John Ingraham

John Ingraham writes from Bouquet New York.

The essay about Rebecca West by Jigs Gardner in the last issue helped me to understand the current confusion about the best course for the conservative movement, confusion manifest in the profusion of articles in what might be called the "Whither?" series. Conservatives are all at sea because they are thinking politically, when what confronts them is a cultural phenomenon. Romantic Utopianism, the animating faith of lefty Democrats, seized the heights of our culture before it was politically victorious in 2008. Politics in a democracy is about contingency and compromise and incrementalism, but a cultural faith like Romantic Utopianism is absolute. Which is why the administration expects the announcement of a plan to be followed immediately by its approval, and also why it is so enraged and frustrated by opposition.

Conservatives tend, when they think about politics, to confine their thoughts solely to that sphere, but lefties, moved by utopian fantasies of the 1960s and 1970s, always combine politics with culture. Remember that they undertook the "long march through the institutions," and in forty years transformed all levels of education, from kindergarten to university, spreading their poisonous ideas into every nook and cranny of American life. Think of the teaching of American history and what it has done to a generation. A graduate student in his early twenties told me that soldiers in our Civil War committed much worse atrocities than the Japanese in the Bataan Death March, and that the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the ultimate war crime that began the ongoing U.S. career of war and oppression. He learned all that in school. Who do you think he voted for?

The cultural areas that Romantic Utopians have made their own are: education, the environment, race, and morality. They have done this by setting up all kinds of organizations, local, state, regional, and national to advance their interest, and they have worked consciously and deliberately. These organizations have been focused on specific issues, of course, but implicitly and often explicitly they have carried the message that this is part of the struggle for a better world.

As for conservatives, the only cultural issue in which they have been prominent is the abortion debate, and the conservative content of their participation has not been stressed. In other cultural areas, however, conservatives as conservatives have been absent. I am sure that individuals who are conservatives have supported vouchers and charter schools and merit pay for teachers and textbook revision, to list some educational issues, but so far as I know, no avowedly conservative organizations have been formed to advance the struggles. The same is true of Ward Connerly's efforts to dismantle racial preferences. And what conservative organizations are fighting same-sex marriage? The conservative record on Greenism is especially disheartening, perhaps because they think of farming and forestry and land use as "countryside" issues, far from their focus on Washington. For instance, conservatives as a group had nothing to say about the Endangered Species Act and its use to wreck the forest industry in the northwest, or its ongoing use to restrict and cripple farming and grazing in the West, not to speak of mining and oil and gas extraction. The people affected are ordinary Americans, and they are desperate for help, but although some individual conservatives may be sympathetic, conservatism as a movement ignores them. And then there is cap and trade legislation, which conservatives oppose on economic grounds, ignoring its wholly mythical foundation, manmade global warming. After all, National Review, the flagship conservative magazine, publishes articles asserting its truth!

The point is that conservatives should openly engage themselves in all these struggles, should create fighting organizations for the purpose, not only because they care, as individuals, about our culture, but because they will then reap substantial political rewards. Think of this: Reaganism did not last much longer than Reagan's presidency (look where we are today) because it was almost exclusively political, did not transform the culture, and it did not try to. *

"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin

Ed Morrissey

Ed Morrissey is one the nation's preeminent bloggers, frequently cited by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. Ed Morrissey writes posts everyday at http://hotair.com/. This post is republished with permission.

After writing several posts about the lack of constitutional authority of Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance or face fines and imprisonment, I assumed people understood the nature of the argument. Kathy Kattenburg's response to my post yesterday on the topic demonstrates that we need to make this point a little more clearly. She links back to another blogger offering a strawman argument that appears to confuse Kathy:

I am particularly perplexed/annoyed by the conservative assumption that unless explicit text directly authorizes a legislative enactment, then Congress necessarily lacks the power to pass the law. This is an extraordinarily foolish and unsupportable view of the Constitution. The Constitution is written in general terms; only a few provisions define individual rights and governmental powers with precision. To make this point more concrete, I quote from a previous essay on the subject:

It is absolutely absurd to ask whether the constitution specifically or explicitly allows Congress to regulate or reform healthcare. The Constitution speaks broadly and ambiguously. Only a few provisions are specific and beyond dispute (like the age requirement for presidents and members of Congress).

The Constitution does not specifically or explicitly authorize the creation of the Air Force or Medicare, nor does it discuss the federal prosecution of crack cocaine possession. And the "Framers" certainly did not specifically contemplate airplanes, prescription drug and hospital plans for seniors, or crack cocaine because these things were not realities when they wrote the Constitution.

If conservatives only believe Congress can regulate things that are explicitly mentioned in the actual text of the Constitution, then they should essentially advocate the abolition of the federal government. At a minimum, they should seek the immediate repeal of laws banning partial-birth abortion and kidnapping; the Constitution does not mention children or abortion.

Also, as many students of high school and college civics classes know, Article I of the Constitution contains the "necessary and proper" clause, which endows Congress with unenumerated powers that are needed to carry out its expressly delegated powers. In the very first case interpreting this provision (McCulloch v. Maryland), the Supreme Court rejected the narrow interpretation offered by anti-federalists.

Well, our argument has never been that Congress cannot pass laws, or that Congress cannot pass laws without some absurdly specific mention in the Constitution. Quite obviously, Congress has the power to pass laws to carry out its expressly assigned powers. They've been doing that for over 200 years, and no one except anarchists challenges that legitimacy.

The argument here seems to be that since the Constitution doesn't specifically grant authority to create an Air Force, we conservatives must consider it illegal. While it's true that the Constitution gives specific authority to maintain an army and a navy, the Air Force falls specifically within the purview of Article 1. Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States[.]

The entirely silly idea that the Air Force is illegal under a strict constructionist concept is laughable on its face. Of course an Air Force provides for the "common defense and general welfare of the United States," as does the Coast Guard, Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, and so on. The key is that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress that jurisdiction.

The question is whether forcing people to buy health insurance falls within that authority. That is, after all, what an individual mandate means. People who do not buy health insurance will get fined thousands of dollars, and could go to prison if they refuse to pay the fines. Unfortunately, the example offered here as precedent is almost as absurd as the Air Force analogy above. Medicare is a more controversial program for strict constructionists, but that's actually beside the point.

I'll allow for the sake of argument that the government has a several-decades-old precedent for establishing government delivery of medical care, but Medicare and Medicaid are entirely voluntary. No American citizen is forced to accept Medicare or Medicaid, as anyone arguing on behalf of the "47 million uninsured Americans" should know. Several million of the uninsured are people with eligibility in one of these federal programs who have declined to enter them.

So I'll ask again: What authority does Congress have to mandate that people buy a product? What precedent do they have to threaten people with imprisonment if they don't buy a product merely for existing, as opposed to a prerequisite for accessing public roads as with car insurance? The reason why Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) refuse to answer those questions is because they don't have an answer to them.

A few brave souls will argue that the "general welfare" clause means that Congress can mandate anything that they see as beneficial, but that misreads the word general -- which meant the welfare of the nation as a whole, not a responsibility to make each individual citizen's life choices for them. The opposite reading would have made Congress a totalitarian monster, with the executive as its hatchetman, and the Founders would have scoffed at such an interpretation.

The Constitution exists to limit the power of government and each branch, reserving most of the power to the states or to the people. Claiming that Congress has the power to dictate that we must buy into health insurance by claiming that all that is possible must therefore be mandatory is arguing that Congress has a dictatorial, unlimited power over every aspect of our lives. *

Thus every blogger, in his kind/Is bit by him that comes behind . . .

The lines above are adapted from Jonathan Swift, who wrote:

So, naturalists observe, a flea/Hath other fleas which on him prey/And these have smaller still to bite 'em/and so proceed ad infinitum/Thus every poet, in his kind/Is bit by him who comes behind.

Chuck Blahous

This article originally appeared in National Review. Chuck Blahous, who is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, gave his permission to republish this article.

"When something is unsustainable," so goes the aphorism, "it tends to stop." Usually invoked about tangible phenomena, the old saw is equally true about unsustainable arguments. If a conception is unsustainable in the face of overwhelming evidence, it must die. Sometimes it dies with a whimper, sometimes with a bang.

In recent years a fashionable myth took hold on the left end of the American political spectrum: the myth of overly conservative Social Security projections. Social Security didn't really face a shortfall, it was said in these quarters. The supposed threats to the system amounted to a "manufactured crisis," based on faulty projections of the Social Security trustees, hyped by conservatives (and their enablers in the scorekeeping agencies) who wanted to destroy the treasured program.

