Get your own Free Home PageFlannery O'Connor, a Southern writer, said once that she received a letter from a reader in California who said her last novel ``left a bad taste in my mouth.''
``Well,'' O'Connor wrote back, ``I didn't expect you to eat the book.''
I think that is a summation of the writer's feelings. As a columnist, I'm pleased if people like what I write, don't mind in the least if they disagree with me, and am amused and sometimes puzzled by people who fly into a rage.
I understand the special-interest groups, such as the Israeli lobby. I don't take its malicious and false criticism personally, because I understand that the goal is just to silence all critics of Israel if it can and to smear those it can't silence. The way the lobby figures it, there's $3 billion of the American taxpayers' money at stake, and it wants to keep it flowing to Israel. The Israeli lobby is to the First Amendment what the Ku Klux Klan is to civil rights. It thinks that free speech is OK as long as you praise Israel and damn Palestinians or otherwise keep your mouth shut.
Fortunately, and sometimes unfortunately, no one has ever been able to intimidate me into keeping my mouth shut. Once, on Army Reserve duty, I got stuck in a typing pool and typed something for a captain. I was a newspaper typist, not a secretary, so it contained two or three corrections.
``This is pretty (expletive) typing, private,'' the captain snapped. ``I hope you don't have to make a living typing.''
I said nothing, but I grabbed the next letter he put into the in-box. I typed it perfectly, and as I handed it to the captain, along with his handwritten original, I said, ``That's pretty (expletive) handwriting, sir. I hope you never have to communicate anything important.''
For those of you who have not served in uniform, let me explain that an enlisted man can say almost anything to an officer as long as he adds ``sir.'' Or at least I always did. Of course I made the rank of private more than once, once from bottom up and a couple of times from the top down.
But a man should always be ready to accept without complaint the consequences of what he does or says and then do and say what he thinks is right without regard for them. No man is free if others can control what he says or thinks. That's part of the Southern code. There are some lines you don't allow people to cross, no matter what the consequences are.
Back to critics. Some folks seem to fly into a malicious rage when they encounter an opinion or opinions they don't like. That is a puzzle. I read and hear opinions all the time that I don't agree with, but I never get upset about it. In the first place, getting angry is bad for the digestion, and I would much rather reserve my Alka-Seltzers for good barbecue and jalapeno grits than waste them on some guy's opinion. After all, as the saying goes, opinions are like elbows -- most folks have at least two.
One guy called and said, ``What qualifies you to be a columnist?''
``A boss who told me to start writing columns. That's all.'' That's the gospel truth. It is a good way to make a living, and it keeps me out of the hot sun. Beats the heck out of being a roofer or a yard worker.
I've always said my opinions are worth exactly what people pay for them -- which is 50 cents and maybe a buck and a half on Sundays. I write a special opinion on Sundays, guaranteed to be worth more than the weekday opinions.
As Miss O'Connor advises, if some column leaves a bad taste in your mouth, then don't eat it.
What puzzles me is why so many people think that Bill Clinton, scandals aside, has been a good president. Actually, if you wanted to elect a covert enemy of the United States and task him with weakening the United States, you couldn't do much better than Bill Clinton. Let's look at his record.
Under Clinton, the United States has had record trade deficits, which translate into lost jobs. Government figures that don't even count people who have given up looking for jobs as unemployed are misleading because they neither reflect low wages nor part-time employment.
Clinton's trade policies are also having a devastating effect on American farmers whose plight is now further aggravated by the collapse of the Southeast Asian bubble. And trade policies are about the extent of a president's effect on an economy. The U.S. economy grew because during the Clinton years the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the economy. Unfortunately, central banks create new money in the form of loans with interest charges. So you see federal, state, corporate, and personal debt at staggering levels. That will inevitably create a recession if not a depression.
The balanced budget is a phony, and, at any rate, we wouldn't even have a phony balanced budget if there weren't a Republican majority in Congress. But even with a phony budget (it's balanced because of the use of Social Security trust funds, money which will eventually have to be replaced), federal spending is at an all-time high. When you count federal, state and local taxes, Americans have to pay about 48 cents out of every dollar they earn. And they get little for it.
Clinton has kept open the immigration flood gates and has fielded the worst immigration service in the past 40 years. It has been shown to be both inefficient and corrupt.
