn't know it from press accounts that whitewashed or buried the protesters' virulent anti-American hatred.
An estimated 500,000 to 2 million people, untold numbers of them here illegally, took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest strict immigration enforcement and demand blanket amnesty for border violators, visa overstayers, deportation fugitives, immigration document fraud artists and other lawbreakers. Mexican flags and signs advocating ethnic separatism and supremacy filled the landscape. Demonstrators gleefully defaced posters of President Bush and urged supporters to "Stop the Nazis!" Los Angeles talk show host Tammy Bruce reported that protesters burned American flags and waved placards of the North American continent with America crossed out.
Bet you didn't see that on television.
One of the largest, boldest banners visible from aerial shots of the rally read: "THIS IS STOLEN LAND." Others blared: "CHICANO POWER" and "BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL." (Can you imagine the uproar if someone had come to the rally holding up a sign reading "WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL"?) Thugs with masked faces flashed gang signs on the steps of L.A.'s City Hall. Students walked out of classrooms all across Southern California chanting, "Latinos, stand up!" Young people raised their fists in defiance, clothed in T-shirts bearing radical leftist guerrilla Che Guevara's face and Aztlan emblems.
Aztlan is a long-held notion among Mexico's intellectual elite and political class, which asserts that the American Southwest rightly belongs to Mexico. Advocates believe the reclamation (or reconquista) of Aztlan will occur through sheer demographic force. If the rallies across the country are any indication, reconquista is already complete.
Lest you think these ideas are moldy-oldy 1960s leftovers that no one subscribes to today, listen to Sandra Molina, 16, a junior from L.A.'s Downtown Magnet High School, who complained to the supportive Los Angeles Times: "This is unjust. This land used to belong to us and now they're trying to kick us out."
Nor are these sovereignty-obliterating grievances confined to the wacky West Coast. In Milwaukee, Wis., marchers carried signs that read: "If you think I'm 'illegal' because I'm a Mexican[,] learn the true history because I'm in my HOMELAND."
Open-borders sympathizers in the press strained to look the other way. As Slate writer Mickey Kaus, who attended the L.A. demonstration, noted, the Los Angeles Times buried any mention of the presence of Mexican flags in its initial "propagandistic" report -- and then eliminated any reference to them at all. Cracks Kaus: "I used to write this sort of press-releasey 'news' account when my college paper assigned me to 'cover' anti-war demonstrations that I'd helped organize! . . . The Times' effort is filled with representative quotes from participants, without a note of dissent."
Apologists are quick to argue that Latino supremacists are just a small fringe faction of the pro-illegal immigration movement (never mind that their ranks include former and current Hispanic politicians from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante).
But you'll never hear or read such forgiving caveats in the mainstream press's hostile coverage of the pro-immigration enforcement members of the Minutemen Project -- who are universally smeared as racists. For what? For peacefully demanding that our government enforce its laws and secure its borders.
Yes, borders. Last time I checked a map of North America, they still do exist.
Unless we give in and let the bullies and their appeasers whitewash those out of existence, too.
By Michelle Malkin
Few things make liberals more uncomfortable than being confronted with the racism of politically correct minorities.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Autum Ashante, the precocious 7-year-old black nationalist poet, who said white people are "devils and they should be gone." If this daughter of a Nation of Islam activist father had instead been an Aryan supremacist child of a Klan activist, she'd still be all over the network news and pages of pop culture magazines (as a pair of white nationalist teen pop singers, Lamb and Lynx Gaede, have been since last fall). But with rare exceptions, nobody wanted to touch Autum's spoon-fed hatred with a 10-foot-pole. That would be, you know, "intolerant." We have to "respect diversity."
Well, this weekend, militant racism from another protected minority group was on full display. But you wouldn't know it from press accounts that whitewashed or buried the protesters' virulent anti-American hatred.
An estimated 500,000 to 2 million people, untold numbers of them here illegally, took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest strict immigration enforcement and demand blanket amnesty for border violators, visa overstayers, deportation fugitives, immigration document fraud artists and other lawbreakers. Mexican flags and signs advocating ethnic separatism and supremacy filled the landscape. Demonstrators gleefully defaced posters of President Bush and urged supporters to "Stop the Nazis!" Los Angeles talk show host Tammy Bruce reported that protesters burned American flags and waved placards of the North American continent with America crossed out.
Bet you didn't see that on television.
One of the largest, boldest banners visible from aerial shots of the rally read: "THIS IS STOLEN LAND." Others blared: "CHICANO POWER" and "BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL." (Can you imagine the uproar if someone had come to the rally holding up a sign reading "WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL"?) Thugs with masked faces flashed gang signs on the steps of L.A.'s City Hall. Students walked out of classrooms all across Southern California chanting, "Latinos, stand up!" Young people raised their fists in defiance, clothed in T-shirts bearing radical leftist guerrilla Che Guevara's face and Aztlan emblems.
Aztlan is a long-held notion among Mexico's intellectual elite and political class, which asserts that the American Southwest rightly belongs to Mexico. Advocates believe the reclamation (or reconquista) of Aztlan will occur through sheer demographic force. If the rallies across the country are any indication, reconquista is already complete.
Lest you think these ideas are moldy-oldy 1960s leftovers that no one subscribes to today, listen to Sandra Molina, 16, a junior from L.A.'s Downtown Magnet High School, who complained to the supportive Los Angeles Times: "This is unjust. This land used to belong to us and now they're trying to kick us out."
Nor are these sovereignty-obliterating grievances confined to the wacky West Coast. In Milwaukee, Wis., marchers carried signs that read: "If you think I'm 'illegal' because I'm a Mexican[,] learn the true history because I'm in my HOMELAND."
Open-borders sympathizers in the press strained to look the other way. As Slate writer Mickey Kaus, who attended the L.A. demonstration, noted, the Los Angeles Times buried any mention of the presence of Mexican flags in its initial "propagandistic" report -- and then eliminated any reference to them at all. Cracks Kaus: "I used to write this sort of press-releasey 'news' account when my college paper assigned me to 'cover' anti-war demonstrations that I'd helped organize! . . . The Times' effort is filled with representative quotes from participants, without a note of dissent."
Apologists are quick to argue that Latino supremacists are just a small fringe faction of the pro-illegal immigration movement (never mind that their ranks include former and current Hispanic politicians from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante).
But you'll never hear or read such forgiving caveats in the mainstream press's hostile coverage of the pro-immigration enforcement members of the Minutemen Project -- who are universally smeared as racists. For what? For peacefully demanding that our government enforce its laws and secure its borders.
Yes, borders. Last time I checked a map of North America, they still do exist.
Unless we give in and let the bullies and their appeasers whitewash those out of existence, too.
Mexican Illegals vs. American Voters
By Tony Blankley
It's lucky America has over two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary committeemen -- and probably a majority of the Senate -- are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.
National polling data could not be more emphatic -- and has been so for decades. A Gallup poll (March 27, 2006) finds 80 percent of the public wants federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3, 2006) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses).
Time magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26, 2006) found 74 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, and 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism. Fifty-seven percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
NBC/Wall St. Journal's poll (March 10-13, 2006) found 59 percent opposing a guest worker proposal. Seventy-one percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (Mach 10, 2006) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of The White House and Congress.
Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.
I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of."
The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.
But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town).
It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. (I guess ignorance loves company.)
Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and the Washington Post -- Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively -- laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.
Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes:
"Gosh, they're all bad ideas. ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. ... [it] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... "
"The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ... Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits.
"[Moreover] It's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all of Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, 2006, from which this is taken.)
Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote:
"Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ... As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came."
Krugman also observed -- citing a leading Harvard study -- "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays -- and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants."
Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.
Under such circumstances, advocates of guest worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic. When the slandered ones include not only the Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.
The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph. So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators, and hasten your political demise.
By Tony Blankley
It's lucky America has over two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary committeemen -- and probably a majority of the Senate -- are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.
National polling data could not be more emphatic -- and has been so for decades. A Gallup poll (March 27, 2006) finds 80 percent of the public wants federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3, 2006) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses).
Time magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26, 2006) found 74 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, and 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism. Fifty-seven percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
NBC/Wall St. Journal's poll (March 10-13, 2006) found 59 percent opposing a guest worker proposal. Seventy-one percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (Mach 10, 2006) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of The White House and Congress.
Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.
I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of."
The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.
But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town).
It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. (I guess ignorance loves company.)
Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and the Washington Post -- Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively -- laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.
Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes:
"Gosh, they're all bad ideas. ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. ... [it] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... "
"The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ... Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits.
"[Moreover] It's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all of Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, 2006, from which this is taken.)
Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote:
"Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ... As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came."
Krugman also observed -- citing a leading Harvard study -- "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays -- and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants."
Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.
Under such circumstances, advocates of guest worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic. When the slandered ones include not only the Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.
The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph. So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators, and hasten your political demise.
The 'Immigration Backlash'
By Debra Saunders
Of course America needs immigrants. This is a country founded by immigrants and made richer by the imprint of newcomers in search of a land that rewards their hard work and determination to make a better life for their families.
The problem is that no country -- certainly, no country with a social safety net -- can afford to accommodate everyone who wants in. (Or as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., put it, "We cannot be the HMO to the world.") That's why there are immigration policies that limit the number of people who can immigrate here legally.
The lack of an open-door policy has spawned this week's victim class, illegal or "undocumented" immigrants, who have flouted American law and apparently believe they should not have to pay the consequences of that choice. Hence Sunday's huge demonstration in Los Angeles, where activists carried signs that called for "Amnistia, Full Rights for All Immigrants."
The Los Angeles Times duly reported, "Some Republicans fear that pushing too hard against illegal immigrants could backfire nationally, as with Proposition 187 (the 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny benefits for illegal immigrants that) helped spur record numbers of California Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. Those voters subsequently helped Democrats regain political control in the state."
Call that the Backlash Myth. In fact, Prop. 187 passed with 59 percent of the vote, and GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, who championed the measure, was re-elected in 1994. In 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, he so enraged voters that he sealed his political demise. After Davis was recalled from office, the heavily Democratic California Legislature repealed the bill.
That's your backlash.
Don't blame racism. While some in the media may think all Latinos vote alike, the Los Angeles Times poll found that 38 percent of Latino voters in California strongly opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
If there is a backlash, it probably will be against the demonstrators. Even before students began blocking the Los Angeles streets to protest legislation in Congress to toughen penalties for illegal immigrants and smugglers, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies told me over the telephone, "I hope they keep doing it. It just makes it less and less likely the Senate's going to pass any amnesty."
A bill passed by the House would make it a felony for illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. Jeff Lungren of the House Judiciary Committee explained that, while it is a crime to cross the border illegally, staying here after sneaking in or after your visa expires has been only a civil offense. The House wanted to make it an actual crime.
When members of Congress complained that a felony was too harsh, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner put forward an amendment in December to reduce the proposed penalty to a misdemeanor.
This shows what a setup the felony issue was: Only eight Dems voted to reduce the penalty, and the amendment failed by a 257-164 vote. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., announced that she opposed the misdemeanor amendment because: "In one stroke, it would subject the entire undocumented population, estimated by some to be 11 million people, to criminal liability." So the Dems stuck with the felony language.
Rohrabacher stresses that 90 percent of illegal immigrants -- if not more -- are "wonderful human beings." He notes that no one expects the government to deport all 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants in America.
The answer is for Washington to toughen enforcement, penalize employers who hired undocumented workers and make border crossing more costly. Then fewer people will move illegally to America.
Instead, on Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill with a guest-worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship. Big mistake. If Washington passes an immigration bill that grants citizenship to illegal immigrants and includes a phony temporary guest-worker program -- phony, because there is no way the government can or would remove workers after six years, as one scheme promises -- then the deception will be official. The message Washington will send will resound louder than ever: Forget immigration laws. Legal, illegal, no dif.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
By Debra Saunders
Of course America needs immigrants. This is a country founded by immigrants and made richer by the imprint of newcomers in search of a land that rewards their hard work and determination to make a better life for their families.
The problem is that no country -- certainly, no country with a social safety net -- can afford to accommodate everyone who wants in. (Or as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., put it, "We cannot be the HMO to the world.") That's why there are immigration policies that limit the number of people who can immigrate here legally.
The lack of an open-door policy has spawned this week's victim class, illegal or "undocumented" immigrants, who have flouted American law and apparently believe they should not have to pay the consequences of that choice. Hence Sunday's huge demonstration in Los Angeles, where activists carried signs that called for "Amnistia, Full Rights for All Immigrants."
The Los Angeles Times duly reported, "Some Republicans fear that pushing too hard against illegal immigrants could backfire nationally, as with Proposition 187 (the 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny benefits for illegal immigrants that) helped spur record numbers of California Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. Those voters subsequently helped Democrats regain political control in the state."
Call that the Backlash Myth. In fact, Prop. 187 passed with 59 percent of the vote, and GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, who championed the measure, was re-elected in 1994. In 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, he so enraged voters that he sealed his political demise. After Davis was recalled from office, the heavily Democratic California Legislature repealed the bill.
That's your backlash.
Don't blame racism. While some in the media may think all Latinos vote alike, the Los Angeles Times poll found that 38 percent of Latino voters in California strongly opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
If there is a backlash, it probably will be against the demonstrators. Even before students began blocking the Los Angeles streets to protest legislation in Congress to toughen penalties for illegal immigrants and smugglers, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies told me over the telephone, "I hope they keep doing it. It just makes it less and less likely the Senate's going to pass any amnesty."
A bill passed by the House would make it a felony for illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. Jeff Lungren of the House Judiciary Committee explained that, while it is a crime to cross the border illegally, staying here after sneaking in or after your visa expires has been only a civil offense. The House wanted to make it an actual crime.
When members of Congress complained that a felony was too harsh, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner put forward an amendment in December to reduce the proposed penalty to a misdemeanor.
This shows what a setup the felony issue was: Only eight Dems voted to reduce the penalty, and the amendment failed by a 257-164 vote. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., announced that she opposed the misdemeanor amendment because: "In one stroke, it would subject the entire undocumented population, estimated by some to be 11 million people, to criminal liability." So the Dems stuck with the felony language.
Rohrabacher stresses that 90 percent of illegal immigrants -- if not more -- are "wonderful human beings." He notes that no one expects the government to deport all 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants in America.
The answer is for Washington to toughen enforcement, penalize employers who hired undocumented workers and make border crossing more costly. Then fewer people will move illegally to America.
Instead, on Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill with a guest-worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship. Big mistake. If Washington passes an immigration bill that grants citizenship to illegal immigrants and includes a phony temporary guest-worker program -- phony, because there is no way the government can or would remove workers after six years, as one scheme promises -- then the deception will be official. The message Washington will send will resound louder than ever: Forget immigration laws. Legal, illegal, no dif.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
From The American Conservative:
Counterfeit Conservative
Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bruce Bartlett, Doubleday, 320 pages
by Doug Bandow
President George W. Bush took office to the sustained applause of America’s conservative movement. In 2000, he defeated the liberal environmentalist Al Gore, abruptly terminated the legacy of the even more hated Bill Clinton, and gave Republicans control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A few cynics were suspicious of Bush’s understanding of and commitment to conservative principles, but most on the Right welcomed his inauguration.
Five years later, the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins. Government is bigger, spending is higher, and Washington is more powerful. The national government has intruded further into state and local concerns. Federal officials have sacrificed civil liberties and constitutional rights while airily demanding that the public trust them not to abuse their power.
The U.S. has engaged in aggressive war to promote democracy and undertaken an expensive foreign-aid program. The administration and its supporters routinely denounce critics as partisans and even traitors. Indeed, the White House defenestrates anyone who acknowledges that reality sometimes conflicts with official fantasies.
In short, it is precisely the sort of government that conservatives once feared would result from liberal control in Washington.
Still, conservative criticism remains muted. Mumbled complaints are heard at right-wing gatherings. Worries are expressed on blogs and internet discussions. A few activists such as former Congressman Bob Barr challenge administration policies. And a few courageous publications more directly confront Republicans who, like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, have morphed into what they originally opposed.
