Poo Poo Head School Administration

Parents seek removal of book containing language they blame for 6-year-old son's school suspension

Is this an Only in America story?

1. Six-year-old boy calls a girl in his class a poo poo head.

2. Brown elementary school in Channelview, Texas, suspends the boy for one day for unacceptable language.

3. The boy's mother discovers later that a book from the school's library, The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, has the same language in it. She rightly asks the school, how can my son be suspended for using the same language that students can read in one of your library books? She requests the book be removed from the shelves.

4. Brown elementary forms a committee to study the matter. The school's response:

"The review process will involve the appointment of a committee to determine the appropriateness of the material in question. School district policy also states that access to the challenged material shall not be restricted during the reconsideration process."

Now you have to ask here, where did the school go wrong: when it allowed The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby in the library, or when it suspended a student for calling a classmate poo poo head? You'd want a teacher to correct a student who calls someone else a name, but a suspension?

Rather than remove the library book, let Brown elementary form a committee to discuss the following resolution:

"Whereas the school district's policy on name calling - which mandates a one-day suspension for all violators - is a poo poo head policy, Brown elementary requests that the district pardon Johnny and vacate last year's one-day suspension. Until the district reaches its determination, Johnny's permanent record will not reflect the punishment administered."

Oh, and perhaps Johnny should apologize to his classmate, which he probably couldn't do the first time around because he was suspended.

Zero Tolerance Policies in Schools - John Whitehead

Here's a link I sent to Rob and Leslie, along with the article's concluding paragraphs and some comments:

Here are the last two paragraphs:

Finally, these policies, and the school administrators who relentlessly enforce them, render young people woefully ignorant of the rights they intrinsically possess as American citizens. What's more, having failed to learn much in the way of civic education while in school, young people are being browbeaten into believing that they have no true rights and government authorities have total power and can violate constitutional rights whenever they see fit.

There's an old axiom that what children learn in school today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow. As surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches become the norm in elementary, middle and high schools across the nation, America is on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation -- one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. In other words, the schools are teaching our young people how to be obedient subjects in a totalitarian society.

The zero tolerance policies the author writes about refer to drugs and weapons in school. The first sentence above struck me, especially the phrase intrinsically possess. The fact that our rights are stated in the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean we actually have them. That’s why I’ve been writing and speaking so passionately about this subject. We think that because we’re Americans we have rights of free speech and all the rest. You look around you, though, and observe how government actually behaves, and you have to conclude that Americans don’t actually have those rights. If we did actually have them, government would not behave the way it does and get away with it.

The author is correct in this sense. We are in a time of transition, where we are in the process of losing our rights. The process accelerated immeasurably after 9/11. After ten years the process is far along, but not so far along that we are helpless to respond. The author suggests – and I agree with him – that if we don’t respond with common sense and vigor, we will find ourselves without rights and without the ability to regain them.

The article is well done. It’s written by an attorney, John Whitehead. He knows how to bring forward detailed evidence to support general points.

Health Care Reform and the Individual Mandate

Here's a message Rob sent to me, and my reply:

Hi Dad,

I confess I didn't have time to read all of this, so you certainly may not...

It's a law professor's (who actually does some work in connection with the Constitution Project) take on the health care reform. I read just a bit, but what I gather him to be saying is that the legal opinions in VA and FL which strike down the health care law conflate people's libertarian streaks (they don't want to be told what to do) and constitutional arguments. The way he sees it, states unquestionably have the authority to impose an individual mandate, so it's merely a question of whether the federal government does too. I'm not sure if I'm able to explain the argument fully (especially without having read the whole thing!) but these are the two paragraphs that were excerpted that called my attention to the piece in the first place:

Near the end of his decision, Judge Hudson writes: “At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance — or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage — it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.” Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who brought the suit, echoed that point the day the decision came down, insisting that “this lawsuit is not about health care. It’s about liberty.” But that is exactly what the case is not about. A decision that Congress lacks the power to enact the individual mandate says nothing about individual rights or liberty. It speaks only to whether the power to require citizens to participate in health insurance, a power that states indisputably hold, also extends to the federal government. The framers sought to give Congress the power to address problems of national or “interstate” scope, problems that could not adequately be left to the states. The national health insurance crisis is precisely such a problem. The legal question in the case is about which governmental entities have the power to regulate; not whether individuals have a liberty or right to refuse to purchase health-care insurance altogether.

But Judge Hudson and Ken Cuccinelli’s misstatements are nonetheless telling. Opposition to health-care reform is ultimately not rooted in a conception of state versus federal power. It’s founded instead on an individualistic, libertarian objection to a governmental program that imposes a collective solution to a social problem. While Judge Hudson’s reliance on a distinction between activity and inactivity makes little sense from the standpoint of federal versus state power, it intuitively appeals to the libertarian’s desire to be left alone. But nothing in the Constitution even remotely guarantees a right to be a free rider and to shift the costs of one’s health care to others. So rather than directly claim such a right, the law’s opponents resort to states’ rights.

Love,

Rob

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Rob,

As I’ve sent articles to you, I’ve been happy I have a son who is not only an attorney, but an attorney interested in constitutional issues!

The analysis below is good, though you know how unhappy I can get about this issue. Some thoughts:

In this country, when you lose in the Congress, the courts are the only recourse. In a court you have to define your arguments in constitutional and legal terms.

I’ve said from the start that the individual mandate, while not clearly in violation of the Constitution’s letter, does violate our unwritten constitution. That’s why you hear speech these days about our social compact. The constitutional arguments about individual liberty and the health insurance mandate identify the core issues correctly.

I believe that if the individual mandate stands, it will become part of our social compact, just as social security did in the 1930s and Medicare did in the 1960s. Backers of last year’s health care reform point to those two programs as success stories, worthy precedents for the current health insurance mandate. Opponents like me see those programs as a primary cause of the financial difficulties that pushed the country toward comprehensive health insurance reform. Rather than address the financial problems, we enacted reform that will make the financial problems worse. These financial problems extend not just to government, but to businesses and individuals as well.

When we enacted social security in the 1930s, we didn’t have experience with comprehensive social programs. People made similar arguments then about the constitutionality of the new retirement program. We’ve accumulated a lot of experience with comprehensive programs since then, nearly three generations of it. People show a lot of passion in their judgments about such programs, and they should. The resources involved, and the impact on every person’s life, is quite large.

I pointed out the personal source of my own passion to Leslie not long ago. The individual mandate puts me in a position where I cannot quit my job without being fined. Yes, I could look for insurance on the private market if I had no job. As a Massachusetts resident, I’ve been in this position since 2007. Still, enactment of an individual mandate for the entire nation had a big psychological impact on me. Part of the impact results from the other ways government has increased its power recently, and my resistance to every change of that nature. Part of the impact results from my own situation as a job holder who has health benefits. It has become another issue I try not to think about too much.

Enough for now. I have done too little work today!

Love,

Dad

Why the Health Care Bill Abrogates Fundamental Rights

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration’s first sentence is another collection of ideas embedded in the nation’s political culture. In simplest terms, it states:

• We are all equal.

• We all have rights.

• We all have a right to liberty.

These ideas have become an American creed: no one can force me to do anything if I am minding my own business. No one can boss me around.

The recently signed health care bill abrogates these rights. Moreover, it violates Lincoln’s vision of a free society: first you work for others, then you work on your own account, and at last others work for you. The health care bill locks in a system where almost everyone is stuck in the first phase – working for others. Under the new regime, it is almost impossible to move out of that phase in a steady progress toward the next two. People sense that in their gut, that this effort to enhance security fundamentally undercuts a life model that we have striven to preserve. Under the new model, we cannot pursue happiness the way we did before. We look at Lincoln’s inspirational view of life, his hopes for self-improvement through all the stages of life, and we know we have to settle for less – a lot less.

Already, the difficulties of becoming self-employed, then starting an enterprise of some kind where you would employ others, was so difficult that most people did not attempt it. The new bill locks in a system where only the most wealthy, those who have already made a lot of money in business, can do what Lincoln describes. The path of growth and self-fulfillment is closed to most people under the interlocking requirements of the new health care regime.

The bill’s backers regarded the change as a fundamental improvement in our security. Many others saw the price paid in freedom – the unutterable, dismaying loss of life choices inherent in its requirements. This indeed is a change in our social compact. This indeed is a change that ought not to come about through congressional deals and parliamentary maneuvers that leave so many to look in astonishment at what we have lost without having a say.

I said emphatically when the bill passed: “This law is unconstitutional.” It is not unconstitutional because it violates the letter of our written Constitution. It is unconstitutional because it violates our long established social compact. As people said at the time, never before has the government required you to buy something, such that you are subject to punishment if you do not comply. That is correct: it is an invasion of personal property that has no precedent. Everyone is subject to the law. All must comply. It leaves no choice of withdrawal. We have never imposed a requirement like this before, and by the terms of our social compact, largely unwritten, it is clearly unconstitutional.

If we let this law stand, though, if we let it take effect and become established – it will become part of our social compact and therefore become constitutional. The loss of liberty will be accepted, the law’s new requirements and mutual obligations will become part of the agreements we live by together, and we won’t be able to go back.

