Senator Joseph McCarthy: Another Look

There are a few key events or people throughout history who define historical epochs or who shape the attitudes of future generations. For the modern conservative movement, Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) is definitely one such figure. “McCarthyist” or “McCarthyism” is an epithet likely to be tossed at any conservative who cares vigorously to inquire into the validity of popular liberal beliefs. A “McCarthyist” is someone who (so the thinking goes) unscrupulously questions opponents or accuses them of disloyalty in order to suppress their opinions.

But who was this man?

Considering how thoroughly vilified McCarthy is today, one needs to be aware of how popular he was at one time. According to some sources, Senator McCarthy was viewed by many—at least early in his career—as “a national hero.”

A Gallup poll taken May 21, 1950, showed that among the general public he had four supporters for every three detractors. In a later Gallup poll, taken in January 1954, 50 per cent of the public viewed him favorably, and 29 per cent viewed him unfavorably. McCarthy was the one man in Washington, D.C., who bucked the bipartisan pressure to be polite to America’s enemies and to “get along by going along.” He was the one man who took anti-Communism seriously and was willing to do something about it. ¹

Sadly, there are enough loose threads in his life and, more importantly, in his methods, that, even today, 50-some years later, McCarthy’s name can hardly be mentioned before someone writes him off as a disgusting fraud. I’m afraid they do so, however, without properly examining the evidence.

We should be more careful.

The Dorling-Kindersley 20^th Century Day by Day speaks of McCarthy’s “famous claim [made in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950]: ‘I have here in my hand a list of 205 that are known . . . as being members of the Communist Party.’”

It is my understanding that this quote is inaccurate.

In the Wheeling speech, McCarthy referred to a letter that Secretary of State James Byrnes sent to Congressman Adolph Sabath in 1946. In that letter, Byrnes said that State Department security investigators had declared 284 persons unfit to hold jobs in the department because of communist connections and other reasons, but that only 79 had been discharged, leaving 205 still on the State Department’s payroll. McCarthy told his Wheeling audience that while he did not have the names of the 205 mentioned in the Byrnes letter, he did have the names of 57 who were either members of or loyal to the Communist Party. On February 20, 1950, McCarthy gave the Senate information about 81 individuals—the 57 referred to at Wheeling and 24 others of less importance and about whom the evidence was less conclusive. The enemies of McCarthy have juggled these numbers around to make the senator appear to be erratic and to distract attention from the paramount question: Were there still persons in the State Department betraying this nation? McCarthy was not being inconsistent in his use of the numbers; the 57 and 81 were part of the 205 mentioned in the Byrnes letter. ²

One of the key points we ought to be concerned about—anyone who is concerned about McCarthy and the McCarthy era ought to be concerned about—is whether McCarthy’s charges were accurate. We ought to concern ourselves with McCarthy’s methods as well. But if his charges were accurate—as so many historians seem to imply they were not—should we ignore the charges while focusing solely on McCarthy’s methods?

McCarthy first brought to the Senate his concerns about Communist infiltrators in government in February 1950. As a result, the Senate established the Tydings Committee in order to conduct “a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State.”

After 31 days of hearings, during which McCarthy presented public evidence on nine persons (Dorothy Kenyon, Haldore Hanson, Philip Jessup, Esther Brunauer, Frederick Schuman, Harlow Shapley, Gustavo Duran, John Stewart Service, and Owen Lattimore), the Tydings Committee labeled McCarthy’s charges a “fraud” and a “hoax,” said that the individuals on his list were neither communist nor pro-communist, and concluded that the State Department had an effective security program. . . .
Did the . . . Committee carry out its mandate? . . . [During McCarthy’s attempts to present the committee with the evidence in his hands,] Tydings and his Democratic colleagues, Brien McMahon and Theodore Green, subjected McCarthy to considerable interruptions and heckling. . . . So persistent were the interruptions and statements of the Democratic trio during the first two days of the hearings that McCarthy was allowed only a total of 17 and one-half minutes of direct testimony. ³

According to James Drummey,

While the Democrats were hostile to McCarthy and to any witnesses who could confirm his charges, they fawned over the six individuals who appeared before the committee to deny McCarthy’s accusations. Tydings, McMahon, and Green not only treated Philip Jessup like a hero, . . . but refused to let McCarthy present his full case against Jessup or to cross-examine him. Furthermore, the committee majority declined to call more than 20 witnesses whom Senator Bourke Hickenlooper thought were important to the investigation.
And when Senator Lodge read into the record 19 questions that he thought should be answered before the committee exonerated the State Department’s security system, not only did the Democrats ignore the questions, but some member of the committee or the staff deleted from the official transcript of the hearings the 19 questions, as well as other testimony that made the committee look bad. The deleted material amounted to 35 typewritten pages.
It is clear then that . . . the words “fraud” and “hoax” more accurately describe the Tydings Report than they do McCarthy’s charges. . . .
[Ultimately, o]f the 110 names that McCarthy gave the Tydings Committee to be investigated, 62 of them were employed by the State Department at the time of the hearings. The committee cleared everyone on McCarthy’s list, but within a year the State Department started proceedings against 49 of the 62. By the end of 1954, 81 of those on McCarthy’s list had left the government either by dismissal or resignation. ⁴

Clearly, there is little reason, at this date, to speak, as many do, of McCarthy “witch hunts"—a term that, as Eric Fettman notes, implies there was no reason for investigation (since “witches don’t exist").

[G]rowing historical evidence underscores that, whatever his rhetorical and investigative excesses—and they were substantial—McCarthy was a lot closer to the truth about Communism than were his foes.
Communists were well-organized, and they did manage to penetrate the highest levels of Washington, planting themselves into positions where they either significantly influenced U.S. policy or passed classified information to the Soviets, or both. . . .
In a famous 1952 essay in Commentary, Irving Kristol excoriated the left for too often “joining hands with the Communists” and refusing to condemn Stalinist outrages.
“There is one thing that the American people know about Sen. McCarthy,” wrote Kristol. “He, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing. And with some justification.”
Ironically, McCarthy himself had little to do with the excesses of anti-Communism. Blacklisting of celebrities had begun in 1947, three years before he even gave his first anti-Communist speech; the extensive system of loyalty reviews and security probes was instituted by President Harry Truman in the same year. . . .
But McCarthy, with his whining voice, heavy jowls and often-bullying manner, writes historian Richard Gid Powers, “gave the enemies of anti-Communism what they had been looking for since the beginning of the Cold War: a contemporary name and face for their old stereotype of the anti-Communist fascist.” ⁵

McCarthy may have provided left-wingers with a stereotypical public relations nightmare whom people would love to hate, but his methods gave them plenty of solid ammunition as well.

Sympathetic observers believe McCarthy was—at least early in his anti-Communist career—trying to protect the innocent from false accusation:

Four times during McCarthy’s February 20th speech, Senator Scott Lucas demanded that McCarthy make the 81 names public, but McCarthy refused to do so, responding that “if I were to give all the names involved, it might leave a wrong impression. If we should label one man a communist when he is not a communist, I think it would be too bad.” What McCarthy did was to identify the individuals only by case numbers, not by their names.
By the way, it took McCarthy some six hours to make that February 20th speech because of harassment by hostile senators, four of whom—Scott Lucas, Brien McMahon, Garrett Withers, and Herbert Lehman—interrupted him a total of 123 times. It should also be noted that McCarthy was not indicting the entire State Department. He said that “the vast majority of the employees of the State Department are loyal” and that he was only after the ones who had demonstrated a loyalty to the Soviet Union or to the Communist Party.
Further, McCarthy admitted that “some of these individuals whose cases I am giving the Senate are no longer in the State Department. A sizable number of them are not. Some of them have transferred to other government work, work allied with the State Department. Others have been transferred to the United Nations." ⁶

But the final impression I’m left with is that McCarthy lacked either the skill, resources, or integrity to pursue with finesse only those who deserved to be pursued and to lay off those whose behavior deserved no censure.