The criticisms are about to get louder, however. Bruce Bartlett has been involved in conservative politics for a quarter century. He authored one of the leading books on supply-side economics, worked in the Reagan administration, and held a position at the National Center for Policy Analysis—until the Dallas-based group fired him, apparently fearful of financial retaliation arising from his sharp criticisms of the administration.
That the truth is so feared is particularly notable because Bartlett’s criticism is measured, largely limited to economics. Bartlett notes in passing his concern over Iraq, federalism, and Bush’s “insistence on absolute, unquestioning loyalty, which stifles honest criticism and creates a cult of personality around him.” These issues warrant a separate book, since it is apparent that Americans have died, not, perhaps, because Bush lied, but certainly because Bush and his appointees are both arrogant and incompetent.
Although modest in scope, Impostor is a critically important book. Bartlett demonstrates that Bush is no conservative. He notes: “I write as a Reaganite, by which I mean someone who believes in the historical conservative philosophy of small government, federalism, free trade, and the Constitution as originally understood by the Founding Fathers.”
Bush believes in none of these things. His conservatism, such as it is, is cultural rather than political. Writes Bartlett, “Philosophically, he has more in common with liberals, who see no limits to state power as long as it is used to advance what they think is right.” Until now, big-government conservatism was widely understood to be an oxymoron.
For this reason, Bartlett contends that Bush has betrayed the Reagan legacy. Obviously, Ronald Reagan had only indifferent success in reducing government spending and power. For this there were many reasons, including Democratic control of the House and the need to compromise to win more money for the military.
Yet Reagan, in sharp contrast to Bush, read books, magazines, and newspapers. (On the campaign plane in 1980 he handed articles to me to review.) He believed in limited government even if he fell short of achieving that goal. And he understood that he was sacrificing his basic principles when he forged one or another political compromise. George W. Bush has no principles to sacrifice. Rather, complains Bartlett, Bush “is simply a partisan Republican, anxious to improve the fortunes of his party, to be sure. But he is perfectly willing to jettison conservative principles at a moment’s notice to achieve that goal.”
Which means Bush’s conservative image bears no relation to his actions. Indeed, reading Impostor leaves one thinking of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, as if the administration’s real record is depicted in a painting hidden from public view.
Bartlett’s analysis is devastating. He begins with process rather than substance, Bush’s “apparent disdain for serious thought and research to develop his policy initiatives.” In this way, Bartlett helps explain why Bush’s policies are almost uniformly bad.
As someone who served on a presidential staff, I can affirm that developing policy is never easy. Departments push their agendas, political allies and interest groups fight for influence, and legislators intrude. But the best hope for good policy, and especially good policy that also is good politics, is an open policy-making process.
That is precisely the opposite of the Bush White House, which views obsessive secrecy as a virtue and demands lockstep obedience. Bartlett reviews the experience of several officials who fell out with the administration, as well as the downgrading of policy agencies and the “total subordination of analysis to short-term politics.”
The biggest problem is Bush himself, who—though a decent person who might make a good neighbor—suffers from unbridled hubris. His absolute certainty appears to be matched only by his extraordinary ignorance. His refusal to reconsider his own decisions and hold his officials accountable for obvious errors have proved to be a combustible combination. As a result, writes Bartlett, “Bush is failing to win any converts to the conservative cause.”
The consequences have been dire. Bartlett, long an advocate of supply-side economics, is critical of the Bush tax program. A rebate was added and the program was sold on Keynesian grounds of getting the economy moving. The politics might have been good, but the economics was bad. Unfortunately, writes Bartlett, the rebate “and other add-ons to the original Bush proposal ballooned its cost, forcing a scale-back of some important provisions, which undermined their effectiveness.” Although rate reductions have the greatest economic impact, rates were lowered less and less quickly.
Bartlett also criticizes Bush on trade, on which he views him as potentially the worst president since Herbert Hoover. “Since then, all presidents except George W. Bush have made free trade a cornerstone of their international economic policy. While his rhetoric on the subject is little different than theirs, Bush’s actions have been far more protectionist.”
Many TAC readers may view Bush as insufficiently protectionist. However, the obvious inconsistency—rhetorical commitment to open international markets mixed with protectionist splurges—is not good policy. Here, as elsewhere, Bush’s actions are supremely political, where the nation’s long-term economic health is bartered away for short-term political gain.
However, it is on spending that the Bush administration has most obviously and most dramatically failed. Bartlett entitles one chapter “On the Budget, Clinton was Better.” Not just Clinton but George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and even Lyndon Johnson, depending on the measure used.
In this area Impostor makes for particularly depressing reading. The administration is not just spendthrift. It is dishonest. Given the administration’s foreign-policy deceptions, it should come as no surprise that the administration cares little about the truth in fiscal matters. Writes Bartlett:
As budget expert Stan Collender has pointed out, the Bush Administration had a habit of putting out inaccurate budget numbers. The deficit in its 2004 budget appears to have been deliberately overestimated just so that a lower figure could be reported right before the election, thus giving the illusion of budgetary improvement. The following year, the deficit projected in January 2005 was also significantly higher than estimated in the midsession budget review in July. This led Collender to conclude that budget numbers produced by the Bush administration ‘should not be taken seriously.’
Like the typical Democratic demagogue, Bush has used spending to buy votes whenever possible. In this, of course, he has been joined by the Republican Congress. But his lack of commitment is evident from just one statistic: Bush has yet to veto a single bill. One has to go back almost two centuries to find another full-term president who did not veto even one measure.
In fact, the Republican president and Republican Congress have been full partners in bankrupting the nation. The low point was undoubtedly passage of the Medicare drug benefit, to which Bartlett devotes one chapter. The GOP majority misused House rules and employed a dubious set of carrots and sticks to turn around an apparent 216 to 218 loss. Worse was the administration’s conduct. The administration shamelessly lied about the program’s costs, covered up the truth, and threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he talked to Congress. The bill is badly drafted and, more importantly, adds $18 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability.
In Bartlett’s view, this might be the worst single piece of legislation in U.S. history, which would be quite a legacy. Writes Bartlett, “It will cost vast sums the nation cannot afford, even if its initial budgetary projections prove to be accurate, which is highly doubtful. It will inevitably lead to higher taxes and price controls that will reduce the supply of new lifesaving drugs.” In short, an allegedly conservative president inaugurated the biggest expansion of the welfare state in four decades.
Bartlett believes that tax hikes are inevitable, and he offers some decidedly unconservative observations on these issues, including the desirability of imposing a Value-Added Tax. He also speculates on the political future and a likely “Republican crack-up.”
But the core of his book remains his analysis of the Bush record. Bush, Bartlett believes, is likely to be seen as another Richard Nixon:
There has been an interesting transformation of Richard Nixon over the last twenty years or so. Whereas once he was viewed as an archconservative, increasing numbers of historians now view him as basically a liberal, at least on domestic policy. They have learned to look past Nixon’s rhetoric and methods to the substance of his policies, and discovered that there is almost nothing conservative about them. So it is likely to be with George W. Bush.
It is almost certainly too late to save the Bush presidency. Impostor demonstrates that the problems are systemic, well beyond the remedy of a simple change in policy or personnel. There may still be time, however, to save the conservative movement. But the hour is late. Unless the Right soon demonstrates that it is no longer Bush’s obsequious political tool, it may never escape his destructive legacy.
_____________________________________________________
Doug Bandow is vice president of policy for Citizens Outreach. A collection of his columns, Leviathan Unchained: Washington’s Bipartisan Big Government Crusade, will be published by Town Forum Press..
Counterfeit Conservative
Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bruce Bartlett, Doubleday, 320 pages
by Doug Bandow
President George W. Bush took office to the sustained applause of America’s conservative movement. In 2000, he defeated the liberal environmentalist Al Gore, abruptly terminated the legacy of the even more hated Bill Clinton, and gave Republicans control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A few cynics were suspicious of Bush’s understanding of and commitment to conservative principles, but most on the Right welcomed his inauguration.
Five years later, the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins. Government is bigger, spending is higher, and Washington is more powerful. The national government has intruded further into state and local concerns. Federal officials have sacrificed civil liberties and constitutional rights while airily demanding that the public trust them not to abuse their power.
The U.S. has engaged in aggressive war to promote democracy and undertaken an expensive foreign-aid program. The administration and its supporters routinely denounce critics as partisans and even traitors. Indeed, the White House defenestrates anyone who acknowledges that reality sometimes conflicts with official fantasies.