As the new health care regime becomes established, the new law will gradually become constitutional, irreversible. The law that was unconstitutional when it was enacted, will become constitutional as its requirements become an accepted part of the way we live together. That is how our social compact evolves.

Both sides in this controversy are right when they say something fundamental has changed. Those who pushed the change through regard most of the changes as good. The sooner it takes effect, the better. Those who object to the change recognize an irreversible step toward a society that values security over freedom, that is willing to impose a high price on all in order to provide additional welfare for some.

If we as a political community permit this loss of freedom, we can accept any loss. If we accept this loss, we will have agreed that principles of security, not freedom, take highest precedence in our social compact. If we acknowledge that principles of security take highest precedence in our compact, we have inaugurated a fundamental change in our compact, one that counts as constitutional.

A change that fundamental should not be enacted by congressional maneuvers, maneuvers required because the majority party lacked the required number of votes in the Senate. In effect, congressional leadership bypassed the normal process of reconciliation between the House and Senate bills, because the Senate did not have the sixty votes required to pass a revised version of the bill.

Opponents – a majority of the citizens out in the land, out among the multitude of citizens who would be subject to its requirements – watched helplessly as procedural votes enacted so fundamental a change in the way we live together. The spectators, whose voices the Democrats in Congress did not hear or take into account, knew instinctively that what had just happened was not right. They were correct in their estimate. They had witnessed a violation in the way we conduct our business together.

And they had witnessed such a clear violation of our fundamental liberties that the government had essentially dissolved its own authority. It had taken away liberty and property that it was pledged to protect. It had violated citizens’ rights so thoroughly that citizens no longer had an obligation to obey its dictates. Its practical legal authority had come to an end.

Ronald Reagan Christmas Address

Ronald Reagan Christmas address (12/23/81)

How to Overthrow the Government: Preliminary Thoughts

I’m going to go all the way here and say what I think and what I feel in my heart. The United States does not have a legitimate, constitutional government anymore. To use John Locke’s language, it dissolved its own authority – not all at once but step by step. Many hoped that the new administration in 2008 would decisively reverse these steps, but that didn't occur.

If you believe the government operates outside the law, both domestically and internationally, then arguments about whether other countries can trust us with their secrets don’t make any sense. If you cannot rely on the U. S. government to honor the most basic of human rights – such as not torturing people or not initiating unprovoked attacks – you should not rely on it for anything. It does not deserve any of the privileges or considerations one would accord a legitimate government.

I didn’t come to these thoughts easily, and I’m not happy with what they imply. They do underlie the arguments I’ve made about the leaked cables, and several other articles I’ve written. Right now a lot of commentary assumes that for all the troubles and extraordinary times we’ve experienced, our government still operates as a lawful force. I just can’t see it that way, and I think a time is coming when more citizens will see what has happened. When they do see that we have to replace our government to make it constitutional again, I hope we have leaders – all over the country – who know how to guide such a change.

In Revolution in the Air, I talk briefly about these changes and why they ought to occur. In the next book, I want to lay out a lot more thoroughly how a change of this nature can take place. To be successful, I believe the change has to be non-violent, or largely non-violent. A non-violent restoration of constitutional government would mean the break-up of the United States, or a clear move in that direction. That kind of transition would require extraordinary leaders: some in Washington perhaps, but most critically in the states, cities and towns. We don’t have leaders like that now, and I don’t know where they would come from.

The unknown for me is whether these things could occur while I’m alive. In a way I wish these changes would wait, because the chance for things to go wrong is great. On the other hand, waiting too long means irreversible tyranny. That is, citizens will have passed the point where they can do anything to save themselves. I think we’re in that state now: if we don’t act soon – within the next decade – we’ll have passed the point where we can undertake effective action. Tyranny, once established, takes centuries to uproot – much longer than the 225 year lifespan of our republic.

I honestly don’t like to be a pessimist. I also know our republic has been through hard times before. Things looked worse in 1860 and 1861 when the Confederate states seceded. We’re a much older country now, though, one that’s sclerotic and less able to adapt. Now we have a limited range of actions we can take to replace a government that can’t change. These actions have to come from the states, and they amount to a strategy of civil disobedience and divorce.

The states have to act as if Washington doesn’t exist, except where Washington forces assertion of its authority and tries coercion. Then the states have to resist. One could say it’s naive to expect state governments to be better or more lawful than national authority. National authority grew in part because state and local governance was often so poor. Perhaps, but concentrated power far away is worse than the devil you know next door.

Following that strategy, with discipline and with our sights on a clear set of outcomes, would have unpredictable consequences. The end of every empire has been unique. The growth of every democracy has been unique as well. What isn’t unique in its pattern and outcomes is the growth of tyranny. The outcomes we’ll see if we don’t do anything are predictable, and those outcomes are not good.

The unpredictable outcomes that follow from effective action cannot be worse than life without freedom. They cannot be worse than life under a government that pretends to be constitutional but is not.  If these changes follow from effective, collaborative action, they'll bring about what Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom." We can't let self-government fail, or let perish the liberties we have enjoyed.

Capital Crimes, Death by Hanging, and International Law

When I was born in 1954, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Frank, Jodl and other Nazi leaders had climbed the gallows just eight years before. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg had sentenced them to hang for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and Goering committed suicide. The allies executed the rest.

As I grew up, in school and elsewhere, people talked about Nuremburg a lot: why the trials were held, what they meant, why the outcome was justified. In international law and politics, they signified the beginning of a new era in history, where aggressive war was a crime and genocide would get you the noose. Never again could the leaders of one country attack another unprovoked, or kill civilians en masse, and think they might be spared execution should they lose the war or be captured.

Idealist though I was, I wasn't impressed. Victors get to do what they want with those they have defeated, and a show trial is a show trial. What do such trials show? That you won the war and that you can dispose of your opponents as you like. The Romans routinely executed leaders of the armies and tribes they conquered. They didn't bother with a trial. Yet the victors claimed that the International Military Tribunal after World War II made a great contribution to international law.

Perhaps it did. Cynicism takes you so far, then it eats at you! Still, I think you should call something what it is. Don't call it something that it's not. If you plan to execute your defeated opponents, just do it and don't dress it up with a lot of legal language that's going to make you look like a hypocrite later.

Let me add another note, so you don't misunderstand what I say here. I oppose capital punishment - no matter who administers it, who the criminal is, or how enormous the crime. Law, international and otherwise, can operate perfectly well without it.

Let's give the victors in World War II the benefit of the doubt here, and ask what grounds the International Military Tribunal gave for its action. Its proceedings brought the phrases war crimes and crimes against humanity into common usage. The tribunal's judges held that unprovoked, aggressive war was a capital crime. So was genocide or other disproportionate, wanton killing of civilians. Note the discriminating qualifications in these two definitions. The prosecutors and judges had to define war crimes and crimes against humanity carefully, so as not to include the victors' wanton acts, past and future.

The qualifications didn't work so well. Sixty-five years have passed since the Nuremburg trials opened. The history of warfare among nations during that time indicates the Nuremburg principles don't influence nations' behavior that much. Still, Nuremburg's prohibition against unprovoked, aggressive war became part of the United Nations charter, the cornerstone of post-World War II international law. Might makes right neither guides nor justifies the acts nations undertake in their conflicts with one another.

The country that insisted the prohibition against aggressive war become the central principle of international law, the United States, violated that principle when it launched its attack against Iraq in 2003. The United States killed fewer non-combatants than Germany, and the war it started involved fewer countries, but the act was the same. We even had the disconcerting idea to call it a war of choice, as if that euphemism would make it okay!

So what are we to think now? Either the Nuremburg trial was a show trial, designed to throw the gloss of legality over proceedings that actually exhibited the victors' raw desire to dispose of their defeated foes as they liked. Or Nuremburg actually established the prohibition against aggressive warfare that underpins international law now. You can't become a member of the United Nations without signing on to the prohibition.

Interestingly, the Nuremburg trial could serve both purposes. It served up legal justification for execution of Nazi leaders, and key principles for the new international system taking shape after the war. However we choose to characterize the trial, we violated the prohibition against aggressive war when we invaded Iraq. Once you apply a principle to others, you have to apply it to yourself. After you hang the people who launched the Nazi attack on Poland in 1939, you have to apply the same standards of judgment to the people who launched the United States' attack on Iraq in 2003.

Yet we've omitted a controlling element: the United States didn't lose its war against Iraq. Therefore George W. Bush is not in the dock - no judge sentences him to hang. Instead, Hussein went to the gallows for the aggressive wars he started, and for the wanton murder of civilians he undertook. I wonder what Hussein would have done if Iraq had won the war? Would he have hanged Bush? We don't have to guess too long about the answer to that one. He would not have bothered with the legalities, either.

Montesquieu and the Tea Party

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." ~ Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws

We have a movement in the country now, called the Tea Party, whose self declared purpose is to restore our government to its founding principles. Low taxes, liberty and limited government summarize those principles pretty well. Though we disagree about practical application, no one disagrees about where to find the principles: in our Constitution and in our Declaration of Independence. Most people also agree that if democracy has a weakness, it is the ability of a majority to rule without regard for the rights or interests of people who find themselves in the minority on a given issue.