The myth is exploding into pieces before our eyes, done in by evidence that can no longer be brushed aside. Yet such was its power that it continued to be invoked even as Social Security's projected near-term surpluses were disappearing. While some were renewing their efforts to deny the coming Social Security shortfall, the Congressional Budget Office was quietly providing updated projections for congressional staff. The new numbers showed that the FY2010 Social Security surplus would be almost wholly eliminated: a mere $3 billion, a pale shadow of the trustees' projection, last year, of $88 billion.

To the extent that things are turning out far worse than the trustees previously envisioned (to say nothing of the persistently more optimistic CBO, whose projections we will discuss later), this was primarily due to factors that no one could precisely have foreseen. Social Security this year faced the programmatic equivalent of a perfect storm: the recession depressed payroll-tax revenues at the same time that Baby Boomer benefit claims were surging, and the program was paying out its largest cost-of-living increase (5.8 percent) since 1982.

Even before the recent downturn, however, the myth was groundless and should never have gained traction. Those who bothered to look could see that there was never a plausible chance that the projected shortfall would vanish. The myth was sustained by various fallacies. Among them were:

Conflation of aggregate and per capita growth. The "National Jobs for All Coalition," in a typical example of this mistake, recently stated that the Social Security projections:

. . . assume that in years to come real GDP will grow much more slowly than it has over the past century or more, when it has averaged around 3.2 percent per year.

The implication -- indeed, often the overt statement -- of this line of argument is that without this inexplicable projection of a growth slowdown, the problem would be much smaller.

But total growth depends on a number of factors, and some of those factors are changing. The Social Security projections were not arbitrarily assuming a decline in productivity growth per worker -- they were taking into account a very realistic projection of a decline in the number of workers added to the labor force every year, as the Baby Boomers head into retirement. From 1963 to 1990, annual labor-force growth was never lower than 1.2 percent, and reached as high as 3.3 percent. Now, net labor-force growth is expected to drop to 0.5 percent by the end of the next decade and stay there.

If the workforce grows by less than one-third the rate it used to, we can quite reasonably expect the economy to grow more slowly as well. This demographic reality was glossed over by some, to create the misimpression of arbitrarily conservative future economic assumptions.

Overstatement of the relative impact of economic growth. In a closely related example, a recent Market Watch column titled "Why Social Security Isn't Going Broke" stated:

The actuaries' own low-cost projection assumes an average annual growth rate of 2.9 percent between now and 2085. . . . Guess what? Under the actuaries' low-cost projection, the Social Security system never runs out of money!

This rather makes it sound as though faster growth by itself will eradicate the problem, doesn't it? But this "low-cost" projection of the trustees isn't only about faster economic growth. Rather, it's a hypothetical illustration of what could happen if virtually every variable improbably breaks in the direction of a smaller Social Security deficit. The "low-cost projection" assumes that fertility rates permanently return to levels not seen since the 1970s. It assumes that longevity grows less over the next 75 years than it has over the past 30. It assumes that inflation after 2010 never rises above 1.8 percent. And so on. The scenario is a compendium of every rosy outcome (from a fiscal perspective) that one can dream up. It is, in short, not plausible.

Misrepresentation of the projection record of the Social Security trustees. Another longstanding myth is that the trustees' past projections have proven too conservative. In a typical statement from a 2005 budget hearing:

They [the trustees] have been wrong because they have consistently understated economic growth. I believe, in all likelihood, they are wrong again.

This allegation has developed in direct contradiction of the facts. As I pointed out in a 2007 paper, the trustees' projection record since the last major reforms is one of impressive accuracy, although they have been slightly too aggressive -- that is, they have, to date, somewhat overstated the program's fiscal health.

The myth of excess past conservatism has been fed by cherry-picked references to the few, unrepresentative trustees' reports that were in fact too conservative: those of the mid-1990s, made just before an unexpected surge in economic growth, caught all government forecasters (not only the trustees) by surprise.

Amazingly, if the CBO's projections are off by a mere $3 billion and the program enters cash deficits next year, the deficit date will have arrived sooner than predicted in every single trustee's report since the 1983 reforms. In other words, not a single projection over all that time will have been conservative enough. If the projectionst critics haven't been 180 degrees off of empirical reality, they've been 179.9.

The acceleration of Social Security's difficulties is leaving egg on many a face -- not only those of the most vocal problem deniers, but on those of other forecasters as well. Just last year, CBO, on the eve of this sudden downturn, inexplicably revised the long-term Social Security assumptions to be more optimistic. CBO's projection changes were mysterious at the time, and look startlingly ill-timed now. One assumption they made was that 2001/03 tax policies would expire, along with relief from the AMT, and that federal income-tax collections would be allowed to grow to exceed permanently the historic highs. However defensible as a literal application of "current law" in the near term, no responsible agency should have adopted such an implausible basis for low balling, in its communications to legislators, the estimated size of the long-term shortfall.

Even stranger was CBO's sudden decision to increase its long-term real-wage growth assumptions to 1.4 percent annually -- more than 50 percent higher than the historical average over the last 40 years. This put CBO's latest estimate near the faulty 1983 assumption of 1.5 percent, which proved to be far too aggressive. CBO's change was never adequately explained, and its implementation on the eve of current economic difficulties has turned out to be a masterpiece of mistiming.

Whatever the explanations for these various missteps, one thing is now clear: Not only have the trustees' projections not been too conservative, we now face a bigger problem even than previously projected. The refutation of the mythmakers has arrived in the form of an economic crisis that will exact a heavy price from all of us, including those who saw the problem coming, these who denied it, and those who were innocently oblivious. People from every camp will need to work together to fix the problem that now faces us. Reality can sometimes be an unforgiving teacher. Let's hope that enough of her pupils learn and respond. *

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison

David J. Bean

David J. Bean is a freelance writer living in California.

Sometimes old books can reflect attitudes and emotions that are being repeated in spite of the lessons that should have been learned the first go-around. Specifically, a review of Nathaniel W. Sephenson's little book Abraham Lincoln and the Union published in 1918 reveals a remarkable similarity in political discussion during the 1850s and the political volatility of the present day. Of course we don't have slavery as an issue today but the division, the hardened positions, and the outright hate exhibited between the Right and the Left today is certainly reminiscent of what Lincoln faced.

The book starts out with a quote:

There is really no Union now between the North and the South. No two nations upon earth entertain feelings of bitterer rancor toward each other than these two nations of the Republic.

This remark is attributed to Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, and provides the key to American politics in the decade following the Compromise of 1850. If you substitute Liberal and Conservative or Right and Left for North and South, doesn't this quote sound like it would be applicable to the political situation today? Lincoln's answer was that he did not believe that the nation could survive half slave and half free. Can our society survive half hard Left and half hard Right? That question is not as frivolous as it first appears.

In the 1850s there was a process of natural selection at work, in the intellectual and economic conditions, which inevitably drew together certain types and generated certain forces. As early as the opening of the 19th century the social tendencies of the two regions were already so far alienated that they involved differences that could hardly admit to reconciliation. It would be fallacious, however, to say that this growing antagonism was (or is) controlled by any deliberate purpose in either part of the country. Then, it was apparently necessary that this republic in its evolution should proceed from confederation to nationality through an intermediate, reactionary period of sectionalism. Slavery of course, was the primary issue but sectional consciousness, including state sovereignty, with all its emotional and psychological implications, was also part of the fundamental impulse for the terrible events that occurred between 1850 and 1865.

In the middle of the 19th century the more influential Southerners had come generally to regard their section of the country as a distinct social unit. The South strove to perpetuate a social system that was fundamentally aristocratic while the North sought to foster its ideal of a more pure democracy. The next step was inevitable. The South began to regard itself as a separate political unit. Aren't those divisions similar to the conditions that have produced the bitter divisions we have today between the Right and the Left? The collectivist tendencies of the urban people on both coasts make them more liberal and more socialistally inclined than the more independent and individualist-minded people of the South and West. And the fact that the hard Left is imbedded in the more popular Democratic Party gives them power that their actual percentage would not normally enjoy. While polls show that most conservative positions are popular with average Americans, when it comes to voting, the people more often follow the Democratic crowd. The two opposite positions have hardened to the point where both parties are confronted with "single issue voters" that make compromise or even intelligent dialog difficult. The Liberals have been a bit shrewder, and practical in this regard admitting senators like Specter and Lieberman while the conservatives adhere much more closely to their various policies within what is considered the conservative movement.