Clinton has gutted the American military, which is now under-manned, under-equipped and demoralized. Both the Air Force and the Navy are losing pilots. Training and maintenance are way off schedule. At the same time, he has expanded the military obligations. For the first time in American history, U.S. troops are in 100 foreign countries, in most places running errands for the United Nations. Clinton, who has abused the use of executive orders more than any president in history, has issued one on the use of troops by the United Nations but refuses to let the American people know what it says. Clinton has expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when it should have been abolished. He has American troops bogged down for an indeterminate time in the Balkans while the basic conflicts in the Balkans remain unresolved.
In fact, Clinton's foreign policy has been disastrous. He has destroyed the coalition created by George Bush in the Persian Gulf. He has blown a once-in-a-lifetime chance for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. His neglect of Southwest Asia has resulted in two countries, India and Pakistan, developing nuclear weapons. His bungling of the Korea problem has the Japanese very antsy. He has kowtowed to the Chinese, ignoring their human-rights abuses while bemoaning human-rights abuses in small countries, Israel excepted, of course.
After six years, survey the world, folks. There isn't any good news anywhere. The world is on the edge of economic collapse and political chaos, and America will not be immune. The problem is that Clinton hasn't governed. All he has done is raise money, huddle with his lawyers and party with his Hollywood pals and gals. I suppose Hillary has tried to govern in his absence, but she's incompetent.
Finally, no president has been a greater enemy of the Bill of Rights than Clinton. Like everything else, Clinton has shown contempt for the Constitution.
Experience tells me that men are more romantic than women. Well, guys, it's all over. A lady friend of mine remarked casually that because they put wheels on suitcases, a woman doesn't need a husband anymore.
First, it was central heat and air, so they didn't need us to chop wood and start the fire. Then came the automobile with an automatic starter, so they didn't need us to saddle the horses, hitch up the buggy or crank the car. Then they went to work, so they didn't need us to bring home a paycheck.
Face it, men are becoming obsolete in America.
Of course, I would remind you that the brilliant and learned soldier-scholar Sir John Glubb wrote in a monograph that one of the characteristics of the impending fall of a nation or empire is the rise of feminism.
I think I know the reason. A city editor once told me that men are more romantic than women, who are insufferably pragmatic. At my tender age, I didn't believe him, but experience proved that he was correct.
We men can get carried away with great schemes, ambitions and other assorted romantic notions such as liberty and repelling tyrants while women are firmly rooted in reality. I well recall instances when I was overwhelmed with emotion and ideas about some film my wife and I saw on television. I was ready to talk about it, but the instant it ended, she would say, dead calm and without emotion, ``Don't forget to put the garbage out.''
Alas, she had not the least bit of interest in freedom for Scotland or the Battle of Trafalgar, the fall of the Alamo, pirates, Indians or the winning of the West. None of that concerned her or the house or the children, so it was nonsense.
I have to admit that where we were living at the time there were no English kings, Scottish patriots, pirates, Indians, Mexican armies or mountain men, but, for goodness sakes, those things are a lot more interesting than taking out the garbage or paying the telephone bill.
So nations fall when women rise to prominence simply because affairs of state probably strike them as nonsense. You can see that in Washington, where feminists think of the military as nothing more than a job opportunity for women. Just-defeated New York senatorial candidate Geraldine Ferraro, when she was in the U.S. House of Representatives, once came on the floor during a debate about Turkey, thinking that they were discussing some agricultural subject.
Clearly the Washington feminists think that it is more important for naval aviators to behave like choir boys than to fly their high-tech fighters to hell and back.
And look how forgiving feminists are of Bill Clinton. They were ready to parboil poor Clarence Thomas and nail his carcass to the Washington Monument, even though he was accused only of talking a little off-color in the presence of Anita Hill. At no time did the strange Hill accuse Thomas of, well, asking her to recreate him while he made a few telephone calls.
But Clinton, who is a male chauvinist pig if ever there was one, gets a free pass from the feminist harpies. Guess that proves they are more leftist than feminist, and Clinton surely is a leftist male chauvinist pig.
Still, I don't mind it if wheels on suitcases have made me obsolete. To tell the truth, I never was very fond of loading and unloading six suitcases and three carry-ons every time we took an overnight trip.