Donald A. Ritchie, associate historian of the U.S. Senate Historical Office, describes what he found when he studied the transcripts of 160 executive sessions (or closed hearings) of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during McCarthy’s chairmanship from 1953 to 1954:

Convinced that subversion and espionage were rampant in the federal government, Senator McCarthy ascribed policies with which he disagreed to either stupidity or sabotage. He tended not to call an agency’s top officials to explain these polices, but worked from the bottom up, starting with lower-level employees. With little hard evidence, he expected to drag confessions out of reluctant witnesses, or to get them to perjure themselves. If a witness took the Fifth Amendment, he interpreted it as an admission of guilt.
After a closed hearing adjourned, the chairman would advise witnesses that they were free to talk to the waiting reporters if they chose, but that he would not reveal their names publicly. Most witnesses, shaken by the experience, fled without meeting the press. Senator McCarthy would then step into the hallway and deliver his version of the testimony. Somehow the names of the witnesses regularly made their way into print despite his assurances. A review of reports in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune—one skeptical and the other supportive of McCarthy’s claims—reconstructed what he told reporters. His accounts appear grossly exaggerated when compared to transcripts.
How the senator chose which witnesses to take into public became clearer as the hearings progressed. Those who willingly confessed past politics and named names, and those who took the Fifth Amendment, were more likely to appear at a later public hearing than those who defended themselves rationally and articulately. . . .
In Human Events, M. Staunton Evans cited evidence against Annie Lee Moss in defense of Senator McCarthy. Moss, Pentagon communications clerk, failed to attend an executive session prior to her public appearance due to ill health. When she appeared at a televised public session, she hardly seemed a threat to the republic. McCarthy recognized a public relations disaster when he saw one and quickly left the hearing room. Had she testified first in an executive session, it is unlikely that she would have been called back publicly. ⁷ Her case contrasts with that of another African American woman, Doris Walters Powell, whom McCarthy erroneously pegged as a communist, drove from her government job, and crowed about to the press, but never brought to a public hearing.
Ronald Radosh in the National Review pointed to McCarthy’s questioning of Michael and Ann Sidorovich, whose names appear in the VENONA transcripts. (For more information on VENONA, see http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/.) Under oath, both denied any espionage. If they committed perjury, McCarthy failed to make anything of it. Their brief testimony contrasts with the chairman’s extensive effort to prove that Aaron Coleman, an Army Signal Corps engineer at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, had lied when he denied riding in a car pool with Julius Rosenberg. It later emerged that Rosenberg had taken Coleman’s place in the car pool, and they had never overlapped. The 4,500 pages of transcripts are replete with such examples of inept investigating. ⁸

The point in all of this: There were definite reasons to fear and dislike the man and perhaps even to hate his methods.

The phrase “McCarthyism” [comes] from the senator’s impatience for due process and the rights of witnesses. This impatience [led] to McCarthy’s use of “executive” sessions to question witnesses. (The term was previously reserved primarily to debate treaties and other “executive” business.) . . . These sessions were not really closed, as cronies and favored reporters of McCarthy were allowed in. The names of witnesses and McCarthy’s associated interpretations were often, therefore, printed in the press.
McCarthy also ignored Senate rules requiring a vote of subcommittee members in order to bring in witnesses. Instead, he issued blank subpoenas which his staff members could issue at will.
Generally witnesses were not given fair notice in advance.
These hearings were often away from Washington and were therefore chaired solely by McCarthy with no peer-oversight.
During these sessions McCarthy would inform witnesses of their right to refuse to answer questions. Later he’d contact their employer and have them fired if they did [refuse to answer]. To this effect he coined the term “Fifth-Amendment Communists.” . . .
Under parliamentary procedure, a point of order takes precedence over all other business. It is properly used only to call attention to a violation of the rules under which the meeting’s business is being conducted. McCarthy abused it, calling for a “point of order” whenever he liked, as a way to interrupt proceedings and seize the floor himself. During the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy’s nasal call, “Point of order, Mr. Chairman, point of order” became a national catchphrase and an emblem of the era. ⁹

Still, despite his shortcomings, McCarthy appears to have been more right than wrong. Yet all we ever hear about is how wrong he was.

The most recent research on McCarthy and his era is beginning to move toward a fair understanding of the man and his times, though the cultural shadow remains.

According to the KGB archives [opened only in the mid-1990s], the NKVD had 221 agents in the Roosevelt administration in April 1941 and the Soviet military GRU probably had a like number. [McCarthy] was proved right that the Communist Party, U.S.A., was an arm of the Soviet intelligence apparatus and the Soviet Union considered the US as their “main enemy.” His liberal critics in academe and the mainstream media, who denied there was Communist subversion and made excuses for it, were proved absolutely wrong! ¹⁰

To quote from various reviews of Arthur Herman’s Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator ¹¹:

We now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was amazingly extensive—reaching to the highest levels of the White House and the top-secret Manhattan Project. Herman has the facts to show in detail which of McCarthy’s famous anti-Communist investigations were on target (such as the notorious cases of Owen Lattimore and Irving Peress, the Army’s “pink dentist") and which were not (including the case that led to McCarthy’s final break with Whittaker Chambers). When McCarthy accused two American employees of the United Nations of being Communists, he was widely criticized—but he was right. When McCarthy called Owen Lattimore “Moscow’s top spy,” he was again assailed—but we now know Lattimore was a witting aid to Soviet espionage networks. McCarthy often overreached himself. But McCarthy was often right. ¹²

Herman believes it’s time to reexamine the legacy, and . . . he argues persuasively that “McCarthy was making a good point badly.” Communism represented “a massive and intractable security problem” for the United States during the 1940s and 1950s; furthermore, “Democratic administrations had been unconscionably lax in dealing with an internal Communist threat." ¹³

Herman is at pains to demonstrate McCarthy’s mendacity, sloppiness in making allegations and his many other flaws on nearly every page. Nonetheless, Herman points out that since the liberal establishment could not disprove McCarthy’s allegations and, in fact, was mortally embarrassed by them, it diverted attention from the charges by attacking McCarthy himself. The effect of this was to obscure the underlying truth of what McCarthy was saying and of what had really occurred. This “crust” around the issue has lasted for nearly fifty years so that as soon as anyone starts to discuss Communists in the government during the 40’s and 50’s, liberals deride them using McCarthy’s name. ¹⁴

In the end, you should be aware that

The term “McCarthyism” so broadly covers all of the investigations of the 1940s and 1950s, that it has melded McCarthy’s investigations into those conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. McCarthy’s detractors blame him for investigating Hollywood, which he did not. His supporters praise him for investigating Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, and others whom he did not. ¹⁵

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¹ Scott Speidel, “The Destruction of Joe McCarthy,” National Vanguard Magazine, Number 114 (November-December 1994). Found on 12 March 2004 at www.natvan.com/national-vanguard/114/mccarthy.html. Let me note: National Vanguard is a white-supremacist rag published by the National Alliance (see www.natvan.com/rune.html). I find the entire white-supremacist viewpoint offensive. Yet as distasteful as I may find someone’s political or social views, I have held it as a solid principle that, if s/he is able to point out some truths I would otherwise overlook, I should pay attention to that which is good and true. I need to listen to that “other side” in order better to discern and argue for the truth. . . . In the context of Senator McCarthy, we need to understand how it might be possible for a man who is so thoroughly vilified today to have achieved what he did in the early 1950s. Was it that people back then were stupid? Or is it possible that Mr. Speidel is speaking the truth? (I have seen many other sites reference the January 1954 poll results.) Return to text.

² James J. Drummey, “The Real McCarthy Record,” The New American, Vol. 12, No. 18, September 2, 1996. Found on 12 March 2004 at www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm. Return to text.

³ Ibid. Return to text.

⁴ Ibid. Return to text.

⁵ Eric Fettman, “The Real Menace,” New York Post, May 8, 2003. Found at www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7725 on 11 March 2004. Return to text.

⁶ Drummey, op. cit. Return to text.

⁷ Ritchie implies that McCarthy left the hearing solely due to immaterial “public relations” concerns. He does not follow this case to its end so you can understand the full contrast between Moss and Powell—the woman whose case he uses by way of contrast. Moss may have been a public relations disaster, but she was, most definitely, a security threat to the United States . . . and she was in an extremely sensitive post within the Pentagon.

One of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy’s methods came in an episode of the TV documentary series See it Now, by respected journalist Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954. Murrow’s program was devoted to McCarthy’s treatment of Annie Lee Moss, a clerk in the Pentagon code room. McCarthy claimed that she was a member of the Communist Party, and consequently should not be allowed to work in a sensitive Pentagon position. Moss was a very sympathetic figure, an elderly African American woman. When asked by McCarthy’s committee about Karl Marx, she replied “Who’s that?” She stated that there were three entries for “Annie Lee Moss” in the Washington, DC phone book, and suggested that the “Annie Lee Moss” appearing in the membership list of the Communist Party was somebody else, and the fact that this “Annie Lee Moss” was listed with her address was due to a mistake. She also received the Communist periodical The Daily Worker delivered to her house, but contended that this too was the result of a mistaken address. (There was no other “Annie Lee Moss” listed in the phone book, but this fact was not checked at the time.)
The Murrow report sparked off a nationwide popular opinion backlash against McCarthy, which the Senator tried to counter by appearing on the show himself. McCarthy appeared on See It Now about three weeks after the original episode, where he made a number of personal attacks and charges against Murrow. However, his method of delivery had been designed for a live audience, not a nationwide broadcast one; the result of this appearance was a further decline in his popularity. (Found at www.tutorgig.com/encyclopedia/getdefn.jsp?keywords=Joseph_McCarthy on 12 March 2004.)