Indeed, realization of the basic differences between the Left and the Right are still being defined by some prominent writers. Peggy Noonan in a recent Wall St. Journal column admitted she was impressed by observing the Democrats at the recent Edward Kennedy funeral. She stated that

. . . pretty much the whole democratic establishment was there and the level of shown affection among them was striking -- laughing, hugging, and telling stories.

She speculated that if it had been a gathering of Republicans it would have been less emotional with little shown affection; polite laughter, cordial handshakes, a lot of staring ahead would have been the standard. People in this group do not necessarily like each other; they compete and they don't feel that they need to fake liking each other. To this group politics is not about emotions, but thoughts and ideals.

The "single issue" people on the conservative side would include the libertarians, who are not always in sync with main-stream conservatives; the security conservatives who are sometimes at odds with the isolationists; the neo-conservatives who are mostly 1950 liberals who crossed over mainly on security issues; and the social conservatives who are labeled by the Left as the religious right. The conservatives do not have any central organization that is powerful enough to hold these groups together.

Today the Democratic Party still generally exhibits the impression that they are unified with "Blue Dogs" and Liberals under one roof. In reality, with the hard Left in key positions, the Left has control over their majorities and with this power have just about converted our republic into a pure democracy, with all the negative aspects. For example, today, only popular minorities are protected. Unpopular minorities like churchgoers, gun owners, smokers, or "the rich" are fair game for any punishing legislation. A pure democracy soon works against any unpopular minority. Even though some dissention is found today among workers who wouldn't normally be considered for the roll, as our labor workers became more well-to-do over the years they became a significant part of the middle class minority. As such, they have become targets of the tax and spend crowd and need to realize that their economic health is in severe jeopardy. They need to re-think their voting inclinations.

We as a people have come to recognize that men have always misapprehended themselves, contradicted themselves, obeyed primal impulses and then defended themselves with sophistications. Unaware of what they are doing, men allow this aesthetic and dramatic sense to grow and shape their conceptions of their own lives. Their political positions become almost as imbedded as a religion. True as this is of man individually, it is even more fundamentally true of man collectively, and of parties of peoples. As in the pre-Civil War era, the current fundamental divisions have grown to where they are just about irreconcilable. As then and now, both sides feel that their ideals are at risk and that on each side a whole social system is at stake. The liberals identify themselves in their imaginations with all of mankind and would throw open the gates of the nation to share the wealth of America with the poor of the world while the conservatives try to preserve what we have.

Thus, we Americans face a dilemma. Is there no rational solution that would adjust the two viewpoints? Politics is the "art of compromise" or as some say, "the art of the possible." Have we elected enough intelligent politicians to work these problems out? Are we too far into the change from a republic to a pure democracy to ever recover? One thing is sure: we will never be as we were, for history proves to us that we cannot go backwards. This means that conservatives are at a disadvantage because their goal of going back to a saner era is simply not attainable. Unfortunately, even during periods when the Republicans were in control, the overall general government movement was a drift toward the Left and bigger government. In any negotiation or compromise the Right can only hope to shorten the lunge to the Left.

However, ultimately, if our society is to survive, both sides are going to have to find a position they each can accept even though it will be a bitter pill for most and will not be a true victory for either side. The politicians will have to make the new positions whatever they are, acceptable to a majority of the people and we, the people, on both sides must reduce the number of our "single issue" positions. Even some on the Left have begun to question the status quo: In a recent Los Angeles Times column, hard Left columnist Steve Lopez stated, ". . . this cultural divide is destroying America and maybe we all need to understand each other a little better." Of course he then went on to quote a few marginal people that even Republicans would call "fringe."

We must be on our guard, however, against ascribing to either side too precise a conciseness of its own motives. We are prone to forget that we act from subconsciousness quite as often as from conscious influences, from motives that arise out of the dim parts of our being; subtler emotions that make use of fear, intuition, prevailing habit, and illusion. This is strikingly true of the two hard political positions today. Neither side fully understands the other. Both sides know vaguely, but with sure instinct, that their interests and ideals are basically irreconcilable. Each feels in its heart the deadly poison of self-preservation: the whole social system is at stake.

People on the Right have a few courses to pursue that can make a difference. The pending large tax increases resulting from the recent spending hurricane is one where conservatives have an advantage. The health debate is another arena where the Left has probably overstepped itself. So even though a total win may not be possible there is still the chance for thinking people to alter the course toward the Left that the press labels "progressive." Conservatives must find a way to integrate their various factions and provide a clear, integrated position to the voters. This will require giving up the self-destructive "single issue" positions and require more tolerance and understanding of their various factions. *

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." --John Adams

Murray Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum holds the Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professorship at Washington University, where he also serves as honorary chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.

Historians tell us that every age is a time of transition. The present is no exception. Since January 2009, President Obama has initiated many policy changes which are shifting the balance of power between the public sector and the private sector and especially from business to government. However, you do not have to be a professional historian to recall that quite a few of these changes began in the administration of George W. Bush.

When we reflect on the broad sweep of American history, we see many earlier periods of transition, especially in the 19th century. But let us briefly turn to the 20th century. For example, many people think about the presidency of Herbert Hoover as a period of reaction or inaction. However, on balance, Hoover's term of office was a far greater move toward bigger government than the nation had experienced under his predecessor Calvin Coolidge. In fact, some of the major New Deal agencies that flourished under Hoover's successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had their origin in the policies of his Republican predecessor. This was the case especially in the housing and farm credit areas.

Clearly, the Obama Administration has embarked upon an unusually ambitious array of expansions of government responsibility and expenditure. Some of them, however, were initiated under the previous president. Much of the bailout of financial institutions was authorized by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. That law authorized TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program and its subsidiary, the Automotive Industry Financing Program.

Nevertheless, since inauguration day (January 20, 2009), the trend toward increasing the power of government has accelerated. The $787 billion stimulus bill (technically, the American Recovery and Investment Act) was passed in early 2009. Also, early 2009 saw the enactment of the new credit card control law and the Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. In addition, several major proposals passed the House of Representatives in mid-2009, notably the climate change legislation and the bill that would control top management compensation in American businesses generally.

We can get some understanding of the general attitude of the new Obama team by reading what they say since taking office. For example, the new Secretary of the Interior introduced his budget request with the following ringing statement: "Together, we will change the world as we oversee the Department of the Interior's responsibilities across all 50 states, the territories, and oceans." That was not an off-the-cuff comment, but a republishing of an earlier speech that he gave.

The new assistant attorney general for antitrust stated that "antitrust authorities [are] key members of the government's economic recovery team. . . . Antitrust must be among the frontline issues in the government's broader response to the distressed economy." Apparently, companies aren't being sued often enough. To be fair, bureaucratic imperialism is of long standing -- and quite bipartisan.

Unprecedented expansions in the scope of the federal government's activities are contained in the White House proposals for new regulation of financial institutions and of labor relations, for increased tax burdens on international trade and investment and on business generally and, of course, for a greater government role in health care.

I am not presenting this information as a value judgment. Personally, I believe that it is far too soon to evaluate the results of President Obama's economic program. As you would expect, any serious observer sees pluses and minuses and I will be doing just that in a moment.

Right now, I believe that it is useful to acknowledge that there is considerable controversy on the part of the public toward many of these new initiatives. We recently have witnessed very vocal complaints on the part of people who think the administration is doing too much in terms of expanding the role of government in our society.

Although they are not quite as vocal, nevertheless, some of the strongest supporters of Barack Obama during his long campaign for the presidency believe that he is being too cautious and should be doing more and doing it more quickly. We should recall, however, that virtually every president since George Washington has experienced variations of both kinds of public reaction -- positive and negative -- and simultaneously.

In my view there is an element of accuracy in each of these two types of responses at the present time. But they are not mirror images of each other. Rather, I find it useful to look at the short-term results of the new administration's actions and policies -- and then examine the long-term implications.

In the short run, the United States seems to be coming out of the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The early part of an economic upturn is increasingly becoming visible. Consumer sentiment is improving; retail sales are up; the decline in housing seems to be leveling off; banks are starting to extend credit again.

Deflation is no longer a major concern and inflation is and interest rates are staying very low. Many economic forecasters, and I am one of them, believe that the U.S. economy hit bottom in the middle of this year and that we are now growing again in terms of the total amount of goods and services being produced in the United States. That is what we call the gross domestic product.

