Get your own Free Home PageThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization is acting as if it were a supra-national government rather than a military alliance. It is now thinking about intervening militarily in Kosovo.
First, Kosovo is Serbian territory and has been for centuries. The Albanian majority are mostly illegal immigrants or noncitizens. They have often made life miserable for native Serbs. The Albanian separatists are wrong; the Serbs are right.
Second, the efforts of Serbia to retain its own territory is none of NATO's business. It's not our business either. If anyone is deserving of assistance, it is the Serbs, not the Albanian separatists.
You may rightly ask what this has to do with America. After all, our public-education system is dilapidated; much of our infrastructure is wearing out; our middle class is shrinking; our farm population is shrinking and is on shaky financial ground; and our debts are mountain-high.
Well, the answer is Kosovo has nothing to do with us. Neither do the Balkans or the quarrels in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and anywhere else Americans are predisposed to meddle under the false flag of purporting that ``stability'' in some far-off place is in our national interest.
Let me tell you what's in our national interest. A well-educated population. Modern infrastructure. Domestic peace. An honest political system. A clean environment. A healthy, financially sound agricultural base. A sound monetary system. Trade surpluses rather than trade deficits. An economy that allows everyone to work and live in dignity.
And not one of the above is a reality.
We have a full domestic agenda, and neither money nor lives should be wasted on faraway foreign quarrels and intrigues. God did not anoint the United States to govern the world. The United States is not competent to govern the world. The Constitution does not authorize the U.S. government to govern the world. The American people don't want to govern the world.
But alas, for most of this century, what one historian has called the New York-London axis, a nexus of international banks and trans-national corporations has peddled incessantly an internationalist-interventionist foreign policy. It has been profitable for them and disastrous for Americans.
Americans get fewer benefits for their tax dollars than Europeans. American workers are paid less than European workers. America once ran trade surpluses but now consistently runs trade deficits. America was once a creditor nation; now it is a debtor nation. America was once called the arsenal of democracy; now America depends on foreign imports for key components of most of its strategic weapons. Americans, if we don't reverse course, will soon be dependent on foreign imports for the food we eat.
You should read Pat Buchanan's new book, The Great Betrayal, published by Little, Brown and Co. The moderate Buchanan (his inscription in the copy he sent to me says, ``To Charley Reese, an America first patriot who makes me sound like Boutros-Boutros Ghali ... .'') provides a succinct and accurate history of how the American people have been betrayed by the American elite who run the nation's foreign-policy establishment.
He points out, for example, that much vaunted prosperity is lopsided. Corporate profits are up; the stock market is up; compensation for chief executives is up; but hourly wages are lower today than in the 1960s, and 63 percent of mothers with children younger than 6 are working.
Yet most politicians, most of the news media, most of the academics keep telling the American people to keep doing what hasn't worked for them and what has actually caused them harm. Americans need to learn to say, ``No.''
This is an unabashed, unapologetic plug for Sandra Bullock's new movie, Hope Floats. Go see it.
First, let me dispose of a conflict of interest. I, as I assume every healthy male in America is, am in love with Sandra Bullock. I now know how Judge Roy Bean felt about Miss Lillie Langtry. If I owned a saloon west of the Pecos River, I would name it after Miss Bullock.
Of course, I've never met the lady, and it wouldn't do a whit of good if I did as (a) she is young enough to be my daughter, and (b) ill-tempered ink-stained wretches who look like Vinnie the Enforcer are lucky if a waterfront barmaid will let them buy her a drink.
But that aside, Hope Floats is an excellent movie, and there is a reason folks ought to go see it. It is a good story about decent people dealing with the crises that every family faces. It is beautifully photographed, intelligently written, extremely well-acted and well-directed. There's no violence, no profanity, no explosions, no sacrilege, no cynicism and no exploitive sex. There is humor and wit and compassion instead.
So, why aren't you folks going to see it?
It is not enough to complain about sex and violence and Hollywood decadence. Movie-making is a business, and, for that reason, people have leverage. It's called a ticket. If you don't buy tickets to bad movies and you do buy tickets to good movies, you will get fewer bad movies and more good movies. Or vice versa. Trust me. That's Austrian School of Economics.
Hollywood moguls won't read any letters you write to them; they will brush off the political rhetoric with a campaign donation; and they have contempt for the critics. But they read box-office receipts.