Return to text.

⁸“In 1995, when Venona transcripts were declassified, it was learned that regardless of the specific number, McCarthy consistently underestimated the extent of Soviet espionage. Venona specifically references at least 349 people in the United States--including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents--who cooperated in various ways with Soviet intelligence agencies. Among them were some high-ranking officials in the United States government, such as Harry [Dexter] White, who was explicitly named in Venona intercepts. (See Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr.)” —From www.tutorgig.com/encyclopedia/getdefn.jsp?keywords=Joseph_McCarthy, found on 12 March 2004. Return to text.

⁹ Ibid. Return to text.

¹⁰ Found at http://history.freeyellow.com/mccarthy.htm on 11 March 2004. See also: Jon Basil Utley, “Most-hated senator was right,” WorldNetDaily, Tuesday February 8, 2000. Found at www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17401 on 11 March 2004. For photocopies of the Verona files held by the FBI, see http://foia.fbi.gov/venona/venona.pdf. Return to text.

¹¹ I should note that Kirkus Reviews calls it a “well-researched but hectoring book that . . . antagonizes readers through its reductionist views of the American people.” Why does Kirkus speak of reductionism? Because of “the tortuous string of narrow characterizations. . . . FDR envoy to Russia Harry Hopkins is a ‘Communist dupe,’ J. Robert Oppenheimer ‘a conscious Soviet asset,’ General Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination to President Truman ‘a daring experiment.’ . . . Rather than acting as a moral barometer, Army counsel Joseph Welch is a crafty Eastern Establishment regular mainly interested in how he appeared on TV. Edward R. Murrow is no beacon of truth but an opportunist whose manipulative McCarthy interviews are central to ‘the modern media’s exalted self-image.’” The Kirkus review suggests that these reductionist characterizations “override” what value one may find in the historical content of the book. I think Publisher’s Weekly is fairer when it says McCarthy is (fairly) “[d]epicted by Herman as a reckless, uninformed, publicity-seeking, hard-drinking, mocking man, [and, therefore,] doesn’t easily evoke sympathy. But Herman successfully situates the anticommunist zealot in his place and time and among his opponents and supporters.” (Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly reviews found at http://snipurl.com/McCarthy on 11 March 2004.)
My sense: we need to get beyond the political jockeying for position with respect to McCarthy and face the truth. He was a fallen man. No question. But his personal failures ought never to have permitted the Communists to continue their work unhindered. Return to text.

¹² From the book jacket. Text found at http://snipurl.com/McCarthy on 11 March 2004. Return to text.

¹³ John J. Miller review for Amazon.com; ibid. Return to text.

¹⁴ Reader review dated December 17, 1999; ibid. Return to text.

¹⁵ Donald Ritchie, “Releasing Joe McCarthy,” OAH (Organization of American Historians) Newsletter, August 2003. Found at www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2003aug/mccarthy.html on 11 March 2004. For more on McCarthy, I highly recommend Drummey’s “The Real McCarthy Record” at www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm. Return to text.

The Immoral American ''Social Security'' System

When it was first passed, the maximum “contribution” an employee could make to the Social Security system was one percent on the first $3,000 of annual income (i.e., $30). Employers had to make a matching “contribution” of up to $30 per year as well.

The U.S. government, in testimony before the Supreme Court in 1937, had to admit that Social Security is simply a tax. “It does not constitute a plan for compulsory insurance within the accepted meaning of the term ‘insurance,’” the government said in Helvering v. Davis (1937). Indeed, . . . the government admitted that Social Security taxes were “true taxes, the purpose being simply to raise revenue. No compliance with any scheme or Federal regulation is involved. The proceeds are paid, unrestricted, into the Treasury as Internal Revenue collections, available for the general support of the government.” So the government told the Supreme Court what it had to hear: that Social Security was not an insurance program, but a tax. But it continues to tell the voters what they want to hear: that it’s an insurance program, not a tax.¹

In a famous (or infamous) case, Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the wife of a deported Communist had her Social Security payments cut off. But her husband had paid into the system for years. Wasn’t she entitled? No. Listen to the Supreme Court’s answer:

To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of “accrued property rights” would deprive it of its flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions, which it demands. . . .

The OASI [Old-Age and Survivors Insurance] program is in no sense a federally administered “insurance program” under which each worker pays premiums over the years and acquires at retirement an indefeasible right to receive for life a fixed monthly benefit. . . .

Sure, the politicians talk about it as though it were insurance; it’s even called insurance: “Old Age and Survivors Insurance.” It uses phrases like “contributions” and “trust funds.” . . . Justice Black . . . in his dissenting opinion to the ruling [said]:

People who pay premiums for insurance usually think they are paying for insurance, not for flexibility and boldness. I cannot believe that any private insurance company in America would be permitted to repudiate its matured contracts with its policyholders who have regularly paid all their premiums in reliance upon the good faith of the company. . . . ²

Millions of Americans . . . believe that the money they have paid into Social Security is safe and secure and just waiting for them to retire, because it’s put into a gigantic “trust fund.” The cruel truth of the situation is that there isn’t a real “trust fund” today, and there never has been.

What there used to be was a pile of unmarketable³ “special” Treasury bonds. As fast as the money would come into Social Security, it . . . was used to buy [these] government bonds. . . .⁴

Nowadays, compared to the promises of payment, there aren’t even that many Treasury bonds sitting in the Social Security system. There are so few people paying into the system (compared to those who are “owed”), that there is not enough money to pay those who are “owed.”

So what is the likely solution to this problem?

The following exchange . . . took place in 1976 between Senator William Proxmire and the then-Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, James Cardwell. . . .

PROXMIRE: “In my State, I figure there are 600,000 voters that receive social security. Can you imag-ine a Senator or Congressman under those circumstances saying, we are going to repudiate [i.e., refuse to pay] that high a proportion of the electorate? No.

“Furthermore, we have the capacity under the Constitution, the Congress does, to coin money, as well as to regulate the value thereof. And therefore, we have the power to provide that money. And we are going to do it. It may not be worth anything when the recipient gets it, but he is going to get his benefits paid.”

CARDWELL: “I tend to agree.”. . . ⁵

_____________

¹Gary North, 12 Deadly Negatrends (Fort Worth, TX: American Bureau of Economic Research, 1985), pg. 32. Return to text.

² Ibid., pp. 31-32. Return to text.

³ Unmarketable: i.e., unsellable—by law! Return to text.

⁴ When the government needs to borrow money (which, as you should know, it needs to do a lot!), it gives the lender a bond: a promise to pay back sometime in the future—five, ten, 20 or 30 years from now—the money it has borrowed . . . plus, in the meantime, interest. How will it pay back this money? There are three (and only three) ways it can possibly do this: 1) by taxing citizens enough; 2) by borrowing more money; 3) by inflating (or debasing) the currency (i.e., simply printing more pieces of paper that claim to have a certain value even though they have none; in other words, the government is doing what would be called, if done by private citizens, counterfeiting). The U.S. federal government—and, indeed, most governments of the world for the past fifty years or more—has been using the last two methods almost exclusively.

I should also point out that there are some major differences between U.S. government bonds and those issued by corporations.

First, when the government borrows money, it does so for far different reasons than do corporations. Companies borrow money in order to increase their profitability. They use cash in order to purchase new equipment that will increase productivity or quality, or in order to hire more and better quality employees who can help them earn more money.

Businesses repay their loans out of profits—i.e., new wealth. The government is not in business. It does not create items of value that generate profits. It does not create wealth. Therefore, when it borrows money, it must repay loans not from new wealth, but from taxes on citizens’ wealth, from more borrowing, or from inflation (i.e., “counterfeiting”—if any private person did it).

Second, the government has been perpetrating a fraud that would land the owners in jail if any corporation tried such a thing. The government, in its statements of indebtedness, does not count the “special” Treasury bonds held by the Social Security Administration as part of its debt! In other words, the government counts the funds that come from the Social Security Administration as it said it would and did back in 1937: as if they were general tax income to the government! The government says it owes the Social Security obligations (that’s what a bond is: it is a debt instrument that says, “I owe you this money plus interest, and I intend to pay”), but the government doesn’t count the Social Security debt as debt! So, according to the Social Security Act, the government’s Social Security Administration has multi-trillions of dollars it owes to people who have paid into the system. And what does it own in order to pay this debt? Government bonds that the government doesn’t count on its books as debt! Put another way: the national debt is actually trillions of dollars larger than the government is willing to admit. . . . Return to text.

⁵ Ibid., p. 37.

Did homeschoolers miss all the fun?

This is an article by Nicole Bergot who appears to be a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I reprint it here by permission.

Here's Nicole's story:

Did homeschoolers miss all the fun?