What is the reaction of the majority party to the Tea Party during the last year and a half? Ridicule and mockery. The majority says tea partiers are so scared and angry they can't think clearly. That they're kooks and wackos. We are talking about good citizens, taxpaying citizens, who are genuinely anxious about the direction their country is going. They hold up the Constitution with pride, to remind us that it's our only guide during a difficult time, when we're not sure what to do. Don't forget our founding principles, they say. Don't forget who we are. What's the reaction? The most merciless smack down of well intentioned Americans one can imagine.

Ronald Reagan or Nancy Pelosi?

People want to believe in their government. They want to trust it, rely on it, follow its lead, contribute to its health. They take pride in it. After all, they own it.

When your government turns on you, when the institutions you thought worked for you begin to prey on you, your trust erodes. The same thing happens when your government lies to you, justifies or hides its misdeeds with all kinds of dishonesty and propaganda, and engages in criminal behavior. Your first reaction is dismay, then anger, and in the end a conviction that the government is illegitimate.

We came close to a situation like that in the 1960s and 1970s. Ronald Reagan grasped its seriousness. He understood that many looked to him not so much for specific policy changes, but for leadership that would restore the government’s legitimacy. He supplied that leadership, and citizens granted him leeway to accomplish a lot of changes in both foreign and domestic policy. People looked to him for leadership, and he delivered.

Obama faced a similar situation, except that he came into office with a progressive outlook rather than a conservative one. Many voted for him not because they favored his policy prescriptions, but because, after a decade or more of partisan, broken, dishonest government they wanted a leader who would make them proud of their civic institutions again. If President Obama had fulfilled the promise of his campaign to provide that kind of leadership, voters would grant him the freedom he needed to enact at least some of his progressive policy solutions.

To follow this course, Obama needed to continue giving inspirational speeches after he was elected, starting with his inaugural address. Instead he used his inaugural address to deliver a mild scolding, suggesting we all ought to be somewhat displeased with our behavior. More measured words followed: careful self-editing so as not to say the wrong thing before a press that loves to play gotcha. Absent was the free-flowing oratory of the campaign. In place of the old-time religion, we had a stern father who didn’t smile.

A year later, in January of 2010, Obama had a critical decision to make. How would he respond to the election of Scott Brown, Republican from Massachusetts, to the United States Senate? Brown’s election took away the Democrats’ 60-vote super-majority in the upper house. How would Obama handle the health care bill now that the partisan breakdown in the Senate was 59-41? Would he back Nancy Pelosi’s hardball plan to push the bill through, or would he judge that public trust and legitimacy ranked higher than legislative victory for his party’s health care policy?

We know how Obama chose, and we’ve seen citizens’ reaction to his choice since he made it. Dismay and anger have turned into alienation so deep, many hold the government in contempt. That is a long way from the pride people hoped for when President Obama stood up to take his oath on January 20, 2009. People looked to him for leadership, not business as usual. A year later they received another backroom deal, victory for the Democrats and dismay for everyone else.

Garden Variety Totalitarianism

It's the Easter season, time for families to get together. We had dinner at my aunt's, and as we sat in the living room after dinner I asked how she was doing. She told me a story hard to credit, were it not such a sign of the times.

My aunt's an active, healthy woman in her late eighties. She serves as president of her garden club, and maintains many active connections to her community. In January her club's treasurer received an unexpected letter from the Massachusetts state attorney general's office. The letter requested complete financial records for the last four years, including a half-inch stack of forms to be filed with the attorney general's office in less than one month. Every garden club in Massachusetts - 161 in all - received the same letter. Clubs that did not complete the forms in time would be held in violation of the law. Clubs that did not file proper financial reports for the past four years would be subject to disbanding.

For all the criminal activity in the state, note what activity the attorney general made a priority:

• Most garden club members are women in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.
• Garden club fund raising compares to bake sales, car washes, and church bingo nights. Clubs sell house plants and similar items to contributors.
• Proceeds from fund raisers support the club's community activities related to gardening.

You know how hard it is to keep a volunteer community going. When my aunt and other club members saw what was required to comply with the attorney general's reporting requirements, they decided they would disband the club. They could meet socially, but they would close their books, contribute the small balance in the club's bank account to charity, and cease any activities involved with money. They reported their decision to the attorney general.

That wasn't good enough. The attorney general's office replied that as a non-profit charitable organization, the club must still meet the state's complex reporting requirements for such groups. The law still applied, even though the group no longer existed, and all fund raising had ceased.

Now the disbanded group could not even give its money away. It would have to hire an accountant to fill out the half-inch stack of forms. Then the state can post the information online, so potential contributors can check the information before they contribute to make sure the local garden club is honest. Never mind that the state has already forced the club to shut down, so the club cannot accept donations in any case.

My aunt rightly asked, "So this is what they want to spend their time on? Garden clubs? It's like they're taking our tax dollars" - she waves an invisible fistful of money above her head - "and lighting a match to them." The other hand touches an imaginary match to the bills. She's right that the attorney general's office has better ways to spend taxpayers' money. 

She didn't emphasize an even more pernicious result: an effective, well run and beneficial civic group no longer exists because the law placed an unreasonable burden on it. Other garden clubs faced the same choice as my aunt's, and those clubs decided to disband, too.

My mentor in graduate school wrote his dissertation on Hannah Arendt. Arendt wrote about the origins of totalitarianism in modern societies. She was most familiar with Germany in the 1930s, where the Nazis used labor camps, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, surveillance, torture, suppression of assembly and free speech, and special military units to break down people's ability to engage in  activities that could undermine the state. Any forms of civic activity apart from the state constituted a threat. Community activities not under the state's purview became illegal. With total control, a new concept of governing appeared: totalitarianism.

Softer forms of totalitarianism grew up in place of Nazi tyranny after World War II. The softer variety differs from hard totalitarianism in these ways:

• It progresses more slowly than its more violent cousin.
• It relies less on violence and other overtly coercive methods.
• Rather than rely on naked power, it persuades people that the steps it takes to control liberty are necessary, justified, and all-around the best for everyone under the circumstances.

Most importantly, soft totalitarianism appears to advance by constitutional means. Resistance is by definition unconstitutional, illegal, and if undertaken seriously enough, a seditious threat to the state's authority.

Now we've come some distance from my aunt's garden club, but we can see that soft forms of state control appear in many contexts. Licensing requirements, financial reporting requirements, building codes, regulatory regimes, tax provisions and more all constrain behavior and grind down civic organization, as well as the individual initiative needed to sustain them.

That's the key point here. Civic organizations - whether garden clubs, trade groups or professional organizations, churches and charitable groups, independent political campaigns and parties - all contribute to community participation and democratic politics. They're points of contact where individuals become involved in communities beyond their own households.

The Massachusetts state attorney general's office might believe it serves a public interest when it demands financial information from local garden clubs, but the effect is far different. The effect is to remove these intermediary organizations from the civic picture, so no independent groups stand between the state and would be citizens. When that happens, it won't matter how many garden clubs exist or how many have disbanded. No locus of civic participation - except organizations that have the state's permission to operate - will remain.

Basil Marceaux, Candidate

Basil Marceaux lost his race, but on Web he won place in public imagination

This gentleman said one of his main priorities would be to end traffic-stop slavery. How appropriate is that!? Basil and the rest of us know exactly what he's talking about.

Rethinking the Afghanistan War’s What-Ifs

Some of us argued in 2002 that we should make Afghanistan our fifty-first state - not primarily to benefit Afghans, but to benefit ourselves. We needed a big footprint in Afghanistan to gather intelligence about our enemies. When you're fighting an organization like Al Qaeda, you need to place your military and intelligence resources close to the scene of the fight. You can't defeat an enemy like that from a distance.

David Sanger's article, Rethinking the Afghanistan War’s What-Ifs, makes those of us who made this argument seem like military geniuses. Since that's not the case, perhaps the experts who set military policy for Afghanistan were dunces. Since that doesn't seem so likely, we have a riddle. What led to bad policy in Afghanistan after the victory there early in 2002?

The answer's not so difficult if you remember human psychology. We know the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq. Within forty-eight hours of the attack on the twin towers, the White House wanted information that would link Hussein to the plot. When you're that set on a certain plan, when you've already committed yourself to a new war, you'll convince yourself that proper follow-up for the war you had to fight first - in Afghanistan - is not worth the candle. You'll make up arguments to show that further involvement is not worth it, just as you'll make up intelligence to show that the war you want to fight must be fought. You'll argue that nation-building in Afghanistan is a highly questionable project, and you'll define the project so as to prove your point.

But let's say the point of nation-building is not to import Western democracy to replace Afghanistan's tribal political structure. Let's say the point of nation-building is to build roads to move your trucks and supplies around. Let's say you want to place cell phone towers in the cities and on the high ground to improve your own communications, and to monitor everyone else's communications. Let's say you want to meet tribal leaders to find out which ones would like to keep Al Qaeda out of their territory. Then you have a definition of nation-building that fits your own interests. Then you have worthwhile projects you can actually accomplish.

But if you actually want to roll into Baghdad to overturn a tyrant who dissed your dad, you won't think about these practical activities. You'll define goals in Afghanistan that are dubious and unachievable. You'll gear up your military forces for a big attack and an impressive victory. That's just what we did.

