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Atlanta Jewish Times op-eds

lewyn — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:38:24 CDT

IS AMERICA FACING ITS OWN TISHA'B'AV? (8-22-03)
Jews throughout the world recently fasted and prayed on Tisha'b'Av (the 9th Day of Av). On that day, the First and Second Temples were destroyed and Jews later suffered a wide variety of other misfortunes.
Centuries after the destruction of the Temples, traditional commentators asserted that Jews loss of the Temples was divine punishment for various sins. But a geopolitical explanation also exists: The loss of both Temples arose from our ancestors attempts to stand up to a powerful foreign empire.
In the 6th century B.C.E., the Jewish king Zedekiah, a vassal of the Babylonian Empire, rebelled against what he probably perceived as oppression. And Babylon responded by wiping out the Jewish kingdom, destroying the First Temple and sending almost all the Jews into exile in Babylon.
Six and a half centuries later, first-century Jews in Israel were sick and tired of corrupt, brutal Roman governors. So they rose up against the Roman Empire - and like Zedekiah, they were crushed. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple and killed or enslaved millions of Jews.
After another anti-Roman rebellion yielded similarly tragic results, Jews moved towards a more pacifist posture for many centuries, tolerating gentile repression rather than taking up arms.
Both supporters and opponents of Americas adventures in Iraq can invoke these TishabAv wars as precedent. My hawkish friends argue: Just as ancient Jews got crushed for resisting the Babylonian and Roman Empires, the Taliban and Sadaam Hussein have been crushed for resisting the United States.
Hence, Arabs and radical Muslims in other countries will learn to make nice with America just as Jews learned to make nice with Rome.
So far, of course, this strategy has been of limited value: the destruction of Iraq's government has not prevented well-armed civilians (from Iraq and from other nations) from attacking Americans.
And as long as America, unlike Rome, seeks to minimize civilian casualties, our empire will never exterminate most of its enemies.
Indeed, a sophisticated dove could argue that just as ancient Jews provoked the Babylonian and Roman Empires, America's Iraq adventure has foolishly provoked the "empire" of Islamic terrorism.
We already know that the Iraq war has increased Muslim hostility to the United States. For example, a recent Pew Center poll reported that 77 percent of Moroccans held a favorable opinion of America in 1999 - but only 27 percent do today.
A worst-case scenario is as follows: Some of the most [newly] hostile Muslims become full-time terrorists. And the more people who start new terrorist groups or join existing ones, the more likely it is that some of those terrorists will succeed in attacking Americans or obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
Eventually, a group of these terrorists gets the smallpox virus or a few nuclear weapons -- and America suffers its own TishabAv.
So which scenario is correct? Will the Iraq war force Arab radicals to live in peace with America? Or is Americas assault upon Sadaam & Co. going to risk Americas own destruction by provoking terrorism?
Ten years elapsed between Osama bin Laden's initial radicalization (caused, so he claims, by Americas decision to post troops in Saudi Arabia in 1991) and his attack on the World Trade Center. So it may take 10 years or more to learn the long-term results of Americas recent wars.

MUSLIMS, POLLS AND MYTHS (7-4-03)

A few weeks ago, the Pew Global Attitudes Project (www.people-press.org), part of Washingtons Pew Center think tank, issued the results of a poll taken in dozens of countries, including several Arab and Muslim countries. Thel results conflict with myths cherished by hawk and dove alike.

For example, one common dovish myth is that most Muslims just want to get along with us infidels, and that only a few crazy people support al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
But the Pew Center poll suggests otherwise. When asked how much confidence they had in a variety of world leaders, 71 percent of Palestinians stated that they have a lot or some confidence in Osama bin Laden, as did 58 percent of Indonesians and 55 percent of Jordanians.

In Pakistan, where the local dictator supports (or at least pretends to support) American anti-terror efforts, 45 percent of respondents supported bin Laden, and only half of the other 55 percent did not. The rest refused to answer, no doubt because they feared government retaliation.

In no Islamic country did over 30 percent of respondents favor U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism.

Muslim attitudes towards Israel are even more Neanderthal. When they were asked whether Arab needs can be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists, 80 percent of Palestinians, 85 percent of Jordanians and 90 percent of Moroccans answered in the negative, essentially endorsing the extermination of Israel.
The moderate Muslim states were not much better. Supporters of wiping out Israel outnumbered supporters of a two-state solution by 57 percent to 23 percent in Pakistan, 58 percent to 28 percent in Indonesia, and 49 percent to 33 percent in Turkey.

By contrast, 74 percent of French respondents said that a way can be found for the State of Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people can be [addressed]." In America and Israel, 67 percent agreed.

The Pew Center poll also explodes the hawkish myth that Muslim public opinion is so fixed that it cannot be affected by U.S. policy. In fact, public opinion of America has changed dramatically for the worse in Muslim nations over the past few years.

For example, 77 percent of Moroccans held a favorable opinion of America in 1999 - but only 27 percent do today. In Indonesia, U.S. supporters plunged from 75 percent in 1999 to 61 percent in 2002 to 15 percent today. In Turkey, the percentage of pro-U.S. respondents skidded from 52 percent in 1999 to 30 percent in 2002 to 15 percent in 2003.

Even the most anti-American areas have hardened their views. In 1999, 14 percent of the Palestinian Authoritys residents held a favorable opinion of America; today only 1 percent do. When Americans make war upon Muslim countries, yesterday's friends become today's foes.

This poll also contradicts the pro-war argument that America's takeover of Iraq will cause the Arabs to love us because Sadaam Hussein was so awful. In fact, only 4 percent of Palestinians, 17 percent of Indonesians and Pakistanis, 19 percent of Jordanians, and 24 percent of Morrocans believe that Iraqis are better off now.

If you're an optimistic, you can argue those numbers show that Muslim opinion of America can only improve. If you're a realist, you know we have to find a way to do better.
[NOTE: this last paragraph of the above article differs pretty significantly from what I wrote].

AMERICA'S TAXING SITUATION (6-20-03)

About 1,800 years ago, our sages wrote in the Mishnah: "Pray for the welfare of the government, for without fear of it, people would swallow each other alive."

Today, our government is less wasteful and repressive than the Roman Empire under which the Mishnahs authors lived. Nevertheless, many Americans would rather eviscerate government than pray for its welfare. At the federal level, Congress just voted to cut taxes even though the government is already mired in debt.

And at the state and local level, many governments are broke, partially because of the economic slowdown and partially because Congress continues to enact unfunded mandates - laws that require, say, better education for disabled children or increased homeland security without giving the states money to fund such projects.

The federal government won't help, and many voters would rather see state and local governments chopped to ribbons than forego tax cuts.

Why? Because many voters believe that starving the government will lead us to paradise; we will all painlessly finance tax cuts by eliminating government waste, fraud and abuse.

But this argument is based on a fallacy. Taxophobes believe that if government is adequately financed, politicans are not wise enough to spend the money intelligently. But they also believe that if government is underfinanced, those same politicians are wise enough to cut wasteful spending instead of essential government functions. Obviously, both propositions cannot be true.

The authors of the Mishnah, by contrast, didn't think that weak government led to a low-tax utopia. Instead, they wrote that weak government leads to anarchy- and thats exactly what is happening in parts of America.

Local governments starved for revenue are balancing their budget by cutting back on police, prosecutors, and prisons. For example:

*In Kentucky, a budget crisis forced the early release of 900 prisoners, some of whom were promptly rearrested on rape, robbery and other charges.

* In Minneapolis, the police department has shaved 200 officers from a 900-person force, partially because the state cut funding, partially because the federal government reduced subsidies for local police, and partially because the federal government has forced local police to busy themselves guarding waterworks against terrorism instead of addressing more common crimes.

*And in Portland, Oregon, the county prosecutors office shrank by more than 20 percent and the police budget was cut by more than 10 percent in the last three years. At the same time, the federal government is requiring the police department to spend millions of dollars to guard bridges.

The results of Portland's "pro-crime" policies are predictable: in the first four months of 2003 alone, car thefts have risen 19 percent and home burglaries have jumped by 21 percent

Atlantans have been spared the worst of taxophobia, primarily because Governor Perdue chose an increase in tobacco taxes over cuts in public safety.

But should the states fiscal problems continue next year, Georgians may face a tougher set of fiscal choices, so how can we avoid Portland's fate?

First, tell Gov. Perdue and Mayor Franklin to keep up the good work, and urge our legislators to focus on preserving the most important public services as well as on keeping taxes down.
Second, tell Congress to support state and local governments instead of obstructing their work with unfunded mandates.

THE POLITICS OF RUTH (5-30-03)
On Shavuot, Jews around the world read the Book of Ruth, which begins when a Jewish couple (Naomi and Elimelech) leave Bethlehem and move to pagan Moab because of a famine. They marry their sons off to Moabite women, but Elimelech and the sons die.

When Naomi returns to Israel, one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, comes with her, converts to Judaism, and marries a Jew. (She later bears King David's grandfather). But the Book of Ruth is not just a G-related soap opera; it's a story laden with messages for today.

When Naomi's husband and sons die in Moab, she has no visible means of support -- no one to provide for her and no form of social welfare or communal charity in Moab.

Moab is the perfect libertarian society: Each person is responsible for herself and the local idol-worshippers are unburdened by a welfare state or taxes [to support one]. There is no place for the likes of Naomi in Moab.

Fortunately, Naomi hears that the regional famine is over in Israel. After she and Ruth go there, Ruth "came and gleaned in a field behind the reapers (2:3). In plain English, Ruth went on someone else's farm and gathered grain to eat.

Nevertheless, Ruth is not a thief. She is merely taking her due under Torah law, which states:
"When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest, you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger." [Leviticus 23:22].

In other words, the Torah mandates an agricultural version of the modern welfare state. Instead of adopting the libertarian position that every person is responsible for herself, the Torah says everyone is entitled to some minimal amount of material support, and that every non-poor farmer must provide that support by leaving gleanings of your harvest . . . for the poor and the stranger.

Todays conservative conventional wisdom is that the hard-working taxpayer owes nobody anything because "it's your money" and that no one can tell you what to do with your land.

But the Torah operates on the assumption that the hard-working farmer owes the poor something because the land ultimately belongs not to the farmer but to our divine creator. The recipient of such social welfare has obligations too. She can't just sit at her mailbox and watch the welfare checks roll in; she has to go out and pick up her grain.

In effect, the Torah creates not a welfare state of subsidized idleness, but a workfare state where those who are willing to work for their food are entitled to support from Hebrew farmers.

Like any great literature, the Book of Ruth raisew as many questions as answers. We know from Ruth that we have an obligation to support the poor and the stranger. But how does this obligation function in a society where Jews are a minority? Are Jews merely obligated to provide charity among themselves and ignore the rest of society?

Or are we obligated to urge other Americans to provide charity collectively through our government?

And if we are, exactly what must our government do for the poor and the stranger?

Is it enough to give the poor some food and give their children a minimal education? Or must we provide health insurance and other services that you or I might deem necessary for a normal life? The Torah may not provide a clear answer but it encourages us to ask the questions.

CYNTHIA TUCKER AND ISRAEL (5-9-03)

Recent issues of the Jewish Times have hosted an exchange of letters about Cynthia Tucker, editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitutions editorial page. One letter praised Tucker for her "keen insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" while others blamed her for what they perceive to be the paper's anti-Israel bias.

I decided to go on the Internet to find out what Tucker really thinks of Israel.

Much to my surprise, I found only one or two Israel-related columns by Tucker herself over the past several years (as opposed to columns by other writers or by the Journal-Constitutions editorial board, which represents the perspectives o a collective of journalists).

Tuckers most relevant column, dated April 7, 2002, focused on death threats heaped upon the family of Adam Shapiro, a self-styled peace activist from Brooklyn who decided to visit Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat while his compound in Ramallah was under siege by the Israeli army.

Tucker understandably denounced the threats to Shapiro's family, but didn't take the further step of endorsing Shapiro's breakfasts with Arafat as a step towards peace. Instead, she noted that Israel's supporters have long denounced Arafat and the terrorism that he has, at the very least, tolerated.
She further wrote that pro-Israel threat-mongers were behaving like Palestinian extremists who are well known for their intolerance of anyone labeled a `colloborator.

She explained: Palestinians believed to be cooperating with Israeli authorities are often treated to mob justice brutal beatings, summary executions, anonymous graves. Is that not what the Shapiros critics are also threatening?

In other words, Tucker does not assert that Arafat is just a nationalist leader and that suicide bombers are merely "frustrated" and "misunderstood"; instead, she apparently thinks Arafat is a thug and that his followers are worse.

Tucker has also condemned American supporters of Arab extremism.

In a June 30, 2002 article about Cynthia McKinneys fight for re-election, she described her [McKinney] as a fringe lunatic, well outside the congressional mainstream and incapable of aiding any cause, whether an independent Palestine or her own congressional district. (McKinney ultimately lost in a campaign exacerbated by anti-Semitic remarks made by her father, Billy McKinney).

But Tucker is not a firm supporter of the Israeli government. She wrote that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's heavy-handed tactics have started to corrode the decency, humanity and moral authority of the nation he seeks to defend.

Tucker explained: While the targets of Israeli tanks and commandoes are often well-armed extremists of Hamas and Hezbollah, the targets are also, too often, young boys armed only with rocks and bottles - rhetoric that may have made sense a decade ago, but is out of date when many Arab boys prefer blowing people up to bottle throwing.

So, we conclude from all of this that Tucker is not a rabid McKinneyite foe of Israel, but a more moderate liberal: She doesnt like Israels enemies, but she doesnt want Israel to be too tough either.

That makes her the sort of liberal who swoons over former Prime Minister Shimon Peres rather than the sort of liberal who thinks both Peres and Sharon are both war criminals.

SECULARISM: GOOD FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE? (4-25-03)

As Jews argue about whether they should be aligned with social liberals or Christian conservatives, they tell each other two very different stories.

The liberal, secularist story is based primarily on one simple fact: For more than 1500 years, Jews lived in a Christian-dominated Europe, one where most countries had established state churches.

And for many of those years, European Christians served our ancestors with heaping helpings of anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust.

Social liberals reason that to avoid such unappetizing dishes, Jews should fight for liberal social mores generally and strict separation of church and state in particular.

For example, Michael Staub, a professor at Bowling Green State University writes: "Given the deeply racist, and often anti-Semitic cast of Christian culture and history it strikes me as odd . . . to ascribe our success in the U.S. to Christianity."

The conservatives' story is based on Jews' experiences today -- not just with Christian conservatives and their support for Israel, but more broadly on the differences between America and Europe.

America is far more religious than other affluent democracies. For example, a 1998 survey by the University of Michigan showed that 44 percent of Americans attended church once a week, as opposed to only 27 percent of British, 21 percent of French, and 4 percent of Swedes.

Americans attitudes are also more religious: An early 1990s survey by the University of Chicago shows that one-third of Americans view the Bible as the actual word of God as opposed to 7 percent of British, 12 percent of West Germans, and 12 percent of Austrians.

If Christian fundamentalism was bad for Judaism, America would be more anti-Semitic (and perhaps more anti-Israel) than Europe. But this is clearly not the case. By most measures, America is friendlier to Jews than Europe: Anti-Semitism is less common, and Americans are far more pro-Israel than most Europeans.
So the conservative argument runs as follows: Religious Christians are more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than everyone else, and religious America is more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than secular Europe. Thus, Christian conservatism is good for the Jews.

As the right-wing rabbi Daniel Lapin argues, "America's Bible belt is the Jewish safety belt and Jews who disregard this fact are driv[ing] with their eyes on the rear view mirror instead of the windshield."

But this has not always been the case. For example, the America of the 1930s was a more religious, conservative country than the America of 2003 -- prayer in public schools was common and abortion and homosexuality were [often] illegal. So if publicly endorsed fundamentalism was good for the Jews, 1930s America should have been paradise. Yet in fact, the religiously conservative America of 60 years ago was more anti-Semitic than todays America in many ways.

A 1937 Gallup poll revealed that 51 percent of Americans would never vote for a Jew for president, and a 1938 poll showed that 58 percent of Americans believed that European persecution of Jews was at least partially their [Jews'] own fault.

And when German Jews sought to flee Hitler, conservative Christian America kept them out.

In 1939, Senator Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Representative Edith Rogers (D-Mass.) introduced a bill to admit 10,000 refugee children into America. But the bill was crushed -- not by liberal secular humanists but by isolationists and right-leaning veterans groups.

Opponents of the bill included the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Daughers of the Confederacy. The bills congressional supporters were disproportionately from the urban, socially liberal Northeast, while most of its opponents were conservatives.

Today, America's religious conservatism seems to lead to good interfaith relationships. But 70 years ago, this was not the case. The most logical conclusion from these facts is that Jews have no permanent allies or permanent enemies, but only permanent interests.