In short, it is precisely the sort of government that conservatives once feared would result from liberal control in Washington.
Still, conservative criticism remains muted. Mumbled complaints are heard at right-wing gatherings. Worries are expressed on blogs and internet discussions. A few activists such as former Congressman Bob Barr challenge administration policies. And a few courageous publications more directly confront Republicans who, like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, have morphed into what they originally opposed.
The criticisms are about to get louder, however. Bruce Bartlett has been involved in conservative politics for a quarter century. He authored one of the leading books on supply-side economics, worked in the Reagan administration, and held a position at the National Center for Policy Analysis—until the Dallas-based group fired him, apparently fearful of financial retaliation arising from his sharp criticisms of the administration.
That the truth is so feared is particularly notable because Bartlett’s criticism is measured, largely limited to economics. Bartlett notes in passing his concern over Iraq, federalism, and Bush’s “insistence on absolute, unquestioning loyalty, which stifles honest criticism and creates a cult of personality around him.” These issues warrant a separate book, since it is apparent that Americans have died, not, perhaps, because Bush lied, but certainly because Bush and his appointees are both arrogant and incompetent.
Although modest in scope, Impostor is a critically important book. Bartlett demonstrates that Bush is no conservative. He notes: “I write as a Reaganite, by which I mean someone who believes in the historical conservative philosophy of small government, federalism, free trade, and the Constitution as originally understood by the Founding Fathers.”
Bush believes in none of these things. His conservatism, such as it is, is cultural rather than political. Writes Bartlett, “Philosophically, he has more in common with liberals, who see no limits to state power as long as it is used to advance what they think is right.” Until now, big-government conservatism was widely understood to be an oxymoron.
For this reason, Bartlett contends that Bush has betrayed the Reagan legacy. Obviously, Ronald Reagan had only indifferent success in reducing government spending and power. For this there were many reasons, including Democratic control of the House and the need to compromise to win more money for the military.
Yet Reagan, in sharp contrast to Bush, read books, magazines, and newspapers. (On the campaign plane in 1980 he handed articles to me to review.) He believed in limited government even if he fell short of achieving that goal. And he understood that he was sacrificing his basic principles when he forged one or another political compromise. George W. Bush has no principles to sacrifice. Rather, complains Bartlett, Bush “is simply a partisan Republican, anxious to improve the fortunes of his party, to be sure. But he is perfectly willing to jettison conservative principles at a moment’s notice to achieve that goal.”
Which means Bush’s conservative image bears no relation to his actions. Indeed, reading Impostor leaves one thinking of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, as if the administration’s real record is depicted in a painting hidden from public view.
Bartlett’s analysis is devastating. He begins with process rather than substance, Bush’s “apparent disdain for serious thought and research to develop his policy initiatives.” In this way, Bartlett helps explain why Bush’s policies are almost uniformly bad.
As someone who served on a presidential staff, I can affirm that developing policy is never easy. Departments push their agendas, political allies and interest groups fight for influence, and legislators intrude. But the best hope for good policy, and especially good policy that also is good politics, is an open policy-making process.
That is precisely the opposite of the Bush White House, which views obsessive secrecy as a virtue and demands lockstep obedience. Bartlett reviews the experience of several officials who fell out with the administration, as well as the downgrading of policy agencies and the “total subordination of analysis to short-term politics.”
The biggest problem is Bush himself, who—though a decent person who might make a good neighbor—suffers from unbridled hubris. His absolute certainty appears to be matched only by his extraordinary ignorance. His refusal to reconsider his own decisions and hold his officials accountable for obvious errors have proved to be a combustible combination. As a result, writes Bartlett, “Bush is failing to win any converts to the conservative cause.”
The consequences have been dire. Bartlett, long an advocate of supply-side economics, is critical of the Bush tax program. A rebate was added and the program was sold on Keynesian grounds of getting the economy moving. The politics might have been good, but the economics was bad. Unfortunately, writes Bartlett, the rebate “and other add-ons to the original Bush proposal ballooned its cost, forcing a scale-back of some important provisions, which undermined their effectiveness.” Although rate reductions have the greatest economic impact, rates were lowered less and less quickly.
Bartlett also criticizes Bush on trade, on which he views him as potentially the worst president since Herbert Hoover. “Since then, all presidents except George W. Bush have made free trade a cornerstone of their international economic policy. While his rhetoric on the subject is little different than theirs, Bush’s actions have been far more protectionist.”
Many TAC readers may view Bush as insufficiently protectionist. However, the obvious inconsistency—rhetorical commitment to open international markets mixed with protectionist splurges—is not good policy. Here, as elsewhere, Bush’s actions are supremely political, where the nation’s long-term economic health is bartered away for short-term political gain.
However, it is on spending that the Bush administration has most obviously and most dramatically failed. Bartlett entitles one chapter “On the Budget, Clinton was Better.” Not just Clinton but George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and even Lyndon Johnson, depending on the measure used.
In this area Impostor makes for particularly depressing reading. The administration is not just spendthrift. It is dishonest. Given the administration’s foreign-policy deceptions, it should come as no surprise that the administration cares little about the truth in fiscal matters. Writes Bartlett:
As budget expert Stan Collender has pointed out, the Bush Administration had a habit of putting out inaccurate budget numbers. The deficit in its 2004 budget appears to have been deliberately overestimated just so that a lower figure could be reported right before the election, thus giving the illusion of budgetary improvement. The following year, the deficit projected in January 2005 was also significantly higher than estimated in the midsession budget review in July. This led Collender to conclude that budget numbers produced by the Bush administration ‘should not be taken seriously.’
Like the typical Democratic demagogue, Bush has used spending to buy votes whenever possible. In this, of course, he has been joined by the Republican Congress. But his lack of commitment is evident from just one statistic: Bush has yet to veto a single bill. One has to go back almost two centuries to find another full-term president who did not veto even one measure.
In fact, the Republican president and Republican Congress have been full partners in bankrupting the nation. The low point was undoubtedly passage of the Medicare drug benefit, to which Bartlett devotes one chapter. The GOP majority misused House rules and employed a dubious set of carrots and sticks to turn around an apparent 216 to 218 loss. Worse was the administration’s conduct. The administration shamelessly lied about the program’s costs, covered up the truth, and threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he talked to Congress. The bill is badly drafted and, more importantly, adds $18 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability.
In Bartlett’s view, this might be the worst single piece of legislation in U.S. history, which would be quite a legacy. Writes Bartlett, “It will cost vast sums the nation cannot afford, even if its initial budgetary projections prove to be accurate, which is highly doubtful. It will inevitably lead to higher taxes and price controls that will reduce the supply of new lifesaving drugs.” In short, an allegedly conservative president inaugurated the biggest expansion of the welfare state in four decades.
Bartlett believes that tax hikes are inevitable, and he offers some decidedly unconservative observations on these issues, including the desirability of imposing a Value-Added Tax. He also speculates on the political future and a likely “Republican crack-up.”
But the core of his book remains his analysis of the Bush record. Bush, Bartlett believes, is likely to be seen as another Richard Nixon:
There has been an interesting transformation of Richard Nixon over the last twenty years or so. Whereas once he was viewed as an archconservative, increasing numbers of historians now view him as basically a liberal, at least on domestic policy. They have learned to look past Nixon’s rhetoric and methods to the substance of his policies, and discovered that there is almost nothing conservative about them. So it is likely to be with George W. Bush.
It is almost certainly too late to save the Bush presidency. Impostor demonstrates that the problems are systemic, well beyond the remedy of a simple change in policy or personnel. There may still be time, however, to save the conservative movement. But the hour is late. Unless the Right soon demonstrates that it is no longer Bush’s obsequious political tool, it may never escape his destructive legacy.
_____________________________________________________
Doug Bandow is vice president of policy for Citizens Outreach. A collection of his columns, Leviathan Unchained: Washington’s Bipartisan Big Government Crusade, will be published by Town Forum Press..
From Investor's Business Daily:
Religion Of Peace?
Posted 3/27/2006
War On Terror: In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a "peaceful religion."
Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance — a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it's understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text.