Our strategic blunder in Iraq and our strategic blunders in Afghanistan are woven of the same threads.

Why Liberals Should Love the Second Amendment

Kaili Joy Gray's article on the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights is excellent. She argues that liberals should interpret the right to bear arms as broadly as they interpret other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. As a libertarian in a family that’s mostly liberal, I was with her. My family mostly favors restrictions on gun rights. I occasionally point out that if people can’t bear arms, we can’t protect ourselves against tyranny. The right of revolution, however, seems screwy and even ephemeral in light of citizens’ practical desire to get handguns off the streets.

Gray argues that the fundamental concept behind the Second Amendment is the right of revolution - the right to replace our government should it destroy rather than protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Gray is correct that the right of revolution is the most essential right we have. We’ve seen in the last decade that if we don’t have that, we don’t have any political rights at all. Constitutional government has no practical meaning without it. Without a right of revolution, people in power pretend to follow the constitution to give their rule the appearance of legitimacy. Without a right of revolution, formal checks on power become legalistic tools or bargaining resources in the political process. The only fundamental protection people have is the right to alter or abolish their government, and to institute a new one.

Gray's article raises an interesting question that comes to mind after the Supreme Court overturned Chicago’s restrictions on handguns. The question arises because the Second Amendment refers to arms, not guns. We’ve argued a lot about whether the Second Amendment extends to machine guns and other automatic weapons. What about bazookas and other anti-tank weapons, mortars, or shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles? What about improvised explosive devices? What about nuclear weapons?

A knife or a box-cutter is a weapon, as is a powerful bomb. All qualify as arms. The framers probably had guns in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, but arms included many kinds of weapons then as now. So the question persists, to what extent does the government have a monopoly on instruments of violence? If its monopoly is absolute, the right of revolution becomes a thought experiment rather than a real constraint on governmental power.

Absolute monopoly or not, most citizens wouldn’t feel comfortable if an individual could buy a nuclear weapon, no matter how many restrictions we placed on the sale. Liberals who favor gun restrictions say we have to distinguish between permissible weapons and impermissible weapons - then draw the line so as to keep dangerous weapons away from criminals and nuts. People who want to protect Second Amendment rights ought to consider why handguns should be permissible, but not bombs or nuclear weapons, since a public safety issue exists for both.

The Hobbesian contract is that citizens turn weapons of force over to the state in return for the state's protection of their liberty. The open question is what happens when a government controls the means of force, but becomes destructive of the liberty it's supposed to protect. Do citizens become helpless, with no recourse to force or the threat of force? One might add this hopeful idea to simplify things a bit: we don’t need nuclear weapons to replace our government.

Gray's article explains why we all have an interest in protection of Second Amendment rights. It explains why the Second Amendment exists in the first place. Most importantly, it places the right of revolution at the center of our political tradition, where it belongs.

Republican Lawmakers Gird for Rowdy Tea Party

Republican lawmakers gird for rowdy tea party:

The Washington Post published an article about the tea party's strength in upcoming congressional elections. Rand Paul suggested that tea partiers form a caucus of like-minded senators after the November midterm elections. Article author Shailagh Murray asked Trent Lott for a response:

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), now a D.C. lobbyist, warned that a robust bloc of rabble-rousers spells further Senate dysfunction. 'We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,' Lott said in an interview. 'As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.'

But Lott said he's not expecting a tea-party sweep. 'I still have faith in the visceral judgment of the American people,' he said.

One might say to Lott: "The visceral judgment of the American people produced you and other partisan jerks in Congress, whose approval rating hovers just above the teens. Now the visceral judgment of the American people would like to correct its mistake. If it does correct its mistake in November, we'll have a robust block of rabble-rousers who care more about the Constitution than they do about their own careers."

I've had faith in voters' judgment my whole life. When voters reelected George Bush in 2004, a big crack appeared in that faith. You could explain why Americans reelected him, but you couldn't defend it. If people vote for more of the same in the United States Congress, you have to wonder what else the dog will drag in. Bring on the rabble rousers. The republic won't survive the people in office now.

Today's Logic Lesson and a Lesson in Trust

Here are two syllogisms from the Bush era.

First syllogism:

Waterboarding is torture.
Americans practice waterboarding.
Americans practice torture.

Second syllogism:

Americans do not torture.
Americans practice waterboarding.
Waterboarding is not torture.

The first one is constructed as an everyday syllogism. You place a particular activity in a larger category: Waterboarding is torture. You identify who practices the activity: Americans practice waterboarding. You conclude that the identified group falls into the larger category: Americans practice torture.

The second one is also unremarkable in its structure, except that the premise is a negative: it excludes Americans from the group of torturers. So you ask:

“How do you know Americans don’t torture?”

“It’s against their code.”

“What prevents Americans from violating their code?”

“The code is self-enforcing.”

“That sounds circular to me. Can’t you give me some independent evidence?”

“Well it’s hard to prove a negative, you know.”

“Still, can’t you tell me how you know Americans don’t torture?”

“Americans just don’t do it. It’s against their code of honor.”

“Like the pirate’s code?”

“That’s right. We have a strict code of honor.”

“But you violate the code all the time, whenever it’s convenient!”

“Remember, they’re just guidelines.”

It’s amazing how often Pirates of the Carribbean serves to explain how people think and behave! It’s the most useful tool I’ve ever run across!

That piece of dialogue does expose John Yoo’s memo for what it was: an extended effort to redefine legal guidelines about torture. That memo was so characteristic of the way we operate: forget the honor, just follow the right legal process. If you can find someone in the Justice Department to write a memo that places activities you want to practice outside the definition of torture, you’re good to go.

That brings us back to the syllogisms. Understanding that the second syllogism is a good deal weaker than the first, the Justice Department lawyers worked hard to reverse its premise. Waterboarding is torture must become Waterboarding is not torture under the guidelines.

“How do you know waterboarding is not torture?”

“Here, read this memo. It explains everything.”

“But this memo just defines things any way you want. It doesn’t make any sense. My twelve-year-old daughter could tell you that.”

“We’re the United States Justice Department. Our memo is authoritative, based on expert legal reasoning.”

“Hah! I put you way below a pickpocket for trustworthiness. Try again.”

So many issues come down to trust. If you read Yoo’s memo, you see the only reason to accept its conclusions is that you trust the source. If you don’t trust the source, the contents of the memo become nonsense.