Women may be practical about some things, but they are not very pragmatic when it comes to accumulating stuff. I know some gals who have enough shoes to lend a few to Imelda Marcos. And, naturally, no woman has ever bought just a pair of shoes, because the acquisition of shoes requires other stuff to match, all of which will be worn once and then branded an I-can't-wear-that-again outfit.
Columbus Day is one of my favorite holidays. I like Columbus. I like Italians. I like being here, which I probably wouldn't be if Columbus had not gone in search of China and found the Western islands instead.
Yeah, I know he didn't know where he was. That's true of a lot of Americans today, many of whom couldn't identify the capital of their state and give you names of their senators if their lives depended on it. Apparently you can have political correctness, multiculturalism and diversity but not an education, too.
There's one thing most Americans have forfeited the right to criticize: someone else's lack of knowledge about geography.
In fact, of course, Christopher Columbus was one of the world's greatest navigators and sailors. He simply had no way of knowing that there was land between him and where he wanted to go, but he was going in the right direction.
It's difficult for us, with our satellite images, to realize how much courage and determination were required to set out from Spain in three small ships and sail toward an unknown horizon.
It's fashionable these days among the PC crowd to bemoan the fate of the Indians as if (A) they had been living in Paradise and (B) they would have continued to live in Paradise except for Columbus. Neither A nor B is true. They weren't living in Paradise.
Their days of isolation from Europe were numbered, and when they clashed, they would lose because the Europeans were so much more technologically advanced.
I can understand how some Hispanics or Latinos have conflicts about this. If they are a mix of Spanish and Indian, then one-half of them conquered and abused the other half. Do they take pride in the half that conquered or feel resentment on behalf of the half that lost?
It's an interesting question that I, being of pure Celtic ancestry, don't have to worry about. My Celtic ancestors, brave and glorious fighters that they were, nevertheless managed to lose every war they fought, starting with the Romans. We Celtic folks have a habit of being on the side of right but not on the side of might.
Ah, well, it isn't the winning or losing that counts but fighting the right people for the right reasons.
But we would all do well to keep political ideology and vicious, little post-modern feuds out of history. It is both illogical and unjust to judge anyone of the past by contemporary standards and knowledge.
Everyone, including us, is inevitably trapped in the parameters of time and place.
It's entirely possible that, if the human species survives long enough, some distant posterity will look back at us and say, ``How could those people have been so stupid as to believe ... ,'' or ``How could those people have been so cruel as to ... ?''
Columbus had no choice but to be a part of his time and place, and he achieved a great accomplishment, which deserves celebration. He overcame incredibly difficult obstacles, not the least of which was the growing fear of his crews.
It took not only a great navigator but a great leader to keep the situation under control and to keep saying, in the words of the poet, ``Sail on. Sail on. And on.''
It's a bad sign when people no longer are willing to celebrate accomplishment.
Perhaps Ayn Rand was right when she had one of her characters say that the way to destroy greatness is to elevate mediocrity.
We have certainly done that.
I don't expect Jerry Springer fans to appreciate Columbus, assuming that they've ever heard of him.
Of course Bill Clinton should be impeached. The man who took an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States clearly violated them twice by committing perjury.
The excuse that what he perjured himself about is a personal affair and therefore the perjury doesn't count is childish. People often commit crimes for foolish reasons, but that does not excuse the crimes. The crime is perjury. What he lied about is irrelevant.
Clinton's own Justice Department has prosecuted and put people into prison for committing perjury in civil cases. Why should he get a free pass?
Furthermore Clinton's actions clearly show that his elevator does not reach the top floor. All Clinton had to do to spare us and him this mess was simply reply during the deposition, ``Yeah, I had sexual relations with that woman. What of it?'' And the answer would have been nothing. It is not against the law to have an affair. It is not an impeachable offense to have an affair. And because Clinton didn't face a re-election campaign, the political fallout wouldn't have mattered. And surely Hillary Clinton would have reacted no differently last year than she did this year: ho hum, what's new about Bill fooling around?
So Clinton's elaborate scheme to lie and to induce others to lie on his behalf was clearly the act of an irrational man. And who wants an irrational man as commander-in-chief of the armed, nuclear forces? Not to mention a man who is a sleaze bag, admitted liar and now an international joke.