MORDECAI Q. PUBLIC'S PURIM (4-4-03)

For most of my life, I thought that Purim was about wearing funny costumes, making noise while the Book of Esther is being read, and eating triangular pastries. But in recent years, I have learned that other Purim customs include:
*Drinking on Purim night to the extent that one no can longer fully differentiate between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.
*Giving gifts of food to as many friends and acquaintances as possible.
*Giving gifts to the poor.

In the small, mixed-income Jewish towns and neighborhoods of the 19th and early 20th centuries, these customs were easy to follow. Mordecai Q. Public could get have a few drinks on Purim night and stagger home, get up in the morning, give some money or food to a couple of poor neighbors and spend the rest of the day distributing sweets to friends.

But in America's suburban metropolis[es], most of these customs have withered away. Imagine, if you will, a 21st-century Mordecai Q. Public who lives and works in a Atlanta suburb.

Mordecai begins the holiday by resolving to have a few drinks on Purim night at the neighborhood synagogue. But right away our would-be celebrant runs into trouble he probably can't reach the synagogue without driving, which means he can't drink on Purim without endangering numerous lives.

And why can't Mordecai walk to shul? Because in much of metropolitan Atlanta, zoning laws allow only a house or two on each acre of land (or 650-1,300 houses per square mile). This means that only 150 or 300 houses will be within a quarter-mile walk of a synagogue.

If the area near the synagogue has as few Jews as the rest of metro Atlanta (about 2-3 percent of the population), some synagogues may have as few as five or 10 Jewish neighbors.

In other words, Atlanta's suburbs are typically so thinly populated that hardly anyone lives within walking distance of a synagogue.

And even if Mordecai lived within walking distance of a synagogue, he could not do so in safety and comfort because many of the residential streets lack sidewalks.

But suppose our adventurous friend, with or without alcohol, wakes up the next morning and resolves to fulfill the Purim custom of giving to poor people. If he works downtown, near panhandler-heavy Woodruff Park, this good deed is easily performed.

Otherwise, Mordecai is out of luck; Atlantans have so effectively segregated wealth and poverty that the average suburban office park has no denizens who will admit to needing charity.

The custom of giving food to friends is also not easily satisfied in suburbia. Here too the culprit is low density: if all your Jewish friends live a 45-minute drive from each other, there simply is not enough time to speed to Five Points to help the poor, drive an hour into suburbia to drop goodies off for friend A, then drive half an hour more to drop goodies off for friend B and still squeeze in a workday.

So if Atlanta's sprawl prevents grownups from drinking, charity, and exchanging gifts on Purim, what's left of the holiday? Noisemakers and costumes- in other words, a holiday thats fun for kids but not particularly interesting for adults. And thats how Purim become infantil[ized].

THE CASE AGAINST THE SLIPPERY SLOPE (2-28-03)

In recent years, the Christian right has been one of Israel's most loyal supporters. For example, former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed has joined a rabbi in Stand for Israel, a group formed to mobilize 100,000 evangelical churches to raise money and support for Israel.

Yet many Jews are hostile to the religious right at least partially because of concerns over church-state separation.

For example, one American Jewish Congress (AJC) fundraising letter states: "If you and I are not vigilant, the religious right may be able to achieve . . . a government where those who do not share their religious views are, in effect, second-class citizens."

While mainstream Jewish groups constantly seek to improve relations with African-Americans and other traditionally liberal groups, the same groups are rigidly opposed to any breach in the alleged wall between church and state, oblivious to the danger that repeated slights could endanger Christian conservatives support for Israel.

Jewish support for church-state separation is not completely irrational. Clearly, some varieties of public support for religion, such as openly Christian prayers at government functions, do trample on Jewish sensitivities.

And other church-state issues raise practical concerns. For example, one common argument against vouchers for parochial school students is that such aid might drain funds from public schools.

But Jewish concerns often rest on a broader and less rational phobia --the slippery slope idea exemplified by an Anti-Defamation League press release: "Supreme Court Decision on Public Aid to Parochial Schools Could Lead to a Slippery Slope On Church-State Separation."

This press release was hardly an aberration: I ran a Internet search and found 374 references incorporating the phrases "church-state" and "slippery slope".

The concern here is that any accommodation of religion in any public facility or institution will inevitably lead America on a slippery slope towards a Christian theocracy.
The flaw in the "slippery slope" argument is this: Religious activity has never been completely separated from government facilities.

For example, if you watch Congressional proceedings on C-SPAN you might notice that Congress begins with an invocation by a clergyman.

And if you buy breakfast or a snack on the way to work you might notice that the government-issued cash you spend includes the phrase "In God We Trust".

And if you have college-age children, they can use federal Pell Grants or student loans to attend religious as well as secular institutions.

And if your children go to public high school, they may be able to join a Torah study group meeting at the school (if the school extends similar privileges to secular student groups).
And on Shabbos, you might pray at a synagogue which is tax-exempt.

In fact, many of the same Jewish groups that seek to guard church-state separation also endorse some forms of aid to religious institutions. The AJCs Statement on Church-State Relations endorses publicly funded benefits, such as lunches and medical and dental services [for] all school children and loans to parochial schools to assist them in complying with federal health and safety standards.

In sum, American government is already intertwined with religion so if any breach in the wall of church-state separation led to theocracy, America would have long ago reached the bottom of that particular slippery slope.

Does this mean we should give the Christian right a blank check to mix church and state?
Of course not. But when confronted with a controversy over government support for religion, Jews and Jewish groups should ask themselves two questions:

*Is the particular [scheme at] issue offensive to our sensibilities as Jews and as Americans?
*Will this issue endanger our relationships with Christian conservatives, and if so, is it important enough to justify creating such friction?

2050: THREE SCENARIOS FOR THE JEWISH FUTURE (2-7-03)

Not long ago, I was chatting with a friend about the state of American Jewry. My friend spouted the conventional wisdom that American Jews are becoming less numerous and more devout because liberal and secular Jews are assimilating or producing smaller families, while more religious Jews (the Orthodox [Jews] in particular) are marrying and creating large families.
Similarly, if current immigration patterns continue, Jews outside America will continue to migrate to Israel as their communities in Europe and Latin America decline.
That would mean a Jewish world dominated by a huge community in Israel and a smaller -- possibly more devout -- community in the United States.
But current patterns of Jewish life might not continue at all for one reason: terrorism. Al-Qaida wants to wipe Jews from the earth, while Hamas and its ilk seek the more modest goal of turning the land of Israel into Muslim turf.
It's conceivable that terrorist groups could, in our lifetime, obtain enough firepower to make atttacks like the September 11 disaster as regular as suicide bombings in Israel are today.
So what would happen to the Jews of America and Israel if terrorism becomes so widespread that life in one of those countries becomes intolerable? Three scenarios come to mind:
*Israel OK, America not so OK.
Imagine that over the next few decades, Israel becomes a less dangerous place after the Palestinians decide that blowing themselves up will never work. And suppose that America continues to be Public Enemy No. 1 in the Arab and Muslim-dominated world.
In that case, radical Muslims might leave Israel alone and attack America again and again with increasingly lethal weapons, causing Jews to abandon America for Eretz Yisrael.
If this scenario comes to pass, the long-predicted ingathering of the exiles will become reality and the Jewish world of 2100 will look a lot like the Jewish world of 3,000 years ago.
*America OK, Israel not so OK.
The situation in Israel continues to deteriorate, while America somehow makes peace with the Muslim world. If the Jewish state survives, it becomes less attractive to all but the most determined Jews, and millions of Israelis move to America, the new center of world Jewry.
And because the most secular Jews will likely be the first to abandon Israel, the American Jewish community of 2050 could be larger -- yet less devout -- than the American Jewish community of 2000.
*Israel not OK, America not OK.
The American-Israeli alliance, along with American wars against radical Islam and Islamic rogue states, inflames a billion Muslims and both countries become war zones.
In such a situation, many Jews might abandon both America and Israel. But where could they go?
Certainly not to Western Europe, which has becoming increasingly Muslim (and thus dangerous for Jews) in recent years due to immigration and declining birthrates among non-Muslim Europeans. And not to Latin America, which has more Muslims than Jews, and is suffering from severe economic problems.
If my nightmare scenario comes to pass, Jews would want to move to countries that either have almost no Muslims or are run by regimes so oppressive and so stable that Islamic radicalism is crushed.
The largest country that meets both criteria is China, where the Muslim population is small and the government is unlikely to tolerate dissent.
And the first criterion is met by Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine, which have no significant Muslim population. [NOTE: Initial draft referred to Eastern Europe generally, though I'm not sure this edit makes a difference].
Although those countries (once the center of world Jewry) have a vibrant tradition of anti-Semitism, Jews may decide that the risk of harassment by Christian anti-Semities is better [less dangerous] than [the risk of] being blown up by jihadniks.

If so, the world of 2050 might look a lot like the world of 1850, one where the Western Hemisphere is no longer a center of Jewish life, but where Eastern Europe once again contains a wall of yiddishkeit from sea to shining sea.

MAKING A CASE FOR VOUCHERS (1-24-03)

(NOTE: This headline was not my idea).

Opponents of vouchers and similar programs in the Jewish community and elsewhere often claim that public schools are uniquely valuable
They argue that public schools force children of all races and classes to mix, exposing them to the real world.
Thus, only public schools deserve public support, and children whose parents cannot afford private school tuition must attend such schools.
For example, the website of the Religious Action Center (Reform Judaisms social action lobby) describes government-run schools as the heart of American identity, calling them a unifying factor among the large range of ethnic and religious communities in our society.
Such reverence for public schools obviously discourages families from sending their children to Jewish day schools. More important[ly], the claim that public schools expose children to diversity is often factually incorrect. In segregated metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, public schools have failed to expose rich to poor or whites to blacks. Instead, most public schools are dominated by one racial or demographic group.
Only 7 percent of students in Atlanta public schools are white, while 89 percent are black. By contrast, many suburban public schools are mostly white, while others are majority black but have a more affluent student body than city schools.
The status quo is quite recent: As late as 1958, only 33 percent of Atlantas public school students were black. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal courts tried to desegregate public schools.
As a result, many white parents decided that racially integrated schools were bad and moved en masse to majority-white suburbs. [Editors deleted sentence explaining why this was so- partially irrational, partially fears of violence, partially fears of classes being dumbed down].
But when blacks move to a suburb, it [that suburb] often becomes unpopular with whites. For example, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was once a white suburb. But when middle-class blacks began moved in, the public schools got a bad reputation.
Today, Cleveland Heights is nearly half-black and resembles Atlantas intown neighborhoods: It retains singles and Orthodox families who send their children to religious schools, but is unpopular with other whites because of the allegedly inferior public schools.
Similarly, public schools in Atlantas more integrated suburbs tend to have few white students.
The public school system enforces -- rather than reduces -- segregation. Heres why:
If there were no public schools, many white and black middle-class families might find [intown] middle-class areas like Virginia-Highlands as attractive as the suburbs because [perceived] school quality would not factor in their housing decisions.
But as matters now stand, to stay intown parents must send their children to public schools with socially diverse student bodies and the bad reputations that often accompany such diversity. Thats a price few parents will pay.
The public school system also rewards people for becoming segregation-seeking suburbanites. A well-off suburban family can send its children to public schools and often pay lower property taxes.
Thats why vouchers might reduce housing segregation. If middle-class families could afford to send their children to private schools, many would stay intown. Therefore, more private schools would be formed, creating a virtuous cycle of urban rebirth creating new schools creating more urban rebirth.

SEEKING THE CENTER IN 2004 (12-27-02)

In 2000, President Bush got only 19 percent of the Jewish vote. Nevertheless, Jewish Republicans have been predicting in recent years that Jews would join the GOP en masse.
For example, Republican pollster Frank Luntz predicts that in 2004, George Bush will get more votes in the Jewish community since any other Republican presidential candidate since they started to measure religious voting.
Because no nationwide exit polls were taken in 2002, there is no way to tell with certainty how Jews voted in the November elections, but state polls in 2002 revealed a mixed picture.
On the one hand, Republican Gov. George Pataki of New York won a flat majority of the Jewish vote in a three-way race. But in two other states, Republican candidates were unable to improve upon the GOPs traditional share of the Jewish vote.
In California, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon got 22 percent of the Jewish vote (as opposed to 69 percent for Democrat Gray Davis and 9 percent for a leftist third party candidate).
And in New Jersey, Democratic former Sen. Frank Lautenberg pulverized Republican businessman Doug Forrester by an 80 percent- 20 percent margin among Jews.
Why was New York different from New Jersey and California? In New York, Republican George Pataki ran as [a] moderate on both economic and social issues. In addition to supporting abortion and gay rights, Pataki supported social spending [to a sufficient degree] to be endorsed by health care workers and [other government employee] unions.
By contrast, Simon ran as an anti-tax, anti-abortion, pro-gun conservative. Forrester supported legal abortion, but he also championed Bush tax cuts, opposed new gun control laws, endorsed oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, and attacked federal fuel economy standards.
The lesson seems to be that a moderate Republican can win a majority of the Jewish vote, but a solid conservative will get the same 20 percent or so that got in 2000 -- and not a vote more.
Bush has focused on the concerns of his partys conservative base large tax cuts and Social Security privatization. Because conservative Republicans did as poorly among Jews in 2002 as they did in earlier elections, Bush may not exceed the GOPs traditional 20 percent share of the Jewish vote if he stays right and if the 2004 election focuses on domestic issues. But Bush can do well with Jews if he moves to the center on domestic issues.
And if foreign policy dominates the 2004 election, President Bush may gain Jewish votes for another reason. Even a conservative Republican can get a few extra Jewish votes if he is sufficiently pro-Israel or his Democratic rival is perceived as overly dovish or wishy-washy in his commitment to Israel.
In 1980, President Reagan got 39 percent of the Jewish vote against Jimmy Carter. Against the more solidly pro-Israel Walter Mondale, Reagan got 31 percent - not a stellar showing, but better than any post-Reagan Republican to date.
If Bush continues to be perceived as pro-Israel, he may get 30 percent of the Jewish vote and maybe more if the Democratic nominee is seen as too dovish by more conservative Jewish voters.
But nothing suggests that Bush can get a majority of the Jewish vote without moving to the center on domestic issues.

WHAT WOULD HAMAN DRIVE? (12-13-02)

Not long ago, a group of Christians started a What Would Jesus Drive campaign (www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org). They believe Christians should stop driving gas-guzzling vehicles because Jesus wants us to travel in ways that reduce pollution and consumption of gasoline.
I couldn't help wondering if there was a Jewish angle to this story. But rather than risking sacrilege by speculating on the likely views of long-dead Jewish prophets and scholars, I decided to imagine visiting one of Atlanta's Persian restaurants for a lunchtime interview with Haman (who, as we recall every Purim, unsuccessfully sought to wipe out the Persian Empires Jews about 2,500 years ago).
I began with the key question: Haman, what would you drive if you were alive today?
Haman: Of course, I'd drive a huge, gas-guzzling SUV or pickup truck.
Me: Why are these different from other cars?
Haman: They are gas guzzlers. Some of those cars get as little as 12 miles per gallon in city driving (as you can learn by going to www.fueleconomy.gov). And the more gasoline a car uses, the more money its drivers have to spend on oil from Arab countries. Some of that money gets sent to the enemies of the Jews in that part of the world.
Me: So gas guzzlers finance war against Israel?
Haman: Precisely - well, at least I hope so.
Me: But arent big, gas-guzzling SUVs safer than other cars precisely because they are so big?
Haman: Not so. According to a recent study [in the transportation journal published] by the University of California, the risk to drivers of average midsize and large cars is about the same [as the risk to drivers] for the [average] SUV because SUVs are so likely to roll over. Pickup trucks have even worse safety records.
And when the SUV collides with another car, the driver of the other car may get crushed. The California study also says the combined death rate (to SUV drivers and drivers of the cars they collide with} is 129 per million vehicles, as opposed to 105 for the average midsize car and even less for most minivans.
Me: Isn't the higher death rate something you're worried about?
Haman: Of course not. Just by the law of averages, some of the people hurt have to be Jews, which of course is my main goal in life - well, it would be if I was still living. Me: Do SUVs have any other benefits?
Haman: Absolutely. You ever sat behind one of those things in traffic? You can't see a thing. By blocking visibility, huge cars annoy the daylights out of other motorists - some of whom happen to be, you guessed it, Jews.
Me: But doesn't that apply to every driver?
Haman: Yes, but there are ways the careful SUV driver can target Jews. For example, I would really enjoy driving around Toco Hills on Friday in some huge car so the Jews can't get home before sundown.
Or I'd go to Quality Kosher with a car so big that it would take up two or three parking spaces.
Me: So what does your perfect car look like?
Haman: Low gas mileage and dangerous design are important, but my ideal vehicle would also have an annoyingly high center of gravity and be wide enough to take up several parking spaces. After all, the driver you're annoying may be a Jew - so happy motoring.