Miss Bullock apparently put up some of her own money (she's listed as one of the executive producers) to make the very kind of movie so many Americans have been saying they want to see.
Well, it's in the theaters. Go see it. We know there is an audience for bad movies. The question is is there an audience for good ones?
A culture is like a yard. If you curse the weeds but neglect to water and fertilize the flowers, you will end up with one heck of an ugly yard. It's never enough to condemn evil; we have to praise and support good.
The death knell for any culture is the message: The bad people care, but the good ones don't. It doesn't matter whether the subject is art, movies, politics or neighborhoods. If we want a good society, then we have to support good people, good art, good movies, good public officials.
Nothing makes a young politician more cynical than to take the heat and do the right thing only to be met with a wall of silence from the very people who had urged him to do what he did. I've seen it happen. I've seen a young public official do the right thing and not get so much as a simple thanks, a postcard or a phone call.
Some folks, of course, just love to gripe. Others have developed a defeatist attitude and perhaps enjoy seeing themselves as unsung martyrs. I prefer action. If you don't like something, do something about it; if you do like something, do something about that, too.
I despise a defeatist attitude. To struggle and fight for the right thing for the right reason is just as important as winning. Too many people decide ahead of time that they can't win so they don't fight. The fight itself is a thing of value. Let God worry about the outcome.
Maybe that's why the new Bullock movie appealed to me. It's about fighting despair and retaining hope.
That's a much more inspiring story than some cardboard hero shooting 50 cardboard villains.
And besides, Miss Bullock is so beautiful.
When it comes to the concept of sin, secular folks just don't get it.
I was reminded of that as I read a news story about the homosexual lobby being in a sulk about some remarks made by Sen. Trent Lott. The remarks were just the standard Christian approach: Homosexuality is a sin, but love the sinner and try to correct the sin.
The ad hominem attack of the homosexual spokesmen can be discounted. They have adopted the usual dog bark of ideologues in these days: If you don't agree with my political agenda, you are an extremist and a hater. Let us ignore barking dogs.
What is interesting is the reporter's comment, which was that Lott had stepped into the controversy of whether homosexuality is learned or biological. The secular position is that if it is biological, then, of course, it's OK. But that is not the Christian position.
That's what I mean about secular folks not getting it. The concept of sin is that there are certain acts God, for reasons of his own, does not wish people to perform. It doesn't matter if people are biologically or environmentally predisposed toward performing them. One could say, for example, that adultery is biological, as well as murder. Some men have high testosterone levels that predispose them to an aggressive sex life. Some people, biologically, have bad tempers. Some people, though probably not all homosexuals, are biologically predisposed toward homosexuality.
Doesn't matter. Morality is about actions, not about desires, impulses or predispositions. If you survey all religions and moral philosophies, you see plainly that the whole idea of ethics is to impose order -- by regulating behavior -- on the human being. Put another way, precisely the idea of morality is to forego ``acting biologically.''
Biology, after all, is about nothing but survival and reproduction. Nature is cruelly indifferent to all else. Hence, biologically, homosexuality is just a defect that destroys itself.
Christianity leaves the homosexual with an admittedly narrow choice -- celibacy or heterosexuality. To be fair, Christianity doesn't leave the heterosexuals any play room either -- their choice is celibacy or marriage. That's probably why more and more Americans choose to practice what the Rev. Steve Wilkins, a League of the South colleague, calls ``churchianity'' rather than Christianity. Christianity among the ruins is definitely becoming politically incorrect and is far too restrictive for post-modern tastes.
Of course, people who don't believe in God or any religion are free of all that. They have what's left: self-indulgence -- if they can manage it -- and then obliteration, both equally meaningless.
Personally, I have no evangelical impulse or any desire to run other people's lives. They can do what they wish, as far as I'm concerned. I disagree with the homosexual political agenda on two points.
First, they wish to be classified as official, government-designated victims, and I'm against that. I don't think that any group should be a government-designated victim.
Second, they seem to want to force people to approve of them. Nobody has a right to be approved of or even liked -- only to be let alone.
Orlando, in a fit of silliness, agreed to allow the rainbow flag to be flown from city staffs during Gay Pride Month. It used the excuse of celebrating diversity. That is not what homosexuals are celebrating. They are celebrating sodomy, pederasty, fellatio and lesbianism. That seems a silly thing for a city government to condone officially.