However, this is no rosy scenario that I am describing. Unemployment is in the neighborhood of 10 percent and that is painfully high. Yet a year from now the continued growth of the economy should be generating a substantial number of new jobs, enough to bring the unemployment rate down. That is the good news in the economic outlook.

Unfortunately, when I look beyond the coming year, I become less optimistic. That is when the rapid expansion of government spending and the resultant budget deficits will be generating some adverse economic effects. Financing unprecedentedly large budget deficits will mean pulling out of the private sector much of the capital needed to finance the creation of new companies, new products, and new jobs.

That is the downside of the expansion taking place in the American public sector. Despite some of the soothing rhetoric to the contrary, business is at the receiving end of unfriendly developments in both high policy and detailed procedure. The changes and the administration's proposals for future action range from a renewed emphasis in antitrust prosecution to increased taxation of those who do the saving and investment and to impending expansion of regulation, ranging from financial institutions to ordinary businesses.

The cumulative effect of this new trend will not be dramatic but will be felt over the years. American companies will experience a much weaker expansion in new capital investment and thus in overall sales and earnings growth than in the previous decade. At the same time, new protectionist policies will make it more difficult for American firms to compete in the global marketplace.

Sooner or later, the United States is going to be hard-pressed to sell all of the new Treasury securities that will be necessary to finance rapidly rising budget deficits. The likely response of paying higher interest rates will have a further dampening effect on our economy.

To some extent decision makers in Washington may have second thoughts and begin to take account of the undesirable side effects of the Obama economic program. Thus, many of the ambitious proposals from the White House may be watered down by Congress or even deferred to a later time. The economic results of Obamanomics may be less pessimistic than I have just sketched out.

In any event, economic developments are always full of surprises. *

"[In] this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." --Benjamin Franklin

Robert M. Thornton

Robert M. Thornton writes from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

I have been reading about education in the United States for over fifty years and have published a few modest essays on the subject but I have never asked a teacher to tell me what goes on "in the trenches."

My friend is in her fifties and teaches fifth grade in a midsize Southern city where she lives with her husband and daughter. She has about twenty years teaching experience and has earned a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree. I shall call her S. P.

S. P. loves teaching and has since she was a little girl "playing school." She wants to be a positive influence on children's lives:

The possibility that I've instilled in them the notion that they are capable of learning anything is an awesome experience. To see a child's eyes light up when they have that "light bulb" moment is indescribable.

S. P. loves what she does and would probably continue to love it even if she had to leave because of the stress. The thought is sad to her but one consolation is that she will know she fought the good fight and did her best for the children.

What is so frustrating that a woman who loves teaching might leave the profession? Well, the pay is low; many teachers take work home to do on their own time; recognition and appreciation are almost nil; some have to eat lunch with the kids because they require supervision; some only get a twenty-minute break from duties all day. All of these are frustrating but there is more to it than that!

Imagine being a teacher and beginning a day facing not youngsters eager to learn -- or at least willing -- but bored looking kids with:

. . . elbow on desk, head resting on hand; both arms laying on desk, chin laying on arms; legs stretched out, butt on edge of chair; sitting sideways on a chair; or leaning chair back on two legs.

Their appearance may be described as "aggressively unkempt: and their attitude a challenge to 'teach me if you can.'" Neither is conducive to learning.

The kids "talk back," don't do what they are told the first time or the second or third, and pretend they don't hear you talking to them. When told to stop arguing with another pupil, they look away. They use foul language and write sexually explicit notes -- in the fifth grade.

The parents of S. P.'s pupils fail to check their children's homework and let them stay up late watching questionable television, so they try to nap in class. Parents avoid meeting with the teacher to discuss problems with their children. In earlier times parents backed up the teachers, but not anymore. Nowadays they treat teachers as the enemy rather than supporting them. They tell their kids to watch teachers closely and tell them if they "slip up" in any way. When there is a meeting of teacher, parent, and child in the principal's office, the parent sides with the child and gets angry with the teacher and the principal.

Teachers must also face the threat of parental complaints being taken to the school board or the filing of a lawsuit. If that happens, they have to go on administrative leave until the matter is investigated and they are cleared. Nothing holds the parent accountable for unfounded allegations.

Principals do not give you unconditional support because they try so hard to be diplomatic and keep everybody happy. In earlier times punishment for breaking rules was swift. Nowadays students have less fear of going to the principal's office because they know that not much will be done. They will maybe get a suspension which means the pupil gets to stay home for a couple of days.

The procedure to expel the very bad kids is a long and complicated process. Under the present system the pupil can behave very badly every year and get by with it because in S. P.'s school system the child's behavior records do not continue into the next grade. The process starts all over again every school year.

S. P. is shocked at the incompetence of new teachers who don't understand the curriculum well enough to teach it. From what I have read this is not surprising. The brightest young students are not interested in the teaching profession because they are discomfited by the education courses required for certification. They see the "methods" taught are mere words spinning, and the subjects are the last concern of education. S. P. herself wanted to get a Master's Degree because with it came a substantial increase in salary. Instead of taking courses on the subjects she teaches, she had to endure such brain-numbing ones as Teaching Reading with Children, Principles of Teaching and Curriculum, Problems in Elementary Education, and Curriculum Integration of Technology.

Jacques Barzun wrote that training has been done by people unfitted for the job because they have no interest in learning. Rather they are bent not on instruction but on social work.

They care little about history or science or good English but they grow keen about any scheme of betterment; one recent proposal is to teach the importance of washing the hands.

Teachers should be concerned with reading and writing skills, history, science, and math, and literature, and not try to be "social workers, baby-sitters, policemen, diagnosticians, drug counselors, or psychotherapists."

In his recent book, George Will wrote that the "Surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be to close all the schools of education."

Arthur Bestor said the issue is between those who believe good teaching should be directed to sound intellectual ends instead of cultivating techniques of teaching in an intellectual and cultural vacuum. He insisted that "No professional man or woman has greater need than the elementary school teacher to cultivate mature intellectual interests."

Thanks to the Federal "No Child Left Behind Act" a testing craze is upon us. At S. P.'s school they test for reading, math, and science but not history and civics. Since "what gets tested is what gets taught" many grade school pupils are not proficient in history. One scholar warned that standardized testing has swelled and mutated to the point where it threatens to swallow our schools whole. School districts "have made higher scores the highest good in their work." Tricks "can be used to pump up scores in the short run, a good number of them worthless distractions from real education." This can be bad because "they represent the triumph of short-term thinking over long-term thinking."

"Because the modern world lives by machine industry," Barzun wrote, "it favors the mechanical in all things, whether all benefit from it or not." In schools this takes the form of multiple-choice tests and "their obvious convenience has concealed a series of harmful side effects." One is that with printed tests "students do not write as often as they once did." The consequence is a "writing problem" because good writing comes only with frequent practice. Multiple-choice tests do positive harm, declared Barzun:

. . . because the so-called objective question does not call for active usable knowledge; it calls only for single-fact recognition; knowing something means the power to summon up facts out of the blue and their significance in the right relation.

Mechanical testing does not foster this power. The basic defect of multiple-choice tests, wrote Barzun, is "that they call for choices but not for reasons for choices. Defective test questions tend to turn multiple-choice tests into lotteries."

In the craze for testing we have forgotten the observation that:

. . . all psychologists and many mental testers know that the best indication of a child's ability in regard to school work should be his progress in school work.

Most are agreed that our public school system is badly in need of repair but about the only thing suggested is to form organizations. Rufus Jones observed that:

We select officials. We make motions. We hold endless conferences. We issue propaganda material. We have street processions. We use placards and billboards. We found institutions and devise machinery.

Jacques Barzun has remarked on the staggering number of councils, centers, and associations busy about reforming the schools.

Other parents and concerned persons have followed other paths to reform. The number of councils, centers, and associations busied about the public schools is staggering. They hold forums, raise money, and keep publicizing their work. The amount of energy and goodwill expended is praiseworthy, but on the evidence the results at best are puny and local. One cause is the national mania for studies and reports and the passion for debating lists of "goals and guidelines." Education is a topic that encourages verbalism when what is needed is material help dedicated to action -- to teaching and its optimum environment.

It would be wise for teachers, parents, and administrators to refrain from routine pieties and enthusiasms, from promises and slogans of the kind we hear from advertisers and candidates for office such as "The Right to Read," "Teach America," and "Goals 2000." Educators and parents should seek satisfaction in each day's conscientious work, rather than the empty abstractions such as "Excellence" and "Innovation." As Albert Jay Nock remarked:

All the progress in civilization that society has ever made has been brought about, not by machinery, not by political programs, platforms, parties, not even by revolutions, but by right thinking.