ONE TORAH, ONE ATLANTA (11-29-02)

In a recent election for Fulton County Commission, relations between the city of Atlanta and the rest of Fulton County became a campaign issue.
According to the Northside Neighbor, one candidate said: "If you want the city of Atlanta represented, you want [one candidate] . . . If you want the people of unincorporated Fulton represented, you want [another candidate]."
The brouhaha over these alleged remarks made me wonder what the Torah says about city-suburb relations.
One passage is arguably relevant: the requirement that Jews "shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not . . . favor the person of the mighty". (Leviticus 19:15).
Rashi,a medieval Torah commentator, says that this verse prohibits judges from favoring the rich. [It logically follows that] By implication, [all types of] government must provide comparable services to everyone [,rather than favoring the rich].
Yet local government falls far short of this goal. Atlantas poor are concentrated in the city and less affluent southern suburbs, while our upper middle class is concentrated in the northern suburbs. According to the 2000 Census, nearly one-quarter of Atlantas inhabitants as opposed to less than 8 percent of suburbanites lived in poverty, and Atlantas median family income is less than two-thirds that of the Atlanta region as a whole.
Because Atlanta is poorer than its suburbs, its tax base is smaller, which means that the city must choose between higher taxes and worse municipal services. Moreover, a city full of poor people must spend more money than its suburbs for the same quality of services [because poor neighborhoods require more police protection and more social spending]. And a city full of poor people typically has a smaller, less educated talent pool of politicians from which to draw, thus ensuring that less talented politicians have to do more with less.
How can be make local government more equitable? An obvious (but radical) solution is to consolidate Atlanta and its major suburbs, so that rich and poor are governed by the same mayor and council. If Atlantas four largest counties (Cobb, Gwinnett, Fulton and DeKalb) were combined, the new city would have about 2.5 million people, and be the fourth largest in the United States, making Atlanta a "major league city."
A common argument against consolidation is that [if city and suburb are consolidated] the suburbs get stuck with the city's problems. But when city and suburb combine, both prosper.
For example, in 1962 Nashville combined with Davidson County, and in one step a city of 73 square miles became a city of 473 square miles. Nashville now compares favorably with Atlanta: its population has grown by one-third since 1970 (while Atlantas has stagnated), its murder rate is one-third that of Atlanta (10 per 100,000 people as opposed to 30 per 100,000), its traffic congestion is less [overwhelming] (35 person-hours of congestion per 1,000 people, as opposed to 53 here).
As former Nashville Mayor Beverly Briley said: "I believe there is a direct relation between [consolidation] and the revitalization that downtown Nashville is experiencing."
Another argument against consolidation is that it redistributes wealth to the poor. But if this [redistribution] means higher taxes, consolidation is not redistributionist [because it does not increase the overall size of government].
Instead, narrowing the group between city and suburb requires only equal treatment a system in which the rich, poor and middle class are served and taxed by the same government, and thus get the equal service that the Torah mandates.

AN AL CHET FOR ALL OUR POLITICIANS (11-1-02)

It is appropriate that the political campaign season begins around Yom Kippur and ends with Election Dy since politicians have a lot for which to repent.
After watching a particularly reprehensible TV ad, I created a prayer to remind politicians of their campaign-season errors. Its modeled on the Al Chet prayer we say on Yom Kippur.
The politicians Al Chet would begin with the traditional opening for that prayer, which includes: Hide not Thyself from our supplication, for we are neither so arrogant nor so hardened as to say before thee, O Lord our God and God of our predecessors, `we are righteous and have not sinned; verily, we have sinned.
Then the politicians prayer would focus on sins commonly associated with liberals and those commonly associated with conservatives.
For the sin we committed by buying votes with taxpayers money, and for the sin we committed by putting future generations in debt to cut taxes today;
For the sin we committed by idolizing government, and for the sin we committed by making government the enemy;
For the sin we committed by comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted;
And for the sin we committed by afflicting the middle class to make ourselves feel better;
For the sin we committed by pandering to the middle classs desire to cut its commutes by a few minutes while ignoring the working poors interest in health insurance and decent bus service;
and for the sin we committed by pretending that government could help the poor by forcing everyone to pay each other higher wages;
For the sin we committed by pretending schools could be saved by throwing money at them,
and for the sin we committed by ignoring differences between rich and poor schools;
For the sin we committed by unchastity, and for the sin we committed by focusing on our opponents personal lives;
For the sin we committed by veiled appeals to racism and [for the sin we committed by] frivolous accusations of racism;
For the sin we committed by letting government support illegitimate childbirth and the sin we committed by pretending all government spending goes to unpopular programs like welfare and foreign aid;
For the sin we committed by refusing to acknowledge that an embryo in a test tube is different than an already born human, and for the sin we committed by refusing to acknowledge that a fetus with arms, legs and a heart is different from an embryo in a test tube;
For the sins we committed by ignoring the environment;
For the sin we committed by war-mongering and by using patriotism to justify every war,
For the sin we committed by spurning the insights of religion, and for the sin we committed by using religious issues to distract voters from issues that their daily lives;
For the sin we committed by accepting bribes disguised as campaign contributions,
For the sin we committed by reckless partisanship and slandering our opponents,
For the sins we committed by pandering to labor unions; and for the sins we committed by pandering to business;
For the sins we committed in the name of liberty, and for the sins we committed in the name of equality;
For all these, O God of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.

And to all candidates, I say what I say to myself as the gates of prayer close: Please try to do better next year.

IS THE TORAH LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE? BOTH (10-4-02)

As Election Day approaches, liberals and conservatives alike will clog the pages of Jewish weeklies across the nation, arguing that if we Jews properly understood our heritage, we would give our votes to the right (or left) candidate.
Liberals will emphasize Jewish traditions benevolence towards societys underdogs, while conservatives will emphasize the Torahs endorsement of a stern moral code.
So is the Torah liberal or conservative? It's both.
On cultural issues, the Torah (for the purposes of this column I mean the Five Books of Moses, not the entire Hebrew Bible or the "Oral Torah" of rabbinic interpretation) generally supports positions commonly considered conservative in 21st-century America.
For example, the Torah states: "One that strikes a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:12) [Artscroll translation]. Indeed, the Torah endorses capital punishment for offenses other than murder, such as kidnapping (Exodus 21:16).
I note, however, that the severity of the Torahs rules has been diluted in a variety of ways by rabbinic interpretation.
Nor is the Torahs law-and-order tendency mitigated by a desire to protect defendants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Instead, the Torah states: "you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great." (Leviticus 19:15).
Although church-state separation has become an obsession among modern Jewish liberals, the Torahs frequent endorsement of criminal penalties suggests that the Torah originally contemplated a theocratic state, one in which Jewish law could be enforced through criminal punishment.
The Torahs sexual mores also fall on the right side of todays political spectrum: in addition to condemning incest and bestiality, it appears to condemn male homosexuality, stating: "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination." (Leviticus 18:22).
Traditional rabbinic commentators later forbade lesbianism as well, although no Biblical provision directly addresses the issue.
On foreign policy, the Torah appears hawkish, mandating uncompromising warfare against some pagan tribes. For example, Numbers 33:5 states "you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the Land before you." And in these wars, the Torah is not always persnickety about civilian casualties: Moses states of one pagan tribe: "we destroyed every populated city . . . we did not leave a survivor." (Deuteronomy 2:34).
Thus, the modern notion that we should allow terrorists to live because there might be civilians in their midst is hard to square with some parts of the Torah.
On economic issues, however, the Torah is undoubtedly liberal by the standards of 21st-century America. Some modern right-wingers believe that "redistribution" (as in "redistribution of wealth") is a dirty word But the Torah seeks to limit inequality by redistributing wealth in a variety of ways.
For example, the Torah mandates a primitive form of welfare: "You shall not pick the undeveloped twigs of your vineyard and the fallen fruit of your vineyard you shall not gather; for the poor and the prosleyte shall you leave them." (Leviticus 19:10). Leviticus also sought to limit inequality by mandating redistribution of land every 50 (25:28).
Having said that, the Torah is more liberal than radical, because it does contemplate significant material inequality: if an all-powerful government was capable of eliminating poverty, there would be no poor to pick up the "fallen fruit" referred to in Leviticus 19:10. In other words, the Torah contemplates a pre-industrial version of the modern welfare state, which limits, but does not eliminate, inequality.
In sum, the author of the Torah (whether singular or plural, whether human or divine) would probably not fit well into either the modern left or the modern right.
Of course, all of this discussion may beg one huge question: so what?
Should we vote the way we think the Torahs author(s) would? The appropriate answer requires us to think about the proper relationship between faith and politics. The Torahs rules, whether divinely written or not, were written for Jews. To what extent should these rules govern a religiously diverse society?
Jewish law cannot govern a secular society but our politics must be informed by our values, and those values should be at least somewhat affected by Torah and tradition. I don't give the past a veto over my political views - but I do give it a voice.

JERUSALEM THE WALKABLE (9-6-02)
Most Americans think of Jerusalem as a spiritual center or as Israels capital. But this city of about 650,000 people is also a city where apolitical people work and play, and where transportation and urban form matter as much as in Atlanta or Memphis or Baltimore.
After a little exploring on a trip last month, I noticed that most of Jerusalem does not resemble any neighborhood in Atlanta.
Atlanta is dominated by two types of areas: sterile skyscraper districts (in downtown, parts of Midtown, and parts of Buckhead) and low-density, auto-oriented areas dominated by single family houses; intown areas differ from suburbs primarily in house and lot size.
But most of Jerusalem falls into neither category. Jerusalem has more than 13,000 people per square mile, some four times as many as Atlanta and more than seven times as many as Alpharetta, Yet I saw almost no high-rises.
How does Jerusalem do it? Most of Jerusalem is dominated by row after row of apartment buildings of two to four stories, making it compact enough for Jerusalemites to walk to shops and synagogues, yet low-slung enough to avoid the claustrophia some feel in downtown Atlanta or midtown Manhattan.
In other words, a walk through Jerusalem shows that "density" doesnt have to be a dirty word even for skyscraper-phobes.
But density alone is not enough for walkability. Even in dense parts of Atlanta ([like parts of] Midtown and Buckhead), city streets are often so wide that pedestrians cannot comfortably cross them. By contrast, Jerusalems streets are narrow enough to be comfortably crossed in a few seconds: I never saw a city street with more than four (usually narrow) lanes.
In other words, Jerusalem teaches us that skinny streets are walkable streets. And some Jerusalem neighborhoods do almost nothing to accommodate the automobile.
For example, the Jewish Quarter within the Old City is essentially a giant pedestrian mall. In many of its residential streets, there is no need for sidewalks not because everyone drives everywhere, but because the streets are too narrow, and the pedestrians too numerous, to accommodate any significant number of vehicles.
So rather than going into the heart of the Old City, taxis and buses stop at its outskirts. The Quarter is centered around a square, and numerous streets shoot off the square in every direction.
Each of these streets, in turn, is flanked by courtyards surrounded by apartments; some Jewish Quarter residents live in walkups, while others have apartments with private entrances directly accessible from the street.
More modern neighborhoods, of course, do more to accommodate cars. In parts of Southwest Jerusalem built in the 1920s and 1930s, there are plenty of cars, but off-street parking lots are invisible or nonexistent. Instead, cars are parked on the street enhancing safety by creating a buffer between pedestrians and speeding cars, and making streets less deserted by bringing drivers to the street instead of segregating them in the huge, ugly parking lots that infest most of Atlanta.
Southwest Jerusalem residents get shade from street trees plenty of trees in some blocks, too few in others. Because the trees tend to be new and small, much of Jerusalem is far less lush than Atlantas greener neighborhoods.
Of course, Jerusalem is not Utopia, even leaving aside terrorism, and dehyradating summer heat. Nearly every building I saw in Jerusalem was brown and made of stone, apparently because of a municipal ordinance enacted to give "a certain romantic quality to the buildings" according to an Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs web page.
Personally, I found the pervasive "brown-ness" of Jerusalem to be monotonous and even disorienting, making it hard to distinguish one part of Jerusalem from another especially since I had spent the previous week in the historic areas of Buffalo, N.Y., where the citys Victorian neighborhoods are a riot of blues and purples and greens.
Then again, everyone has their own tastes in such matters.
Israels transportation policies, unlike Jerusalems architecture and street design, should be familiar to any Atlantan. During the past several decades, metro Atlantas city and county governments have followed a self-contradictory transportation policy: On one hand, our politicians built MARTA and other public transit systems to facilitate access to the city center and increase mobility. But they also emasculated MARTA by building highways such as I-285 and Georgia 400, dispensing people and jobs to places without MARTA service, forcing them drive more and to choke the roads with cars and pollutants.
Similarly, Jerusalem is building a light rail system, one likely to be far more succesful than Atlantas, because the citys high density means many more people can walk to stations than in Atlanta). But the national government is busy sabotaging the rail system by building the Trans-Israel Highway, a billion-dollar road that may well disperse development to now-unsettled areas.
On balance, Atlantans can learn a lot about street design from Jerusalem but I only wish Israelis would learn from Atlantas mistakes.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE BLACK-JEWISH "ALLIANCE" (8-9-02)
On Aug. 20, one election may be of special interest to local Jews: the Democratic primary in Georgias 4th District between incumbent Cynthia McKinney and challenger Denise Majette. Most Jews will probably support Majette, because of McKinneys pro-Palestinian stands and because her support for Israel has been less than enthusiastic. (For example, earlier this year McKinney refused to vote for a pro-Israel resolution that passed the House 352-21).
Although both McKinney and Majette are black, their contest has placed Jews on the opposite side of the fence from much of the black political Establishment
In such situations, the press typically teems with reports about the "broken black-Jewish alliance". Yet when Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that many people considered anti-Israel, there was little discussion of the "broken Southern Baptist-Jewish alliance" .
In fact, the black-Jewish alliance is about as real as the Southern Baptist-Jewish Alliance --which is to say, not very real at all.
Fifty or 60 years ago, our grandparents could talk about a black-Jewish alliance with a straight face, because Jews and blacks lived in the same urban neighborhoods and were discriminated against by the same people -- white Christians who didnt want either group in their schools or neighborhoods.
But these common interests have evaporated during the last several decades. While blacks still suffer disproportionately from racism and poverty, Jews generally get along well in America maybe even too well given the skyrocketing intermarriage rates of the past several decades.
Nor are Jews and blacks united by geography anymore, because our desire to move to overwhelmingly white neighborhoods is just as strong as that of non-Jews.
For example, Atlantas south side long majority blackcontains few Jews. And the only synagogue south of I-20 will soon be built in overwhelmingly white Fayette County, many miles to the south of most of Atlantas black neighborhoods.
Still, Atlanta is more integrated than some other large urban regions. For example, Clevelands most heavily Jewish suburb, Beachwood, is less than 10% black, and more integrated suburbs like Cleveland Heights have been losing Jews in recent decades.
To sum up, all that blacks and Jews have in common is that -- before I was born both groups were oppressed by white Christians, a slender peg on which to hang an alliance.
Given that Jews and blacks have no special reason to be allies, how should we interact with each other? What do we owe each other?
I begin with the simple, widely held moral assumption that color blindness is ordinarily a good thing, so it logically follows that Jews should treat black Christians the same way we treat white Christians.
That means that we cannot expect blacks to fight for Jews special interests any more than we expect other whites to be our natural allies and that we should be no more disappointed by blacks failure to follow our lead than by whites failure to do so.
And because we cannot reasonably expect blacks to behave differently from white non-Jews, we should resist the temptation to blame blacks for the anti-Semitism of a Louis Farrakhan or to assume that his remarks represent the views of most blacks.
Just as Jews owe blacks the same treatment they owe other non-Jews, blacks owe Jews the same treatment they owe other non-blacks.
Blacks cannot expect us to be consistently supportive of policies they support any more than they should expect white Presbyterians or Baptists to endorse that agenda.
On the other hand, blacks have a right to expect just as much civility and decency from Jews as they should expect from white Presbyterians or Baptists.
In sum, in matters of politics Jews should see blacks simply as non-Jews and blacks should see Jews simply as whites.
Once both groups adjust their expectations accordingly, black-Jewish relations may well improve.
(Editing note: I personally would have used the term "non-Jewish blacks" instead of "blacks", since there are a few Jewish blacks out there. But this sort of judgment call is what editors are for).

