2003
From the Archives: Stemming the Tide
On August 9, 2001, during a speech from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush put an end to several months of debate surrounding government funding of research on stem cells derived from human embryos. After discussing his administration’s research into the matter and declaring his own “deeply held beliefs” in science and technology and that “human life is a sacred gift from our Creator,” President Bush announced his decision:
Giving the Devil His Due
Over at Takimag, Chronicles contributing editor Tom Piatak has a thought-provoking piece on the proposal to extend $25 to $50 billion in government-backed loans to the Big Three automakers. Among other points completely ignored by those who reflexively shout “Let them die!” whenever the American auto industry is mentioned are, as Tom notes, that as many as three million U.S. jobs may be lost; that the “tax loss from such a catastrophe would be over $150 billion over three years”; and that over 850,000 retirees receive pensions and health benefits from the Big Three–and taxpayers are on the hook for at least some of that cost through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
In other words, the extension of $25 to $50 billion in loans may be the cheapest way out of this mess. Predictably, though, the same people who declared that we had to bail out Wall Street have drawn the line at Midwestern Main Streets.
Tom’s thoughtful, reasoned, and fact-filled post drew a response from Richard Spencer, modestly titled “A Modest Proposal.”
Hating Babies, Hating God
When I sat down to write this article, Google reminded me that, when it comes to the issue of contraception, the stakes are very high. To check the date of publication of Dr. Charles Provan’s important work The Bible and Birth Control, I typed “Charles, Provan, Bible, Birth Control” into the mother of all search engines. As fast as my dial-up connection could react, I was confronted with a paid advertisement, spawned by my search criteria, for Ortho Evra, also known as The Patch, the bastard offspring of The Pill. I followed the link and immediately recognized the happy contraceptor from the ubiquitous television ad, who lifts her baby-T to show, just above her pantyline, the flesh-colored patch, which stands up to the ravages of both shower and swimming pool as it pumps norogestromin and ethinyl estradiol into her erstwhile fertile (healthy) body. The Patch, claims the commercial, is for women who just do not have time to worry about taking a pill every day.
Remember From Whence Thou Art Fallen
“Forget about Europe!” shriek the neo-isolationists. “Only Britain and Israel matter. We saved the French twice in one century, and they still think they have a right to follow their own foreign policy.” Americans used to have somewhat longer memories. When General Pershing arrived in Paris in 1917, his aide and orator declared, “Lafayette, we are here!” not only in remembrance of the Marquis de Lafayette’s services during the Revolutionary War but in acknowledgment of the fact (not often recalled) that the French navy and army rescued the American cause at Yorktown. There were, in fact, more French than American troops on the ground when Cornwallis surrendered.
The Grinch Who Stole Kwanza
The political plum on last year’s Christmas pudding, so to speak, was l’affaire Lott, which, erupting at the birthday party for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond in early December and continuing until Trent Lott’s less-than-voluntary resignation as Senate majority leader three weeks later, threatened to ruin Kwanza for just about everybody. The Lott crisis was an unhappy one for President Bush and the Republican Party because it forced them to think about their real political base of middle-class whites—not a few of whom are Southerners—rather than twaddle on about the entirely fictitious coalition of blacks and Hispanics mobilized by the GOP’s ethnic sensitivity.
By Their Clichés, You Shall Know Them
At least since September 11, the buzz-phrase for every investigation has been “connect the dots.” Republicans were highly imaginative in connecting the dots between Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, while Democrats preferred connecting the dots between Enron executives and the Bush administration. Donald Rumsfeld, who has raised this kind of political gibberish to high art, told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation:
I was musing over the fact that there are so many books that have been written—“Why England Slept,” Pearl Harbor, what happened, why didn’t we know? Right now on Capitol Hill, the members of the House and the Senate are trying to—are looking, having investigations on September 11th of last year, and trying to connect the dots, as they say, trying to piece together what might have been known, and why didn’t we know it, and why weren’t we able to connect the dots?
Night Thoughts for the Middle-Aged
A review of About Schmidt (produced and distributed by New Line Cinema; directed by Alexander Payne; screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor from Louis Begley’s novel) and The Quiet American (produced by William Harberg and Stefen Ahrenberg; directed by Philip Noyce and Robert Schenkkan; Screenplay by Christopher Hampton from Graham Greene’s novel; distributed by Miramax Films).
Bulletin: Hollywood scapegrace, Jack Nicholson, reads Chronicles.
Or so several of our readers reported after seeing Alexander Payne’s adaptation of Louis Begley’s novel, About Schmidt. Needless to say, these sightings propelled yours truly into action.
En route to perform my reconnaissance at the local multiplex, I calculated the probabilities. On reflection, what had seemed at first improbable began to seem quite plausible. Nicholson, after all, has a reputation for refusing to toe anyone’s line, even that of his conventionally leftist Hollywood paymasters. I recalled the flap he raised a few years ago when he declared he was against abortion, having been spared by his unmarried mother, who chose the inconvenience of bringing him into the world, to our everlasting benefit. So, why wouldn’t Hollywood’s premiere maverick subscribe to a journal as politically out of step as he is?
Same Old Song and Dance
President George W. Bush painted a pleasingly simple black-and-white picture of the world in his State of the Union Address on January 28. It was a choreographed political speech with several statements of strong intent rather than a factual assessment of the nation’s current “state.” That America is strong and resolute, while Saddam Hussein is the embodiment of evil, was, not surprisingly, Mr. Bush’s main theme. Unlike last year, there was no Axis of Evil and no mention of Osama bin Laden. The blanket assurance in the opening paragraph that “every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people” will be resolutely dealt with was intended to indicate that Mr. Bush is mindful of other flashpoints in the world—though they later paled to relative insignificance, as Iraq became the dominant foreign theme.
Apocalypse Now
“If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
American evangelicals, according to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “are the Israelis’ best friend in the whole world.” In return, they dubbed him “the Ronald Reagan of Israel.” That so many are still surprised by those statements indicates that, by and large, those happy to be called evangelicals or even fundamentalists have been largely ignored by most of the dominant American mass culture, though a few outside the fold who have stopped ignoring this “sleeping giant” have reaped tremendous rewards: election victories, foreign-policy directives, and undying political loyalty.
Small Is Beautiful
The City of Rockford is broke. That does not mean, of course, that it is insolvent or bankrupt; after all, it is rather hard for any government with the power to tax to end up in that position (though some occasionally do). Like so many other cities of its size today, however, Rockford has projected expenses for the coming fiscal year that far outstrip expected revenues from taxes and other sources—in other words, what any father, looking at his household budget, would define as broke.
The power to tax, however, provides the city with a different set of options from those available to the father. In this current economic slump, the head of a household does not have many ways of increasing its revenue; he may be lucky simply to keep his job. By necessity, he either has to cut expenses (the prudent, though possibly painful, course) or to borrow to make ends meet, pushing those expenses further into the future to a time when, he hopes, he will have a little more cash in his pocket. The city, however, can generate more revenue through a simple majority vote and, thus, avoid the issue entirely. And that, unfortunately, is what Rockford’s aldermen have chosen to do.
Webstore Features
Scott P. Richert's Catholicism GuideSite @ About.com