By Nicole Bergot

Homeschooling became mainstream about 15 years ago. Now, the kids who started the trend are "graduating." Fears that home education would turn out antisocial, unschooled religious fanatics were, for the most part, unfounded. It turns out the majority are happy and productive. But many still long for what they missed by not attending regular high schools.

*****

As a kid, Dan Witte was afraid to play in his front yard or go to the park during the day. At least not on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., when other kids were in school. Witte, who was homeschooled, feared the dreaded truant officer. His concern wasn't frivolous; often people in his neighborhood called the police to complain that he wasn't in school. Once, when his brother was injured during a game of pick-up basketball in the backyard, neighbors accused Witte's parents of child abuse. They would call the police and tell them we were being kept home from school," Witte said.

Witte and his five younger siblings were all educated at home by their parents in the 1970s, before the homeschooling movement had caught on. Though the 31-year-old corporate lawyer says he and his brothers and sisters had a positive homeschool experience, they constantly battled negative stereotypes. "They hear homeschooler and automatically they've conjured up in their mind ideological fanatic," he said. "They don't know what to think except weird."

Today, the 20-something-year-olds who were at the forefront of the homeschooling movement in the '70s and '80s are entering the work force with success, and challenging old myths about homeschooling. Fears that home education would turn out antisocial, unschooled religious fanatics have turned out, for the most part, to be unfounded. A recent study indicates that homeschoolers have gone on to be community leaders and successful in a range of fields. It turns out what homeschoolers missed wasn't the preparation they needed for higher education and satisfying careers, but the emotional and social aspects found in regular school, like homeroom gossip, sports camaraderie, plays and even cliques.

A new study called "Homeschooling Grows Up" is the largest survey of adult homeschoolers ever published. Dr. Brian Ray conducted the study and contacted 7,300 adults who had been educated at home. Ray found that although homeschoolers are a diverse group, the study did show common traits. Generally speaking, they are open-minded, independent thinkers who are involved in their communities and do well in their chosen fields. In essence, Ray said, homeschoolers become "good Americans."

The study showed that three out of four home-educated adults ages 18 to 24 have taken college-level courses, compared with less than half of the general American population. Seventy-one percent are involved in community service, like coaching a sports team or working with a church, compared with 37 percent of U.S. adults. In Ray's judgment, homeschooling taught students independence and confidence by "freeing them up to find their own voice with their own personality without peer pressure."

A 22-year-old former homeschooler, Cody Mattern, is a fencing instructor in Portland, Ore., who will find out in March if his team will compete in the 2004 Summer Olympics. He thinks homeschooling gave him the flexibility to spend time honing his fencing skills every afternoon. Mattern, who is dyslexic, stopped going to public high school when he was 14 because he felt unchallenged by the remedial classes he was forced to take. Besides fencing, part of his homeschool curriculum was working part-time at a local pet store where he learned about customer service and marine biology. "It was one of the most educational things in my life," he said.

Though many homeschoolers enjoyed freedom to pursue their interests, some said it came at a cost. Mattern regrets not having the social interaction he would have had at high school, where there's "exposure to so many people who are a lot more diverse and different."

Cheryl Askeland, 27, was homeschooled in San Jose, Calif., and missed having a social life. "I remember being extremely bored and deprived of social contact," she said. After pleading with her parents, she went to regular school for tenth grade. "I loved it. I liked being organized and sitting at a real desk and doing homework." She thinks homeschool works for some people but that "children need to really experience school," she said. "Even the bad things about it."

Other homeschoolers resent their parents for not allowing them a normal teenage experience. Chris Yohman, 25, a firefighter in Charleston, N.C., said he wanted the regular school stuff. "I have a longing for those memories -- going to football games, hanging out with the guys," he said. It has taken a long time for his relationship with his parents to be restored after they became his teachers. "The roles changed," he said. "They weren't the nurturers anymore, they were the instructors. I felt like I lost my folks."

Dr. Ted Feinberg, assistant director for the National Association of School Psychologists in Washington, appreciates that homeschooling allows an individualized curriculum and freedom to pursue interests. But he questions how children educated in the home acquire other important skills they would get in public school. In high school kids get "a sampling of a variety," he said. "They taste a lot of possibilities, and it's helpful when it comes to making life decisions." He thinks the insular nature of homeschooling does not prepare the student for when they must deal with tricky real-life situations or "learn how to negotiate and tolerate the less wonderful."

Witte thinks one of the few drawbacks of homeschooling is that it doesn't provide the network of alumni the regular school system has. So he created the Quaqua Society, a network of grown homeschoolers that offers career advice and scholarships to families who educate their children at home. He wants to help them avoid the problems he faced as a homeschooler. In spite of the difficulties Witte encountered, he's thankful he didn't have to endure the public school system and the pressures of trying to fit in. "I would've been in the nerd category," he said. "I wore hand-me-downs, no money, no car. I think all that would've kept me from developing my intellectual capabilities."

--28 January 2004

*****

Okay. Your turn.

I expect that, for the majority of homeschoolers, certainly the vast majority of homeschoolers educated using Sonlight Curriculum, the answer will be a resoundingly positive negative: i.e., something along the lines of, "Of course I didn't 'miss all the fun'! I had a great time; a much better time than I would have ever experienced in a classroom school!" --And each and every person who provides such an answer will also be able to give wonderful, glowing examples of how and why s/he believes as s/he does: "Homeschooling [or, "Homeschooling with Sonlight," or "Homeschooling with (whatever)"] meant that I _______________."

I'd be so grateful if you could share your stories here as a "Comment" on this article!

Thanks!

John

Dresses Only--A Biblical Requirement?

The Fall 2002 issue of the Home School Digest, "The Quarterly Journal for Serious Homeschoolers" (http://www.wisgate.com/hsd.htm) included a lengthy (8-page) article in which the author "argued" (in a way) that the Bible teaches women to wear long dresses and to avoid pants; "pants are men's clothing."

I decided to write a response, of sorts.

Why? Because I am concerned about a tendency I think I'm seeing where we Christians seem to use the Scriptures NOT to discover what they really teach (or DON'T teach) but, rather, to figure out ways to justify our own prejudices and preferences. . . .

Letter to the Editor of
Home School Digest
sent via email 7 November 2002

Dear Friends:

I try to conduct my affairs as the Bereans: to "receive the word with all readiness of mind" while searching the Scriptures to see whether a matter is really "so" (Acts 17:11). And so it was with this attitude that I read Dr. Davis' "The Language of the Christian's Clothing" (Vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 39-46).

Having examined the Scriptures Dr. Davis references in that article, I believe it is appropriate to warn your readers that, while he proclaims many things that ARE "so," the majority of the content of points 6 through 8--what seemed to be at the center of his presentation--appear to be rather well REFUTED by Scripture. Indeed, they seem well refuted by some of the very Scriptures to which Dr. Davis REFERS but fails to quote in full.

I am thinking, especially, of Exodus 28:42, 39:27-28, Leviticus 6:10, 16:4, and Ezekiel 44:18.

On p. 43 Dr. Davis fails to quote any of these verses but he does quote Cathy Corle to the effect that "God directed for a man to wear pants or breeches and a short haircut." Dr. Davis does not quote Corle concerning where IN SCRIPTURE she believes we might find such directives; nor does he offer any scriptural proofs himself for these claims. But he DOES say that the five passages listed above are the only places in the Bible where the word "breeches" occurs and "[t]he word is always used in relation to men."

By placing these comments in juxtaposition with Deuteronomy 22:5 ("The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God"--quoted on p. 43 in your magazine), Dr. Davis seems to want us to believe that God Himself teaches us that pants (or "breeches") are uniquely men’s wear not to be worn by women.

If I have interpreted Dr. Davis' intentions correctly, then I believe we need to look at the Scriptures to which he has referred. We should see for ourselves: is this "men ought to wear pants/women ought to wear dresses" teaching truly based on SCRIPTURE?

If you study the referenced passages, I believe you will find it is not. Instead, you will discover that Dr. Davis is "lad[ing] men [and women!] with burdens grievous to be borne," burdens that Dr. Davis himself, when it comes down to it, "touch[es] not . . . with one of [his] fingers" (Luke 11:46).

Will you please join me and be like the Bereans? Will you please turn "to [God’s] law and to [His] testimony" (Isaiah 8:20) and see if these things are really so?

******

The referenced passages, as Dr. Davis notes, are, indeed, the only ones in which the English word "breeches" appears in the King James Version of the Bible. But if Dr. Davis wants to make these passages teach that all men, and only men, are to wear breeches, then I wonder why he did not go further into these passages' details? Why, for example, did he ignore the point that every one of the referenced passages speaks not merely about "breeches," but about "LINEN breeches"? If we men are to wear breeches in obedience to these passages, shouldn’t we be sure to wear only LINEN breeches? If not, why not?