TORAH LESSONS FOR ATLANTA'S SUBURBS (7-19-02)

In order to limit suburban sprawl and preserve natural resources, Oregon requires municipal governments to establish "urban growth boundaries" around cities and inner suburbs. Outside the boundary, subdivisions are prohibited -- and agriculture and forests are promoted.
In other words, Portland and other Oregon cities cannot sprawl indiscriminately into the countryside as Atlanta suburbs have; instead, Portland is surrounded by a green belt of rural land.
Some results of Portland's growth boundaries are miraculous; in the past two decades, the city of Portland's population has increased by 40 percent -- as fast as [that of] its suburbs. By contrast, the city of Atlanta's population increased at a sluggish 5 percent pace during the 1990s, while its suburbs exploded.
Nevertheless, Oregon's policies are not likely to be adopted by Georgia (or other states) - partially because of concerns about Portland's ever-increasing home prices, but also because of a widely held view that any environmental regulation of real estate violates developers' "property rights" to unlimited profits.
For example, John Charles of the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute says Oregon's growth boundary "strips thousands of property owners of a reasonable use of their property" by prohibiting subdivisions and office buildings in agricultural zones.
The Supreme Court has ruled that regulation is subject to a balancing test -- [a] landowner's loss is balanced against [the] public interest favoring regulation. So protecting natural resources is subject to judicial whim.
By contrast, the Torah takes a clear pro-regulation position - one with lessons for the unbridled growth in Atlanta.
For example, Numbers 35:2-5 states that upon entering Israel, the Hebrew people had to assign "towns for the Levites to dwell in [and] . . . pasture around their towns." That town pasture "shall extend a thousand cubits around the town wall all around. You shall measure off 2,000 cubits outside the town . . . with the town in the center."
The medieval Torah commentator Rashi explained that the inner 1,000 cubits (about 500 yards) surrounding cities were to be undeveloped, and the outer 1,000 were for agriculture.
In other words, the Torah created the first urban growth boundary. The Levite tribe -- to a greater extent than modern-day Oregonians -- was limited to the urban core, while the suburbs were reserved for flora and fauna and could only spread out over 2,000 cubits.
The Torah also orders farmers to let the earth lie unplowed every seventh year (Leviticus 25:1-6) and provides that agricultural land must be returned to [its] original owners every 50 years to limit inequalities of wealth (Leviticus 25:10).
Post-Biblical Jewish law extended the goals of land use regulation by enacting early forms of environmental regulation.
For example, Bab Batra (a book of the Mishnah, a code of Jewish law written around 200) creates a zoning code limiting the location of cisterns, ditches, caves, seeds, dovecotes, bakeries, graves, tanneries and other potentially noxious sites.
Tanneries [for example] create foul odors, so the rabbis were creating an early form of environmental regulation. Dovecotes had to be 50 cubits away from villages because doves might eat crops.
The position of Jewish law is clear: A property owner's right to develop must sometimes yield to the broader good, including keeping rural land rural and limiting pollution.
Think of that the next time you drive up I-85.

WHEN "PREDICT AND PROVIDE" DOESN'T WORK by Michael Lewyn (6-7-02)

A few weeks ago, an article ran in the Jewish Times about the growth of suburban synagogues. One interviewee said: "You dont keep building in places where the Jews used to live. You try to figure out where theyre going to live." In other words, predict where people are going to live, and provide services for them.
During the past few decades, this "predict and provide" model has been used to justify disinvestment in older Atlanta neighborhoods, and to justify shifting Jewish facilities to outer suburbs far from the regions historic core. (I hasten to add that the interviewee in question may not have meant to endorse such disinvestment).
For example, a Jewish retirement home moved to Alpharetta because, according to its executive director, Alpharetta is "up-and-coming" even though in fact (according to a related Jewish Times story) "only a few of the homes residents have relatives in Alpharetta."
So whats wrong with predicting and providing? First of all, the "predict and provide" model is, to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you build something (say, a Jewish day school, or a Jewish community center, or a synagogue) in place X, committed Jews are likely, other factors being equal, to move to place X.
For example, as Beth Jacob in Toco Hills began to prosper, Jews started to move to Toco Hills, which in turn caused other Jewish-oriented enterprises to move to Toco Hills.
Would this cycle of Jewish migration have happened if Beth Jacob did not exist? Of course not. Toco Hills would be just another nondescript older suburb, with as much of a Jewish presence as East Point or College Park.
To be sure, broader demographic trends have brought Jews -- especially Jews who are less affluent, less committed or both -- to move to Christian-dominated areas. For example, the quest of middle-class families for cheap real estate has scattered Jews to Cobb and Gwinnett Counties.
But even there [in suburbia], the Jewish elites investment patterns have an impact. Because the regions major Jewish community Center is in Dunwoody and its day schools are mostly in Sandy Springs and Dunwoody, Jewish families who cant afford to live in those ritzy suburbs are more likely to live in nearby northern outer suburbs than in cheaper, newly gentrifying intown neighborhoods such as East Atlanta.
Sometimes the "predict and provide" model fails on its own terms: Attempts to predict the Jewish future often just plain dont work. For example, in 1964 Look Magazine ran a cover story on "The Vanishing American Jew." Today, American Jews still exist and Look Magazine has vanished.
Even within Judaism, all manner of predictions have gone into the ash heap of history. For example, the 19th-century architect of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, called his prayer book Minhag America (in English, "custom of America"); evidently, he believed that Reform Judaism would become the "custom of America."
Instead, Orthodox Judaism (as well as in-between alternatives to both Orthodoxy and Reform) thrived in the 20th century.
Similarly, attempts to predict where Atlantas Jews will live have occasionally misfired. A decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that intown Atlanta is dying. By the end of the 20th century, it was predicted [a casual reader of the Jewish press might have believed that], Atlanta would look like Cleveland, which has only one synagogue within the city limits and where synagogues in the inner suburbs are dying as the population moves further out into the exurban wilderness.
But instead, the old-line intown shuls and the middle-aged inner-suburban shuls have been joined by newcomers: the Virginia Highlands/Morningside area boasts two older synagogues, [and also] Chabad Intown and Shomrei Shamayim. Similarly, Toco Hillss Beth Jacob has been joined by Young Israel and two small Sephardic synagogues, while two small Reconstructionist congregations are taking root a few miles away.
Are older intown synagogues losing members? Perhaps but if so, the lost members are moving not just to suburbia but also to smaller, more intimate intown congregations.
In other words, any attempt by our communitys leaders to predict and provide for future Jewish migration is a self-fulfilling prophecy when it succeeds and just plain wasteful when it fails. Either way, whats the point?

IF I WERE A RICH MAN: THE INTOWN SOLUTION (5-3-02)

Atlantas Jewish billionaires Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus have made headlines by spending money on a football team [,]and an aquarium and Atlantas Jews have responded by inflicting their unsolicited opinions on each other.
Some argue that Jewish tycoons should spend less money on secular toys and more money on Jewish causes, while others point out that the same tycoons have already done plenty for their coreligionists.
These arguments caused me to ask myself: What would I do if I was very rich rich enough not just to write checks to other peoples good causes, but to start my own good cause? (It goes without saying, of course, that any billionaires reading this article should do whatever I would do).
My unique good cause would combine my religious interests with my major secular interest the promotion of good urbanism, by which I mean places that cater to people as well as cars.
I believe that tomorrows children should not grow up as prisoners of mommys car, but instead should have the opportunity to live in places where they can walk, bike or take the bus to synagogues, stores, community centers and the rest of the world outside their backyards. That means neighborhoods where sidewalk-lined residential streets are within walking distance of civic amenities and where neighborhoods are connected by bus routes.
But all too often, families have to choose between Jewish life and neighborhood livability. Most of Atlantas Jewish day schools and community centers have moved to suburbs where children are condemned to a state of infantile dependence on their parents cars until they turn 16. Then they suddenly (according to Georgia laws) become mature enough to create havoc on the highways. My ideal charity would end this problem by bringing major community facilities to pedestrian- and transit-friendly communities (most of which are in intown neighborhoods).
The most commonly discussed solution for the Jewish communitys failure to adequately serve intown residents is a Jewish community center (JCC) certainly a worthy cause. But were I a community-oriented billionaire, a JCC alone would not be my first choice for two reasons.
First, a familys housing choices are more likely to be based on the desirability of the nearest school than on the proximity of a place to work out or play ball (to name a few of our JCCs many worthy activities).
Second, I suspect that a Jewish day school education does more for a childs Jewish identity and level of Jewish learning than proximity to a JCC.
So I would spend my money on heavily subsidized Jewish day schools in the sort of places I would like my children (if I had any) to experience in walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods (such as the Virginia Highlands-Morningside area) or near MARTA stations.
A few more Jewish day schools would not only promote Jewish continuity but also make intown life a viable option for families who have been scared into the suburbs by Atlantas public schools.
In addition, my schools would be far more successful in attracting students than suburban day schools. Because suburbs such as Alpharetta already have highly reputed, taxpayer-subsidized public schools, only
The most Jewishly committed parents there are willing to forego the primary benefit of suburbia (its "good schools") by spending thousands of dollars on private Jewish schools.
By contrast, the low prestige of Atlantas public schools means that intown parents are a captive audience: an intown Jewish school might attract the majority of Jewish city children instead of a tiny share of suburban children.
Some philanthropists have apparently followed my advice by giving Torah Day School enough money to move to the heart of Toco Hills thus giving Atlantas Orthodox parents an intown alternative. Now all we need is a zillionaire who would do the same for the rest of Atlantas Jewish families.

TORAH, TRADITION AND THE NORTHERN ARC PROPOSAL (2-21-02)

Gov. Barnes wants to spend $2.4 billion in taxpayers money to build the Northern Arc, a highway that would span Cherokee County, Forsyth County and other areas far from the Perimeter.
Why could such a dry, technical issue have to do with Jewish values? Plenty.
For more than 3,000 years, Jewish tradition has condemned those who sought to impoverish the needy and disabled. Leviticus 19:14 states: "You shall not curse the deaf, and you shall not put a stumbling block before the blind" words that, read literally, condemn mistreatment of the disabled.
In the very next verse, the Torah urges government officials not to favor the rich over the poor, asserting: "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor favor the person of the mighty" (Leviticus 19:15).
Centuries later, Maimonides instructed us how to help the needy, writing: "The highest degree [of charity] is that of a person who assists a poor Jew . . . by putting him in a position where he can dispense with other peoples aid."
But throughout the 20th century Georgias transportation policies made the poor and disabled more dependent on charity and welfare. By building highways like I-75, I-85 and I-285, the state has made it convenient for businesses to abandon Atlanta in favor of its suburbs. And because these suburbs often have minimal or nonexistent public transit, nondrivers have no access to the jobs the state enticed into suburbia.
While government has built a 24-hour highway system to serve drivers, the majority of metro Atlanta jobs are not within walking distance of a bus stop. And according to the Atlanta Regional Commission, only 34 percent of the regions jobs were within a one-hour public transit ride for low-income Atlantans in 2000.
Furthermore, contrary to popular myth, there are plenty of transit-dependent Atlantans: In the city of Atlanta (hardly one of Americas most transit-friendly places) 28 percent of households and more than a third of African-American households had no car in 1990 according to Census figures.
The Northern Arc will worsen the mismatch between low-income workers and jobs.
Supporters of the road which would link I-75 and I-85admit that they support the highway because it will encourage businesses to move from Atlanta and older suburbs such as Sandy Springs and Dunwoody to Cherokee and Forsyth Counties.
For example, Cherokee County J.J. Biello states that the highway will "attract industry and jobs" to the county. (Conversely, the Forsyth County Commission voted 4-1 in favor of a resolution opposing the Arc because members fear the development that Biello welcomes).
Cherokee and Forsyth Counties have no public bus service whatseoever. That means the Northern Arc would increase the number of jobs that are unreachable by the carless, who are usually urban, poor or disabled.
So if the state builds the Northern Arc, it will do exactly the opposite of what Jewish tradition recommends. Torah and tradition command us to employ the poor, but the Northern Arc will freeze nondrivers out of the labor market, and thus force onto the welfare rolls those Atlantans too poor to buy cars or too disabled to drive.
Jews should oppose auto-oriented transportation policies for a more selfish reason: More jobs moving to places like Forsyth County means more driving, which means consumption of oil, which means more revenue for Arab oil producers, which means more money going to Israels enemies in Saudi Arabia and Iran.
To put the matter crudely, a vote for the Northern Arc is a vote for the bankers of Hezbollah and Yasir Arafat. The most common argument for the Northern Arc is that it will relieve traffic congestion. But like criminals trying to hide their misdeeds, the Arcs backers cannot keep their story straight.
On the one hand, Arc proponents claim that it will unclog traffic a claim disproved by the fact that metro Atlantas most congested streets are in the city and its inner suburbs, far from the proposed route of the Northern Arc.
On the other hand, Arc backers claim that it will bring jobs to outside-the-Perimeter counties. But if employers move to Cherokee and Forsyth Counties, those counties will have more people on the roads which means more cars and more traffic congestion, not less. Thus, the claim that the Northern Arc will reduce congestion is simply rubbish.
So if you believe that work is better than welfare and that the state doesn't need to export inside-the-Perimeter congestion to places like bucolic Forsyth County, you should write Gov. Barnes and the other gubernatorial candidates, your county commissioners and your legislators telling them that Georgia can find better places to spend $2.4 billion. To learn more about how to fight the Northern Arc, contact the Sierra Club at (404) 607-1262.

SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND JEWISH DISCONTINUITY (4-7-00)

Over the past few decades, metropolitan Atlanta, like the rest of America, has been transformed by "suburban sprawl" -- the movement of middle-class families and jobs from older urban cores to newer, more automobile-dependent suburbs. Between 1970 and 1998, the city of Atlanta's population declined from 495,000 to 403,000, while its suburbs mushroomed.
And over the past several decades, the area's Jewish population has moved outward along with the rest of the population: first from its traditional south Atlanta core to north Atlanta neighborhoods such as Morningside, and more recently to a variety of suburbs.
This migration away from the central city has had a serious negative effect on the city itself, of course, by removing an educationally accomplished and economically vibrant set of residents and potential leaders. The movement was part of a larger [trend of] "white flight" that has been well-documented and analyzed.
Less well-understood is the impact that this migration has had on the Jewish community itself. What is now becoming clear is that the dispersal out of the core city neighborhoods has frayed the bonds of acquaintance and friendship that had made a Jewish community coherent and strong and thereby contributed to the increasingly severe problems we face with continuity and identity.
The shift in Atlanta is less pronounced than in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and St. Louis. In each of those cities, only one synagogue remains within the city limits, and even the inner suburbs -- [the ones] closest to the downtown and most walkable -- like Cleveland's Cleveland Heights and St. Louis's University City [--] are losing people to outer suburbs. For example, only 28 percent of Cleveland-area Jewish households now live in the traditionally Jewish inner suburbs of Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and University Heights.
In 1996, one Conservative rabbi whose congregation voted to leave Cleveland Heights for an outer suburb described the neighborhood it was abandoning as "dying."
At the same time that the nationwide migration to suburbia was happening, the Jewish community was losing its continuity through intermarriage.
In 1912, less than 3.5 percent of American-born Jews married non-Jews. In 1968 (the heyday of the Jewish inner suburb) Albert Vorspan, director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations' Commission on Social Action, wrote that "many more Jews are marrying out of the faith than anybody had realized" because between 20 and 30 percent of Jews married non-Jews. Today, 40 percent or more of Jews (depending on whose survey you believe) "marry out."
Are urban decay and Jewish decay linked, or is this correlation a mere coincidence. Common sense suggests that suburban sprawl and intermarriage do in fact go together.
During the first half of the century, most Jewish children, no matter what their parents' theology, grew up in heavily Jewish urban enclaves where they walked everywhere and were thus in constant contact with their Jewish neighbors. In such an environment, it was relatively easy for young Jews to grow up with, and later to love and marry, their co-religionists.
By contrast, many of today's young Jews, especially in Atlanta, grew up in areas totally dominated by the automobile. I grew up in an area where the nearest regular MARTA bus stop was a mile away. I couldn't safely walk to the bus stop or to a neighbor's house because there were no sidewalks and the neighbors' trees and shrubs went right up to the curb, preventing me from walking on the grass as one can in many sidewalk-less Midwestern suburbs -- or in Toco Hills near Beth Jacob.
Even if a Jewish family's neighbors are disproportionately Jewish -- itself an unlikely event outside chasidic or Orthodox circles where residents walk to synagogue as a matter of religious duty -- most young Jews do not see their neighbors particularly often in unwalkable outer suburbs.
Historically, familiarity was the precursor to romance. Now in our dispersed suburban lives, the ties to Jewish neighbors have been weakened. One result: a rise in intermarriage.
Admittedly, it is possible for Jewish parents -- or their children, after they reach driving age -- to drive outside the neighborhood to socialize with other Jews. But this requires a level of commitment that, in practice, deters all but the least motivated. By contrast, Jews who grow up in a walkable ethnic enclave, such as Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill, need not make such an effort; instead, they will meet other Jews as a matter of course.
There is little statistical evidence one way or the other as to whether suburbanites are more likely to intermarry or abandon Judaism. However, it does seem clear that city dwellers are more likely to identify with Judaism.
The book "Jews on the Move" by Sidney and Alice Goldstein, divided Jews into "core Jews" -- Jews who practice Judaism or at least regard themselves as Jewish -- and the "peripheral population" -- non-Jews of Jewish ancestry. In 1990, 51 percent of the "core Jews" but only 41 percent of the "peripheral population" lived in central cities.
Similarly, city dwellers are more likely to be observant. For example, 15 of Illinois's Orthodox congregations, but only 8 of the state's Reform congregations, are located in central cities . . . [NOTE: I am using ellipses to delete a sentence that turned out to be not quite right; I said there was a similar gap in Atlanta, because I thought a couple of Orthodox shuls were within the city limits which are in fact just a few blocks outside).
This may be so because intown living is more compatible with the mitzvah of walking to a synagogue. By contrast, I have seen Reform synagogues in sidewalk-less areas where it was physically impossible to walk on the street without endangering one's life.
What can we do to break the pattern of linked urban decay and Jewish decay?
As individuals, we can oppose government policies that accelerate suburban sprawl, like the billion-dollar highways that shift development outside the Perimeter or the zoning decisions that encourage ever-lower residential density. We can also support public and private spending that hastens the renewal of walkable city neighborhoods.
As a community, we can also contribute to our continuity by putting more of our dollars inside the city, building a Jewish infrastructure in the city and in walkable suburbs like Decatur that makes it more comfortable for Jews to stay in town.
Now, for example, most of our Jewish day schools are in the suburbs, where they must compete with high-quality public schools that were the primary factor in luring parents to live in the suburbs. With good schools close by and already supported by required taxes, only the richest or most motivated parents are likely to send their children to a Jewish school.
By contrast, a day school or two in the city of Atlanta, like Christian religious schools in most American cities, would benefit from a "captive audience" of Jews who want to stay in the city but will not send their children to Atlanta's public schools with their records of generally inferior academic accomplishment. As the new community high school searches for a permanent home, it should consider how it might help continuity by looking inside the city limits.
It is too late to rebuilt the demolished community center in Midtown or to unbuild the expanded center at Zaban Park. But it is not too late to explore a small satellite JCC facility to serve the continuing recreational needs of the intown community.
Divesting in the city has come at the price of a weaker communal identity. Reinvesting in neighborhoods where our children can truly grow up together could pay a rich dividend of a strengthened Jewish future for them -- and for us.