The Big Picture

What would happen if journalists thought for themselves? Once they get on a line of thought, you can't get them off of it. One line of thought, or premise, has been that we need to counter the insurgents' attacks with attacks of our own. So we level Fallujah and defeat Sadr's forces in Najaf. We mount an offensive against the insurgents near the Syrian border, and go after them in Samarra, Baghdad, and any number of other cities. We find their weapons caches and their hideouts, we capture their leaders, and we round up suspects to bring them in for what we used to call questioning, a euphemism now for torture. None of it worked. The more we tried to limit the insurgents’ ability to fight, the worse the insurgency became.
Another broad effort is the transfer of sovereignty. Analysts reason that if the Iraqis see that they're running their country, they won't have any reason to resist our occupation. We want to bring democracy to the country, after all, and democracy means self-rule. So we have a formal transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis at the end of June 2004. We have elections at the end of January 2005. The Iraqis will form a government and write a constitution. Most of all, we train Iraqi infantry and police forces to achieve the military and security objectives we haven't been able to achieve. Instead of more order, we see the beginnings of a civil war as insurgents attack poorly trained and poorly protected Iraqi forces. We have tried to reconstitute Iraq's armed forces for almost two years now, and it has not worked.
Civil reconstruction is a third broad area of effort. No one even pretends that progress in this area is a goal anymore. Courts, schools, health facilities, pipelines, water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, electrical power plants, roads, civil service functions, garbage pickup, street cleaning, building construction, electrical power distribution, and every service to make civil society run well: all these projects wait until someone restores order. Ask any Iraqi or American official when that will be. Their truthful answer is, “We're working on it.” Press for another answer, and they'll say, “It could take years.”
Here's something the journalists who write about Iraq miss. No matter what our opponents do, they succeed while they tie American troops down in Iraq. Yes, Iraqi insurgents aim to push the Americans out as soon as they can. Their open goal is to get rid of the occupiers. Moreover, Iraqi resistance has help from other countries. Foreign fighters in Iraq recognize that having American troops in Iraq is a bonanza for them. They can kill Americans there much more readily than they can kill them anywhere else. They know that while Americans fight in Iraq, they can't fight elsewhere. Al Qaeda knows that while we are in Iraq, they have an advantage no matter how the battle goes from day to day.
That’s the dilemma that makes our goals questionable, our strategy self-defeating. Whether we stay or go, the outcomes look bleak. The car bombs could stop tomorrow. All the other attacks: sniping, roadside bombs, hit and run ambushes, mortar attacks, every sort of skirmish and sabotage, all the assassinations and kidnappings, all these could stop suddenly, and we would still be have no clear plan to defeat the enemies who attacked us in 2001. Even a great power cannot do everything. The considerable resources tied up in Iraq are unavailable for fighting anywhere else. We've had to pull forces from other parts of the world just to maintain a force of 135,000 in Iraq. When we do leave Iraq at last, will anyone here at home want to send our young men and women out again to fight Al Qaeda somewhere else? Will we have the passion to fight the war we ought to fight? No, we'll be happy that the war in Iraq is over; we won’t remember the war we should have been fighting – the war we would have fought had we not gone into Iraq.
That's getting ahead of things, though, because the prospects for getting out of Iraq soon are nil. Supporters of the war there say we don't bear any opportunity cost when we commit our resources there. They say we are fighting the right war, for the right reasons, for the right goals. They maintain that when we leave Iraq, we won't need to fight elsewhere. Iraqi democracy will be established, and as it spreads throughout the region, to Saudi Arabia and Syria and even to Iran, Al Qaeda will have no place to hide. In the open air of free societies, Al Qaeda will wither and melt like the wicked witch of the West. No one will want to fight for Al Qaeda when the benefits of Western democracy and free enterprise are all around. That's the Wolfowitz cure: an Oz-like strategy where democracy cures all ills, the White House receives a broomstick and we all get a medal. By the time Wolfowitz and his fellow charlatans are done, Iraq will need a panacea, but it won’t come from us.
Who, in or out of our government, has made a convincing case that creating a democracy in Iraq will bring about the defeat of Al Qaeda? Why couldn't Al Qaeda operate just as effectively in an open, democratic society as it does in a more traditional one? The planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks show that Al Qaeda can operate equally effectively in Afghanistan, Germany, and the United States. We say that we have Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we are pressing them hard in Iraq, but where's the evidence that we have reduced its ability to fight? Who believes that a quiet Iraq will mean defeat of the organization that attacked the World Trade Center? The scary thing now, two years into the Iraqi war, is that people don't even care any more how we're doing in the fight against Al Qaeda. They just want to be done with fighting, period.
So how can we counter the prevailing presumption that a democratic, self-sufficient Iraq means victory for us? How can we keep the big picture about our goals in front of us? The big picture differs so much from the main line of thought we hear everywhere. To see the importance of the larger view, think of the prevailing line of thought that existed when Reagan entered the White House. Then most people thought that we had to reach an accommodation with the Soviets. The United States and the Soviet Union had to live on the same globe, and the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust was to work things out with them. We didn't say nasty things about them, and we tried to find ways to cooperate. Least of all, we didn't want to provoke them. With temperance and discretion, we had managed to survive the Cold War for almost two generations. Keep your head low, avoid eye contact, walk softly and don’t say anything provocative.
Reagan arrives, labels the Soviet Union an evil empire, predicts its so-called workers’ state is headed for history’s dustbin, and calls on Americans to help dump it there. He even quipped, “How's this for a strategy: we win and they lose.” You can't get much more blunt than that. Then he and his team achieved that objective, using military force and diplomacy adroitly to force the Soviet Union into conceding Eastern Europe shortly after Reagan left office. No one thought he could do it until it happened. When it did happen, people said that he must have been right after all.
The actions required now differ, but we’re in a similar conceptual box with Iraq. Everyone thinks the only way we can succeed there is to bring democracy to the people while we train a new armed force capable of containing the insurgents. How often have you heard this one: "Whatever you think of the war, we're committed now, and we have to see the job through." How often have you heard: "We can't leave now. There'd be chaos and a civil war." Well let me tell you that the civil war has already started. Everyone all over the world has concluded correctly that we can't do anything to stop it. Everyone knows the limits of our strength, the extent of our weakness.
The cubic container we’ve fashioned won't allow anyone to say we have to withdraw to fight another enemy. Even the war’s vocal opponents concede we have to stay there long enough to hand security responsibilities over to the Iraqis. That, they add, will take at least until the end of 2006. At least. When we come to the end of 2006, come back to read this essay, and ask yourself if we've achieved any of the goals the conventional strategy sets out for us. Ask if we've reduced the level of violence, turned over responsibility to the Iraqis, or made advances in the area of civil reconstruction. Even if we have made progress in any of these areas, we'll have failed if we're still tied down in Iraq, still fighting people who weren't even our enemies until we made them so.
The conceptual box we're in won't allow anyone to say we win and they lose, we lose and they win, or anything that could possibly be perceived as cut and run. People think that if we pull out, we are humiliated, and humiliation implies we’ve lost. We'll have failed, they say, and that outcome can’t be possible. Everyone will see that we lost, that we can't stick it out. But it's not true. The only way to win this war is to leave this battlefield and correct our mistake. The sure way to lose the war is to stick it out in Iraq. The sure way to grant our enemies just what they want is to stay in Iraq and bleed. We've gone down the wrong path here. We have to turn back if we want to win, because at the end of this path lies futility, defeat, humiliation, and a total loss of confidence in ourselves. These things will happen not because we couldn't win, but because we couldn't lose. We couldn’t lose the war. We couldn't lose our self-certainty and conviction that we've done the right thing, that we've set out on the right course. Sadly, if we try to win the war in Iraq by sticking it out, we'll lose the war against Al Qaeda that we should have fought from the start.
One of the most insightful passages from the New Testament is this teaching: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even that which he has will be taken away.” The first part of the passage applies to the United States during its period of world leadership. For all its faults and mistakes, U. S. leadership offered the world wealth beyond measure, individual dignity, freedom from coercion based on natural rights, clear vision, optimism, practicality, good judgment and generous impulses, wisdom, faith, more hope for peace and prosperity than the world had known. The country had everything a human society could want, in abundance. The signs after 9/11, evidenced by the Iraq war, indicate the United States and its leaders do not have any of these precious qualities. It has not clear vision but blindness, not optimism but fire and blood, not practicality but utopian fantasies, not good judgment but thick-headed self-righteousness, not generous impulses but selfish anxiety, not wisdom but fatuous gall, not faith but gullible aggressiveness, not hope but nervous fear. As a result, everything it has will be taken away.
During the 2004 presidential debates, a friend pointed to the box that Bush created when he went to war in Iraq. President Bush challenged John Kerry, “So are you saying that our troops in Iraq have died in vain?” I wish Kerry had replied, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask that question, you slimy little criminal.” You can’t say that in a presidential debate, though. At a time when no one can say anything against our troops, Kerry was stymied. “He had him,” my friend observed. I replied that Howard Dean would have responded differently. He would have come back at Bush directly:
“Yes, Mr. President, you're right. Those troops died in vain. They died without purpose in a war you initiated.
“Our courageous young Americans died from a huge strategic blunder – a futile, wrong-headed war. You’re responsible for these useless deaths – our soldiers’ unfortunate sacrifice is on your head. These young men and women, so willing to give everything for their country, trusted you. Their parents, their brothers and sisters, their wives and children all trusted you. The whole country looked to you after the September 11 attacks to lead us back from that dreadful loss. How did you respond? You sent our armed forces into a long, destructive war, justified it with obvious, self-serving dishonesty, and refused to admit your mistake after everyone else could see the truth about what you had done.
“You want charge me with defeatism and disloyalty? Let me ask you this. Who is not supporting our troops: the commander in chief who leads his armed forces on a foolish, misconceived mission, or the mother who tries to organize some resistance to this fanciful crusade? The vice president who suggests that critics in or out of uniform are traitors, or the sergeant who leads his platoon through danger and difficulties, no matter what he thinks of the war?
“Our troops promised to protect our Constitution. They promised to serve their country faithfully. They trusted you to lead them well. You failed to honor that trust – you betrayed it. You asked our soldiers to do something that you wouldn't do yourself when it was your turn to serve, and you asked them to do it for dishonest reasons. So I need to ask you, Mr. President: When are you going to support our troops? When are you going to send them to fight our real enemies, rather than false enemies that you cooked up because you had a grudge against Saddam Hussein? You've misled the citizens of this great country much too long now. If you can't admit your mistake, at least stop the vile suggestion that your opponents are unpatriotic traitors who don’t support our men and women in the field.”
The Democratic party thought Howard Dean couldn't win against George Bush. They thought John Kerry was a more effective fighter, more electable. Hindsight proved them wrong on that judgment. Kerry hardly talked about the war in his campaign until the fall, and even then he raised his criticisms in only a few speeches. He spent too much time in the end trying to answer Bush's question: Why did you vote for the war? After Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it seemed his campaign had little to say about military matters. Criticism of the war might appear unpatriotic. On the contrary, Kerry's criticism of the war in Iraq showed the best patriotic impulse, just as his stand against the war in Vietnam exemplified courageous patriotism. Unlike his anti-war activities in the 1970s, though, Kerry the presidential candidate acted too hesitantly. As a result, his opposition to the Iraq war appeared unfounded and equivocal. Dean would not have been such a reluctant critic.
Seventy-five years from now, analysts will recognize that some citizens saw how we erred after 9/11, while it happened. We didn’t have to wait for the war to be over in order to see our mistake. We could predict the destructive, self-defeating effects of this war, before we launched it. We could see what a bad course of action it was, as it unfolded. But seeing the truth about the war hasn't made us – as a nation – willing to do the necessary and right thing: redeploy our forces to fight the people who attacked us. When you focus your attention in the wrong place – indeed, when you focus your attention in any place, you miss the big picture. When you miss the big picture, you make big mistakes.