Clinton reminds me of a client of a lawyer friend of mine who, the lawyer said, could not bring himself to tell the truth even when it was in his own best interests to do so.
Besides, a serious president has too much to do to waste the time Clinton did on his Byzantine scheme of lies and counterattacks. What he did was plainly nutty as well as criminal. He took a pimple and turned it into a malignant tumor and, in the process, broke the law.
Military officers can be cashiered for ``conduct unbecoming an officer,'' and certainly Clinton's conduct has been unbecoming a president. I wouldn't even take a White House tour without a can of disinfectant.
So, although Clinton should be impeached, the question is will he? That depends not on what he did but on the politics of the Republican Party.
Republican strategists are no doubt as indecisive as your average economist. On the one hand, impeaching Clinton would be good; on the other hand, it puts Al Gore into the White House with a good head start in the 2000 election.
I don't know what they will do. My guess is nothing until after the fall elections. If Republicans win big, they may get bold. If they don't do so well, my guess is Clinton's off the hook. A resolution of censure would have as much effect on Clinton as one drop of rain on a duck. Republican strategists may decide that it is better (for them) to have a discredited president in the White House than to give Al Gore a head start.
Partisanship has injected its ugly self into this process on both sides. Both Democrats and Republicans, most of them, are acting not on the basis of what is true and what is best for the country but on the basis of what is best politically for themselves. H.L. Mencken, cynic that he was, once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Certainly that has held true for people in politics and entertainment.
Americans are so bombarded with information, a majority of it self-serving or false, that many have forgotten the basics.
The law of supply and demand, for example, cannot be repealed. Hence, when you hear the Clinton administration say that the answer to the world's growing economic crisis is to ``stimulate growth,'' you know that it is talking nonsense for public consumption.
That's the equivalent of saying you know how the Red Sox can win the World Series: All of their players must bat .320 or better and hit at least 40 home runs each, and all of their pitchers must win 20 or more games. Sure, that would win them the Series, but what has fantasy got to do with reality?
The economic problem is precisely too much growth in the recent past. Production capacity exceeds demand. To stimulate growth, you would have to find previously unknown markets for all this stuff. Where will you find them? Paraguay? Northeast Brazil? Burundi?
The market will balance itself. The least efficient of the companies will go bankrupt. The loans that were used to finance those companies will have to be written off. Banks will fail. People will get laid off. And all of the excess money in the system badly lent and badly invested will be wrung out.
And there isn't one darn thing the United States or the International Monetary Fund or anybody else can do to stop it. Some American officials have accused the Japanese of ``dragging their feet'' and not fixing their own economy, which, in fact, powers the rest of the Asian economy.
Well, I've got a deal for you: If you know how the Japanese banks can deal with $1 trillion or more in nonperforming loans without destroying what's left of Japan's economy, then hop on a plane for Tokyo and tell them. You'll be a national hero. They will no doubt build a monument in your honor and burn incense on the anniversary of your death.
The Japanese are not dragging their feet. They are balanced on the thin edge of a precipice and are trying desperately not to fall. If the Japanese allowed their largest banks to fail, then what's left of their economy would implode and the rest of Asia with it. If we had honest regulation of banks in this country, which we don't, you would realize that some of America's largest banks are also in a precarious position.
Why do you think there is this sudden interest in and talk about saving the Brazilian economy? American muckety-mucks are not famous for being obsessed with the welfare of the Brazilian people. The reason is that some of the large banks in New York are heavily over-lent in Brazil, and if the Brazilian economy goes, they will no longer be able to pretend that their bad loans are good loans.
There are no real witches and no real leprechauns, and there is no such thing as perpetual economic growth. The world runs in cycles, not in straight lines. Good economic times are followed by bad economic times. Peace ends with war; war ends with peace. Over and over, round and round but never, never straight ahead.
The human life span is far too short for any of us to gain any perspective without the benefit of studying history, and whatever else most Americans flushed through the educational bureaucracy learn, it isn't history. As Harry Truman was fond of saying, the only surprises are the history you don't know.
I'm sorry if the end-all and be-all of your life is material prosperity. I think that your parade is about to get rained on. The silver lining is you may learn that the really important things in life are not stuff.
Get your own Free Home Page