Home

lewyn — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:36:02 CDT

he Paradox of Missile Defense (Blue Dog Press 7-25-01; one of my last Blue Dog Press articles)

by Michael Lewyn

Ever since President George W. Bush was inaugurated, his administration has insisted on planning to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on a missile defense system to protect American cities from the yet-to-be-deployed
missiles of Iraq, North Korea and a variety of other small thugocracies.

The logic of missile defense is as follows: during the Cold War, we survived without missile defense because the Soviet Union was rational enough to be deterred by our thousands of nuclear warheads. But over the next few years, our pint-sized enemies may deploy nuclear missiles, and may either (a) be irrational enough to fire atomic bombs at
the United States even if by doing so they risk annihilation themselves, or (b) use their future nuclear deterrent to prevent the United States from mounting a conventional invasion the next time these ""rogue states"" threaten their neighbors, for example, if Iraq invades Saudi Arabia or North Korea invades South Korea.

But paradoxically, missile defense may make less sense now than at the height of the Cold War. Here''s why: during the Cold War, the Soviet Union''s thousands of missiles threatened not just American cities, but America''s own missiles. In fact, the Soviet Union had so many missiles that they arguably could have destroyed all of America''s land-based missiles (though not our air- and sea-based missiles) in their silos. This, in turn, meant that if
some technical breakthrough allowed the Soviets to destroy our air- and sea-based nuclear weapons, they could, in theory, have been able to fight and win World War III in half an hour, by destroying our nuclear deterrent.

It logically followed that if we deployed a missile defense that destroyed 50 percent of Soviet missiles before they entered U.S. territory, we would have insured that our own nuclear deterrent would survive a first strike by the
Soviets, thus deterring the Soviets from starting World War III. Therefore, a Cold War-era missile defense would actually have been of significant value, even if it did not destroy every single incoming missile.

By contrast, the missile system proposed by President Bush would probably be designed only to deter nuclear attacks by smaller nations with only a few dozen missiles apiece, far too few to threaten America''s nuclear deterrent.

It follows that the Bush program would protect only America''s cities rather than its missiles, and thus would have to be 100 percent effective in order to avoid a catastrophe. Suppose, for example, North Korea decides to fire 20 nuclear weapons at United States territory. Even if the missile defense system was 90 percent effective, and 2 of
North Korea''s weapons landed on American cities, millions of Americans would die, as would (a few hours later) a few million North Koreans who our own nuclear weapons would vaporize. Because even a 90 percent effective system would be unable to prevent a foreign dictator from killing millions of Americans, such a system would have little deterrent value.

It could be argued that without a missile defense system, one of America''s less powerful enemies could use their future nuclear deterrent to prevent the United States from using its own conventional deterrent. For example, a nuclear-armed Iraq could invade Saudi Arabia and suggest to American leaders that any attempt to rerun the Gulf
War would lead to a rerun of Hiroshima in an American city. But these threats would be effective whether a missile defense was 10 percent effective or 90 percent effective, because even a 10 percent chance of a blown-up American city (or, for that matter, the destruction of an American city or two by 10 percent of Iraq,,s nuclear missiles) would
be sufficient for Iraq''s deterrent to work. In other words, unless the United States or its enemies knew with absolute certainty that our missile defense would be 100 percent effective, a missile defense would not prevent those enemies from mounting conventional attacks upon their neighbors.

Even supporters of a missile defense concede that an American missile defense would not, in fact, be 100 percent effective. For example, Frank Gaffney (who was responsible for missile defense policy in the Reagan Defense
Department) wrote in the March issue of Commentary, ""Even the best defense would likely have some leakage, a fact that, for a nation relying on it, could well prove catastrophic."" It logically follows that missile defense is
unlikely either to prevent an attack by a so-called ""rogue state"" or to deter a conventional war by a rogue state.

In defense of missile defense, Gaffney argues: ""an adversary contemplating an attack in the face of even partially effective defenses could never know whether his warheads would succeed in reaching their targets and if so, which ones they would be. This in itself may create an additional disincentive to launching a strike in the first place,
particularly if the consequences of doing so would be certain and devastating retailiation by a still wholly or mainly unscathed United States."" In other words, Gaffney asserts that a dictator would be crazy enough to risk being blown up by mounting a successful nuclear attack against the United States, yet not crazy enough to take the risk
that his nuclear attack would be frustrated by missile defense, an obviously absurd scenario. So an imperfect missile defense is unlikely to deter even the most deranged dictator.

Published July 25, 2001

REALITY TV: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNETHICAL

By Michael Lewyn

To a much greater extent than motion pictures or plays, network television radically changes from year to year.

For a while, the dominant fad might be the wholesome family situation comedy. Then, a raunchier comedy becomes
popular, and all of the television networks try to copy it by airing potty-mouthed farces. For a time, hour-long
dramas are popular, and the networks fall all over themselves imitating those.

Recently, the latest fad has been so-called reality television, a generic term for shows that feature non-actors in
contrived situations. For example, Survivor (the reality show with which I am most familiar) drops numerous
persons into some isolated landscape, such as a tropical island or a desert, tells them to vote each other off the show
on a regular basis, and then, after a series of strange challenges (eating bugs, standing on a pole), the final tribe
members face their peers. After the ultimate votes are cast, a large sum of money is awarded to the person who
survives the elimination battle.

Generally, I find Survivor (and its knockoffs -- for the five or ten minutes that I have examined them) to be
anything but reality TV. I personally have never been on a tropical island with 15 strangers with whom I have to
simultaneously live and plot against -- and I suspect the same is true for most readers. Big Brother forced a group
of strangers to live together in a studio-fabricated house as television viewers voted off whom they felt were the
most annoying. On The Mole, players hunted for the spy amongst them. Fear Factor finds folks willing to do almost
anything (be with 400 live rats or get dragged by a horse) to win $50.000.

Frankly, Survivor isn''t any more realistic than most other television shows. For example, television executives
justify their obsession with crime, premarital and extramarital sex, and violence on the grounds that these
phenomena do in fact occur in the United States. But these problems are hardly as significant to my life as they are
to most television shows.

For example, I have not been murdered even once, nor has my apartment ever burned to the ground -- yet TV news
intensely covers crime and fire, and television entertainment is filled with violence. And about my sex life... let''s
just say that there''s not as much sex in my life as there is on television. In fact, about one-fourth of my life (as
much as one-third on good days) consists of sleep -- yet television scarcely ever portrays anyone sleeping, let alone
sleeping for one-fourth of an episode (7.5 minutes of a 30 minute sitcom --with commercials; and 15 minutes of a
one-hour drama).

If television truly reflected reality (say, by airing extended coverage of actual human sleep, a la Andy Warhol''s
movie, aptly titled Sleep), it would be far more relaxing -- but perhaps even less entertaining than it is today, if such
a thing were possible, that is.

But even if Survivor were more realistic, it would nevertheless still fail to retain my attention. I simply don''t find
other people''s lives interesting enough to watch on television. Rather, I prefer to obsess on the soap opera of my
own life. Over the past 15 years, I have lived in eight different cities, held eleven different jobs (counting temporary
jobs of various types), been laid off once, narrowly avoided termination once (by leaving a law firm only a few
months before it folded), and experienced four nationwide job hunts (once of which involved 48 interviews in over
a dozen cities). Even now, I am hardly stuck-in-a-rut. I usually have to prepare for a new class or two every
semester, work hard to retain the good will of both my students and the administrators who have the power to fire
me, worry that the law school where I teach will not stay in business, and write enough scholarly articles to have a
decent chance of tenure. Perhaps if I were used to job security, I would be a bit more interested in the adventures of
some people thrown onto an island, who are told to work with and against each other.

Perhaps being a contestant on a reality show is more fun than watching one -- but nevertheless, I would not like to
be part of these shows'' institutionalized backbiting. Jewish tradition understandably condemns lashon hara
(Hebrew for ""evil talk"" -- but more loosely translated as gossip, or negative comments about others). Yet, some
of the reality shows are structured to encourage lashon hara. On Survivor, for example, contestants have to vote
each other off the show. This encourages them to speak negatively about their fellow combatants, scheming, of
course, that someone else will be voted off the show before they are.

I realize that I wouldn''t necessarily burn in Hell if I were to spend a few months as part of the Survivor cast -- but
nevertheless, such a situation could not possibly be good for my ethical development.

So watch Survivor and its ilk if you must, but definitely don''t treat the contestants as role models.

¿¿2001 Blue Dog Press Published July 03, 2001

SPECIAL NEEDS, SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

BY MICHAEL LEWYN

On October 25, 1979, Johnny Paul Penry raped and murdered Pamela Carpenter.

He confessed that, after he installed a stove in Carpenter''s home, he planned to return for an encounter that would
prove deadly for her.

In his own very chilling words, Penry said, ""I decided I would go over to the chick''s [Carpenter''s] house and get
me a piece. I also wanted to get the money that she had in her purse. I knew that if I went over to the chick''s home
and raped her that I would have to kill her, because she would tell who I was to the police, and I didn''t want to go
back to the pen.""

After entering Carpenter''s home, Penry hit her repeatedly and raped her for thirty minutes. ""I sat down on her
stomach and I told her that I loved her and hated to kill her, but I had to so she wouldn''t squeal on me."" Penry
(who was on parole from a previous rape) then stabbed Carpenter in the chest and ran away. Carpenter clung to life
for an hour and then died from her wounds. According to the Texas Supreme Court, she ""was in the grip of violent
pain...up until the time she died.""

More than twenty-one years have passed since that tragic day, and Johnny Paul Penry''s fate has not yet been
resolved. After Penry was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a Texas jury, he appealed the death
sentence, asserting that (to quote the U.S. Supreme Court''s description of his argument) ""it would be cruel and
unusual punishment, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment, to execute a mentally retarded person like himself.""
The Supreme Court did not adopt his argument, but has twice remanded his case to the Texas courts on more
technical grounds. Specifically, the Court has held that the Texas courts did not clearly instruct juries that Penry''s
retardation should be considered as a mitigating factor.

Recently, the High Court once again stayed Penry''s death sentence. His case (and the general issue of whether
retarded murderers should be executed) has attracted a significant amount of publicity. In fact, the Texas state
legislature passed a bill banning the execution of mentally retarded persons, but the bill was vetoed by Governor
Rick Perry.

The case against executing the retarded was articulately stated years ago by Justice William Brennan, who
concurred in the first Supreme Court opinion halting Penry''s death sentence. Brennan argued that ""the impairment
of a mentally retarded offender''s reasoning abilities, control over impulsive behavior, and moral development in
my view limits his or her culpability so that, whatever other punishment might be appropriate, the ultimate penalty
of death is always and necessarily disproportionate."" Similarly, the American Association on Mental Retardation
(AAMR) argued before the Supreme Court that because of ""disability in the areas of cognitive impairment, moral
reasoning, control of impulsivity, and the ability to understand basic relationships between cause and effect,""
mentally retarded people cannot act with the level of moral culpability that would justify capital punishment.

Penry''s own behavior rebuts these arguments. Justice Brennan wrote that a retarded defendant''s lack of ""control
over impulsive behavior"" bars capital punishment. But Penry was anything but impulsive. He confessed that for
three weeks before he killed her, he ""thought about [Carpenter] a lot. He made the decision to rape her when he
""saw a girl in City Hall who reminded me of [Carpenter]."" Penry decided at that time that he would murder
Carpenter in order to escape detection. While he was stabbing her, he actually told her that he was killing her ""so
she wouldn''t squeal on me.""

It is hard to imagine a more calculated, controlled crime. Far from being unable to control his impulses, Penry was
about as ""impulsive"" as Timothy McVeigh. Like McVeigh, he mulled over the details of his crime before
committing it, and killed not on impluse, but based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. Specifically, he
believed that if he stabbed Carpenter to death, he would be less likely to ""go back to the pen"" than if he merely
raped her and allowed her to live.

The AAMR asserted that retarded individuals lack ""the ability to understand basic relationships between cause and
effect."" But Penry murdered Carpenter because he had exactly that ability. He murdered Carpenter because he
believed that there would be a cause/effect relationship between his murder and his freedom: that his decision to
murder Carpenter would cause the fortunate (for him) effect of eliminating the only witness to his rape of her, thus
hampering the police investigation.

I gladly concede that some killers who science defines as ""mentally retarded"" should not be executed because of
their mental problems. For example, the defendant who is incapable of distinguishing between death and sleep. But
Johnny Paul Penry knew exactly what he was doing when he raped and murdered Pamela Carpenter, so if capital
punishment is morally appropriate for anyone at all, Johnny Paul Penry deserves to die.

¿¿2001 Blue Dog Press Published June 27, 2001

Biblical Politics

By Michael Lewyn

As I have become more interested in my religious heritage, I have begun to look at the Bible now and then,
especially the one part of the Bible which lays down a large number of specific laws: the Five Books of Moses
(Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) also known as the Pentateuch or (to us Jews) the Torah.
Generally, the most religious Americans are also the most politically conservative, but the Pentateuch does not
always support this tendency.

On the cultural issues that motivate the Religious Right, the Pentateuch does tend towards positions that might be
considered conservative in this century (or even in the last century). For example, the text states: ""He that smiteth a
man, so that he dieth, shall surely be put to death"" (Exodus 21:12). To be fair, Jewish commentators watered down
capital punishment by endorsing a variety of procedural protections for defendants. Nor is the Bible''s law-and-
order tendency mitigated by a desire to protect criminals merely because they had disadvantaged backgrounds: it
states ""Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor favor the
person of the mighty"" (Leviticus 19:15). And despite the Religious Right''s intense interest in abortion, this
subject is never directly mentioned in the Pentateuch.

But on economic issues, the Pentateuch is not particularly right-wing. It seeks to protect debtors by limiting the use
of clothing as collateral (Exodus 22:25-26), and creates an early version of bankruptcy law by mandating that all
debts be released at the end of every seven years (Deuteronomy 15:1). The Pentateuch also protects the poor in a
variety of ways. It states to the ancient Hebrews: ""if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee, then
thou shalt uphold him"" (Leviticus 35:38).

More specifically, it adds: ""And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corner of thy
field, neither shalt thou alter the gleaning of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou
gather the fallen fruit of thy vineyard, thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger."" (Leviticus 19:9-10).
This passage would appear to mandate a modest form of workfare, requiring ancient Israelites to support the poor
with the fruits of their labor as long as the beneficiaries were willing to exert the effort necessary to turn agricultural
products into food and money. On the other hand, such modest forms of relief do not contemplate the total
elimination of poverty or inequality.

The Pentateuch also shows some environmentalist tendencies: for example, after God tells Moses to give the Levites
(ancient Israel''s priestly tribe) cities to dwell in, God adds: ""open land round about the cities shall ye give unto the
Levites... for their cattle, and for their substance, and for all their beasts. And the open land about the cities, which
ye shall give unto the Levites, shall be from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits round about.""
(Numbers 35:2-4). In other words, the Bible creates an urban growth boundary for the Levites: a greenbelt that, like
that enacted in 20th-century Oregon, limits the sprawl of urban and suburban development and requires everything
beyond that boundary to be used for agriculture and other rural land uses. The Pentateuch adds: ""When thou shalt
besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof... is the tree of
the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?"" (Deuteronomy 20:19). It therefore appears that the author of the
Bible was the original pro-tree environmentalist.