The Secession Papers: Introduction

I’ve been an independent in politics for a long time. I recognize, though, that parties are the organizations that get things done in the political arena, and I think with the right leadership the Libertarian party could accomplish a lot. We’ve never had a time when so many people are rightly unhappy with both major parties, or so distrust institutions of government. We need political leaders who can harness the discontent and desire for freedom to a third American revolution. The first one started in 1776, and the second one started in 1860. I don’t see any Jeffersons or Lincolns on the horizon, though, and even if we did have leaders of that caliber, it’s hard to see how they would proceed. We need someone who is stubborn, visionary, and disciplined to lead the country in a campaign of civil disobedience against Washington. Those qualities aren’t so common, especially not in one person.

Ronald Reagan and James Dean: Rare Video From 1954

Ronald Reagan and James Dean: Rare Video From 1954 - Culture - The Atlantic

Path to Labor Market Freedom and Job Growth

Reagan said the more you tax something, the less you have of it. If you tax labor and the products of labor, you'll have fewer jobs. If you tax sales contracts, you'll have fewer goods and services for sale - and therefore fewer jobs. If you tax business contracts of all kinds, you'll have fewer business transactions. We know what fewer business transactions implies for jobs.

We know how to increase the number of jobs. Everyone knows: we have to remove government from the labor market. Yes, we'll always have taxes, but we can fashion tax policy so as to minimize the impact taxes have on business contracts. Labor and sales contracts are the key types of business contracts at issue here. If we reduce taxes on labor and sales contracts, we increase the number of contracts and therefore the number of people engaged in those contracts. If we reduce government interference with labor and sales contracts, we increase the number of contracts and therefore - I don't really need to say it again - the number of jobs.

Here is a baker's dozen of things we can do to reduce taxes on business contracts and eliminate government impediments:

1. Decouple health care and employment.
2. Decouple tax collection and employment.
3. End the social security tax.
4. End the tax for Medicare and Medicaid.
5. Tax all employment at the same low rate.
6. Give employers, contractors, and independent consultants complete freedom to form business contracts. Eliminate the tax distinctions and restrictions that govern contract employment.
7. Tax all sales transactions at the same low rate. Eliminate the multitude of largely invisible taxes on sales contracts in favor of a single sales tax.
8. End the minimum wage.
9. End the permits, tax requirements, and other legal restrictions that make it difficult for entrepreneurs to start and grow a new business.
10. For any new business contract, eliminate all taxes for six months. Let any two people or parties form a legitimate business contract without regard for tax or other legal requirements.
11. End the requirement that employers pay for unemployment insurance.
12. End the requirement that employers pay for workers' compensation.
13. End all government subsidies in the form of direct payments, tax breaks, and other allowances. Reduce government payments and special considerations to zero.

Naturally we don't plan to do any of these things. Instead we will pass another stimulus bill, which reduces our ability to sustain job growth over the long term. We'll continue our unhappy discussions about how to create jobs, our sense of pessimism about how to accomplish it. But we know how to accomplish it. The path to labor market freedom lies right in front of us.

Freedom, Security, and Cost in Our Health Care Dilemma

Recently I ran across an article by Cynthia Tucker that quoted from Ronald Reagan's 1961 speech against Medicare. In the speech, Reagan accurately predicted what would happen if Medicare were enacted. She also cited Nicholas Kristof's article, where he mocks critics of Social Security and Medicare. Referring to the critics of the current health care bill before Congress, he suggests we've heard all of this before. All the predictions about socialization, higher costs, and loss of freedom were wrong then, Kristoff says, and they're wrong now. These programs proved to be hugely popular, so much so that Reagan stopped criticizing them when he ran for president.

The popularity of Social Security and Medicare doesn't mean their critics were wrong, though. Their predictions about cost, freedom of choice, and socialization came about. Their description of how our society would evolve with these programs in place was remarkably accurate. We expect and accept the high taxes, and constraints on individual freedom that these programs entail. The program's popularity doesn't mean the critics were mistaken. It means people have wanted to trade freedom for security in two key areas: retirement income and health care. Many accept the higher costs and loss of choice that public programs impose, if in return the government can ease their fears about poverty and ill-health during old age.

So defenders of the current efforts to improve our health care system can look back and say accurately that Medicare has more supporters than critics. What's popular does matter in a democracy, but truth and popularity aren't always on the same side. In this case, Reagan's warnings about Medicare have proven altogether accurate. In fact, the need to change our health care system now would not be so urgent if Medicare did not place such a strain on our government's resources. We could live with our system's faults if the bill for Medicare weren't so high. As it is, Medicare payments seem out of control, going up faster and faster as our population becomes older. Thus the urgent need, expressed so often by Washington's budget analysts, to contain costs.

Interestingly, a key element of our current cost-cutting plan is to increase the government's role in health care! If you aim to reduce costs without rationing, reduce government's role. Don't increase it. We have other goals, however: clearly universal participation in the nation's health care system precedes cost cutting as the reformers' primary goal. The outlay of public funds required to cover every person, under current proposals, won't be small. We have only two ways to limit costs: individuals who make purchasing decisions in an unregulated market, and some form of public rationing. We are a long way from the free market option, and no one speaks favorably of the R word. Consequently we are headed toward an expansion of public funding for health care, with no support for rationing. Of course the government's costs will go up. We've tried - not so successfully - to pretend they won't.

Let's return to Kristoff's confident, dismissive remark: “We've heard all of this before.” The critics were wrong then, Kristoff implies, and they're equally wrong now. Critics in the 1960s said we would look to governnent for our benefits and well-being, and we do. Critics said the costs of social health care in old age would become insupportable, and they have. Critics argued that each enhancement of the government's authority would result in a diminution of our freedom. We have seen exactly that outcome. Reagan and all the wise people who joined him spoke truthfully. We enacted public funding for old age health care, and we  have seen the results. For the most part, the intended social bargain since 1964 has worked: in return for high taxes and a substantial degree of government involvement in old age health care, Medicare participants have received the care they want.

Whatever judgments we make about Medicare's tradeoffs, though, we should recognize why Reagan and others objected to it. If we want to change the system in a way that forces everyone to participate, we certainly have to recognize what's true in the critics' warnings. The truth is that security of the type we're talking about here does come at the price of freedom. As we move to carry out health care reform, we ought to heed Reagan's warning: once we sacrifice our freedom to some other end, we're not going to get it back. We can easily relinquish our freedoms incrementally, in return for benefits we're eager to acquire. We'll have the security we crave, but will we have the life we want?

John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable: Book Review

I lived in Nanjing, China when Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, came out. We were cut off from a lot of news over in China. You felt like you were on the other side of the world because you were. So something had to make a big stir in the U. S. for us to know about it in Nanjing. The Los Angeles riots after police beat Rodney King and the first Persian Gulf war were two events that made a stir. Oliver Stone's film did, too.

I didn't see the film until much later, well after we returned to the United States. Before that I saw an interview where a journalist asked Stone whether he believed the story he told in JFK. He  smiled slightly and said, “I just make movies.” I thought it was a good answer. I didn't feel so comfortable if, after nearly thirty years of controversy, the judgment of so many people would turn on the story presented in one film.

After we returned from China, I read Gerald Posner's book, Case Closed. The controversy about Stone's film must have raised my interest, as it was the first book about the assassination I'd read. Posner's argument, that Lee Oswald acted alone and that a single bullet hit both President Kennedy and Governor Connally, seemed plausible. I hadn't been inclined to question the Warren Report to begin with, so Posner's account was convincing enough for me.

Now move forward ten years and more, to the Bush administration's response to 9/11. The regular use of torture by the CIA and the military against our enemies appalled me. It completely changed my attitude toward my own government. Where before I would give my elected representatives the benefit of the doubt in every doubtful case, now I would never do so. I completely lost faith that the government would do the right thing as it carried out its responsibilities. The government's behavior after 9/11 caused it to lose legitimacy.

Some would say, “It's about time you saw that.” Others would say, “Governments have always done bad things. These acts weren't out of the ordinary. You have to take the bad with the good.” A third bunch might comment simply, “Open your eyes and try not to be so idealistic.” Open your eyes is right, but not in the way the last group intends. Remember Saul's conversion, when the scales fell from his eyes after God struck him blind. He was a new person after that. What a conversion experience. Paul went out and converted the world after that.

Let me describe my conversion experience. Mine started in 2002, when we started down the path toward war with Iraq. I've already written a lot about that period in Ugly War. Anger preceded Bush's reelection in 2004; discouragement followed it. By 2005, though, my emotion and vehemence had played out, so the horrific events in Baghdad and elsewhere during Bush's second term didn't affect me so much. As Bush's popularity bottomed out and stayed low during 2005-2007, I thought, I was here a long time before everyone else.

Then in the summer of 2009 I read an article by Oliver Stone in praise of a new book by James Douglass. Douglass's book is titled John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. I bought the book at Amazon, and as often happens at that site, picked up another book, too, called Brothers by David Talbot. I read Brothers first, and could see it was a first class piece of journalism. I said to people, if you're interested in the Kennedys, you have to read this book - and I don't recommend books that often. Then I started Douglass's book.