But that's OK. If the city can fly the flag for sodomy, then certainly the city can fly the Confederate flag during Confederate History Month. I look forward to watching the city mamas and papas squirm on that issue.
I have my own suggestions for a study in economics that involves reading literature rather than economic treatises.
The novels of Charles Dickens and Emile Zola can show you the shortcomings of capitalism. The novels of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and George Orwell can show you the shortcomings of socialism. Both systems can and have been heartless and cruel. One is concerned only with profits. The other, only with power.
Many Americans, lucky enough to have been born in the prosperous postwar era, have only foggy notions of either system. Young conservatives, for example, are almost always anti-union. They buy the bunk that the corrupt robber barons who emerged after the War Between the States were entrepreneurs and benefactors. Mostly, they were financiers, crooks and as vicious as any commissar.
These young conservatives who are doctrinairely opposed to unions have no idea that their own paychecks and benefit packages are the result of unions, even if they don't belong to one. Corporate interest in the ``welfare'' of the employee materialized as a strategy to keep out unions. If you passed a law banning unions, this corporate interest in employee welfare would evaporate as quickly as spit on a Las Vegas sidewalk.
Why do you think corporations are so interested in moving their manufacturing operations to places such as Mexico and Asia? So they can revert to type and get dirt-cheap labor with no benefits, no safe working conditions and no concern for environmental damage just as they once had in America before they were forced to reform.
I've never belonged to a union and probably wouldn't because it's bad enough having a boss who pays you without paying somebody else to tell you what to do. But I at least have sense enough to appreciate that my good fortune is in part owed to decades of struggle, broken heads, broken hearts, lockouts and killings that union men and women have endured in this country.
What a lot of young conservatives and libertarians have forgotten is that one of the pillars of true conservative beliefs is the recognition that the human beings are fallible and flawed creatures. Total liberty would not produce the utopia many libertarians believe that it would. It would produce what it always has produced -- domination and exploitation of the weaker by the stronger and the more ruthless. Conversely, total government power would not produce the utopia liberals believe that it would. It would produce what it always has produced -- domination and exploitation of the weaker by the stronger and more ruthless.
Human nature is the same in the private sector as it is the public sector. And are some unions corrupt or poorly led? You bet. Human nature is the same in the union hall and in the executive suite.
That's why genuine conservatives recognize and prepare for a struggle their whole life long. We don't buy the fool's nostrums, isms, and utopian nonsense peddled by simple-minded intellectuals as a sure-fire cure for human social ills. We know that perfection is not to be found on this Earth.
We therefore value experience and tradition. We will accept change but not unless it can be proven that the change is an improvement. We lack the arrogance of the fool who, though still womb-wet, thinks that he is smarter than all humans who ever lived and have gone before.
I personally don't even consider anyone educated who can speak and write in only one language, yet among the ruins today there are plenty of Ph.D.s who would have trouble with exegesis of the Dick and Jane primary-school readers.
Americans would do better to quit looking for miracle cures and settle down to the long, hard struggle to preserve and protect what has been bequeathed them by the long, hard struggle and sacrifice of others.
A big high-pressure cell has been laying on the Gulf of Mexico like an anesthetized St. Bernard for several weeks now. It's steady, hot breath has made the lower latitudes where we live start to look more like Arizona than Florida.
I will be glad when the jet stream dips down and gooses this cell awake. Then we can settle down to our normal hot mornings and rainy afternoons, with good thunder and lightning shows and occasional tropical storms. After all, if we had preferred scorpions and Gila monsters to palmetto bugs and water moccasins, we would have settled in Tucson.
But it seems the whole country has sort of settled back for a snooze during the hot months. The Clinton-Starr scandal machine clinks along. The prez is following my advice and traveling overseas a lot. What is euphemistically called the Middle East peace process remains locked up like an engine with no oil. Fax machines continue to spit out their special pleadings. But nothing seems exciting, and no one seems to be excited.
It's an Al Gore kind of summer.
Sen. John McCain, the strange man from Arizona with the strange past, told an unbelievably tasteless joke at some Washington shindig. In it, he managed to insult the president's daughter and the attorney general. McCain, however, is a darling of the Beltway press corps (reason enough never to vote for him), and they let him off light. Typical of McCain, by the way, the joke was not only tasteless and insulting but not funny either.