Some "right thinking" about our schools should convince us that Walter Williams was right when he declared that "Without a civilized learning environment, academic excellence is impossible no matter how much money is spent."

It is a scandal that so little is said about the violence in public schools. Why is it tolerated? One answer is that our compulsory education system forces young people to stay in school even though they are not interested in book knowledge or they are not bright enough to learn more than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Let these kids leave school and get jobs or attend a vocational school instead of being troublemakers in the classroom. Empower teachers and principals to punish those who misbehave.

Charles Murray declared there is no excuse for schools in which competent teachers have to endure misbehavior in their classrooms. We "must give a safe and orderly classroom to every student who is trying to learn, no matter what." S. P. states forcefully that students who "are guilty of violent behavior should be expelled and not allowed to return."

Unfortunately S. P.'s school was not overly concerned about maintaining discipline in the classroom when the principal told the teachers out-of-school suspensions would be cut back so their attendance rating would improve.

Several years ago, George Roche observed that:

. . . many parents have been unwilling to assume primary responsibility for their offspring. It is true that the modern school has tended to assume functions for which it was ill-suited, thus becoming a poor substitute for the parent, but the primary blame must rest with the negligence of many parents. Parental responsibility does not rule out the importance of the teacher. The dedicated teacher, who has mastered himself and who would spend his life in helping the young to master their lives, is engaged in one of the highest callings. Without such men and women, the school as an extension of parental responsibility would be impossible. In fact, it has been the devotion to duty of many teachers and administrators that has enabled our educational system to keep operating successfully, despite bureaucratic rigidity and parental flight from responsibility. Still, the good teacher is fighting a losing fight unless the home enforces the discipline and standards necessary to support the learning experience of the classroom.

Mortimer Smith believes

. . . modern teachers are a little frightened by the word "discipline" because of the harshness in earlier times when children were beaten. They should take a moderate view and think of discipline as something to be imposed with enlightened and patient common sense. Discipline is not an adult conspiracy against children; it is a response adults owe to children.

Bernard Iddings Bell wrote that parents should firmly but lovingly discipline their children. Instead:

. . . the parents dump their progeny at the feet of the schoolmaster and schoolmistress and say, "Here, we have no time to bring these youngsters up, nor have we any stomach for the job. You take them over, as totally as possible, and do what we will not do for our own. Train them in character; that is what you get paid for."

And some teachers with a "puffed up sense of imagined omnipotence" try to do their own difficult work and the work of parents. S. P. knows better. She says:

. . . to have to teach them reading, math, spelling, language, science, and social studies along with respect, manners, conflict resolution, anger control, accountability, and so on is just too much.

Robert M. Hutchins agreed. He declared that:

Education cannot do everything. It cannot do everything equally well. It cannot do some things as well as other social institutions can do them or could do them if these institutions were forced to discharge their responsibilities instead of leaving the educational system to struggle along with them by default.

It is time for teachers to tell parents:

If you want your children to learn to read, to spell, to count, then send them to us prepared to do so. We're only responsible for their learning. Your child is impeding the educational progress of others. You as the parents are responsible.

That puts the onus back on parents for their kid's behavior.

B. I. Bell wrote that teachers would be wise if they said to parents:

We refuse to take on ourselves responsibility for the character development of your children. We shall do our bit by them, but you must give them the more important part of that training in your own homes. If because of community maladjustments you can no longer do this, then rectify the social wrongs; do not push off the malformed and stunted youngsters on us and then blame us for their deficiencies. If you can do your job and will not, let the responsibility for what your boys and girls turn out to be rest where it belongs -- on your own heads, not on ours. If as seems not unlikely, our civilization comes to ruin because the oncoming generation lacks character, that will be too bad; but if it happens, know this: we will not take the blame. *

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

Angus MacDonald -- Editorial

Of all the animals on earth, man is the most intelligent and the most uncivilized.

Many people are civilized, but they do not make the news. The local news every night contains improper behavior.

When two people on TV are asked to state their opinions, the conversation is heated and ill-mannered, with one interrupting the other and trying to prevent the other from making a case.

But this is the pattern of life. Workers organize to demand the employer do the wish of the workers, and the company becomes bankrupt. Toyota comes to the U.S. and prevents unions from taking over. They produce better cars with happier workers. General Motors is bankrupt and may go out of business, and the workers will blame the company.

Unions achieve only a temporary advantage because their demands increase cost and inflation. Others pay for what they demand, and the cycle spreads over society.

Politicians get elected by promising citizens money, and we have built a system of benefits that we cannot afford and that will lead to bankruptcy. Cultures die, and so will ours. That is the lesson of history.

If I were a dictator I would abolish unions but insist that companies share profits with the workers. Workers would be interested in their product and would do their best. They would be partners in success for themselves and the community. Their lives would be civilized as they renounced warfare.

Though the majority of all countries are decent people, they are swept away and accept dictators because in present circumstances the worst elements come to the top and prevent civilized discourse.

Countries collapse, which is historic fact. And they all collapse because of greed. The poor attack the wealthy, who are maligned. *

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison

Some of the quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.

The following is a summary of the October 2009 issue of the St. Croix Review:

In the editorial, "Words to Note," Barry MacDonald uses quotations from the President and Democrats, made in unguarded moments, that reveal their intent to impose government-run health care on an unsuspecting public.

Mark Hendrickson, in "The Healthcare Reform Fiasco," writes that President Obama is still grasping for as much control as possible; in "The Nuts and Bolts of Cap and Trade," he shows why cap and trade legislation should be called the "Raise the Cost of Living and Ship Jobs Overseas Act of 2009"; in "Remembering July 20, 1969," he reviews all the historical events that led to the moon landing, and considers whether, after all, these marvelous events mislead us into putting too much trust in government, and not enough trust in a merciful God; in "Detroit: A Glimpse Into America's Future?" he writes that Detroit suffers from "government disease," the redistribution of wealth to political allies and the neglect of primary duties (defense of life and property); in "The U.S. Constitution: Living, Breathing Document or Dead Letter?" he shows how we have become governed by "partial, subjective and capricious men and women."

Herbert London, in "Healthcare Reform and Personal Freedom," considers how a bureaucrat using Obamacare guidelines would ration care; in "The Crisis Syndrome," he notes that the President's practice of pronouncing every problem a "crisis" is a tactic that could backfire; in "Fatah Speaks," he describes the Obama administration's approach: apply pressure to Israel and ignore the blood-thirsty pronouncements of the Palestinians; in "Cronkite Revisited," he provides a contrary view of the celebrated newsman.

Allan Brownfeld in "Is It Irrational to Be Concerned about the Plight of the Elderly and Disabled under a Rationed Health-Care System?" writes that the vulnerable will receive reduced care under Democrat "reform"; in "The Case of Henry Louis Gates: Resisting the Reality of Our Increasingly Egalitarian Society -- and Celebrating an Early Conservative Who Has Always Put Country above Color," he sets the voices of those who decry the persistence of racism against a Black American who disagrees: Jay Parker; in "'Cash for Clunkers': A Dangerous Precedent of Government Intervention in the Economy," he show why the program is bad policy.

Norman D. Howard demonstrates that sometimes it takes a truckload of intelligence and knowledge to have common sense in "Some Impertinent Questions about Global Warming."

In "Michael Crichton Is Right!" Joseph Bast relates the scathing critique Michael Crichton made of the environment movement in his novel, State of Fear.

Paul Kengor, in "Saving Obama from Himself: The Machiavellian Thing vs. the Moral Thing on Healthcare," asks is there a downside to blocking Obamacare? Possibly, he thinks, but Obamacare must be stopped; in "Gore Unhinged," he shows that Al Gore's comparisons of climate-change advocates with Churchillian-Nazi fighters is nothing new.

In "Not 'Silent Cal' -- 'Thinking Cal' -- Correcting the Historical Image of Calvin Coolidge," L. John Van Til redeems the reputation of one of our great Presidents.

Jigs Gardner, in "Rebecca West and the Fruits of Romantic Utopianism in Our Time," shows how Miss West's utopian passions have played their part in the left's assault on Western traditions.

Thomas Martin reviews The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzenitsyn, by Edward E. Ericson Jr., and Alexis Klimoff,

Thomas Martin

The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn, by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Alexis Klimoff. ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 2008, 300 pp., $28.00, ISBN: 978-1-93385-957-6.