As I read Talbot's account, I found myself saying, “We'll never know if there was a conspiracy behind Kennedy's assassination.” As I finish JFK and the Unspeakable, I ask, “How could anyone who considers the evidence think otherwise?” The main problem with Stone's film, and with Jim Garrison's work in the 1960s, is that they don't explicate a motive for a government conspiracy. You're left feeling that everyone was in on it. How could so many people be involved with the conspiracy, and still have it be a secret after all this time?

Well, the number of people involved, or who knew about the conspiracy, was large but not that large. As for secrecy, it's amazing how much evidence related to a conspiracy was ready at hand from the start. What a poorly kept secret! Yes, the Warren Report managed to corral enough people who would speak in favor of the lone gunman account of the crime. Its purpose from the start was to lay conspiracy theories to rest,  and it succeeded with people like me - people brought up to give our public institutions more trust than they apparently deserve. After the Bush-Cheney fiasco, I would never ever misplace my trust again.

Let me say a little about the word conspiracy before moving on to Douglass's book. The term has a bad odor after many years of dismissive put-downs: “Oh, he's just another one of those conspiracy theorists.” Remember the simple meaning of conspiracy: it refers to a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. Reduced further, it means more than one person was involved in the assassination. Was it a lone gunman or not? If you think it wasn't a lone gunman, do you have to live with the opprobrious label, conspiracy theorist?

The virtue of Douglass's book is that he explains why a conspiracy formed in the first place. It's the first book that convincingly addresses the conspirators' motives. In Case Closed, Posner recognizes that he has to accomplish that same tasks as a courtroom attorney: assemble evidence to support your case, explicate a motive, make the evidence and the motive hang together in a convincing story. Douglass does the same thing. I haven't read much of the conspiracy literature, but I can tell you that an awful lot of it focuses on evidentiary details. Jim Garrison's case is a good example of that method. One reason the jury acquitted Clay Shaw is that Garrison didn't explain why Shaw might have been involved with a conspiracy to begin with.

When you read Talbot and Douglass together, you can see that many powerful people had numerous reasons for wanting Jack and Bobby Kennedy out of the way. At bottom, they saw Jack Kennedy as treasonous, not to be trusted with the power he held. Brutus and the other conspirators in Rome had the same motive for killing Caesar. They didn't trust him. They didn't trust him with the survival of the state. In Kennedy's case, his enemies believed that if he continued as president, the United States would lose its global contest with communism.

Imagine that Barack Obama wants to open negotiations with Osama bin Laden. When challenged, told firmly he should not go down that road, Obama persists. He argues that we invite our own destruction if we don't find a way to make peace with our enemies. He argues that we should look at our own attitudes, examine our own tendency to reach for weapons of war when the methods of peace offer us our only hope for salvation. The differences between our current war and the Cold War of Kennedy's time are numerous and relevant, yet this example gives an idea of the reaction some people had toward Kennedy's moves toward reconciliation with the Soviet Union after the Cuban missile crisis. Like Kennedy, they perceived the nation's survival at stake. They concluded that Kennedy must be removed from office to protect the republic.

When you understand the conspirators' motives, the rest of the evidence becomes too strong to dismiss. Douglass assembles a huge amount of non-dismissible evidence to support the conclusion that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's murder. For me, Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Oswald on November 24 created the small voice that asked through the decades, “What's going on here? That's fishy.” How could Oswald be murdered like that? What's going on here?

Then you learn that Jack Ruby had ties to the CIA before he carried out his hit against Oswald. You learn that Oswald wasn't only a former Marine, a loner and a misfit with problems in his marriage and no steady job. His history was a lot more complicated than that. Life magazine published that black and white photograph of Oswald, standing with a rifle in his hands. There you have him, the president's killer. The evidence is right in front of you. When you find out that Oswald himself worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, had done so for quite a long time before 1963, you have to question the Life magazine account. You can't believe the Warren Report any longer when you learn that both Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald had clear ties to the CIA.

The enormity of the alternate account was too big for most people to swallow. How could our own government have been involved with this huge crime? The crime itself couldn't be believed. Political assassinations of the kind that brought Julius Caesar down just don't occur any more. Instinctive disbelief in political assassination engendered grief-stricken belief in the Life magazine account: a disturbed gunman acted alone, for reasons we could never fathom due to Jack Ruby's act of revenge.

Well what if Jack Ruby didn't act out of revenge? What if he cried that weekend not because Kennedy was dead, but because he'd been assigned to take Oswald out? He'd cry if he knew his life was over. He went to prison and died there. Oswald cried out to the press the day before, “I'm just a patsy!” Funny thing for a presidential assassin to say, actually. Funny thing to say, unless it's true.

So read Douglass's book. Read it even though the print is small and it looks a little intimidating. Good research generally does look intimidating. One Amazon reviewer commented that this book is the most important written in the last forty years. That is not an overstatement, no matter what you think of the Kennedys  and no matter what you think of the Warren Commission. JFK and the Unspeakable offers our country an opportunity to deal with the truth. The country is already immeasurably weakened now, at the beginning of 2010, compared with its strength and vitality at the end of 1999. At the least, it can muster courage to recognize the truth before it passes into history's list of deflated empires.

J. K. Rowling said that dealing with the truth is always better than accepting a lie or an evasion. Not only better - it's easier than the alternatives, no matter how hard accepting the truth might be. We don't know what might have happened in the United States if we had accepted the truth about November 22, 1963, right away. We do know what will happen if we don't accept it now. Our country will succumb to civil conflict, just as Rome did after Caesar fell. We had plenty of civil conflict in the 1960s, and we have plenty more on the horizon in 2010.

Conspiracy theorists have another kind of dismissive put-down to deal with. “You think JFK's assassination was an inside job? So what if it was? What can we do about it? Let's move on already.” Bobby Kennedy wasn't dismissive about it, but during his bitter period of grief he would say something similar. “What good would it do to prove a conspiracy? It won't bring my brother back.” Who cares if people in our own government knocked off a sitting president? It happened over forty-five years ago. Let's deal with problems we have right now.

Oliver Stone, David Talbot and James Douglass have it right, though. We can't pretend Kennedy fell to a lone nut if it's not true. We have to be clear eyed about why facing the truth matters. We have to face the enormity of this assassination. If it's the truth, we have to accept that our government executed a president, then lied to cover it up. How could anyone say that the truth doesn't matter here? We all want to love our country. We all want to be proud of our citizenship, our membership in this community of freedom and responsibility. How can love and pride ring true for us if the whole project rests on a lie?

Once you've lost faith in one area, you lose faith in every area. The government tortured people to death at Bagram air force base, and you wonder what else it can do. Once you doubt that Lee Oswald acted alone, you doubt that Sirhan Sirhan acted alone. Once you doubt the government's story about why the Kennedys died, you doubt the official story about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. When you don't believe anything the government says, that's not healthy skepticism anymore. That's a loss of faith so complete the government no longer holds legitimate authority.

Let's take one more example that brings us back to the twenty-first century. When a good friend first raised the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job, I have to say my response was swift. “What's the point of even thinking such a thing?” I asked. I shook my head and said, “There's just no evidence for that at all.” That was before the stories about enhanced interrogation techniques, extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, black sites, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and more truly sank in. That was before I turned, before the scales fell.

I went to a liberty forum a few years ago where 9/11 truth tellers were hawking their brochures and amateurish newspapers to anyone who might be interested. I thought, a bit contemptuously, why do they even let these guys in here? I believe in free speech, but they don't have to show up here, where their pet subject isn't even that relevant to the meeting. Their obsession with conspiracies rubs off on everything. Be careful: their reputation as conspiracy nuts can rub off on you.

Now I wonder a bit at my own readiness to ignore the message and brush off the messenger. Now I read the evidence about the collapse of World Trade Center building number seven, and I wonder. How could all three of those buildings collapse like that? My friend argued that the motive to destroy the World Trade Center is clear. If you want to start a war in the Middle East, and you want strong public backing for it, you couldn't do better than an attack like 9/11. I dismissed the argument. We have plenty of enemies in the world; we don't need to manufacture inside plots to account for those attacks, I said. The conspiracy nuts have to observe some limits!

Yes, but why did building number seven collapse that way, so late in the day? Why did the Bush administration resist an investigation of the 9/11 attacks for so long? Why did the government and media outlets not fully publicize the identities of all nineteen attackers, with a full biography of each one? Once you start to doubt, you doubt everything. Once you lose trust, you distrust every last element of authority you used to deem legitimate. You used to pay taxes because you wanted to support your public institutions, because you believed in their mission, and you knew your representatives carried out their responsibilities openly and in good faith. You are proud of your membership in the community, and you believe in its purpose. Once you lose trust, you pay taxes because you have to.

I know the 60s weren't easy - Vietnam stretched my patriotism hard. I was ready to leave the country if  forced to fight over there, and I don't feel ashamed of my opposition one bit. After Vietnam, I joined the Navy voluntarily, and service to country was a primary motive. My love of country survived Vietnam, but living through that time taught me that loving your country does not require loyalty to its government. You can maintain fidelity to your country's ideals while you stand against the actions of its government. The same distinction has to hold for patriots who recognize the evil behind our government's actions after 9/11. Condemnation of the government for acts that are in fact evil is not disloyal, unpatriotic, or treasonous. Let the truth come out, though the heavens may fall.