Further, why does Dr. Davis ignore the fact that the breeches spoken of in these passages are not commanded as OUTER wear, but are to be worn IN ADDITION to--UNDER--a "robe" and "coat" (see Exodus 28:4, 31-35 and 39 for just one series of verses that describe these garments)? They were not to be worn like the pants in a modern man’s suit; they were not to be visible to the eyes of curious bystanders. No. They were to be worn UNDER the outer robe and coat, "upon [the] flesh" (Leviticus 16:4). Put another way, they were what we call "underwear."

So why does it appear that Dr. Davis is willing to expose himself to public view clad in nothing more than a modern man’s suit, wearing upon his lower body the equivalent of what the Bible defines as UNDERWEAR? Why does he not wrap himself in what, to be consistent, he should be telling us are God-mandated outer garments for men?

And how does he dare show on the home page of his website (www.drsmdavis.com) photographs of men attired in the equivalent of Biblically-defined UNDERWEAR? Where are the photographs of men wearing the Biblically-mandated robes--the kind of robes with which, Dr. Davis says, true men were taught to "gird up their loins" (p. 43; Job 40:7, etc.)?

Let us go on.

If Dr. Davis' comments about breeches are the result of handling the Scriptures with integrity, and if such breeches-style clothing on a woman really is an "abomination" because it is "that which pertaineth unto a man" (Deuteronomy 22:5), then why does he not speak forthrightly about the sin of modern breeches-style WOMEN'S underwear--i.e., what in our culture are generally called "panties"? Is he not concerned to warn women against such sins?

And why no exegesis about how both men and women must clothe themselves with underwear that covers "from the loins even unto the thighs" so they will avoid the nakedness of which Exodus 28:42 speaks (according to Dr. Davis), the nakedness of inadequate underwear, the nakedness that is both mentioned and defined in Exodus 28:42 (p. 40 in Dr. Davis' article)?

Moreover, how is it that Dr. Davis turns this Biblical discussion of what is obviously UNDER-breeches into a discussion of "shorts, culottes, dresses, whatever"--OUTER garments--"that stops covering above the knee"?

And why? Why does he make an application to forms of clothing (OUTER clothing) that are NOT discussed in the passage, but makes NO application to that which is directly addressed (the matter of UNDER clothing)?

And there is more.

If Dr. Davis is correct in his interpretation and application of these passages, then I am curious why he ignores the fact that, in the very same passages, the LORD commands us men to wear linen BONNETS (Exodus 28:40, 29:9, 39:28, Leviticus 8:13, and Ezekiel 44:18). And, again, if Dr. Davis is correct in his interpretation, the LORD commands us MEN to wear such bonnets, but NOWHERE does He issue a similar commandment to women.

So why does it appear (from an examination of his photograph) that Dr. Davis fails to obey this command? And why does Dr. Davis not warn women against being conformed to the world in this area (see Romans 12:2)? Why does he fail even to MENTION (much less sound a clarion call) that bonnets are masculine clothing and not to be worn by women?

Similarly with the girdles. If we men--and only men--are supposed to wear breeches, I don’t understand why Dr. Davis ignores the Scripturally-mandated girdles for men (Exodus 28:40, 29:9, Leviticus 8:13). Once more: there is not a single verse in Scripture commanding WOMEN to wear girdles; but we do find these verses where, according to Dr. Davis, MEN are commanded to wear them. So why does Dr. Davis ignore this command? And why does he not warn women against encroaching on this province of masculine clothing?

I believe the answers to all of my questions are one and the same; and that one answer is really quite simple.

I believe the reason Dr. Davis ignores all of these "additional" requirements; the reason he himself refuses to "touch" these commandments with one of his own fingers (i.e., the reason he neither "obeys" nor teaches these commandments), is because as soon as one looks at the subject Scriptures IN CONTEXT, one realizes that they have everything to do with appropriate attire for God’s Old Testament PRIESTS (see, for example, Exodus 28:43, 29:27, Leviticus 6:9-10, 16:3, and Ezekiel 44:15); they have absolutely nothing to say about appropriate attire for "men" in general. Yes, the priests were all men, but the focus of these verses is the PRIESTS' clothing and the PRIESTS' responsibilities. Their focus is not at all upon the distinctions we ought to observe between men’s clothing and women’s clothing.

*******

In sum: rather than suggesting that the Bible "TEACHES" women to wear long dresses (KATASTOLE); rather than suggesting that breeches are for men only; perhaps Dr. Davis and your fine magazine could emphasize and exegete Scriptures that truly teach the more fundamental principles outlined (but hardly explained) in the article's other "points": the need for modesty and humility; the need to conform ourselves to the image of Christ; the need to bring our outer and inner clothing (the clothing of the heart) into conformity one with another; and so forth.

For the glory of Christ among the nations,

John Holzmann

Eugenics

One of those "dirty secrets" that few schools mention, but that ought to be mentioned by all.

People refer to "the" Holocaust as if it were a unique historical event inspired by a solitary madman named Adolf Hitler (may his name forever be disgraced). Of course, this preoccupation with Hitler means that far bloodier tyrants of the 20th Century--Joseph Stalin and Mao Zadong being only the two most infamous--are readily ignored. (It is always unfashionable to offer any forms of apologetics for Nazi Germany; it is rarely unfashionable to forge "explanations" and apologies for Mao and Stalin.)

I am distressed by the historical myopia that would cause us to focus so uniquely on the one man and the one country or culture, that we would ignore other people and other cultures, and, most especially, our own people and our own culture.

You see, Americans and Britons seem to have completely forgotten our own nations' roles in the "scientific" theories that led directly to the events that we know of as "the" Holocaust. Yes, “Christian” America—the United States—set the legal precedents and standards by which Hitler carried out his deadly policies.

In 1916 Scribners published Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, a defense of the idea that “the Nordic race” is superior to all others. That was followed by, and continued to be published alongside, Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Stoddard’s The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman followed in 1922.¹

You should know: these were widely-read “scientific” books of the day. They advocated the application of Darwinian evolutionary “science” in public policy. And so, rather than serving as a Christian “light to the nations,”

The United States became the model for pre-Nazi German racial hygienists after World War I. The Nazis merely applied on a massive scale a program that their liberal predecessors had recommended.²

Does that sound far-fetched—laying Nazi policies at the doorstep of America? Possibly. But consider.

In 1904—only 45 years after Darwin published his famous The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life—a “Station for the Experimental Study of Evolution” was established in the United States with a grant from the Carnegie Institution. In 1910, the Harriman and Rockefeller families contributed a “Eugenics Record Office” to the Station.³

Grant, Stoddard, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the Rockefellers, the Harrimans, and countless other leaders of American opinion, policy and culture, advocated and advanced a public policy of eugenics.

How did this work out in practice?

In 1907, Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in America. States passed laws against marriages between people who were “eugenically unfit.” By the late 1920’s, 28 states had passed compulsory sterilization laws; some 15,000 Americans had been sterilized before 1930. This figure rose by another 15,000 over the next decade. . . . This was also the era of laws against interracial marriage; 30 states passed such laws between 1915 and 1930. . . .

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell (1927), upheld Virginia’s model sterilization law, which was carried out on 19-year-old Carrie Buck. By a vote of 8 to 1, the Court upheld this before the girl was sterilized; her guardian had opposed the action. . . . The Court’s opinion, written by justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, announced: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices. . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”⁴

Notice that every one of these historical events occurred before Hitler came to power and before the German laws against sterilization were stricken from the books.⁵

Wrote Grant in 1916:

Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.⁶

And Osborn, president of the Museum of Natural History in New York and professor of zoology at Columbia University, announced at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held at the Museum of Natural History:

The right of the state to safeguard the character and integrity of the race or races on which its future depends is, to my mind, as incontestable as the right of the state to safeguard the health and morals of its people. As science has enlightened government in the prevention and spread of disease, it must also enlighten government in the prevention of the spread and multiplication of worthless members of society, the spread of feeble-mindedness, of idiocy, and of all moral and intellectual as well as physical diseases.⁷

Few Christians, and even fewer churches, were willing to speak out against these ideas and governmental policies.

“Buck v. Bell generally stimulated either favorable, cautious, or—most commonly—no comment. Few if any newspapers took notice of the impact of the decision on civil liberties in the United States.”⁸

---

¹ Both Grant’s work and Stoddard’s Revolt Against Civilization were translated and published in Germany in 1925. Back to article.

² Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), 447. Back to article.

³ Walter Truett Anderson, To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 153, cited in North, op. cit., 445. Back to article.

⁴ North, op. cit., 446. Back to article.