Which explains a Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that Americans are becoming more aware of the broader threat (58% associate terrorists with Islam), but are still convinced terrorists are radicalizing Islam and not the other way around (54% don't think Islam itself encourages violence).
The new poll, however, still doesn't sit well with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group dedicated to improving public perceptions of Islam. It has denounced increasingly negative views as "Islamophobic" and vowed to redouble its "education" efforts.
Good. What better time for CAIR and other Muslim leaders to step up, cut through the politically correct fog and provide factual answers to the questions that give so many non-Muslims pause?
Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:
Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?
Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?
Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?
Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?
And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?
Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?
Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?
Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?
There are other questions, but these should do for a start. If the answers are "yes," then at least Americans will know there's no such thing as moderate Islam, even as they trust that there are moderate Muslims who do not act out on its violent commands.
Religion Of Peace?
Posted 3/27/2006
War On Terror: In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a "peaceful religion."
Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance — a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it's understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text.
Which explains a Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that Americans are becoming more aware of the broader threat (58% associate terrorists with Islam), but are still convinced terrorists are radicalizing Islam and not the other way around (54% don't think Islam itself encourages violence).
The new poll, however, still doesn't sit well with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group dedicated to improving public perceptions of Islam. It has denounced increasingly negative views as "Islamophobic" and vowed to redouble its "education" efforts.
Good. What better time for CAIR and other Muslim leaders to step up, cut through the politically correct fog and provide factual answers to the questions that give so many non-Muslims pause?
Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:
Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?
Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?
Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?
Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?
And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?
Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?
Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?
Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?
There are other questions, but these should do for a start. If the answers are "yes," then at least Americans will know there's no such thing as moderate Islam, even as they trust that there are moderate Muslims who do not act out on its violent commands.
Whose country is this?
By Cal Thomas
Mar 28, 2006
Observing the pro-immigration demonstrations in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta and elsewhere in recent days, I wondered: whose country is this? Why are many illegal aliens who broke our laws to get here and who continue to break our laws to stay here, demanding that the United States not only allow them to remain, but support them with the taxes of law-abiding citizens? Have we gone mad?
"Thousands Rally For Immigrants' Rights" read a headline about the Phoenix march. What rights? If they are here illegally, they have the right to leave. They have no rights under our Constitution, anymore than I might expect the rights of a Mexican citizen should I choose to live illegally in Mexico. Marchers in Los Angeles carried Mexican flags, which should tell us about their primary allegiance.
There were work stoppages and school walkouts. Every person who left school or job should be required to prove they are in America legally. If they cannot, or will not, they should be deemed illegals and deported.
Immigration is developing into a major political issue. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, made a bid for the votes of illegals and their enablers last week. Clinton promised to fight a bill passed by the House in December and debated this week in the Senate. It would subject illegals, and those who knowingly employ them, to criminal penalties. Invoking biblical justification for her opposition to the House measure, Clinton said it "is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably Jesus himself."
Democrats have been trying to make inroads on religious language and religious symbolism from the near-monopoly held by Republicans. But, like Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, who once spoke of the Old Testament book of Job as his favorite New Testament book, Sen. Clinton misfired. In the parable told by Jesus, robbers set upon a man, beat him, and left him "half dead." A priest and a Levite passed by, refusing to help the victim. A Samaritan, despised by the Jews, stopped to help the man and also paid an innkeeper from his own pocket to care for him (Luke 10:30-37).
Notice that Jesus didn't call on a government program for help. As for how this relates to illegal immigration, Jesus never counseled breaking laws.
Here is the real problem with illegal immigration. Many Americans believe we are losing our unique national identity. Census Bureau figures indicate the Washington, D.C., regional population will become "majority minority" in less than a decade. The biggest influx between 2000 and 2004 was among Hispanics, a considerable number believed to be here illegally.
The same demographic profile is reflected, or will soon be reflected, in many other major metropolitan areas and, in the case of California, an entire state. It isn't race or ethnicity that bothers most legal residents of this country. It is our failure to make non-hyphenated Americans out of them. Instead of becoming English-speaking Americans, too many are retaining the language, customs, culture and political agendas of their native lands. No nation can long survive such an invasion without assimilation.
Forty-two states are currently considering bills related to immigration policy, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nineteen of these states would restrict public benefits for illegals. Congress should act to create some uniformity.
A "guest worker" provision for those already here might work, but there should be restrictions on how long they can stay and a requirement that they return home before applying for legal admittance. Accompanied by much tighter control of our borders, such an approach would be in America's best interests. And could we please put this country's best interests first for a change?
Under no circumstance should there be amnesty for illegals, by whatever name politicians wish to call it. New illegal immigrants should not be allowed in until those already here are either fully and legally assimilated, or sent home when their work permits expire.
Too many politicians appear ready to sell the security of their country for the votes of illegals and their supporters. They must not be allowed to do so. Illegal immigration, along with national security, which are related, should be the top issues in the 2006 and especially 2008 elections.
By Cal Thomas
Mar 28, 2006
Observing the pro-immigration demonstrations in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta and elsewhere in recent days, I wondered: whose country is this? Why are many illegal aliens who broke our laws to get here and who continue to break our laws to stay here, demanding that the United States not only allow them to remain, but support them with the taxes of law-abiding citizens? Have we gone mad?
"Thousands Rally For Immigrants' Rights" read a headline about the Phoenix march. What rights? If they are here illegally, they have the right to leave. They have no rights under our Constitution, anymore than I might expect the rights of a Mexican citizen should I choose to live illegally in Mexico. Marchers in Los Angeles carried Mexican flags, which should tell us about their primary allegiance.
There were work stoppages and school walkouts. Every person who left school or job should be required to prove they are in America legally. If they cannot, or will not, they should be deemed illegals and deported.
Immigration is developing into a major political issue. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, made a bid for the votes of illegals and their enablers last week. Clinton promised to fight a bill passed by the House in December and debated this week in the Senate. It would subject illegals, and those who knowingly employ them, to criminal penalties. Invoking biblical justification for her opposition to the House measure, Clinton said it "is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably Jesus himself."
Democrats have been trying to make inroads on religious language and religious symbolism from the near-monopoly held by Republicans. But, like Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, who once spoke of the Old Testament book of Job as his favorite New Testament book, Sen. Clinton misfired. In the parable told by Jesus, robbers set upon a man, beat him, and left him "half dead." A priest and a Levite passed by, refusing to help the victim. A Samaritan, despised by the Jews, stopped to help the man and also paid an innkeeper from his own pocket to care for him (Luke 10:30-37).
Notice that Jesus didn't call on a government program for help. As for how this relates to illegal immigration, Jesus never counseled breaking laws.
Here is the real problem with illegal immigration. Many Americans believe we are losing our unique national identity. Census Bureau figures indicate the Washington, D.C., regional population will become "majority minority" in less than a decade. The biggest influx between 2000 and 2004 was among Hispanics, a considerable number believed to be here illegally.
The same demographic profile is reflected, or will soon be reflected, in many other major metropolitan areas and, in the case of California, an entire state. It isn't race or ethnicity that bothers most legal residents of this country. It is our failure to make non-hyphenated Americans out of them. Instead of becoming English-speaking Americans, too many are retaining the language, customs, culture and political agendas of their native lands. No nation can long survive such an invasion without assimilation.
Forty-two states are currently considering bills related to immigration policy, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nineteen of these states would restrict public benefits for illegals. Congress should act to create some uniformity.
A "guest worker" provision for those already here might work, but there should be restrictions on how long they can stay and a requirement that they return home before applying for legal admittance. Accompanied by much tighter control of our borders, such an approach would be in America's best interests. And could we please put this country's best interests first for a change?
Under no circumstance should there be amnesty for illegals, by whatever name politicians wish to call it. New illegal immigrants should not be allowed in until those already here are either fully and legally assimilated, or sent home when their work permits expire.
Too many politicians appear ready to sell the security of their country for the votes of illegals and their supporters. They must not be allowed to do so. Illegal immigration, along with national security, which are related, should be the top issues in the 2006 and especially 2008 elections.
Guests or Gate Crashers?
By Thomas Sowell
Immigration is yet another issue which we seem unable to discuss rationally -- in part because words have been twisted beyond recognition in political rhetoric.