Would the heavens fall if we acknowledged the truth about JFK's assassination? Would they have fallen if we had acknowledged it forty-five years ago? We can't answer the second question, of course. We can only answer the first question if we try it out. Fourteen years after the assassination, in 1979, the House panel on assassinations wrote that JFK's murder was probably the result of a conspiracy. After Oliver Stone's film, polls started to show that more than half of the respondents believed the same thing. Does that mean we've acknowledged the truth? I don't think so. Acknowledging the truth means we open up all of the government's records on the matter. To begin with, those records belong to us. Acknowledging the truth means that the government take an active role in finding the truth, not an active role in hiding it. Acknowledging the truth means owning the crime, and figuring out where to go from here once we've done so.

I'd say we owe James Douglass a big debt of thanks. That book took a lot of work. It took special skill to do what he did. As citizens we need to read his work and reach judgments about what he has written. Honestly, you can't let your president be murdered and not face up to it. You can't let the unspeakable remain unspoken. At some point the unspeakable has to come into the open and enter the room, no matter what. When it does, you have to keep it with you, no matter how shocking, shameful, or shattering the truth is.

I'm telling you, we have one more chance, after George W. Bush, to save our country, to reestablish our commitment to its founding ideas. We have big trials ahead. Acknowledging the truth about all our government's evil acts could help us survive the coming trials as one nation. If we hide the truth, avoid it and hope it disappears, we'll shatter into a shapeless pile under the pressures we'll endure. We don't have to endure these trials alone, we don't have to succumb, but the general atmosphere of division and pessimism suggests that we prefer failure to honesty.

Lincoln's Legacy

The more you learn about Abraham Lincoln, the more you learn to admire him. He deserves his praise. Today is the two hundredth anniversary of his birth day, February 12, 1809. February 12, 2009, is only twenty-three days after another leader from Illinois stepped into Lincoln's large shoes.

We all know that Lincoln managed to hold the Union together through victory in a protracted civil war. The standard stories often don't relate how much that outcome depended on Lincoln's determination and tenacity. Right up to the fall of 1864, when Atlanta fell, people pressed Lincoln to negotiate with the South to end the war. They even suggested that he retract the Emancipation Proclamation to conciliate the South.

Outcomes of war look inevitable in retrospect, but they don't look so certain when you still have to fight for them. When we praise Lincoln now, and thank him, we recognize the material part he played to keep the United States one country and all free. The house did not divide and it did stand.

Interestingly, Lincoln's ambition to lead brought the sectional crisis over slavery to a turning point. The country split because of his election, though Lincoln himself never recognized the separate status of the Confederate states. He regarded the Confederacy's call to arms as a rebellion that had to be defeated. With wisdom and force of character, he succeeded.

Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, for the continuation of this great experiment. We may feel somewhat pessimistic about our prospects right now, but we have reasons to be hopeful, too. If Mr. Obama follows your example of leadership, as he wants to do, our hope may have some foundation.

Memories Of Robert F. Kennedy

Memories Of Robert F. Kennedy, Jeff Greenfield Worked On RFK's 1968 Campaign - Now He Shares Remembrances Of The Man

"Thomas Jefferson once wrote that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. But If I'm elected president … don't try it." ~RFK

Nature of the Global Warming Controversy

Last night I read generally about the origin of oil, greenhouse gases, and climate change on the web. What I read was not inconsistent with two points in a constellation of arguments:

People’s beliefs about global warming are just that: beliefs. The arguments about the data on climate change, the principal causes of climate change, the consequences of climate change, and our responses to it are all premised on what one might call prebeliefs. But then, many ostensibly scientific discussions carried on by people have the same character, so the global warming discussion isn’t so different that way.

In line with the first point, arguments about proper responses to global warming follow this idea of prebeliefs. People say: we can observe global warming, it’s a problem, and we have to reduce emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to address the problem. The private structure of the argument is different: we need to limit the use of non-renewable fossil fuels, and global warming supplies a strong rationale for doing so. Beliefs about oil, where it comes from and how much we have, drive beliefs about the correct response to climate change.

Analysis of Military Aircraft for Current Missions

Hi Dad,

I extracted the information below from Wikipedia. I know you’re skeptical about that online encyclopedia, but it’s actually a good collection of information. You challenged me to find some figures, so I did! I have to credit a conversation with Leslie for motivating me.

I included some extra text for general interest. It was fun doing these calculations. Thanks for suggesting I pursue these figures!

Enough for tonight.

Love,

Steve

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P-51 Mustang

Type Fighter
Manufacturer North American Aviation
Maiden flight 26 October 1940
Introduction 1942
Retired 1957, U.S. Air National Guard
Primary users United States Army Air Forces
Royal Air Force, numerous others (see below)
Number built 15,875
Unit cost US$50,985 in 1945 ($610,687 in 2008 dollars)

The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang was an American long-range single-seat fighter aircraft that entered service with Allied air forces in the middle years of World War II. The P-51 became one of the conflict's most successful and recognizable aircraft.

The P-51 flew most of its wartime missions as a bomber escort in raids over Germany, helping ensure Allied air superiority from early 1944. It also saw limited service against the Japanese in the Pacific War. The Mustang began the Korean War as the United Nations' main fighter, but was relegated to a ground attack role when superseded by jet fighters early in the conflict. Nevertheless, it remained in service with some air forces until the early-1980s.

As well as being economical to produce, the Mustang was a fast, well-made and highly durable aircraft. The definitive version of the single-seat fighter was powered by the Packard V-1650-3, a two-stage two-speed supercharged 12-cylinder Packard-built version of the legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, and (the P-51D) were armed with six of the aircraft version of the .50 caliber (12.7 mm) Browning machine guns.

After World War II and the Korean conflict, many Mustangs were converted for civilian use, especially air racing. The Mustang's reputation was such that, in the mid-1960s, Ford Motor Company's Designer John Najjar proposed the name for a new youth-oriented coupe after the fighter.

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F-22 Raptor

Type Stealth Air superiority fighter
National origin United States
Manufacturers Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems
Maiden flight YF-22: 29 September 1990

F-22: 7 September 1997
Introduction 15 December 2005
Status Active: 91
Planned: 187
Primary user United States Air Force
Number built 112 (as of February 2008)
Program cost US$62 billion
Unit cost US$137.5 million (2008 flyaway cost)

The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It is primarily an air superiority fighter, but has multiple capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles. The United States Air Force considers the F-22 a critical component of the U.S. strike force.

Faced with a protracted development period, the aircraft was variously designated F-22 and F/A-22 during the three years before formally entering US Air Force service in December 2005, as the F-22A. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems and final assembly of the F-22. Program partner Boeing Integrated Defense Systems provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and all of the pilot and maintenance training systems.

The F-22 is claimed by multiple sources to be the world’s most effective air superiority fighter. The US Air Force claims that the F-22 cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft. Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, Chief of the Australian Defence Force, said in 2004 that the “F-22 will be the most outstanding fighter plane ever built.“

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A couple of simple ratios finishes the analysis:

F-22 unit cost divided by P-51 unit cost equals 225.

The F-22 costs 225 times as much as the P-51, in 2008 dollars.

The number P-51s built divided by the number of F-22s planned equals 84.89.

For each F-22 the air force builds now, it built 85 P-51s sixty years ago.

Note the relationship between time and money, too. For the Mustang, the time from its maiden flight in 1940 to its introduction in 1942 was two years. For the Raptor, the time from its maiden flight in 1990 to its introduction in 2005 was fifteen years. That’s thirteen extra years of development for the F-22.

A defender of current practice would say that of course the F-22 is more expensive and takes longer to develop. It’s more complex and a much more capable aircraft. That begs the question, though. We want and need simpler aircraft. Many military missions don’t require the capabilities of the F-22. A less capable aircraft – lower speed, lower weight, less everything – would serve our purposes well. Our pilots have many missions to accomplish, but they don’t need to prevail in dogfights with other jets.

Summary: Because such high performance weapons systems cost so much, we produce them in smaller quantities. If we made simplicity and lower cost primary factors in the design of our military aircraft, we would have many more of them. Our current air power rests with drones, helicopters, long-range bombers, and high performance jets. If we look at what we want to accomplish with air power in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, however, we see many missions that require simple, small, piloted aircraft.

What are those missions?
• Accurate bombing of military, not civilian targets.
• Close support of ground troops in urban warfare, not so vulnerable to ground fire as helicopters.
• Reconnaissance of all types.
• Harassment of enemy movements and communications.
• Command and control over large areas, including urban battlefields.

As I write these thoughts, I don’t even know whether these aircraft would be jets or propeller driven. I think propeller driven would be more useful. I imagine an aircraft that would operate at low to medium altitudes, at relatively low speeds. Altogether, the altitudes and speeds would be high enough to make them much less vulnerable to ground fire than helicopters. Yet the altitudes and speeds would be low enough to make them able to accomplish their support missions more capably than high-performance fighters.

I didn’t intend to write so much after the initial calculation of figures, but there you go!

Thanks again,

Steve