Like religious conservatives and secular liberals, the Pentateuch is critical of discrimination. It states: ""Thou shalt
not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the lind"" (Levicitus 19:14). And, ""if a stranger sojourn with
thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong"" (Leviticus 19:33). Although these passages hardly mandate specific
legislation, they do emphasize the value of fair treatment for foreigners and the disabled.

It could even be argued that the Pentateuch confronts racism: God inflicts a skin disease upon Miriam (Moses,,
sister) after she ""spoke against Moses because of the Cushite [Ethiopian] woman who he had married."" (Numbers
12:1). (However, the Bible does not directly state the cause of Miriam''s complaints, so this passage is ambiguous).

In sum, the author or authors of the Pentateuch endorsed a kind of centrist populism, moderately redistributionist on
economic issues, conservationist on environmental issues, but culturally conservative. Of course for some, this
discussion may beg the question: so what? The answer depends not only on one''s view of the Bible''s divine origin
or lack thereof, but also on the extent to which one''s own morality and faith should shape a religiously diverse
society.

¿¿2001 Blue Dog Press Published June 21, 2001

PROHIBITION: THE LESSER EVIL?

By Michael Lewyn

A few months ago, I saw the Oscar-nominated movie Traffic. The apparent message of the film was that despite the
billions of dollars spent on the so-called War on Drugs, anybody who wants to smuggle drugs into the United States
can easily do so, and anyone who wishes to buy illegal drugs can easily do so. The film''s popularity reflects a
common (albeit not a majority) point of view: drug prohibition has failed to stop drug use, and is thus a failure.

Certainly, drug prohibition has failed to live up to its lofty goals. Our politicians and bureaucrats have ranted for
decades that if we only throw enough money at law enforcement, we can eradicate the scourge of illicit drugs from
American soil. But millions of Americans continue to sell and use cocaine, heroin, PCP and similar substances. On
the other hand, the drug war has not been a total failure. Between 1991 and 1999, the number of drug-related
murders in America nosedived by 58 percent (from 1353 to 564) ---- a decrease even faster than the overall 1990s
decrease in crime. Similarly, use of illicit drugs appears to have decreased. Surveys by the U.S. Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration reveal that in 1985, 12.1 percent of Americans used (or at least were
willing to admit to using) one or more illegal drugs in the month prior to the survey, while in 1998, 6.2 percent of
Americans did so. Use of cocaine, the most popular illicit drug other than marijuana, decreased from 3.0 percent to
0.8 percent. Such surveys are of questionable accuracy, because some people lie even on anonymous surveys, and
because some changes may not be statistically significant; nevertheless, it appears that drug use has not increased
and may well have decreased. So maybe the War on Drugs isn''t a complete failure.

It follows that we cannot resolve the issue of drug prohibition merely by deciding that current laws are overly harsh,
or by noticing that millions of Americans still use cocaine, heroin and similar intoxicants. Even if drug prohibition
is imperfect, it may still be the lesser evil if its benefits outweigh its costs: that is, if the problems created by the
status quo are less obnoxious than those caused by legalization. I don''t know what the right answer to this question
is ---- but I do have a pretty good idea what factors we should be thinking about.

American legislators, judges and voters generally believe that what Americans do to their own bodies is their
business. Otherwise, tobacco would be illegal, as would a variety of other dangerous practices (such as drinking
alcohol or maybe even eating fatty foods). Indeed, this norm is so widespread that Americans are willing to allow
each other to do things to their own bodies that harm other beings, such as abortion (which kills an arguably human
fetus). It follows that the case for drug prohibition rests not on harm to users but on harm to nonusers ---- that is,
crime caused by drug addicts.

It could be argued that the drug war itself causes a great deal of violent crime. Sellers of illegal drugs rob and kill
each other to wipe out the competition ---- a problem that would go away if large corporations sold cocaine and
heroin. Addicts steal to support their habit; arguably, fewer would do so if drugs were legal, because legalization
might entice more businesses into the drug market, thus causing the supply of drugs to increase, thus causing prices
to go down.

But there is another side to the argument. If now-illegal drugs were legal, some Americans who don''t use them
would do so, both because they would no longer fear prosecution and because such drugs might become less
expensive than they are today. Some of those Americans would become addicts, and some of those addicts would
commit crimes ---- either because of the intoxicating effects of illegal drugs, or to get money to support their
habits.

How many Americans would become drug addicts if the most dangerous drugs were legalized? Certainly not a
majority; most Americans are too rational even to smoke cigarettes, let alone smokable ""crack"" cocaine. But it
seems equally clear that a few Americans would yield to temptation; when cocaine became cheaper in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the streets of America''s ghettoes overflowed with crackheads. If even one percent of America''s
adults became drug addicts, we would have about two million new drug addicts on our hands.

In other words, legalization would prevent some crimes (especially those arising from the drug trade) yet create
others (especially those committed by frenzied addicts). To decide whether cocaine or heroin should be legalized,
we should start thinking about whether the second group will be more numerous than the first.

¿¿2001 Blue Dog Press Published June 13, 2001

Blaming the Victims

By Michael Lewyn

One common excuse for state government''s failure to stem suburban sprawl is the ""blame the victims"" theory:
the view that the troubles of cities such as Buffalo are fundamentally the result of incompetent municipal
government, rather than state policies that promote migration to suburbia (such as funding roads that shift
development to the countryside). For example, Washington pundit Gregg Easterbrook argues that Americans
""sought the suburbs in order to escape the corruption and mismanagement of urban government.""

But in fact, there is little correlation between city competence and city wealth. In 2000, the Maxwell School of
Citizenship & Public Affairs And Governing magazine graded the efficiency of 35 city governments. Fourth-place
Minneapolis lost population in the second half of the 20th century, as did eighth-place Milwaukee. Conversely,
some poorly-managed cities continue to grow. Columbus''s city government was the fourth worst, yet Columbus
has gained population in every decade since 1950. In fact, of the ten most incompetently managed cities, five
(Nashville, San Francisco, Anchorage, Columbus, and Los Angeles) have gained population in recent decades. It
therefore appears that some well-run cities have been bled dry by their suburbs, while some poorly run cities
continue to grow and prosper, evidence that municipal incompetence is only a minor factor in sending Americans to
suburbia.

It could be argued that high taxes rather than incompetent service delivery drives middle-class flight from cities. But
Buffalo has lower property taxes than many of its suburbs, yet continues to lose population to them. Conversely,
New York City has a city income tax, yet continues to grow.

Admittedly, many urban governments tax more and provide less than their suburban counterparts. But to the extent
that this is so, sprawl is more cause than effect. This is so for three reasons. First, if a city''s middle class migrates
en masse to suburbia, its tax base will be smaller and it will thus be forced to raise taxes or reduce services. Second,
if a city''s middle class migrates to suburbia, its schools will become less prestigious, because children from
disadvantaged backgrounds tend -- other factors being equal -- to be slower learners than middle-class children.
Third, suburban sprawl itself may facilitiate the election of incompetent urban governments.

Because of middle-class flight to suburbia, older cities are dominated by low-income voters, who tend to favor
liberal politicians whose tax-and-spend, soft-on-crime policies drive away anti-tax middle-class voters. For example,
in Washington, D.C., the ""white flight"" of the 1950s and 1960s and the middle-class black flight to suburbia of
more recent decades combined to create a low-income, overwhelmingly African-American electorate that was
responsive to Marion Barry''s appeals to black pride, and supported his attempts to create jobs by inflating the city
payroll. As a result, Barry was able to reduce the size of the city''s police force, get convicted of using crack
cocaine, and nevertheless be reelected mayor in 1994. The results of Barry''s policies were calamitous: between the
1980 Census (two years after Barry was first elected) and 1998 (when he left office, hopefully for the last time) the
city of Washington lost population more rapidly than the city of Buffalo, even though the population of the
Washington region increased by over 30 percent. But paradoxically, Barry benefitted from the city''s decay: the
voters who moved to the suburbs were middle-class voters who were likely to oppose him, while those who stayed
in the city tended to be his low-income supporters.

By contrast, had there been no middle-class flight during the last half of the 20th century, the city of Washington
would have been resembled the Washington metro area as a whole; that is, it would have been a 3/4 white city with
a 10 percent poverty rate instead of a 2/3 black city with a 20-25 percent poverty rate. In such a city, a Marion
Barry-type candidate could not have been elected or reelected. Thus, Marion Barry and politicians like him are
results, rather than causes, of sprawl.

Moreover, the ""blame the victim"" theory of suburban sprawl requires us to believe a number of bizarre
coincidences. Most Northeastern and Midwestern American cities gained population in the 1930s and 1940s and
lost population for several decades thereafter. So, to believe that suburban sprawl is the result of municipal
incompetence, one would have to believe that dozens of city governments, by an incredibly strange coincidence,
became unable to police their streets or improve their schools at exactly the same time -- an obviously unbelievable
proposition. In recent decades, the inner suburbs of Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo and Cleveland have begun to
lose population. So, to believe that municipal incompetence is the major cause of middle-class flight, we would have
to believe that all of these suburbs became ungovernable at exactly the same time, an equally unbelievable
proposition.

In sum, the claim that urban incompetence causes suburban growth is meritless, both because the correlation
between municipal competence and urban decay is weak, and because urban decay may be a cause, rather than a
result, of incompetent government.

HOW THE DEMOCRATS STOLE THE ELECTION - FROM EACH OTHER (1-3-01)

As this year's election dispute dragged on, partisan rhetoric among Democrats and Republicans alike became uglier and uglier. Republicans repeatedly claimed that Democrats were trying to steal the election from George W. Bush, until Al Gore conceded the election - at which time the Democrats promptly began to accuse Republicans of stealing the election by preventing manual recounts in Florida. But had it not been for the incompetence of Gore's fellow Democrats, he would have won Florida and the election without needing a recount.

The Vice President's tale of woe began in early 1998, when the nation discovered that President Clinton had lied under oath to cover up his sexual misconduct. By doing so, President Clinton had arguably committed perjury - a felony for which his own administration had repeatedly prosecuted private citizens. If President Clinton had had the decency to step down when his lawlessness was exposed (and if Congressional Democrats had had the decency to insist on his departure) Al Gore would have been sworn in as President. And if Gore had been President, in 2000 he could, like any incumbent President, have taken credit for the nation's prosperity, and therefore would have been reelected without difficulty. (Ironically, President Clinton might have enhanced his own political viability by resigning in 1998; had he quit during the first two years of his second term, he would have been eligible to run again in 2004).

Early in 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno inadvertently sabotaged the Gore campaign. Last winter, the relatives of Elian Gonzalez were fighting over Elian's custody: his American relatives (and most of Miami's Cuban-American population) wanted him to live in America with them, while his father wanted him to come home to Cuba. (As you may recall, Elian's mother decided to leave Cuba for America and brought Elian along; the mother died, but the child survived). Janet Reno could perhaps have negotiated a peaceful settlement of this dispute with the American relatives - but after a favorable court decision or two, she got bored with negotiations and sent numerous gun-toting FBI agents into the Gonzalez home in Miami's Little Havana, thus triggering a minor riot in that neighborhood. Reno's risky scheme did not (unlike the FBI's attempt to lure the Branch Davidian cult out of their hideout with tear gas) result in anyone's death, but did alienate Miami's Cuban-Americans, thus causing Gore to lose thousands of Cuban-American votes. Between 1996 and 2000, the Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote dropped by 7 points (from 60% in 1996 to 53% in 2000) in heavily Cuban-American Dade County (Miami and its suburbs) while Gore lost only 3 points (from 53% to 50%) statewide. Had it not been for Reno's trigger-happiness, Gore's Dade County "drop-off" from Clinton's 1996 totals might have been as small as his statewide drop-off (i.e. 3 points) thus causing him to win an extra 19,000 votes (4% of Dade's 620,000 or so votes) - more than enough to win Florida and the election.

While Janet Reno was sabotaging Gore in a misplaced display of courage, the fellow Democrats were sabotaging Gore out of cheapness. Over the years, counties throughout Florida have replaced their outdated computer punch-card machines with more accurate optical scanner voting machines. But South Florida's largest counties (Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, all of which went for Gore in 2000) were too cheap to buy optical scanner machines. Unfortunately, punch-card machines fail to count five times as many votes as optical scanner machines do (15 per 1000 for the former, 3 per 1000 for the latter). It follows that if the (mostly Democratic) politicians and bureaucrats in these Democratic-leaning counties had been willing to invest money in scanner machines, and if the uncounted votes had been as pro-Gore as the counted votes, Gore would have gotten more votes in Florida - probably enough to win Florida and the election.

One county in particular belongs in the Democrats' hall of shame: Palm Beach County. That county's Democratic election officials approved an unusual ballot known as the "butterfly ballot", which required voters to read the ballot more carefully than usual in order to vote for their intended choice. The butterfly ballot confused thousands of predominantly pro-Gore voters, causing them to instead vote for Patrick Buchanan. Had those Buchanan votes gone to Gore, Gore would have won Florida and the election.

Liberals and Democrats gave Gore the coup de grace on Election Day, when 96,000 Floridians voted for Ralph Nader. According to national polls, most Nader supporters were liberals and/or Democrats who preferred Gore to Bush. It logically follows that if Florida's Democrats for Nader had been willing to endorse the lesser of two evils, Gore would have won Florida and the election.

It is a common cliche on the Left that America now has two Republican parties. But the Democrats' mishaps over the past two years suggest that America in fact has two sharply different parties: the Republican Party and the Self-Destructive Party.

NIXON- NOW MORE THAN EVER(3-30-01)

Over the past several years, the world has become a more dangerous place. North Korea and Iran may soon have nuclear weapons, Israel and the Palestinians are at war, and China and Taiwan may soon be at war. And as the horrid headlines pile up, I have started to fantasize about having a President who understood foreign policy, and to ask myself: "WWND"- "What Would Nixon Do?" Which of course leads to another question: "Why not Nixon in 2004?" Although he served two terms, he is nevertheless eligible for a third term under the 22nd Amendment (which allows a President to serve a third term if one of his first two terms lasted under two years). No one ever accused President Nixon of being lazy or an idiot (unlike certain incumbent Presidents one might name), let alone a sex addict (unlike certain former Presidents one might name).

Nixon's many enemies will no doubt attack him for being "dead" (or, to phrase the matter less offensively, a "morto-American"). But Americans have discriminated against morto-Americans for too long - often with wretched results. For example, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was instantly thrown out of office in favor of Lyndon Johnson - who repaid America's confidence by escalating the Vietnam War, causing the death of tens of thousands of American boys who would have survived an eight-year Kennedy Administration even if Kennedy did not. And after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he too was ejected - and his successor, Andrew Johnson, bungled Reconstruction and set back the cause of African-American equality.

Common sense as well as history supports the view that morto-Americans make better leaders. Unlike President Clinton, a morto-American President would be immune from scandal: he would ignore special interests, accept no bribes, and rare indeed would be the White House intern who would be tempted to have sex with President Nixon (either by President Clinton's narrow definition of the term "sex" or by more conventional definitions).

How will government function under a morto-American president? Far more smoothly than today. Under a second Nixon Administration, Congress will be freed of the burden of executive "leadership". No longer will a President be bothering Congress with all manner of nonexistent crises and silly "reforms" merely to fulfill his campaign promises or show that he has an agenda. A morto-American president, by sheer inertia, can show the world that the government that governs best is in fact the government that governs least. Congress will at last be free to do what it does best - nothing.

Admittedly, Congress will have to pass a yearly budget and supervise the federal bureaucracy. But these duties can be performed more effectively under a morto-American President than they are today. If Congress passes legislation that is not signed or vetoed, it will go into effect without the President's signature. So in those rare instances where Congressional action is actually necessary (e.g. yearly budgets) Congress can move more quickly than before without the hindrance of a "living" President vetoing their bills or lobbying Congress.

Foreign policy and diplomacy will function even more effectively than today. Since a morto-American President will be unable to appoint new officials, the Bush Cabinet will guide foreign policy and guide it wisely: for example, Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man of presidential timber himself, will be able to do his job without interference from a President arguably less gifted than he.