We can't even call illegal immigrants "illegal immigrants." The politically correct evasion is "undocumented workers."
Do American citizens go around carrying documents with them when they work or apply for work? Most Americans are undocumented workers but they are not illegal immigrants. There is a difference.
The Bush administration is pushing a program to legalize "guest workers." But what is a guest? Someone you have invited. People who force their way into your home without your permission are called gate crashers.
If truth-in-packaging laws applied to politics, the Bush guest worker program would have to be called a "gate-crasher worker" program. The President's proposal would solve the problem of illegal immigration by legalizing it after the fact.
We could solve the problem of all illegal activity anywhere by legalizing it. Why use this approach only with immigration? Why should any of us pay a speeding ticket if immigration scofflaws are legalized after the fact for committing a federal crime?
Most of the arguments for not enforcing our immigration laws are exercises in frivolous rhetoric and slippery sophistry, rather than serious arguments that will stand up under scrutiny.
How often have we heard that illegal immigrants "take jobs that Americans will not do"? What is missing in this argument is what is crucial in any economic argument: price.
Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels -- and those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants are willing to take those jobs.
If Mexican journalists were flooding into the United States and taking jobs as reporters and editors at half the pay being earned by American reporters and editors, maybe people in the media would understand why the argument about "taking jobs that Americans don't want" is such nonsense.
Another variation on the same theme is that we "need" the millions of illegal aliens already in the United States. "Need" is another word that blithely ignores prices.
If jet planes were on sale for a thousand dollars each, I would probably "need" a couple of them -- an extra one to fly when the first one needed repair or maintenance. But since these planes cost millions of dollars, I don't even "need" one.
There is no fixed amount of "need," independently of prices, whether with planes or workers.
None of the rhetoric and sophistry that we hear about immigration deals with the plain and ugly reality: Politicians are afraid of losing the Hispanic vote and businesses want cheap labor.
What millions of other Americans want has been brushed aside, as if they don't count, and they have been soothed with pious words. But now the voters are getting fed up, which is why there are immigration bills in Congress.
The old inevitability ploy is often trotted out in immigration debates: It is not possible to either keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here.
If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that may well be true. But does the fact that we cannot prevent every single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder?
Since existing immigration laws are not being enforced, how can anyone say that it would not do any good to try? People who get caught illegally crossing the border into the United States pay no penalty whatever. They are sent back home and can try again.
What if bank robbers who were caught were simply told to give the money back and not do it again? What if murderers who were caught were turned loose and warned not to kill again? Would that be proof that it is futile to take action, when no action was taken?
Let's hope the immigration bills before Congress can at least get an honest debate, instead of the word games we have been hearing for too long.
By Thomas Sowell
Immigration is yet another issue which we seem unable to discuss rationally -- in part because words have been twisted beyond recognition in political rhetoric.
We can't even call illegal immigrants "illegal immigrants." The politically correct evasion is "undocumented workers."
Do American citizens go around carrying documents with them when they work or apply for work? Most Americans are undocumented workers but they are not illegal immigrants. There is a difference.
The Bush administration is pushing a program to legalize "guest workers." But what is a guest? Someone you have invited. People who force their way into your home without your permission are called gate crashers.
If truth-in-packaging laws applied to politics, the Bush guest worker program would have to be called a "gate-crasher worker" program. The President's proposal would solve the problem of illegal immigration by legalizing it after the fact.
We could solve the problem of all illegal activity anywhere by legalizing it. Why use this approach only with immigration? Why should any of us pay a speeding ticket if immigration scofflaws are legalized after the fact for committing a federal crime?
Most of the arguments for not enforcing our immigration laws are exercises in frivolous rhetoric and slippery sophistry, rather than serious arguments that will stand up under scrutiny.
How often have we heard that illegal immigrants "take jobs that Americans will not do"? What is missing in this argument is what is crucial in any economic argument: price.
Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels -- and those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants are willing to take those jobs.
If Mexican journalists were flooding into the United States and taking jobs as reporters and editors at half the pay being earned by American reporters and editors, maybe people in the media would understand why the argument about "taking jobs that Americans don't want" is such nonsense.
Another variation on the same theme is that we "need" the millions of illegal aliens already in the United States. "Need" is another word that blithely ignores prices.
If jet planes were on sale for a thousand dollars each, I would probably "need" a couple of them -- an extra one to fly when the first one needed repair or maintenance. But since these planes cost millions of dollars, I don't even "need" one.
There is no fixed amount of "need," independently of prices, whether with planes or workers.
None of the rhetoric and sophistry that we hear about immigration deals with the plain and ugly reality: Politicians are afraid of losing the Hispanic vote and businesses want cheap labor.
What millions of other Americans want has been brushed aside, as if they don't count, and they have been soothed with pious words. But now the voters are getting fed up, which is why there are immigration bills in Congress.
The old inevitability ploy is often trotted out in immigration debates: It is not possible to either keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here.
If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that may well be true. But does the fact that we cannot prevent every single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder?
Since existing immigration laws are not being enforced, how can anyone say that it would not do any good to try? People who get caught illegally crossing the border into the United States pay no penalty whatever. They are sent back home and can try again.
What if bank robbers who were caught were simply told to give the money back and not do it again? What if murderers who were caught were turned loose and warned not to kill again? Would that be proof that it is futile to take action, when no action was taken?
Let's hope the immigration bills before Congress can at least get an honest debate, instead of the word games we have been hearing for too long.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
I remember the quizzical reaction I caused from my parents when I started watching Buck Owens' syndicated television show in the 1960s. He'd been covered by The Beatles, giving him immense credibility with me, but the ringing sounds of Don Rich's Fender Telecaster kept me coming back week after week. He was an underappreciated giant.
From The Nashville Tennessean:
Sound, savvy made Owens music giant
He conquered country from a base, style far from Nashville
By PETER COOPER
Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens Jr., the pioneering country artist whose hard-charging "Bakersfield Sound" made him one of the genre's most important and influential figures, died yesterday at his home in Bakersfield, Calif. He was 76, and the cause of death has not been determined.
Though many knew him primarily for his role on the popular syndicated television series Hee Haw, Mr. Owens' guffawing presence on that show did not hint at his musical significance. Before Hee Haw's 1969 premiere, Mr. Owens had redefined the sound of country music.
He had already worked in television, giving future superstar Loretta Lynn her first media exposure on KTNT in Tacoma, Wash. He had already brought the snarling, treble-heavy Fender Telecaster guitar to popularity.
He had established Bakersfield as a place where renegade artists made edgy country music that served as the sinewy anti-thesis of the lush, pop-leaning records coming from Nashville in the 1960s. He led his electrifying Buckaroos band to triumphant concerts overseas and at New York's hallowed Carnegie Hall. He had inspired a British rock group called The Beatles to record a version of Mr. Owens' hit Act Naturally, and he had done enough to ensure a lasting place in American music.
"I looked at CNN.com today and (the headline) said, 'Hee Haw Star Buck Owens Dies,' and it made me mad," said country musician Brad Paisley, a longtime fan of Mr. Owens who became a friend of the legend's. "This is a guy who influenced The Beatles. They covered him. He's one of the most important country artists ever. That headline should say, 'Music Legend Buck Owens Dies.'"
Like fellow Country Music Hall of Famers Lynn, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and George Jones, Mr. Owens' achieved fame after a hardscrabble upbringing. He was born to a sharecropping family on Aug. 12, 1929, in rural Sherman, Tex. His nickname of "Buck" was shared with a family mule.
In the Dust Bowl 1930s, the Owens family moved to Arizona. They would have gone farther west, but a trailer hitch broke on their 1933 Ford. A ninth-grade dropout, Mr. Owens worked full time while a teenager. His father gave him a cheap-but-priceless guitar, his mother showed him a couple of chords and country music soon filled the waking moments that weren't taken up with jobs as a messenger boy, a car-washer or a loader of fruit. He despised the poverty that cloaked his family, and saw music as a potential means of escape.
"I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry, I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes," Mr. Owens told writer Rich Kienzle in an interview for the liner notes of Rhino Records' boxed set The Buck Owens Collection (1959-1990).