⁵ The influence of the eugenics movement in Germany accelerated after Hitler came to power in 1933. Sterilization had been illegal in Germany prior to Hitler; he changed the law in July, 1933. Two million people were ordered sterilized by the Nazis’ Eugenics Courts as eugenically unfit, 1933 to 1945.

In 1939, the year of the “Duty to be Healthy,” the Nazi program of sterilization went to the next phase: “mercy killings” of mentally and physically handicapped people who were incarcerated in hospitals and mental asylums. One estimate is that some 200,000 people were killed in this way during World War II. Physicians superintended the massacre. . . . The Nazis understood in 1939 what the humanist media in the United States had understood in 1922: churches could have become a major threat to their genetic ideal and program of forced sterilization for genetic purposes. As it turned out in both countries, however, churches remained mute on the issue.

—North, op. cit., 447-448.
Back to article.

⁶ Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 4th ed., revised (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 49, quoted in North, op. cit., 444. Back to article.

⁷ Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (New York: Knopf, 1977), 278, quoted in North, op. cit., 448-449. Back to article.

⁸ Daniel V. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985), 112, quoted in North, op. cit., 447.

More on Eliminating the Concept of Purpose in Science

I mentioned Jacques Barzun's comments about the historical movement that eliminated the concept of purpose in scientific inquiry. Today I was reminded of some more historical data that contributed to the elimination of this concept.

In an audio summary of a recent business book, It’s Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business by Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis, I was startled to hear the following three sentences:

Adam Smith wrote that people follow their own self-interest, which leads to the greatest good for all. Charles Darwin's rule says that species adapt or die. That's the meaning of the term "selective pressure."

I was startled by the obvious juxtaposition of Smith's and Darwin's ideas. But the two ideas mesh perfectly. Isn't Smith's concept of the "'invisible hand' of the marketplace" (in which large-scale public good is the inescapable, unintentional, and wholly unconscious by-product of laissez-faire capitalism) . . . --Isn't that "merely," in the social and economic sphere, what Darwin's concept of "natural selection" is in the scientific/biological sphere?

Now that I think of it, weren't the "social Darwinians" in essence turning Darwin's ideas back to their intellectual and historical predecessor: Adam Smith?

Again: this should have been so obvious. I have considered these ideas before in various ways.

• Gary North, in Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996) points out that William Jennings Bryan's objections to the teaching of evolution in public schools was motivated not by scientific concerns, per se, but by social concerns:

  [While, on the positive side, Bryan argued that democracy gave taxpayers the right to control how their funds should be used, he argued] that a ruth-less hostility to charity was the dark side of Darwin-ism. Had Darwin’s theory been irrelevant, he said, it would have been harmless. “This hypothesis, however, . . . teaches that Christianity impairs the race physically. That was the first implication at which I revolted [when I read Darwin’s work]. It led me to review the doctrine and reject it entirely” (from William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1922), 107). [Bryan] cited the notorious (and morally inescapable) passage in Darwin’s Descent of Man: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have suc-cumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man” (Ibid., 107-108). [Bryan] could have continued to quote from the passage until the end of the paragraph: “It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (New York: Modern Library, [1871], 501). . . .
  
  Darwin in the next paragraph wrote that sympathy, “the noblest part of our nature,” leads men to do these racially debilitating things (Ibid., 502). Bryan replied: “Can that doctrine be accepted as scientific when its author admits that we cannot apply it ‘without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature’? On the contrary, civilization is measured by the moral revolt against the cruel doctrine developed by Darwin” (Bryan, op. cit., 109).
  
  Darwin was taken very seriously by many Pro-gressives on the matter of charity. In her book, The Pivot of Civilization (1922), Margaret Sanger [founder of Planned Parenthood] criticized the inherent cruelty of charity. She insisted that organized efforts to help the poor are the “surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding, and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents” (Sanger, op. cit., 108). Such charity must be stopped, she insisted. . . . “If we must have welfare, give it to the rich, not the poor,” she concluded (Ibid., 96). “More children from the fit, less from the unfit: that is the chief issue of birth control” (Sanger, "Birth Control," Birth Control Review (May 1919).

  --From North, op. cit., pp. 453-455.

• David M. Levy in his fascinating How the Dismal Science Got Its Name (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002) notes, too, how modern economic theory (i.e., economics post-Smith) interfaced with was borne along by--and bore with it--a social Darwinian view.

I don't know where I want to go from here. Primarily I wanted to make the observation that Smithian economics goes hand-in-hand, intellectually and historically, with evolutionary thought, both biological and social.

I guess I would like to make one more observation, this one coming, too, from the audio tape that inspired my comments here.

I am impressed with how theories of purposeless, "self-organization" (such as Smith's and Darwin's) are being turned to practical ends.

In the audio summary of Meyer's and Davis's It's Alive, I heard the story of a John Deere factory that makes seed planters.

The company uses a computer to create a few random schedules that express the sequence of planters to be built in a digital code made of zeros and ones. That code is a set of instructions, just as DNA carries a set of instructions as "genetic code."

This is possible because of a genetic algorithm. A genetic algorithm is a computer program that simulates the same sort of breeding and evolution that appears to take place in nature. The program can test millions of examples of a production schedule using a simulator. It identifies the schedules that work the best, kills the rest, and then mixes parts of the winning schedules to create new ones. In essence, it breeds new schedules. Then the new ones are tested, and so on. Forty thousand new schedules are tested every night, and the winner is the schedule that runs tomorrow's real-life production on the John Deere factory floor. . . .

In using genetic algorithms to set its factory schedule, John Deere applied two evolutionary concepts. One was the idea of recombination, which is known as breeding in the animal world. The other was to exert selective pressure. . . .

In the John Deere example, a schedule that speeds things up is rewarded by allowing it to breed with other fast schedules. A schedule that is slow dies off without breeding.

The cycle repeats through successive generations, and the agents undergo changes and evolve — in this case, getting faster. In life, the change of one species depends on the change of others. Fast foxes help breed faster rabbits. This is often called co-evolution.

--Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries, Volume 12, No. 7, Section 1, July 2003.

The Madness of the American Drug War

I'm apparently "strange" for a conservative Christian, but the more I study the issue, the angrier I become: What business does the U.S. federal government have in declaring certain drugs illegal . . . and then seeking to enforce its will by violent means? If you're a Bible-believing Christian, I'd like to ask you: what biblical justification can you think of for governmental behavior like that which I'm about to relate to you?

I found the following story referenced in a December 23, 2003 editorial by Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, and a regular columnist in the Rocky Mountain News.. . .

Campos said his editorial was inspired by a story featured in The New York Times about a drug raid at the Goose Creek, South Carolina, high school on November 5, 2003 . . . and by a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 8th.

Let me begin with the Goose Creek High School story. Campos summarizes:

With guns pointed at their heads, students were handcuffed and forced to lie on the floor, or to kneel with their faces to the wall.

One student said he assumed the police "were trying to protect us, that it was like Columbine, that somebody got in the school that was crazy or dangerous. But then a police officer pointed a gun at me. It was really scary."

"After an extensive search," Campos says, "the police found no drugs, but they did terrorize more than 100 students."

I'd want to suggest that they not only terrorized more than 100 students; they put these and other students' lives at risk. And for what? Is the Goose Creek high school a better place, now, as a result of the police raid? Supposing the police had found drugs on one or more of the students: was the implicit (or even explicit) danger of those drugs worth putting 100 or more students' lives at risk?

"What's really scary," Campos notes, "is that incidents such as this seem to stir so little outrage.

What level of government persecution will put a dent in public apathy about the madness that is the war on drugs? If the police at the Goose Creek high school had inadvertently shot a student or two in their zealous search for marijuana cigarettes, would that be enough to distract people from holiday shopping and channel surfing? Or would such an incident be shrugged off as another regrettable accident, of the sort that is inevitable in wartime?

As I said, Campos referenced not only the events at Goose Creek, but a bill he said was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, "a bill that gives the White House drug czar's office $145 million of taxpayer money to run anti-marijuana propaganda ads."

Besides paying for ads (many of which he finds rather preposterous: "My personal favorite . . . is a television ad in which police rough up a high school student when arresting him in the school's marijuana-smoke-filled bathroom. This is followed by a caption reading, 'Marijuana: Harmless? Think again.'"), the most egregious portion of the bill, says Campos, "prohibits any local transit system that receives federal funding from running privately funded ads that call for marijuana policy reform.

In other words, at the same time that the federal government is forcing you to spend your money to publicize its willingness to engage in storm trooper tactics to persecute the tens of millions Americans who smoke marijuana, it is trying to prohibit you from having the freedom to spend your money to protest these same tactics. [All above quotes are from Campos' editorial, "A new reefer madness".]