Gore misspoke and said Michael Jackson when he meant to say Michael Jordan (there is a slight difference), but, because Gore is not Dan Quayle, the press did not make a big deal of that either. Ho hum. A strange lethargy has crept over the country. The next thing we know Jerry Springer will have a show with normal people on it (him excepted).
Even Hollywood, which is releasing an unusually large number of summer movies, has not come up with one that has caused any real stir of conversation outside their own incestuous circles. Nor are the criminals pulling their weight in keeping the excitement junkies awake.
The crime rate continues to go down for the sixth straight year. Pretty soon local television stations will have to resort to reporting foreign crime.
``Eight-thousand miles away today, a businessman you don't know in a place you've never been was murdered on a street the name of which we can't pronounce. Details on the Six O'Clock News.''
You think I'm kidding. Hey, The Orlando Sentinel has resorted to front-page headlines announcing that the weather is hot and dry. Betcha didn't know that until you read it. And when some woman decided to have her baby's birth broadcast on the Internet, a million people had nothing better to do than watch it.
I'm old enough to remember when people were making utopian predictions about the wonders of leisure time that were surely coming to America. It seems to me, however, that leisure, prosperity and peace are not good for people. People with nothing to do, plenty to eat and no threat to overcome seem to go to pot pronto.
Maybe it's biological. The human race has spent far more time going hungry and running from tigers and dinosaurs than it has watching television and reading newspapers. It could be that our systems are designed for crisis-living, and when nothing big and mean is hunting us and we aren't hungry, the body starts to shut down.
Unless some crisis occurs, we may evolve into an entire nation of Al Gores. Wouldn't that be a snore. Boredom, rather than barbarians, may end our empire and bring on the Dull Age.
Romans watched human beings kill each other for recreation. Nobody ever accused the Romans of being sensitive.
Why then would anyone expect American children who grow up watching human beings kill each other on television, in the movies and in video arcades to be sensitive and compassionate?
The situation today is worse than it was a few decades ago. The fictional killing is more voluminous, more graphic, but, most important, it is gratuitous, amoral and often presented as a source of humor.
Growing up during World War II, I was, of course, exposed to violence in the movies and on the news, but there was a big difference. The violence was always shown as a necessity -- good men forced by evil men to fight. It was never celebrated or joked about. Everyone, most especially the soldiers, longed for the day when the real violence could end and they could come home to their peaceful pursuits.
Film stories presented violence in the same context. The movie heroes of those days were not assassins. They were men forced as a last resort to violence in order to defend the good. The killing of a human being, even a bad guy, was generally shown as a regrettable and sad event.
As a note of film history, the first break with that practice, to my knowledge, was the initial James Bond movie, Dr. No. It was the first film in which the hero killed an unarmed man in cold blood. It was also the first film in which the hero cracked a joke about killing a person. Unlike the Bond in the novels, who was more human and motivated by patriotism, the film Bond was and still is depicted as an amoral and cynical assassin.
Unfortunately that became the pattern for the Hollywood action hero. The volume of killings increased tremendously, and many movies of that genre degenerated to kill a man, crack a joke; kill a man, crack a joke. Thus the value of human life is degraded, and the act of killing is shown as gratuitous, even funny. This is a deadly message to implant into the impressionable minds of children.
There is something you can do about it. The best choice is dump the television set. I know that's hard to do for sports fans and for public-television fans who are addicted to watching sea turtles lay eggs and hyenas scratch fleas.
The next best thing is to recognize the television set as a hazard to mental health and control its use. You wouldn't, I hope, hand your children over to some strangers standing on the street and say, ``Entertain them for a couple of hours. I've got errands to run.'' Well, don't hand them over to the strangers in Hollywood and New York.
And complain about the violence and the vulgarity. Don't waste time writing to the networks or cable companies. The life-support system of television is advertising. Write the advertisers. Take note of their names. Any public library will have a directory that has the name and address of the chief executive officer.
Just send a note. ``You are free to sponsor what you choose, but I am free to buy what products I choose, and as long as you choose to sponsor trash like (whatever), I shall choose not to buy your products anymore.''
Movies are even easier. Be careful what you buy tickets to see. And don't let your children play violent video games.
One often hears, as a political slogan, something like, ``Let's take back the country.'' Politicians can't do that. Only the people, as individuals, can, by making intelligent, moral choices in every aspect of their lives.
We don't need government to control the entertainment industry. Its customers can do that -- if they have the will.
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