In May of 1967, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in a "Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers":

I am, of course, confident that I will fulfill my duty as a writer under all circumstances from the grave even more successfully and more unchallenged than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to the truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But, maybe many lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime. At no time has this ennobled our history.

As Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn is in the grave, it is time for every serious reader to pick up his books and awaken to the task we face on the road to the truth. The Soul and Barbed Wire is a fitting title for this succinct introduction to Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn's literary, historical, and political works by two distinguished scholars. The title for this work is taken from the fourth part of the seven parts of The Gulag Archipelago, in which Solzhenitsyn "shifts from the downward movement of lamentation to the upward movement of hope."

The authors note that Solzhenitsyn's life was a spiritual odyssey reminiscent of Dante's both as pilgrim and poet, and his purpose as man and poet is to guide his reader through the inferno of the 20th century.

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray

From the straight road and woke to find myself

Alone in a dark wood.

Solzhenitsyn witnessed first-hand the sins which result when "men have forgotten God," by turning to materialistic ideologies to engineer a heaven on earth built upon the ash piles of the holocaust and the bone yards of the gulag and fanned by the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence, as witnessed in the steady growth of contraception, abortion and hedonism.

The book is divided into sections on his "Life," "Works," "Beliefs," and "Reception" in the world, where Solzhenitsyn, fulfilling his duty as a writer, was as welcomed in 20th century's culture of death as the light of Christ's birth was by King Herod.

The section "Life" offers a biographical sketch and is a helpful preface for anyone reading The Gulag Archipelago, The First Circle and Cancer Ward since so much of Solzhenitsyn's writing is autobiographically based. In fact, born one year after the Russian Revolution in 1918, his life story is nearly identical to that of the Russian people, who suffered from being caught in the pincers of the Soviet Union which fed upon their lives like a cancerous growth. At age twelve, he joined the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth group, and his passion begins when fellow members rip the cross he regularly wore from his neck. By eighteen, as an ardent Marxist convert with an enthusiasm for being a writer, he sets himself the task of "describing the Russian Revolution afresh." This foreshadows the The Red Wheel, a ten volume, six-thousand page epic on the Russian Revolution. The reader of this section will be treated to the major points in Solzhenitsyn's own moral transformation from the Marxist-Leninist ideology to the Russian Orthodox Church.

In "Works" the authors present twenty-three informative essays on all Solzhenitsyn's literary works, as well as most of his historical and political essays, which will inspire the novice reader to embrace a thorough read. They explain his "polyphonic" principle of construction used in his literary and historical works. The polyphonic aspect "points to the presence of a multitude of such individual viewpoints and voices within the text." In other words, there is no main character but a variety of thoroughly developed characters. Ericson and Klimoff state that the polyphonic "is a highly effective technique for bringing out the fundamental worldview of each character -- as well as the clashes between worldviews." Be this as it may, Solzhenitsyn's mastery is reminiscent of Dostoyevsky's: both see right into the moral arena of the character's soul. Both authors' characters are the many faces of Adam, of fallen man, each of whom brings out the "fundamental worldview" of an individual turning away from or towards God, right before the reader, who will see in their struggles his own as "god and the devil are fighting . . . and the battlefield is the heart of man."

In his "Nobel Lecture" Solzhenitsyn contrasts two types of literary artists: one starts with his own subjective experience and seeks "an autonomous spiritual world" out of the Enlightenment concept of the autonomous self, which never gets beyond itself to the universal concepts that unite all humanity. "In Solzhenitsyn's view," the authors claim:

. . . this approach, which has many practioners among contemporary writers, is futile, for it ignores those perennial, universal concepts that unite all of humanity.

The other, is the author as a "humble apprentice under God's heaven." This writer's:

. . . creative powers are imbued in him by divine creation. He develops his gifts only partially by himself; the greater part has been breathed into him ready-made at birth.

Ericson and Klimoff see Solzhenitsyn's work, "His creation," as one that "imitates in microcosm the original Creator's making of the real world."

Solzhenitsyn's "creative powers" are revealed in The First Circle, a novel named after Dante's first circle in hell, where the virtuous pagans who are denied salvation by their preceding Christ are housed. This is a fitting title for the former seminary on the outskirts of Moscow, which now is a technical research institute staffed by prisoners who are working on a telephone encryption device, a voice print machine, to capture Stalin's enemies. In this prison, a place where men formerly sought God's grace, their living souls are wrapped in barbwire. (One of my favorite chapters, "Sawing Wood" finds the prisoner Sologdin sawing wood, for lazy prison guards as the sun rises, revealing the hoarfrost on the barbwire, and he "gazed wide-eyed at the miracle and took delight in it" -- they are shrouded in God's grace). The thematic concerns of this work are based on the moral choices presented to everyman. Ericson and Klimoff give a good structural overview of the novel "embedded in the complex interaction among Nerzhin, Rubin and Sologdin." Nerzhin, a stand-in for Solzhenitsyn, is on a search: "he is fiercely committed to developing his own point of view, a goal that to him is more precious than life itself." Rubin is transfixed by the idea that "circumstances determine consciousness," and, stubbornly, offers "a fervent defense of the regime that has imprisoned him, all the while exhibiting genuinely humane instincts." Sologdin is Rubin's foil, and "he relishes reciting the evils of the Soviet system" as he predicts that Nerzhin will come to God, more specifically a "concrete Christian God," with, the authors note, "the full accompaniment of classic Christian doctrines."

In "Beyond Politics to the Moral Universe," from the section "Belief," Ericson and Klimoff draw from the lead essay in From Under the Rubble, noting that politics cannot have primacy precisely because "the state structure [itself] is of secondary significance." Solzhenitsyn sees the "[absolute] essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our soul from participation in the lie forced upon us." Solzhenitsyn's framework for his writing is a moral universe where, "human life is carried on against the panorama of a universe that is ordered by moral principles."

The moral universe operates according to two axioms. First, actions and consequences are integrally woven together. Consequently, the sins of the father are visited upon the children and grandchildren. Solzhenitsyn's position is forcefully articulated by Dr. Boris Kornfeld in his last words to Solzhenitsyn after his cancer operation: "I have become convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this life on earth which is undeserved." The second axiom of the moral universe:

. . . as Solzhenitsyn sees it, is that actions can and should be measured according to the traditional standards of good and evil . . . [which] are not socially constructed or culturally conditioned; they are simply part of the nature of things and apply universally.

Man is made in the image God and is endowed with a conscience that is the seat of universal moral judgment. In the words of Nerzhin, in The First Circle, "Justice is the cornerstone, the foundation of the universe! . . . We were born with a sense of justice in our souls."

The final section, "Reception," gives a respectable overview of the jubilant welcome Solzhenitsyn received in 1962, when One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published, and conservative Western politicians perceived him to be an ardent anti-Communist and a strong proponent of Western political systems. By 1974, the time of Solzhenitsyn exile, it was obvious to the liberal press that "he was not one of us." Also, Henry Kissinger, "who was promoting a policy of detente with the Soviet Union" at the time, advised against inviting Solzhenitsyn to the White House.

Given that Solzhenitsyn believes literature should tell the truth, he was perceived by modern critics "guided by aesthetic considerations" to be "old-fashioned." This is as would be expected given the "moral relativism that permeates modern thought, and it is incompatible with the postmodernist critics' dismissal of all absolutist convictions in principle."

It is as one would expect when a New York Times editorial, written upon hearing Solzhenitsyn's Harvard University commencement address in 1978, warned its readers against listening to a man who "believes himself to be in possession of The Truth and so sees error wherever he looks."

The positive responses, though few in number, present the task to everyone to decide for himself, after reading the commencement address, for starters, whether Solzhenitsyn is right in diagnosing the spiritual sickness of secularism being that:

. . . man -- the master of this world, does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. *

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life. --George Burns

L. John Van Til

L. John Van Til is a Fellow for Law & Humanities at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He has been teaching at Grove City College for thirty-two years.

We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. --Calvin Coolidge

Consult almost any history or political science textbook of the past 50 years as it comments on the 1920s, and very likely it will portray Calvin Coolidge negatively, frequently referring to him as a dumb, indolent, anti-intellectual pawn of Big Business. In this view, Coolidge was a political accident who, upon becoming President of the United States on August 2, 1923, slept through his five-and-a-half-year presidency. While he slept, say his critics, the nation drifted towards disaster, which came in the form of a gigantic stock market crash and great economic depression.