Mesa, Ariz. radio station KTYL offered Mr. Owens and friend Theryl Ray Britten an unpaid, 15-minute slot, providing an entry into show business. Parents Alvis and Maicie Owens weren't initially supportive of the show, or of the honky-tonk barroom gigs that soon followed, but the youngster correctly determined that he could make more and easier money as a musician than as a cotton picker.
At age 18, he married aspiring singer Bonnie Campbell, who was four months pregnant with their first son. In 1951, the new family moved to Bakersfield, an oil industry and farming town north of Los Angeles, and Mr. Owens joined Bill Woods & The Orange Blossom Playboys, a group that billed itself as "Central California's Top Dance Band." The marriage to Bonnie lasted another two years, and Mr. Owens continued playing music.
Bakersfield musician Tommy Collins took a liking to Mr. Owens and hired him to play guitar with him on record and on a 1954 edition of The Grand Ole Opry, and Mr. Owens began to get other session work at Los Angeles-based Capitol Records. He recorded some halting efforts for small record companies, including some rockabilly songs done under the pseudonym "Corky Jones." A friendship with Harlan Howard, who would become a Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter, aided Mr. Owens' development.
The struggling and scuffling were not over for Mr. Owens after initial sessions for Capitol Records in 1957 garnered no hits. He moved to Washington state and bought into a small radio station, working as a disc jockey, selling ads and playing music. He also served as host of a TV show, where he gave television time to a then-unknown Loretta Lynn. Also in Washington, he met fiddler Don Rich, who would become his best friend and musical partner.
In 1959, a shuffling version of Second Fiddle broke into the Billboard country top 30, and Under Your Spell Again reached the top 10. Mr. Owens moved back to Bakersfield, this time for good. A few years later, he employed a bass player named Merle Haggard in his band.
"When I played bass for Buck, we didn't have a band name and Buck asked us all what we should call ourselves," Haggard said Saturday. "I shouted out, 'The Buckaroos,' and that's the name that stuck."
The 1960s were a golden era for Mr. Owens, as he and The Buckaroos became a top touring and recording act. The group's sound was sharp and aggressive, careening through AM radio speakers in cars across America. Rich became a foil for Owens, on Telecaster guitar and on harmony vocals, and steel guitar players Ralph Mooney and Tom Brumley wove their parts around the Telecasters.
Mr. Owens, Haggard, Collins and others clung to their "Bakersfield Sound," which differed substantially from the glossier fare coming from Music City.
"It was cutting-edge and revolutionary," said Bill Anderson, a Country Hall of Famer and friend of Mr. Owens. "Buck did things his own way. His music didn't sound like anything coming out of Nashville, but the songs were undeniable hits."
In addition to Act Naturally, those hits included Tiger By The Tail, Together Again, You're For Me, My Heart Skips A Beat, Love's Gonna Live Here and the instrumental Buckaroo. WSM-AM disc jockey Ralph Emery aided the popularity of those songs by spinning Mr. Owens' records even as station brass asked him to focus on Grand Ole Opry acts. The Beatles' inclusion of Act Naturally on the Help! album didn't hurt, either: The Fab Four routinely requested advance copies of Mr. Owens' albums, before the music hit record stores.
Mr. Owens also insured himself against ever having to return to his childhood poverty by expanding his business holdings. He bought radio stations and a movie studio, owned a management company and led publishing company Blue Book Music to profitability. Meanwhile, he and The Buckaroos became country's most impressive touring act, as proved by the recording that came from a March, 1966 concert at Carnegie Hall.
"My favorite record is Buck Owens at Carnegie Hall," Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn said in 2004. At Carnegie, Mr. Owens wore a flashy yellow jacket and commanded a propulsive group of Buckaroos. He changed nothing — not the instrumentation and not the between-song jokes — for the supposedly "elevated" audience. In 2001, Paisley wore Mr. Owens' jacket from Carnegie Hall on the night that Paisley was inducted into the Opry.
The end of the 1960s found Mr. Owens co-hosting Hee Haw, a show that began on CBS and later moved into syndication. The singer continued to diversify his sound, notching a hit with a folksy recording of Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Mr. Owens' most damaging professional blow was also his greatest personal sorrow. In 1974, Don Rich died in a motorcycle accident.
"I met Buck in the 1990s," said country artist Chely Wright, whom Mr. Owens befriended and supported. "He talked about Don, and he cried. He said, 'My heart will never be whole again.'"
Reeling with grief, Mr. Owens fell into depression. He masked his discouragement while joking on the Hee Haw show, but he would never again lead The Buckaroos to touring or recording heights. To a generation of television viewers, he became more a character actor than a musician, something that Dwight Yoakam sought to change in 1987, when he entered Mr. Owens' Bakersfield office and met with his idol.
Yoakam convinced Mr. Owens that he was still a beloved and vital artist, and the two toured together and released a 1988 No. 1 single (Mr. Owens' first in 16 years) called Streets of Bakersfield. They remained friends throughout Mr. Owens' life.
"I will cherish, forever, the musical moments he graciously shared with me," Yoakam said yesterday in a statement. "I will be eternally grateful for his fatherly chastisements, encouragement, and, ultimately, his friendship and love."
Streets of Bakersfield would be Mr. Owens' last big hit, but he remained involved in country music. He performed regularly at his Crystal Palace nightclub, and he offered advice and encouragement to numerous up-and-coming artists.
"I was at the Academy of Country Music Awards and my first record had just come out," country superstar Kenny Chesney said. "Buck Owens walked up to me, told me he really liked my record and said, 'I believe in your talent. I believe you're three minutes — one hit song — from being a big star and finding your own path.' Well, two years ago, Buck walked over to me and said, 'It looks like you got those three minutes, didn't you?' You found six, nine, 12 and 15 of them.' And he told me he was proud of me."
For months, Mr. Owens' declining health was causing him to stay away from his Crystal Palace stage. Friday evening, though, he made a surprise appearance at the Palace, performing for more than an hour. Then he went home to bed, and, according to his family, died in his sleep. Fellow artists, from younger performers to his fellow legends, weighed in yesterday evening with words of sadness and tribute.
"Buck influenced a lot of people, from The Beatles to me," Haggard said. "Buck and I were in a lot of battles over the years, always on the same side. Over the last few years, we'd become closer. He even flew up to Portland to see me when I opened for Dylan last year. We were outlaws together."
Lynn's statement was simply that, "I think we've lost one of country music's greatest stars today. I will miss him."
Anderson pondered Mr. Owens' kindness to younger performers and said, "What better way to perpetuate the things he fought for and believed in than to pass those things on?"
Mr. Owens' songs and sound were transformative, for country music and for a sharecropper's son. He died in wealth, having just heard an audience's applause and having just eaten a chicken-fried steak. His influence is underscored each time a country guitar picker fires off a Telecaster lick, each time a bar band plays Together Again, and each time someone spins that Beatles' record from 1965.
And though Nashville, not Bakersfield, remains the acknowledged center for country music, that's no affront to Mr. Owens' legacy. He didn't much care for the center, anyway. He was happier out on the edge. •
From The Nashville Tennessean:
Sound, savvy made Owens music giant
He conquered country from a base, style far from Nashville
By PETER COOPER
Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens Jr., the pioneering country artist whose hard-charging "Bakersfield Sound" made him one of the genre's most important and influential figures, died yesterday at his home in Bakersfield, Calif. He was 76, and the cause of death has not been determined.
Though many knew him primarily for his role on the popular syndicated television series Hee Haw, Mr. Owens' guffawing presence on that show did not hint at his musical significance. Before Hee Haw's 1969 premiere, Mr. Owens had redefined the sound of country music.
He had already worked in television, giving future superstar Loretta Lynn her first media exposure on KTNT in Tacoma, Wash. He had already brought the snarling, treble-heavy Fender Telecaster guitar to popularity.
He had established Bakersfield as a place where renegade artists made edgy country music that served as the sinewy anti-thesis of the lush, pop-leaning records coming from Nashville in the 1960s. He led his electrifying Buckaroos band to triumphant concerts overseas and at New York's hallowed Carnegie Hall. He had inspired a British rock group called The Beatles to record a version of Mr. Owens' hit Act Naturally, and he had done enough to ensure a lasting place in American music.