Lest you think I'm a nut case who is bent on debauching our youth, let me make clear that I am a teetotaler (i.e., I don’t drink alcohol; I am a “total abstainer”). Indeed, I don’t drink coffee, either. I have never used any “hard” or illegal drugs. (Although I believe I have probably committed the felonious behavior of ingesting one or two antibiotic pills that the doctor had prescribed to someone else in my family while I waited to get lab tests to confirm what I was already quite sure was true: that I was suffering from the exact same malady that had struck the other person.)

So why do I harp on federal drug laws?

Because I see no biblical ground for turning a moral issue into a legal one; and I see no extrabiblical (i.e., merely practical) reasons for creating the kind of monstrous police state under which we labor today “just because” some people are unable or unwilling to control their urges to medicate themselves for physical or mental reasons.

Strange: there are strong reasons to believe that even the “bad” drugs like heroin and cocaine are nowhere near as “bad” as government propaganda has led most of us to believe. Far more people use even these “bad” drugs without becoming addicted than use them and become addicted. And far more people use them and continue to live productive lives than use them and, as a result, become antisocial. (How many people do you know who are physically dependent on the addictive drug caffeine and act in antisocial ways as a result of their addictions? Do you believe they deserve to be imprisoned or even put to death for their nefarious behavior?)

I encourage you to see Jacob Sullum’s “The surprising truth about heroin and addiction,” in Reason magazine, June 2003, 32-40.

Comments? Criticisms? What am I missing?

---

Note

Don't you think they ought to be put to death? If not, why not? Twenty-seven Republican members of the 104th Congress of the United States signed on as cosponsors of legislation that would have required anyone in the United States who was convicted of owning two ounces or more of marijuana to be executed for their crime. . . . (See "Death Penalty for Two Ounces of Marijuana!" and its sister document, "Co-Sponsors of H.R. 4170".) Back to article.

Are virtually all high school students to be precluded from working for pay?

There is a a horrible new bill before the House of Representatives titled the "Youth Worker Protection Act," HR3139. If it makes its way through Congress, I believe we're about to see virtually all students under 18 become wholly unemployable.

Am I overreacting? Consider just a few of the most egregious provisions of the bill:

* Outlaw the use of riding lawn mowers for purposes of earning income by all youths under 18 who have yet to graduate from high school.

* Outlaw the use in an employment context of ladders over 6 feet tall by youths under 18.

* Outlaw any handling of fat used in deep fat fryers--whether the fat is hot or cold, it does not matter--by youths under 18.

* Potentially outlaw the employment of anyone under 18 years old in ANY place of employment where any of the above-mentioned equipment or materials may be located.

* Outlaw all "youth peddling" (i.e., going door-to-door for any sales purpose if you're under 18 years old) unless selling newspapers or soliciting in behalf of a nonprofit organization).

. . . And so forth.

Oh! And if you attend a private school or you're homeschooled: guess who controls your employability? Yes: your local public school district!

Does it surprise you to hear that the NEA (National Education Association), AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations), and other such organizations are all proud of this legislation?

Right now the bill is "in committee" (Committee on Education and the Workforce and, more especially, the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections). However, since no public hearings are planned, it could come out of committee at any moment once Congress is back in session beginning January 20th. I believe, if we want our younger children to have any opportunity to get jobs before they are 18, we may need to raise a hue and cry. . . .

Please confirm each of my following points by looking at the original documents. You can find them in the last link ("Text of Legislation") at http://snipurl.com/HR3139. There's a PDF version (upper left) and an HTML version (upper right). Am I reading the bill correctly?

Section 201(3) requires all minors to get government-sponsored work permits. Section 203(b)(3) specifies that the form shall include, "In the case of a school-age minor, a certification by a school official that the official has informed the minor of school attendance requirements and has given the minor a written summary of those requirements" and Section 203(e) continues, "A work permit that is issued when school is not in session shall be subject to certification under subsection (b)(3) not later than 30 days after school resumes. If the minor does not obtain certification during that period, the permit shall be suspended until the certification is obtained. As used in this subsection, the term 'in session' has the meaning given that term under the law applicable to the school district in which the minor involved lives." [Put another way: your local public school is the de facto permitting agency. Your homeschooled child, if s/he wants to work before s/he reaches the age of 18, will now be required to get the local public school's permission. Put another way: your child's ability to hold a job will be wholly at the discretion of your local public school district and its schedule.]

Section 209 defines the term "minor" as "an individual who is under the age of 18 years." And it defines a "school-age minor" as "a minor who, as determined under the law applicable to the school district in which the minor lives, has not earned a high school diploma or other document of equivalent or greater status."

Section 204 prohibits an employer from "permit[ting] a school-age minor to work during school hours. . . . As used in this section, the terms 'school hours', 'school day', and 'in session', respectively, have the meanings given those terms under the law applicable to the school district in which the minor involved lives." [Placing upon the employer the necessity to uphold the monopoly status of the local public schools and the local public schools' schedules.]

Section 207 prohibits "Youth Peddling." In a new proposed "Title I--Fair Labor Standards," Sec. 106 defines the term:

'Youth peddling' means sale of goods or services by a minor in a public place . . . , at the residence of the customer, at the place of business of the customer, or from a vehicle, except that such term does not include--

(1) newspaper delivery . . . ;

(2) sale of goods or services at a fixed retail location; or

(3) sale of goods or services on behalf of an organization that is described in section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and is exempt from taxation under section 501(a) of such Code, if the minor is a volunteer and does not receive compensation for the sale.

[Hmmm! Mom had better not begin a business like Ralph Moody's mom did in Little Britches (or was it Man of the Family?)! . . . Notice, however, that, despite the "dangers" this law is supposed to protect kids from, it permits use of children by public schools and other non-profit organizations to achieve their ends. Kids "simply" can't go ahead and engage in pecuniary pursuits for their own or their family's benefit. . . . ]

Besides the new "Title I," this bill also seeks to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 201 et seq.) by inserting several "Miscellaneous Provisions" in "Title II." For example:

Section 201 states that "Not later than 24 months after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary of Labor shall promulgate a rule . . . that . . . in the application and enforcement of the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 201 et seq.), . . . (1) the occupations that are the subjects of recommendations pertaining to current hazardous orders, as stated in part IV of the report entitled `National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor for Changes to Hazardous Orders', dated May 3, 2002; and (2) the occupations that are the subjects of recommendations for new hazardous orders, as stated in part V of that report . . . [are] particularly hazardous for the employment of children between the ages of 16 and 18 years or detrimental to their health or well-being, within the meaning of section 3(l)(2) of that Act (29 U.S.C. 203(l)(2))." [I will quote from the NIOSH report below.]

Section 201(d) includes the following specific rules:

(1) . . . the rule may not provide for employment of children between the ages of 16 and 18 years in the operation of power-driven meat and food slicers in the wholesale, retail, or services industry;

(2) the rule may not allow for the operation of counter-top models of power-driven bakery machines, as proposed in the part IV recommendation HO 11 for Non-Agricultural Occupations. . . .

[I guess a bread slicer is too dangerous for a young person.]

But pay special attention to paragraphs 1) and 2) on page 42 of the NIOSH regulations referenced above (p. 64 within the NIOSH PDF), where the authors suggest, with respect to HO 10:

1) . . . Revising this HO to apply to specific industries instead of occupations or tasks would greatly simplify compliance and enforcement of the HO, and may be a more effective way of protecting youth. The current HO prohibits seven specific types of work associated with meat slaughtering and processing, and may not be all-inclusive of tasks and activities with serious injury and health risks in these industries.

2) Although the title of HO 10 implies that it is limited to meat processing machines, this HO actually includes all occupations involved in the operation, feeding, set-up, adjusting, repairing, oiling, or cleaning of numerous power-driven food processing machines, regardless of the product being processed (including, for example, the slicing in a retail delicatessen of meat, poultry, seafood, bread, vegetables, or cheese). Machines covered include meat and bone cutting saws, meat slicers, and grinders. Available data demonstrate that some types of food processing machines, specifically grinders and juice, oil and fat extractors, are associated with serious injuries, including amputations. Although data show high numbers of injuries associated with power-driven slicers, the injuries appear to be relatively minor. This finding supports the revision of the HO to allow operation of slicers in the retail, wholesale and services industries. [Emphasis added; JAH]

On the other hand, note 3 does say, "A student learner/apprenticeship exemption is recommended for the use of meat processing machines in non-manufacturing settings. Compared with meat processing machines used in manufacturing, those used in settings such as retail establishments are smaller, less complex machines. Hazards associated with these machines are generally limited to the machines themselves, and may be reduced through worker training and proper guarding and maintenance." . . . So maybe there's hope yet!

Section 203:

Not later than 24 months after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary of Labor shall promulgate a rule, under section 553 of title 5, United States Code, to prohibit employment of minors in the following activities:

(1) Seafood processing.

(2) Employment requiring a minor to handle or dispose of oil or other liquids from fryers.