How did this apparent political naif, this so-called simpleton, this relic of the l9th century become President, conventional historians and political scientists ask in their best-selling texts. After penning a few lines of ridicule, most historians then push any serious consideration of President Coolidge off to the side and continue their speculation about what, in their opinion, "should have been" in the 1920s that "lost" decade between Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Let's find the real Coolidge and see what difference it makes for the historical record. Sadly, decades of hostile historical comment about Coolidge in hundreds of texts has left a large percentage of the American public with a decidedly negative image of him. It is the contention of this essay that Calvin Coolidge certainly should be appreciated for several reasons. First, the textbook image of him believed by most who have matriculated in the nation's schools is simply dead wrong. The prevailing view of him is not merely a matter of interpretation, it is a question of facts, and the texts have the facts wrong in most instances. Second, as I found in a several years-long study of his writings, Coolidge was a very thoughtful man with a comprehensive view of the world. Indeed, the nation would be much better served if more of its Presidents had a worldview as consistent as Coolidge's. We should strongly suggest that his writings be read today because they have a deep wisdom in them that was born of the man's basic common sense. Besides, he was a man of great humor and we all can use more of that.

Fortunately a more balanced view of him may emerge as a result of a modest Coolidge renaissance that is now under way. Evidence of this appears in several new scholarly biographies of him by leading historians, numerous conferences devoted to a further exploration of Coolidge and his era, and not least of all, in a quirky political endorsement of him by a recent, very popular President. The last reference, of course, is to the now-famous White House scene in which Ronald Reagan, upon assuming office, ordered Coolidge's portrait to be hung in the Cabinet Room. Reporters snickered, and when their inquiries about it reached Reagan, he emphatically said that Coolidge was his kind of President because he cut government spending and lowered taxes -- two things Reagan hoped to do.

British historian Paul Johnson also contributed to the Coolidge revival, especially in his thoughtful evaluation of Coolidge in his best-selling Modern Times. In fact, it was Johnson's view that encouraged me to find Coolidge's works and read them for myself. It was soon clear that they were not easily available, and out of print since the 1920s. It occurred to me that a new edition of his main works would be valuable for the emerging Coolidge revival and for others interested in him and his era. I resolved to study and prepare a new edition of Coolidge's published works and then write an account of his intellectual development. Both of these projects are now complete. Two main things emerged from my study of his writings, one expected and the other not. Naturally a better understanding of Coolidge flowed from this study. On the other hand, to my surprise, it became evident that Calvin Coolidge was a very thoughtful man, a quality never implied or suggested by text writers and critics. After reviewing several notebooks full of quotations gleaned from my study of his speeches and addresses, it was also evident that Coolidge's writings displayed a rather well-thought-out set of ideas about society, government, business, the nature of man, and related topics. Was it possible that the proverbial "Silent Cal" was also "Thinking Cal?" And, since Coolidge wrote all of his own speeches and addresses, they reflect his thought, not the thinking of speech writers as is often the case with subsequent Presidents.

Concluding that Coolidge was exceptionally thoughtful raised the question: How did he get that way? Did he read his way to a comprehensive worldview? His personal library, preserved in the Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts, suggests that he was, indeed, very widely read. The same message, in the form of copious literary quotations and paraphrases, jumps out of the pages of his dozens of essays and speeches. And his extensive knowledge of history is everywhere present in his writings. Coolidge himself, however, tells us very clearly in his Autobiography from whence it was that he obtained his interest in the way the world works, that is, how he developed a coherent world view. It was, he says, his professors at Amherst who opened the door to a comprehensive view of life. Quoting a crucial passage from his Autobiography sums up his intellectual development very succinctly in his own words. After noting that he studied history and literature in his first years at Amherst, Coolidge focused on what to him was the critical point in his education:

It always seemed to me that all our other studies were in the nature of preparation for the course in philosophy. The head of the department was Charles E. Garman, who was one of the most remarkable men with whom I ever came in contact. . . . Beginning in the spring of the junior year, his course extended through four terms. The first part was devoted to psychology, in order to find out the capacity and the limits of the human mind. . . . We were not only learning about the human mind but learning how to use it, learning how to think. . . . The human mind has the power to weigh evidence, to distinguish between right and wrong and to know the truth [emphasis mine]. I should call this the central theme of his philosophy. . . . We looked upon Garman as a man who walked with God. His course was a demonstration of the existence of a personal God, of our power to know Him. . . . The conclusions which followed from this position were logical and inescapable. It sets man off in a separate kingdom from all other creatures in the universe, and makes him a true son of God and a partaker of the Divine nature. . . . He believed in the Bible and constantly quoted it to illustrate his position. . . . To Garman was given a power which took his class up into a high mountain of spiritual life and left them alone with God. . . . What he revealed to us of the nature of God and man will stand. Against it "the gates of hell shall not prevail."

It seems remarkable, indeed, that all of this was still so clear in Coolidge's mind thirty-five years distant from the classroom at Amherst. No doubt, it is evidence of the strength of Garman's influence on the shaping of Coolidge's mind. The power of Garman's influence is everywhere evident in Coolidge's two major works, The Price of Freedom and Foundations of the Republic, first published in 1924 and 1926 respectively. (As noted, I have prepared a new edition of these works along with a 125-page essay which traces the development and structure of his thought.) We turn now to a consideration of two principal characteristics of Coolidge's life and thought.

First, Coolidge had a systematic and comprehensive view of the world, one that was obviously and distinctively Christian. Second, he had supreme confidence in the societal and governmental principles the Founding Fathers hammered out for the new nation in their own writings and in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. These features of Coolidge's thought are woven into virtually every speech he delivered and essay he wrote.

Turning to the first theme, we may observe that many of Coolidge's contemporaries, Americans who came to maturity in the last quarter of the l9th century, would not be surprised to hear someone refer to Coolidge as having a Christian world view, because most of them thought of their own lives and world in the same way. Notwithstanding late 20th-century intellectuals' and Supreme Court Justices' views to the contrary, America into the 1920s was in many ways a Christian society -- meaning that the prevailing flavor of culture assumed Christian principles. This congruence between Coolidge's view of America and many Americans' view of it was one of the reasons why Coolidge was the most popular public figure in America throughout the decade of the 1920s, even after he left office and was replaced by Hoover. Once out of office he was paid a small fortune for articles he wrote for magazines and newspapers because the public wanted to know what Coolidge thought about any and every thing.

There was, however, something distinctive about Coolidge's Christian worldview, rooted as it was in the teaching of his beloved professor, Charles Garman. We can only touch a few of the highlights of this view here. (More of them may be found in my essay referred to above.) Beyond the usual Christian assumptions about life -- that God was sovereign, that He made man in His image to rule over the Creation, that man sinned and could be redeemed, that man had a duty as image-bearer to create civilizations, and more -- Coolidge focused on societal structures and how they ought to work. He thought society had a natural balance among its several segments -- family, business, religious institutions, labor, education and the like. Significantly, following Professor Garman, Coolidge believed that this balance had been disrupted by business practices during the Industrial Revolution, especially since the Civil War. Leaders of industry had obtained power a thousand times greater than any man had held in the days of craftsmen, Coolidge noted. The new Captains of Industry, as they were called, gained great wealth and power while others working as laborers lost almost all control over their own lives and labor. It was especially frightful, and immoral, to Coolidge, that such workers had no outlet for their creativity -- an image-bearing quality each worker should exercise either on the job or in some other realm, Coolidge argued.

It should be noted in passing that this focus by Coolidge on creativity as part of life was but one dimension of his continuous emphasis on the spiritual, immaterial and transcendent aspects of human nature. Indeed, he pondered this at length in another of, what I have called, his "big picture essays," this one entitled "The Things That Are Unseen." The concluding lines of that piece sum up very well the importance of the spiritual dimension of life that Coolidge believed was crucial in one's view of man. Said Coolidge:

We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.

Elsewhere Coolidge spoke and wrote at length about the need for character, moral power, and religion. In addition, he was adamant about his claim that we do not need "more laws." What was needed, he said, was a much better enforcement of existing laws.

To return to the main point here, an accumulation of great power by the Captains of Industry, Coolidge did not merely refer to it in the abstract in his speeches and essays. He put flesh and blood on this claim, especially in his essay "Theodore Roosevelt," delivered as an address in New York City, just weeks before he was inaugurated as Vice President. Though he thought the problem had been largely tamed by that time, 1920, he wanted to make his view clear about the imbalance that had developed after the Civil War, an imbalance that Roosevelt had largely corrected through his anti-trust efforts.