"I looked at CNN.com today and (the headline) said, 'Hee Haw Star Buck Owens Dies,' and it made me mad," said country musician Brad Paisley, a longtime fan of Mr. Owens who became a friend of the legend's. "This is a guy who influenced The Beatles. They covered him. He's one of the most important country artists ever. That headline should say, 'Music Legend Buck Owens Dies.'"
Like fellow Country Music Hall of Famers Lynn, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and George Jones, Mr. Owens' achieved fame after a hardscrabble upbringing. He was born to a sharecropping family on Aug. 12, 1929, in rural Sherman, Tex. His nickname of "Buck" was shared with a family mule.
In the Dust Bowl 1930s, the Owens family moved to Arizona. They would have gone farther west, but a trailer hitch broke on their 1933 Ford. A ninth-grade dropout, Mr. Owens worked full time while a teenager. His father gave him a cheap-but-priceless guitar, his mother showed him a couple of chords and country music soon filled the waking moments that weren't taken up with jobs as a messenger boy, a car-washer or a loader of fruit. He despised the poverty that cloaked his family, and saw music as a potential means of escape.
"I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry, I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes," Mr. Owens told writer Rich Kienzle in an interview for the liner notes of Rhino Records' boxed set The Buck Owens Collection (1959-1990).
Mesa, Ariz. radio station KTYL offered Mr. Owens and friend Theryl Ray Britten an unpaid, 15-minute slot, providing an entry into show business. Parents Alvis and Maicie Owens weren't initially supportive of the show, or of the honky-tonk barroom gigs that soon followed, but the youngster correctly determined that he could make more and easier money as a musician than as a cotton picker.
At age 18, he married aspiring singer Bonnie Campbell, who was four months pregnant with their first son. In 1951, the new family moved to Bakersfield, an oil industry and farming town north of Los Angeles, and Mr. Owens joined Bill Woods & The Orange Blossom Playboys, a group that billed itself as "Central California's Top Dance Band." The marriage to Bonnie lasted another two years, and Mr. Owens continued playing music.
Bakersfield musician Tommy Collins took a liking to Mr. Owens and hired him to play guitar with him on record and on a 1954 edition of The Grand Ole Opry, and Mr. Owens began to get other session work at Los Angeles-based Capitol Records. He recorded some halting efforts for small record companies, including some rockabilly songs done under the pseudonym "Corky Jones." A friendship with Harlan Howard, who would become a Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter, aided Mr. Owens' development.
The struggling and scuffling were not over for Mr. Owens after initial sessions for Capitol Records in 1957 garnered no hits. He moved to Washington state and bought into a small radio station, working as a disc jockey, selling ads and playing music. He also served as host of a TV show, where he gave television time to a then-unknown Loretta Lynn. Also in Washington, he met fiddler Don Rich, who would become his best friend and musical partner.
In 1959, a shuffling version of Second Fiddle broke into the Billboard country top 30, and Under Your Spell Again reached the top 10. Mr. Owens moved back to Bakersfield, this time for good. A few years later, he employed a bass player named Merle Haggard in his band.
"When I played bass for Buck, we didn't have a band name and Buck asked us all what we should call ourselves," Haggard said Saturday. "I shouted out, 'The Buckaroos,' and that's the name that stuck."
The 1960s were a golden era for Mr. Owens, as he and The Buckaroos became a top touring and recording act. The group's sound was sharp and aggressive, careening through AM radio speakers in cars across America. Rich became a foil for Owens, on Telecaster guitar and on harmony vocals, and steel guitar players Ralph Mooney and Tom Brumley wove their parts around the Telecasters.
Mr. Owens, Haggard, Collins and others clung to their "Bakersfield Sound," which differed substantially from the glossier fare coming from Music City.
"It was cutting-edge and revolutionary," said Bill Anderson, a Country Hall of Famer and friend of Mr. Owens. "Buck did things his own way. His music didn't sound like anything coming out of Nashville, but the songs were undeniable hits."
In addition to Act Naturally, those hits included Tiger By The Tail, Together Again, You're For Me, My Heart Skips A Beat, Love's Gonna Live Here and the instrumental Buckaroo. WSM-AM disc jockey Ralph Emery aided the popularity of those songs by spinning Mr. Owens' records even as station brass asked him to focus on Grand Ole Opry acts. The Beatles' inclusion of Act Naturally on the Help! album didn't hurt, either: The Fab Four routinely requested advance copies of Mr. Owens' albums, before the music hit record stores.
Mr. Owens also insured himself against ever having to return to his childhood poverty by expanding his business holdings. He bought radio stations and a movie studio, owned a management company and led publishing company Blue Book Music to profitability. Meanwhile, he and The Buckaroos became country's most impressive touring act, as proved by the recording that came from a March, 1966 concert at Carnegie Hall.
"My favorite record is Buck Owens at Carnegie Hall," Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn said in 2004. At Carnegie, Mr. Owens wore a flashy yellow jacket and commanded a propulsive group of Buckaroos. He changed nothing — not the instrumentation and not the between-song jokes — for the supposedly "elevated" audience. In 2001, Paisley wore Mr. Owens' jacket from Carnegie Hall on the night that Paisley was inducted into the Opry.
The end of the 1960s found Mr. Owens co-hosting Hee Haw, a show that began on CBS and later moved into syndication. The singer continued to diversify his sound, notching a hit with a folksy recording of Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Mr. Owens' most damaging professional blow was also his greatest personal sorrow. In 1974, Don Rich died in a motorcycle accident.
"I met Buck in the 1990s," said country artist Chely Wright, whom Mr. Owens befriended and supported. "He talked about Don, and he cried. He said, 'My heart will never be whole again.'"
Reeling with grief, Mr. Owens fell into depression. He masked his discouragement while joking on the Hee Haw show, but he would never again lead The Buckaroos to touring or recording heights. To a generation of television viewers, he became more a character actor than a musician, something that Dwight Yoakam sought to change in 1987, when he entered Mr. Owens' Bakersfield office and met with his idol.
Yoakam convinced Mr. Owens that he was still a beloved and vital artist, and the two toured together and released a 1988 No. 1 single (Mr. Owens' first in 16 years) called Streets of Bakersfield. They remained friends throughout Mr. Owens' life.
"I will cherish, forever, the musical moments he graciously shared with me," Yoakam said yesterday in a statement. "I will be eternally grateful for his fatherly chastisements, encouragement, and, ultimately, his friendship and love."
Streets of Bakersfield would be Mr. Owens' last big hit, but he remained involved in country music. He performed regularly at his Crystal Palace nightclub, and he offered advice and encouragement to numerous up-and-coming artists.
"I was at the Academy of Country Music Awards and my first record had just come out," country superstar Kenny Chesney said. "Buck Owens walked up to me, told me he really liked my record and said, 'I believe in your talent. I believe you're three minutes — one hit song — from being a big star and finding your own path.' Well, two years ago, Buck walked over to me and said, 'It looks like you got those three minutes, didn't you?' You found six, nine, 12 and 15 of them.' And he told me he was proud of me."
For months, Mr. Owens' declining health was causing him to stay away from his Crystal Palace stage. Friday evening, though, he made a surprise appearance at the Palace, performing for more than an hour. Then he went home to bed, and, according to his family, died in his sleep. Fellow artists, from younger performers to his fellow legends, weighed in yesterday evening with words of sadness and tribute.
"Buck influenced a lot of people, from The Beatles to me," Haggard said. "Buck and I were in a lot of battles over the years, always on the same side. Over the last few years, we'd become closer. He even flew up to Portland to see me when I opened for Dylan last year. We were outlaws together."
Lynn's statement was simply that, "I think we've lost one of country music's greatest stars today. I will miss him."
Anderson pondered Mr. Owens' kindness to younger performers and said, "What better way to perpetuate the things he fought for and believed in than to pass those things on?"
Mr. Owens' songs and sound were transformative, for country music and for a sharecropper's son. He died in wealth, having just heard an audience's applause and having just eaten a chicken-fried steak. His influence is underscored each time a country guitar picker fires off a Telecaster lick, each time a bar band plays Together Again, and each time someone spins that Beatles' record from 1965.
And though Nashville, not Bakersfield, remains the acknowledged center for country music, that's no affront to Mr. Owens' legacy. He didn't much care for the center, anyway. He was happier out on the edge. •
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