AMERICA'S MORAL BOOM (3-22-01)

A few weeks ago, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd said: "I've been in Washington now 49 years, and in these past few years I've seen a more rapid deterioration of the country's cultyure than ever before." But in fact, America is experiencing a moral boom. Let's look at the record:

*Crime. If America's moral fiber was indeed deteriorating, our immorality would be reflected in crime - our willingness to murder, rape and rob each other. And indeed, crime is higher than in the 1950s. But the 1990s have been a 10-year cavalcade of good news for violence-weary Americans. In 1991, 24,700 Americans were murdered. In 1998 (despite a growing population) only 16,900 Americans were murdered. Other crimes have decreased as well during this period: rape from over 102,000 to 93,100, and robbery from 688,000 to 447,000 in 1998. When population increases are taken into account, the news is even better: America's murder rate per 100,000 decreased by over 30% (from 9.8 to 6.3), its rape rate per 100,000 by almost 20% (from 42.3 to 34.4), and its robbery rate per 100,000 by almost half (from 272.7 to 165.2).

*Youth crime. The recent school shooting in Santee, California brought gun-toting teenagers back into the headlines of America's newspapers. But in fact, America's schools have become safer in recent years: according to a recent issue of Time, the number of violent deaths in public schools decreased from 54 to 16 between 1993 and 2000. Even off-campus, America's youngsters have become less lethal in recent years. The number of juveniles arrested for murder decreased from 3473 in 1993 to 1592 in 1998. During the same period, juvenile rape arrests decreased from 5490 to 4013, and juvenile robbery arrests from 44,598 to 30,047.

*Drug abuse. In 1985, 3% of Americans described themselves as "current users" of cocaine in surveys conducted by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. In 1998, only 0.8% of Americans did so.

*Education. American students, long condemned for being lazier and stupider than their counterparts in other countries, are beginning to get out of the gutter. In 1990, the average SAT was 1001 (500 verbal, 501 math). In 1999, the average SAT was 1016 (505 verbal, 511 math)- not close to the 1960s averages (which were in the mid-to-high 1000s) but a noticable improvement. Similarly, the ACT (a standardized test given to Midwestern high school students) national average improved slightly, from 20.6 to 21.0.

*Family stability. In 1981, 5.3 Americans per 1000 divorced their spouses. The divorce rate decreased to 4.8 per 100,000 in 1992 and 4.3 per 100,000 in 1996. To be sure, some of the divorce decrease was caused by the fact that Americans married later and less frequently-but not all. The marriage-to-divorce ratio was slightly under 2-1 in 1981, and is slightly over 2-1 today.

*Teenage pregnancy. In 1991, 62.1 teenagers out of every 1000 had children. In 1999, 51.1 teenagers out of every 1000 had children. To be sure, much of this increase was caused by teenagers' refusal to marry early rather than to a decrease in unwed teen motherhood-but not all. Even the birthrate for unmarried teenage girls is slightly lower than at the start of the decade (42.5 per 1000 in 1990, 44.4 per 1000 in 1995, and 41.5 per 1000 in 1998).

*Teen sex. Although the sexual revolution has not been reversed, it has been stalled: according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 49.3% of teenage women aged 15-19 had sex in 1995-a slight drop from 51.1% in 1988. Similarly, the percentage of male teenagers who had sex dipped slightly from 60.4% in 1988 to 55.2% in 1995.

*Abortion. Prolifers should be happy to know that the number of abortions has decreased from 430 per 1000 live births in 1981 to 351 per 1000 live births in 1996.

*Sexually transmitted diseases. The Center for Disease Control reports that the number of new AIDS cases decreased from 103,533 in 1993 to 46,521 in 1998, and the number of syphilis cases decreased from 101,000 to 38,000 during that period. (These statistics and most others listed above can be found in the 2000 Statistical Abstract of the United States, available from the U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov).

Why are some Americans so unwilling to accept good news? For a variety of reasons, both good and bad. The good reason is that Americans have received a steady diet of bad news for decades: between 1960 and 1990, most of the problems listed above became much worse, and as a result America is still a more dangerous, anti-family, addiction-prone, sex-obsessed place than it was in 1960. The bad reason is that the media gives more publicity to the bizarre and the exceptional than to humdrum good news: Eminem and Columbine are headline news, but when a slum neighborhood gets less dangerous the media goes to sleep.

CRIMINALS BELONG IN JAIL (2-21-01)

Between 1980 and 1997, the number of Americans in state and federal prisons increased by nearly 300%, from just under 320,000 to 1.185 million, and the number of Americans in municipal jails increased from 182,288 to 557,974. America's increased use of incarceration has been controversial: for example, one paper written for the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA) complains: "In the past 10 years America has grown increasingly dependent on a single approach to the problem of crime. The logic that dictates ever-increasing expenditures on police and prisons goes unquestioned-as we continue to put more and more young men in prison every year."

But common sense suggests that putting criminals in prison reduces crime. Every day a robber, rapist or murderer is in prison is a day that he cannot rob, rape or murder most of his fellow Americans. So it may be no coincidence that as our prison population has grown, our crime rate has gone down. Between 1980 and 1997, America's murder rate has been virtually cut in half (from 10.2 murders per 100,000 people to 5.7), its robbery rate has gone down by 40% (from 251 per 100,000 people to 150), and its burglary rate has nosedived by over 50% (from 1684 per 100,000 people to 770).

(from 22.2% of Americans to 12.6%) and unemployment decreased (from 5.5% of Americans to 4.9%).

And during the 1970s America split the difference: the number of prisoners increased, but more slowly than in the 1980s and 1990s (by 63% as opposed to 270%) - and by an odd coincidence, crime increased, but more slowly than in the 1960s (murder by about 30%, robbery by 46%, and burglary by 55%).

The criminal defense bar and their allies in academia make several arguments against America's reliance on prison. One is that America is somehow backward because it imprisons more people than most European countries. But since America is more violent than most European societies, it has a lot more people who belong in prison. For example, America has consistently had 5-10 murders per 100,000 people over the past several decades, while countries like Great Britian and Japan typically have 1 or 2 murders per 100,000 people.

A second argument is that prison costs too much- to quote the NCIA essay, Americans are "Trading Textbooks for Prison Cells." This argument rests on the premise that government spends more on prison than on education or other social services- a premise that is blatantly false. In fact, state and local governments (the primary financier of both schools and cells) spent $279 billion on elementary education in 1996, and $100 billion more on higher education. By contrast, state and local governments spent a grand total of $37.5 billion on prison - less than 3% of all state and local government spending.

Moreover, imprisoning dangerous felons is actually a fairer way to spread the burden of crime than is setting them free to commit crimes. If Joe Criminal is sent to prison for a few years, every taxpayer pays a minuscule portion of the cost of his upkeep. But if Joe Criminal is set free and robs or rapes a dozen people, those victims will be saddled with the entire cost (financial or otherwise) of Joe's crimes. And because crime victims, to a much greater extent than taxpayers, tend to be proportionately nonwhite and poor, the state's refusal to incarcerate Joe actually redistributes wealth from poor, nonwhite victims to white, middle-class taxpayers (and of course, to Joe himself). A 1997 Justice Department poll revealed that in 7.1% of all persons in households earning under $7500 were victimized by violent crime, as opposed to 3% of persons in households earning over $75,000. Similarly, blacks were 28% more likely to be robbed, raped or assaulted than whites.

It is occasionally argued that government education and social welfare spending (or "prevention" to use a more recent code word) prevents more crime than police or prisons. This argument, however, has no obvious support in recent history. Social welfare spending exploded while crime was exploding in the 1960s and 1970s, and increased far more slowly when crime went down in more recent decades. For example, elementary and secondary education spending doubled in real terms during the crime-ridden 1960s (although enrollment increased by only 22%, from 42.6 million children to 51.8 million), and took thirty years to double again. Similarly, total federal domestic spending increased from 8.5% of GNP in 1960 to 11.3% of GNP in 1970 to 16.8% of GNP in 1980-and dipped to 16.5% of GNP in 1998.

A more persuasive argument is that government sometimes imprisons the wrong people, imposing preposterously long terms on nonviolent drug users. I agree. But a truly just prison system might be just as costly as the status quo, for two reasons. First, few prisoners are nonviolent first-time offenders: 49% are in prison for a violent crime, and 45% more are repeat offenders. Second, many dangerous criminals serve less time than many people would think just: the average convicted rapist is in prison for only 87 months (just over 7 years) and the average robber only 55 months (just over 4 and a half years) - and many other rapists and muggers serve even less time (or no time at all) by plea bargaining to lesser charges. Although1.8 million Americans were in jail or prison in 1997, 3.2 million more were on probation (which means that they were convicted but not punished for their crimes), So for every crackhead who serves too much time there may be a predator who serves too little.

DO TAX CUTS EQUAL SPENDING CUTS? (2-1-01) (NOTE: the growth of spending over the past four years shows how prescient I was).

After Alan Greenspan suggested that the nation could survive a modest tax cut, a feeding frenzy began. Democrats admitted that some kind of tax cut was inevitable, while some Republicans hinted that President Bush's $1.6 billion tax cut was too small - even though that tax cut will, if enacted, soak up most of the non-Social Security surplus.

But in their zeal to augment their constituents' paychecks, politicians are overlooking one tiny fact: that the budget surplus doesn't mean that we are debt-free. In fact, the federal government still owes over $5 trillion to various creditors. The much touted budget "surplus" means only that the debt is no longer increasing every year. To draw an analogy to your private life: suppose that you saved $2000 in 2001, but you still owe $30,000 in credit card debts from the preceding ten years. Then you are in the federal government's position - that is, you are just beginning to dig yourself out from under a mountain of debt, and you are in no position to start increasing your spending or reducing your revenues. So if Americans don't want to move that mountain of debt onto their children or grandchildren, they will have to pay down the debt before they give themselves a pay raise.

Politicians push two arguments for a large tax cut. Some argue that the American economy is heading for a recession and needs a tax cut for some quick fiscal stimulus. But President Bush's proposed tax cut is spread out over 10 years, and thus does not support this goal. If we want to put money in people's pockets, a one-year, one-time tax rebate will do the trick nicely.

Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press secretary, justifies a tax cut on a somewhat more intellectual ground: "The less money that is sent to Washington, there'll be less money available for the politicians in both parties to waste . . . So he [Bush] does want to put the beast on a diet so it has less money to spend." While 20th century conservatives sought to cut social services in order to balance the budget, Fleischer wants to cut the surplus in order to cut social services.

This argument, however, fails on its own terms, because a surplus-draining tax cut may actually increase government spending. In recent years, taxpayers have been forced to cough up over $200 billion per year to pay interest on the federal debt-more than the federal government spends on education, job training, veterans benefits, space flight, energy conservation, disaster relief, community development, foreign aid, and transportation combined. If we reduce the debt, taxpayers will waste less money on debt interest, and thus will be less heavily burdened by government. But if we forego debt reduction in favor of tax cuts or spending increases, interest costs will continue to mount - and therefore overall government spending will go up as well, other things being equal. The example of the 1980s is instructive: between 1980 and 1990, the federal budget increased from 21.7% of GNP to 22% of GNP - and all of that increase and then some was because interest on the national debt increased from 1.9% of the GNP to 3.2%. In other words, non-debt spending actually went down (from 19.8% of GNP to 18.8%) - but overall spending went up because of the national debt.

So if we want a less costly government in the long run, we ought to have a smaller national debt, rather than a huge tax cut and a huge national debt. This is not to say that estate tax relief or the elimination of the marriage tax penalty would cause the end of civilization. But Alan Greenspan got it right when, in his January 25 testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, he suggested that any "long-term tax plan . . . include provisions that would limit surplus-reducing actions if specified targets for the budget surplus and federal debt were not satisfied" (English translation: if the surpluses go away, ditch the tax cuts). Will our politicians listen to his wise counsel? Don't bet on it.

THE UNDERRATED AND THE OVERRATED (1-18-01) (After Sept. 11, Clinton looks worse than he did at the time I wrote this article, and Eisenhower looks better- if only because his steadiness of character and ability to bring the nation together compares favorably with most of his recent successors).

Ind a similar survey in 1996) the Journal survey made a serious effort to include conservative as well as liberal scholars; as a result, Ronald Reagan was ranked as a "Near Great" president (No. 8). However, other presidents' rankings were similar to the rankings in the 1996 study.

Presumably, different scholars used different criteria for ranking chief executives. However, a commonsense rule of thumb should be that those Presidents whose tenure made America a significantly better place for future generations were good Presidents, those Presidents whose actions harmed future generations were bad Presidents, and the many Presidents with no long run impact whatsoever were average.

This test supports the scholars' decision that Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were our three greatest presidents: Washington for being the first and for showing future generations how to be a President without being a dictator, Lincoln for preserving the Union and eliminating slavery, and Roosevelt for saving the world from Hitler. Similarly, three of the four Presidents ranked as failures (Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan) appear to deserve their ranking; Pierce and Buchanan for failing to stop America's drift to civil war, and Johnson for sabotaging the Reconstruction Congress's attempt to give African-Americans equality under the law, thus contributing to the poisonous racial climate of the 20th century. But the scholars made a lot of mistakes with the Presidents in between. To name a few:

*Theodore Roosevelt: The first President Roosevelt is ranked as "Near Great"- ahead of everyone but the three Great Presidents and Thomas Jefferson (who deserves his ranking for the Louisiana Purchase, which saved America from having to guard a border with the European superpowers of the day). Roosevelt was clearly not a bad President: he presided over peace and prosperity, he was charismatic, and he might have been a great President had he been forced to confront a major crisis. But for all that, his impact on our lives was virtually nil. Roosevelt's greatest achievement (or so he claimed) was locking up millions of acres of forest in national parks- arguably a praiseworthy policy, but one with no obvious impact on my life. By contrast, had Jefferson not purchased Louisiana, we might be fighting wars with France and Spain on a regular basis. My ranking: "Above Average."

*Dwight Eisenhower. Ranked as "Near Great", probably because commentators of all ideologies like him: conservatives because he was a Republican who balanced the budget as often as not, liberals becaue he was nonideological. And to be fair, Eisenhower might have seemed like a good President in 1960, when the nation was prosperous and at peace. But the long term consequences of the Eisenhower Administration were toxic beyond belief: the interstate highway program helped to destroy American cities both by physically removing neighborhoods from the map and by encouraging suburban migration, and his appointments of Earl Warren and William Brennan to the Supreme Court accelerated the growth of crime and immorality over the past several decades, as the Warren/Brennan Court increased judicial power, handcuffed police and prosecutors, and created constitutional rights out of thin air. Every time I see a deteriorating urban neighborhood or read about the rampant crime of the 60 and 70s, I remember the unintended consequences of the Ike Age. My ranking: "Below Average" bordering on "Failure."

*Woodrow Wilson: Ranked as "Near Great" - and justifiably so, in domestic policy. Our prosperity in recent decades owes a great deal to Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan- and it was Wilson who created the Fed. But Wilson's foreign policy record was not so good: first he dragged us into a pointless European war (World War I) and then stood idly by as England and France lost the peace by punishing Germany, thus making the Germans mad at the rest of the world, thus paving the way for Hitler. And by insisting that every ethnic group was entitled to its own nation, Wilson facilitated the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which could have been a crucial counterweight to Germany. My ranking: "Average" (Near Great at home, Terrible abroad).

*Lyndon Johnson: Ranked as "Above Average" for his signing of civil rights legislation, which did make it easier for talented African-Americans to get jobs. But 50,000 Americans died thanks to Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War, and millions of lives have been wasted thanks to the welfare dependency induced in part by Johnson's Great Society. For his contribution to human misery, Johnson deserves a resounding "Below Average."

And on the underrated side of the ledger:

*Harry Truman: The scholars ranked Truman as "Near Great" - below not only the "Big Four" of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt but also the overrated Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson (whose record is marred by his decision to stand idly by as Georgia expelled thousands of Indians to the West in violation of a federal treaty). But Truman's major accomplishments dwarf those of the other "Near Great" presidents. Through the Marshall Plan and NATO, Truman turned Western Europe from an economic basket case into a group of peaceful, prosperous nations, and thereby made it impossible for Communism or Fascism to gain a foothold there. Truman set the template for America's Cold War victory, by creating containment policies that other Presidents successfully followed for nearly half a century. In short, Truman saved Europe and the world from Communism, and in so doing earned himself a rating as "Great."

*Calvin Coolidge: Ranked as "Average" (and just barely, No. 25 of 39). Most of our nondescript peace-and-prosperity Presidents (such as William McKinley and James Monroe) were ranked as "Above Average." Coolidge deserves the same.

*Gerald Ford: Ranked as "Below Average." Can you think of anything bad he did to deserve this ranking? Me neither. I rank him as "Average."

*Jimmy Carter: Ranked as "Below Average" - and when he left office I agreed. But some of the achievements of the Reagan era were set in motion by Carter: by appointing Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chair, Carter set in motion Volcker's taming of inflation during the Reagan years, and Carter began the Reagan defense buildup (albeit in baby steps). For these good deeds I upgrade Carter to "Average" (and am tempted to rank him even higher).

*Warren Harding: Ranked as "Failure" because of the corruption within his administration. But recent administrations have routinely had an indicted Cabinet secretary here and there (or at least one heavily investigated by special prosecutors) and Harding's administration was otherwise harmless, with no long-term impact on our lives for good or ill. My ranking: just a tad below average.