His remarks about Roosevelt provide an example of another of his "big picture" essays and addresses. Noteworthy, too, is the fact that a number of these essays were biographical. That was no accident, as the following quotation makes clear. He states here, as in many other biographical essays, that great men have been sent from time to time to aid civilizations' development in special ways. Stated Coolidge:

Great men are the ambassadors of Providence sent to reveal to their fellow men their unknown selves. To them is granted the power to call forth the best there is in those who come under their influence. Sometimes they have come as great captains, commanders of men, who have hewed out empires, sometimes as statesmen, ministering to the well-being of their country, sometimes as painters and poets, showing new realms of beauty, sometimes as philosophers and preachers, revealing to the race "the way, the truth, and the life," but always as inspirers of noble action, translating high ideals into practical affairs of life. There is something about them better than anything they do or say. . . . They come and go, in part mystery, in part the simplest of all experience, the compelling influence of the truth. They leave no successor.

These remarks set the stage for the main point of this, his essay, that is, that Teddy Roosevelt was a God-given leader who corrected the economic imbalance that had developed in America since the Civil War. Of course, this is part of Coolidge's larger view of history, a view that may be termed "Augustinian," with elements of a devotion to "manifest destiny" in it. In short, history was a development through stages and now in America the last stage was unfolding. His view, in these respects, was much like that of many other Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though his focus on the "unseen" is more dramatic.

Coolidge's view of societal structures and the need to keep them in balance illustrates the scope of his considerable thinking about how institutions should relate to one another in a civilization. Indeed, it was the foundation of his policies while in government service. Significantly, he saw government as just another of society's institutions. To be sure it had specific duties, as is evident in his view of Roosevelt's use of governmental power to correct an imbalance in the economic sphere. Stated another way, in his view government was limited in its role just as religion and business were limited. We turn now to see how Coolidge developed his view of government.

A basic distinction for him in this matter was to be found between the terms government and state. Government for him and his generation meant the constitutional apparatus that provided for the ruling or governing of society. It included the separate branches of government, limitations on the powers, and duties of each branch, an election process, amending powers, and the like. State for Coolidge, and again for his generation, referred to the series of social relationships found among citizens -- political parties, religious organizations (including churches), family, unions, business firms, fraternal organizations, and more. Strange as it may seem to most 21st-century minds, each of these institutions in the minds of early 20th-century Americans also had its own government: Churches had ecclesiastical governments; families had paternal governments; and so on with all societal institutions. Stated another way, the government in each realm applied the rules (laws) that regulated its realm and its realm only. These distinctions have been largely lost today as the federal government has usurped power and authority previously held by each. To emphasize, when Coolidge talked about government and its powers, he thought of it as civil government, one not possessed with immediate authority over all societal realms. In short, he understood, as did his contemporaries, that civil government was but one kind of government, one with limited powers to be sure. In this, as in many other intellectual matters discussed here, he reflects the thinking of his beloved mentor, Charles Garman.

Government, or Civil Government as Coolidge liked to call it, was that government created by the Constitution. And, it was limited in two ways in his view. First, by the Constitution itself because it was a document that enumerated the powers of the government it created. This feature was strengthened by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, worth quoting here:

Amendment IX (1791) -- The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X (1791) -- The powers not delegated to the United

States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In addition to the limitations on the Civil Government found in the Constitution and its Amendments, it was also limited, in Coolidge's view, by virtue of the fact that it was but one of many institutions in society. To emphasize, it stood among the others -- business, family, churches, labor, etc., and all together they constituted a part of the natural order of things. From another angle, it may be said that Civil Government was not a superior or supreme institution in society, in Coolidge's view. How different this view is from that held by most in American society today! Today most people expect and assume that the Civil Government is the first resort in solving problems rather than the last one as Coolidge and his contemporaries believed. With this view of government as limited, Coolidge constantly worked to reduce government -- which had expanded greatly during World War I, as governments always do during wars. Harding had created the Bureau of the Budget just before his untimely death and Coolidge soon put teeth into it. He gave it life as a tool to help in the control and reduction of government expenditures.

We must note in passing that Coolidge was not opposed to new programs as many of his critics suggest, nor was he a mindless Dickens-like Scrooge, who delighted in destroying programs to save money. He favored many new projects over the years, when they made economic sense. He pushed developments in transportation, for example, both on water and on land. Moreover, he was among the first to see the bright future of air transportation.

And where did Coolidge get his view of limited government ultimately? In addition to what he found in the Constitution itself, he learned much from the Founders themselves. It is evident in his essays and speeches that he was an accomplished student of the Founders' lives and writings. He spoke and wrote about many of them, noting the unique contribution each made to the American System. It may be said with confidence, based upon his own writing and the contents of his library, that Coolidge was very likely as knowledgeable as any President about American history, and especially so when it came to the Founding Fathers. Significantly, he not only quotes them, but often he also refers to them as he did to Theodore Roosevelt, as "ambassadors of Providence."

Like Lincoln, Coolidge thought that the Declaration of Independence was in a way more important than the Constitution. At least, the latter was not possible without the former. This fascination with the Declaration is not only evident throughout his writings but especially clear in his address delivered on the 125 anniversary of this document. Interestingly, at that time in American history, when July 4 fell on a Sunday, the celebration took place on the next day. So it was that Coolidge presented his remarks about the Declaration on July 5, 1926, in Philadelphia under the title "The Inspiration of the Declaration." Among other things, Coolidge stated that the annual celebration of the Declaration was not so much a time to:

. . . proclaim new theories and principles as it was a time to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.

Something of Coolidge's power with the pen is evident in this address. He noted that people from other lands as well as Americans viewed Independence Hall as hallowed ground. Indeed, to him it seemed to be as important to many as the Holy Land -- a sacred place. He went on to say:

In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual concepts. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man -- these are not elements which we can see and touch. These are ideals. They have their source and their roots in religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions [endures], the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

In this we see the close tie in his mind between the faith of the Founders and the principles of the Declaration. The large audience before him at Independence Hall that day in July, 1926, would have felt perfectly comfortable with his view of the Founder's faith and the Declaration.

Before concluding this essay, a point or two more should be clearly emphasized. First, it is good to emphasize that Coolidge's considerable thought-life had two principal features, two pillars as it were -- a comprehensive world view rooted in the Christian philosophy of his beloved Amherst mentor, Charles Garman. Mrs. Coolidge noted that throughout their married life Coolidge always had two books on his bedside stand -- Garman's Letters, Lectures and Addresses. . . . and the Bible. The second pillar of Coolidge's thinking was, as pointed out here, a deep devotion to the Founding Fathers and their achievements in creating the American System, its substance being on display in the Declaration and the Constitution.

And, one more point. Being a quiet and modest man, Coolidge seldom referred to an achievement of which he was most proud. During his senior year at Amherst -- he subsequently was graduated magna cum laude -- Coolidge entered a national essay contest that was open to all seniors of America's colleges and universities. The topic was the causes of the American Revolution. The prize was a one hundred fifty dollar gold piece -- worth a lot of money at that time. The judges decided weeks after graduations around the country that Coolidge won. When notified, Coolidge characteristically said nothing, placing the medal on his desk in the law office where he had begun to study law. Days later, a senior partner, and fellow Amherst graduate, walked in and saw the medal, congratulating Coolidge. Coolidge, who later as a seasoned politician said of speech, "Be brief. Above all, be brief," responded merely, "Thank you." His great, though quiet pride in winning the national contest is evident in his book Foundations of the Republic. In it he included the prize essay as the last item in the collection. The prestige associated with this prize in 1895 would be similar to, if not greater than, Rhodes Scholarships awarded today. An obvious point to be made here, too, is the fact that this prize essay is powerful evidence of the fact that Coolidge was already a gifted and thoughtful person at an early age -- re-enforced by the fact that he was also graduated magnum cum laude from a top school, such as Amherst.

And so we conclude by asking: Was Coolidge an anti-intellectual simpleton and dullard as New Deal historians suggest? Winning the top collegiate contest in the nation and being graduated magnum cum laude from a first-rate school, Amherst, do not support such a view. Further, a sustained examination of his life and writings does not support such a claim either. As a matter of fact, such an examination of the record strongly suggests the opposite. Students and politicians today would be better off studying his life and ideas rather than those of recent Presidents. For, unlike them, he shows much wisdom about how to live a successful life as a public servant, based on Christian principles and a sound understanding of the Founding Fathers and their work. *

"Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made." --George Burns