[Hmmm! Might this affect employment in a McDonald's (for instance)? . . . Remember notes 1 and 2 on p. 42 in the NIOSH document!]

*****

Of course, you and I are supposed to believe that all these rules have nothing but our children's welfare in mind!

Okay.

Remember that Section 201 states that "the Secretary of Labor shall promulgate a rule . . . that . . . the occupations that are the subjects of recommendations pertaining to current hazardous orders, as stated in part IV of the [NIOSH] report . . . and (2) the occupations that are the subjects of recommendations for new hazardous orders, as stated in part V of that report . . . [are] particularly hazardous for the employment of children between the ages of 16 and 18 years."

So let's see what the NIOSH report has to say.

You can find the entire report online at http://www.sonlight.com/uploads/niosh.pdf.

From the Preamble:

Our society places special value on young people and has adopted various social policies, including protection from hazardous working conditions. Implicit in these policies is the belief that youth should not be exposed to the same risks as adults. "The vulnerable, formative, and malleable nature of childhood and adolescence requires a higher standard of protection for young workers than that accorded to adult workers" [NRC/IOM 1998]. Recommendations made in this report are consistent with the DOL commitment to facilitate meaningful employment and training opportunities while protecting youth from the most hazardous work activities. (p. 15)

Let us see how well this "balance" is maintained. Consider the following proposed "Recommendations for New Hazardous Orders" (Section V, beginning at p. 99; emphasis added; I will emphasize modified hazardous orders that are already in place below these new recommended orders). It appears that Hazardous Orders (HOs) mean, essentially, "no youths shall be employed in such tasks" (see Section 201(4) of this bill: "In the case of a minor who is between the ages of 16 and 18 years, the employment is not in an occupation that is particularly hazardous for the employment of children between those ages or detrimental to their health or well-being, within the meaning of section 3(l)(2)."

• "Establish a new HO for work in commercial fishing occupations. An apprentice/student learner exemption is not recommended" (p. 99).
• "Establish a new HO prohibiting all work in construction occupations. . . . An apprentice/student learner exemption is not recommended" (p. 101).
• "Establish a new HO prohibiting work in refuse collection. An apprentice/student learner exemption is not recommended" (p. 106).
• "Establish a new HO prohibiting work in water transportation industries. No apprentice/student learner exemption is recommended" (p. 108).
• "Establish a new HO prohibiting work in the farm-product raw materials wholesale trade industry (SIC 515). No apprentice/student learner exemption is recommended" (p. 112").
• "Establish a new HO for nonagricultural occupations prohibiting work at a height of 6 feet or more from ladders; scaffolds; trees; and structures . . . and machinery. An apprentice/student learner exemption is not recommended" (p. 114; put another way: forget any painting jobs for young people under 18 years of age that require use of ladders; or employment at a place like Home Depot, Costco, Old Navy, etc.--in other words, just about any retail establishment--where they have those stepladder appliances to get materials from upper shelves).
• "Establish a new HO for nonagricultural industries prohibiting operating a tractor or connecting or disconnecting an implement or any of its parts to or from such a tractor. An apprentice/student learner exemption is justified, with the condition that tractors must be equipped with ROPS and seat belt use mandated" (p. 119; "tractor" seems clearly to include riding lawnmowers).
• "Establish a new HO for nonagricultural industries prohibiting work in welding" (p. 124).
• "Establish a new HO for nonagricultural industries prohibiting work involving powered conveyors in manufacturing. The HO should cover operation, repair, and maintenance of conveyors, as well as cleanup duties in the vicinity of conveyors that are in operation or energized. No apprentice/student learner exemption is recommended" (p. 130; I hope warehouses won't be included in the definition of "manufacturing," otherwise Sonlight won't be able to hire any more high school or first-year college students to work in its warehouse; we have slow-moving power conveyors to help move materials from our ground floor to a mezzanine storage area (and back again); we also have powered roller conveyors to move packed boxes from the packing stations to the shipping area. . . . So this equipment that we purchased to REDUCE injury may actually preclude us from hiring young people!).

And here are the recommended modifications to HOs that are already on the books:

HO 16 (non-agricultural): Occupations in Roofing Operations

Recommendation — 1) Expand current HO to include all work performed on roofs. The HO should not be limited solely to roofing operations that involve construction, maintenance, and repair of roofs. 2) Remove the exemption for apprentices/student learners. (See pp. 60ff)

HO 1 (agricultural): Operating a Tractor Over 20 PTO Horsepower or Connecting or Disconnecting an Implement or Any of Its Parts To or from Such a Tractor.

Recommendation — 1) Retain the HO with the removal of the 20 PTO (power take-off) horsepower threshold. 2) Revise exemption for 14- and 15-year-olds with tractor certification to require tractors to be equipped with a rollover protective structure (ROPS) and mandate the use of seatbelts.

Rationale — 1) Tractor-related fatalities have been the leading source of work-related farming deaths in the U.S. for many years. Available data sources frequently do not include enough detail to determine the horsepower of tractors or PTOs involved in fatal and non-fatal injuries. Additionally, PTO horsepower differs from tractor engine horsepower and may be difficult to identify by Wage and Hour inspectors, employers, supervisors and youth workers. Furthermore, available data do not support the notion that a tractor’s horsepower (engine or PTO) is related to risk of injury. Therefore, the current 20 horsepower PTO requirement should be eliminated. 2) A ROPS, when used in conjunction with a seatbelt, is the most important safety feature on a tractor in reducing the number of deaths from overturns. This engineering safety measure, in addition to tractor safety training and mandated seatbelt use, should be an effective means of preventing a substantial number of tractor-related injuries and fatalities among young workers. (See pp. 67ff)

HO 2 (agricultural): Operating or assisting to operate (including starting, stopping, adjusting, feeding or any other activity involving physical contact associated with the operation) any of the following machines:

i) Corn picker, cotton picker, grain combine, hay mower, . . . ;

ii) Feed grinder, crop dryer, forage blower, . . . or

iii) Power post-hole digger, power post driver, or nonwalking-type rotary tiller.

HO 3: Operating or assisting to operate . . . any of the following machines:

i) Trencher or earthmoving equipment;

ii) Fork lift;

iii) . . .

Recommendation – Combine HO 2 and HO 3, and expand prohibition from lists of specific machines to machines that perform general functions (e.g. harvesting and threshing machinery; mowing machinery; . . . and, mobile equipment, including forklifts) following the terminology used in current coding systems. (See pp. 72ff; does this mean no one under the age of 18 will be permitted to do lawn mowing, using a power lawn mower? I note that Table 21 "Fatal Injuries to Agricultural Production Workers Associated with Agricultural and Garden Machinery, United States" on p. 73 specifically includes injuries due not only to "Mowing machinery, unspecified" but "Lawn mowers – riding.")

HO 6: Working from a Ladder or Scaffold (Painting, Repairing, or Building Structures, Pruning Trees, Picking Fruit, etc.) at a Height of Over 20 Feet.

Recommendation – . . . Reduce the maximum height at which youth under 16 may work in these settings from 20 feet to 6 feet.

Rationale – . . . Available fatality data for workers of all ages suggest that permitting youth to work at heights of up to 20 feet is not sufficiently protective. . . . (See pp. 79ff; does this mean no one under the age of 16 will be permitted to paint a house at a height greater than 6 feet? Will parents who involve their children in such tasks be subject to charges of child abuse?)

Questions: Do you think all these rules are REALLY for the protection of young people? Or are they primarily for the benefit of union members? And . . . if these jobs are truly too dangerous, when and where and how will any 18-year-old gain the experience s/he requires so that s/he doesn't get injured on the job?

So what should you and I do about these things?

• Pray.
• Write to or call your congressperson to get rid of the offending provisions.
• Go back to the first page I referenced above (http://snipurl.com/HR3139). Click on the "Cosponsors" link and write to or call the committee people along the same lines.

Two key contact persons:
The Honorable Charlie Norwood
Chairman, Workforce Protection Subcommittee
Room 2452 Rayburn House Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20515

and

The Honorable John Boehner
Chairman, Committee on Education & the Workforce
Room 2181 Rayburn House Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20515

Some potentially unfamiliar acronyms:

• BLS = Bureau of Labor Standards.
• DOL = Department of Labor.
• FTEs = Full-time equivalents (i.e., 40-hour weeks; explanation: lots of kids work only 10 or 20 hours per week; a full-time equivalent is 40 hours per week; thus, while four kids may be employed at 10 hours each, the four, together, equal only one FTE).
• HOs = "Hazardous Orders" (government regulations concerning occupations and tasks that the government has determined are especially hazardous).
• ROPS = "Roll-over protection structure" (a full "roll cage" to protect the driver/occupant of a vehicle in case the vehicle flips over).