What of President Clinton? On domestic policy alone, he might deserve an "Above Average" for taming the deficit and for the nation's general prosperity. But after eight years of Clinton mismanagement, the world outside America is more dangerous than before. China is more aggressive, Russia more authoritarian, and the Mideast is once again at war. If these problems turn into major crises, history may judge Clinton harshly. If not, Clinton may look pretty good to our descendants.

SUPREME COURT EXONERATED by Michael Lewyn

When the Supreme Court stopped further recounts in Florida last December 12, the conventional wisdom (at least among liberals and Democrats) was that the Court had essentially elected George Bush President. Conversely, the conservative conventional wisdom was that the Supreme Court had stopped Al Gore from stealing the election.

But by recounting every uncounted ballot in the state of Florida, the media has proved both sides wrong. USA Today, the Miami Herald, and Knight-Ridder newspapers examined hundreds of thousands of votes that were not counted in Florida- both undervotes (ballots that registered no presidential vote when run through vote-counting machines) and overvotes (ballots disqualified by the machines because they registered votes for more than one presidential candidate). By manually recounting the undervotes, USA Today found that 18% of the 171,908 uncounted ballots could be counted as clear legal votes in a manual recount, because the voter's intent could reasonably be determined from those votes.

USA Today found that the identity of the winner of Florida depends on the meaning of the word "vote" - specifically on which undervotes are counted. If only overvotes and clean punches on punch-card ballots are counted, Bush won Florida by 152 votes. But if "dimpled" chads (i.e. ballots bearing a slight impression) are also counted, Gore wins. Unfortunately, Florida law provides no guidance as to which standard should be used, and other states are divided. So there is no clear Florida winner.

One fact, however, is quite clear: unless overvotes are counted, Bush still wins, because Gore's lead among undervotes (even among the most lenient "dimpled chad" standard) was not large enough to overcome Bush's prerecount lead. And the Florida Supreme Court-mandated recount that the federal Supreme Court halted was a recount of undervotes only. (Even that recount was more than Gore's lawyers requested; Gore asked for recounts of undervotes in just four counties). Thus, the USA Today recount reveals that the Florida Supreme Court recount would have gone for Bush, because Gore's lead among the undervotes was simply too small to beat Bush. In other words, even if the federal Supreme Court had affirmed the Florida Supreme Court, the end result would probably have been a recount that handed Florida and the election to Bush on a silver platter.

Ironically, a majority of Florida voters almost certainly intended to vote for Gore, but failed to do so because of a variety of ballot errors. Tens of thousands of Floridians overvoted by voting for more than one candidate, thus making it impossible for the state to decide their true intent. Most of those voters supported Gore; for example, 10,234 ballots included marks for both Gore and Buchanan, while only 4,957 contained marks for Bush and Buchanan. This mistake occurred in part due to confusing ballots. In Duval County, voters were shown the first five presidential candidates on one page and another five candidates on a second page. After the first page was an instruction that said "turn page to continue voting." In addition, a sample ballot distributed by election officials contained the instruction "vote every page." And many voters did exactly that, voting for one candidate from the first ballot page and another from the second.

OUR CONSERVATIVE PROLETARIAT (2-8-01) (NOTE: Douglas County again gave Bush 61% of its votes in 2004).

I was at a party in December, and one of the guests was complaining about the election. "I don't understand my neighbors in Douglas County [a lower-middle class suburb of Atlanta that gave 61% of its votes to President Bush last year). They are working-class people, yet they all vote Republican." In other words, my fellow partygoer suffered from a common liberal delusion: that "the working class" is the natural rival of "the rich" and thus naturally liberal.

In fact, America's "working stiffs" have more in common with Bill Gates than they have with a homeless panhandler or a perpetual welfare recipient.

*The average Douglas County breadwinner actually works for a living (thus the phrase "working-class"). So does Bill Gates. By contrast, America's slums have low rates of labor force participation and high rates of unemployment.

*Working-class families pay income taxes, and thus have a handy excuse to be perpetually mad at the federal government. So does Bill Gates. And because both the working class and the rich work and pay taxes, members of both groups often feel exploited by the welfare-dependent poor, because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the latter group lives off the taxes provided by the rich and the middle class.

*Working-class families typically have a home in a suburb (usually one which, like Cheektowaga or Douglas County, has few if any perpetually poor people) and a car or two. So does Bill Gates. Poor people live outside the suburban mainstream, in urban slums or out-of-the-way rural areas.

*Working-class families, like the rich, fear the urban poor, because they believe (not without good cause) that violent, predatory criminals disproportionately come from America's slums. By contrast, Bill Gates may rip you off with high prices or bad service, but the chances of him murdering you in your bed tonight are infinitesimal.

*Most lower-middle-class Americans are white. So are most rich people. So when racially polarizing issues dominate politics, working-class and rich voters gang up against the (disproportionately nonwhite) urban poor.

And on some cultural issues, working-class Americans are actually more conservative than the rich. For example, a 2000 Washington Post poll revealed that only 32% of Americans earning under $30,000 per year believed that abortion should usually be legal, as opposed to 53% of Americans earning over $75,000. And another 2000 Post poll revealed that only 40% of Americans earning under $30,000 per year believed that the National Rifle Association had too much power over gun policy, as opposed to 52% of Americans earning over $75,000.

Perhaps in the 1930s, before the growth of welfare dependency among the poor, the decay of labor unions, and the crime explosion of the 1960s, working-class Americans had more in common with their poorer neighbors than with the rich. But today, lower-middle class voters' day-to-day lives resemble those of their bosses far more than they resemble the lives of the nonworking poor. So it is only natural that America's lower middle class should make common cause with the rich against the poor. And so they do: although high school dropouts voted 60-40 for Gore in 2000 (as did the most educated Americans, voters with postgraduate degrees), high school graduates and college dropouts voted for Bush.

LEARNING FROM THE ROMANS (9-28-00)

It was 1977, and I was 14 years old. I was lingering around a small-town drugstore, and heard the proprietor complain: "These kids today they got no values . . . they'll do anything for kicks - just like Rome."

And since then, I have again and again heard the fall of the Roman Empire used as proof of the dangers of loose morality, and as evidence that if America did not embrace social conservatism its empire too would fall. But the truth about ancient Rome is far different. When Americans think of Roman immorality, they think of the pagan emperors of the Empire's first centuries - for example, Caligula, who performed indecent acts with his sister, and Nero, who according to some legends bedded husbands as well as wives. But the Roman Empire survived Caligula and Nero with hundreds of years to spare.

Rome did not fall until 476, after a century and a half of rule by Christian emperors and bureaucrats so addled by fundamentalist puritanism that they made today's Religious Right look like the staff of Hustler. For example, the Catholic Church was so powerful that when, in 388, St. Ambrose (then bishop of Milan) ordered the Emperor to repent for the "sin" of punishing the destroyers of a Syrian synagogue, the emperor cravenly caved. The late Empire, unlike the tolerant pagans, also mimicked the Church's hostility to homosexuals: the Empire's Theosodian Code of 390 stated that gays "shall expiate a crime of this kind [homosexual sex] by avenging flames in the sight of the people" - that is, by being burned alive. Obviously, the late Empire was not a land of liberalism run amok. But if loose morals didn't kill Rome, what did?

The ultimate cause of Rome's fall was, of course, military weakness. Throughout the 5th century, Rome was surrounded on all sides by Germanic tribesmen, who gradually chipped away at its borders and eventually penetrated the Empire's Italian heartland. The Empire could not defeat the tribesmen (or "barbarians", as the Romans called them) because they did not have the manpower to fight on several fronts. For example, Stilcho, Rome's greatest 5th-century general, could muster only 20-30,000 troops against one set of German invaders-not an overwhelming force even by ancient standards.

But why was Rome's military so weak? Rome may have taxed itself to death, taxing the peasantry so heavily that it destroyed its agricultural tax base, thus depriving the Empire of revenue with which to finance its wars. 90% of Roman tax revenue was based on land taxes, most of which were paid by small farmers. In the words of 5th-century theologian Sylvian of Marseilles, "Taxation, however high and brutal, would still be less severe and brutal if all shared equally in the common lot . . . [instead] the tributes due from the rich are extracted from the poor." Farmers evaded taxes by abandoning the land, and switching careers either to become bandits or to knock on the door of the nearest large landowner (who usually had the political clout to avoid being taxed himself) and volunteering for serfdom as the lesser evil. The popularity of such abandonment is suggested by the fact that emperors repeatedly issued edicts governing the proper disposition of abandoned lands. And when farmers left the farm, they stopped paying land taxes, which meant that the Empire had less revenue, which in turn meant that the Empire did not have enough troops to preserve itself.

The Roman government's meddling with its citizens' lives extended from matters of the pocketbook to matters of the spirit. For the Empire's first several centuries, it was run by pagan emperors who tended to tolerate most of their subjects' religious eccentricities. But the Christian emperors of Rome's twilight years sought to stamp out both other faiths and dissent within Christianity. In 381, a scant 95 years before the final fall of Rome, Emperor Theodosius I prohibited pagan worship and visits to pagan temples. And in 448, Theodosius II went still further, burning pagan books. The king explained: "All the volumes that move God to wrath and that harm the soul we do not want to come to men's hearing." So-called heretics (that is, Christians whose views differed from those of church leaders and the Emperor) were subjected to similar treatment. In the last 125 years of the Empire, emperors passed 66 anti-heretic degree. Heretic-phobia grew so intense that one Imperial decree actually forbade discussion of any religious question whatsoever. It is not clear that the Empire's religious intolerance contributed to its fall - but common sense dictates that imperial attacks on religious dissidents must have impaired popular morale by diminishing the latter's desire to fight for the Empire.

The late Empire's religious intolerance was matched by its racism. For centuries, the Empire had prospered by assimilating non-Italians -- but its tolerance ran out in its last century. Had the Empire sought to assimilate the "barbarians" rather than fighting them, it could have built an Italo-Germanic order for the ages. Instead, it oppressed the Arian heresy (a religious doctrine similar to Unitarianism in that it questioned the Holy Trinity, and which most Germanic tribesmen subscribed to) , and oppressed the Germans who suckered themselves into believing that they could live under Roman rule. In 370, for example, the empire prohibited intermarriage between Roman citizens and German immigrants, and by 416 Imperial bigotry had reached such a fever pitch that Romans were prohibited from wearing "barbarian" clothes such as certain furs and skins. Eventually, the Germans got the message and decided to fight the Empire rather than continuing to live under it.

The Rome of the Caesars, despite crazy emperors like Caligula and its vicious treatment of nationalist dissidents, was a tolerant society. By contrast, the late Empire strangled itself with economic statism, racism, and religious fanaticism. Fortunately, America today resembles the early Empire more than the late Empire. Although Americans complain about taxes, they pay lower taxes than residents of almost all countries in Europe (with the occasional exceptions of Switzerland and Turkey). While our military has been weakened over the past decade, we, unlike Rome, have the money to rebuild it: military spending now soaks up only 3% of GNP, down from about 6% in 1985. While ancient Rome sought to impose one religious orthodoxy on its people, our Constitution guarantees Americans the right to worship the god or idol of their choice. And although racism is still a problem in America, American political debate is generally not over whether the government should oppress ethnic minorities, but over how much government should do to help them. The guiding principles of late Rome were high taxes and state-enforced morality. The guiding principles of America today are free minds and free markets - and as long as this continues to be so, we will never be just like Rome.

LITTLE SURPRISES (12-20-00)

It now appears that the 2000 election is finally over, and that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas will, on January 20, 2001, be inaugurated as the next President of the United States. The biggest surprise of the 2000 election, of course, may be Al Gore's inability to translate America's unprecedented prosperity into a clear Democratic victory. But a look at the exit polls and the election returns of individual states and counties reveals a variety of little surprises, including:

*The irrelevance of women. Once upon a time, conventional wisdom dictated that to win, Republicans had to narrow the gender gap - perhaps by putting a woman on the ticket, perhaps by being more ostentatiously "compassionate" (whatever that means). But in 2000, the gender gap was larger than ever, and Bush won anyway (at least in the sense of doing well enough to get elected, since we may never know who "won" the election in any other sense of that term). Bush got 53% of the male vote and 43% of the female vote-a 10 point gender gap. By contrast, the gender gap was 6 points in 1996 (when Bob Dole got 44% among men and 38% among women) and 1 point in 1992 (when Bush the elder got 38% of men and 37% of women). Bush even lost suburban women by a 52%-45% margin, a worse showing that his father in 1992, who lost this so-called "soccer mom vote" by a 45%-41% margin. In sum, Republican presidential candidates win when the gender gap is big and lose when it is small; it logically follows that Republican presidential candidates win not by narrowing the gender gap but by widening it.

*The irrelevance of minorities. A year ago, Bush purported to be a compassionate conservative who could bring blacks and Hispanics under the Republican banner. In fact, Bush got only 8% of the black vote - less than Bob Dole, less than his father, even less than Ronald Reagan. Bush did slightly better among Hispanics, getting 31% of the Latin-American vote. Bush's share of the Hispanic vote, although higher than that of the Republican candidates of the 1990s, was lower than that of Ronald Reagan (who got a muscular 37% of the Hispanic vote in 1984). Bush's weakness among Hispanics caused him to lose the Catholic vote, and Bush's 19% among Jews (although higher than the Republican Jewish vote in 1992 and 1996) was far smaller than the Republican share of the Jewish vote in the 1970s and 1980s, when 30-40% of Jews routinely voted Republican. In sum, Bush did worse than most Republicans among racial and religious minorities - but won anyway.

*The irrelevance of moderate and conservative Democrats. In the 1980s, Republicans usually needed large numbers of moderate and conservative Democrats to win elections. But in 2000, only 11% of Democrats crossed party lines to vote for Bush (including only 26% of conservative Democrats), slightly more than abandoned Bill Clinton but far fewer than the 17% who voted for Bush the elder in 1988 or the 25% who voted for Reagan in 1984. Bush also got only 13% of liberals, as opposed to the 18% who supported Bush the elder in 1988 or the 25% who voted for Reagan in 1984. In other words, the base Republican vote is so large that Republicans can now win elections without significant Democratic support. And because Bush did poorly among moderate and conservative Democrats, he lost five of the eight largest states with Republican governors (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois), thus proving once and for all the irrelevance of governors to presidential elections.

*The irrelevance of suburbia. Bush won the suburban vote by only 49%-47%, which means he probably lost the suburban vote outside the South. Bush lost such once-Republican suburbs as Montgomery and Delaware County (outside Philadelphia), Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties (outside New York City), St. Louis County (outside St. Louis), Baltimore and Howard County (outside Baltimore), Macomb and Oakland Counties (two Detroit suburbs which supported Bush the elder in 1992 when the rest of America was deserting him), and the suburban portions of Los Angeles County, Chicago's Cook County, and Buffalo's Erie County.

*The irrelevance of ticket-splitting. In 2000, only six states supported a Presidential candidate of one party and a senatorial candidate of the other, as opposed to 9 in 1996 and 12 in 1976 (the last year in which the presidential election was close). In other words, the base Republican vote is so large that Bush won without attracting massive numbers of ticket splitters.

So if Bush couldn't attract women, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics or Democrats, how did he win? By gaining larger than usual majorities in the South and among the traditional Republican base of rural, male, white Protestants. Bush won the South 55%-43%, carrying every single Southern state, even West Virginia (which voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Michael Dukakis), Al Gore's home state of Tennessee, and Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas. Bush didn't win the south by carrying urbanized areas: in fact, he lost Tennessee's two major urban counties (Shelby County, which includes Memphis and many of its suburbs, and Davidson County, which includes Nashville) as well as the major urban counties in West Virginia (Kanawha County, which includes Charleston) and Arkansas (Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock). Instead, Bush swept the South (and parts of the Midwest and West as well) by sweeping rural America: he won the rural vote 59%-37%, up 13 points from his father's showing in 1992. Bush's rural strength may have had something to do with his opposition to gun control: nearly 60% of Republican congressional voters had a gun in the house, while an even larger percentage of Democrats did not. Bush also carried the white Protestant vote 63%-34%, up 16 points from his father's showing in 1992. And as noted above, Bush clobbered Gore among males, winning the male vote 53%-42% while losing the female vote by a comparable margin.

How did Bush morph from the compassionate conservative of 1999 to the macho conservative of 2000? By having a simple, clear, polarizing message: like Newt Gingrich in 1994, Bush promised to leave Americans alone with their money and their guns. In the debates, Bush emphasized tax cuts and gun control, while deemphasizing issues on which conservatives arguably favor more government (like abortion). Bush's positions may have turned off some moderates, but they undoubtedly deepened his support among conservatives. And in 2000, that strategy was enough to get him elected.

AL GORE, THE UNABOMBER AND ME (6-22-00)

by Michael Lewyn

While surfing the Internet recently, I came across a web page entitled "Did Al Gore Say It? Or Was It The Unabomber?" (www.atr.org/Gore/gore25.htm) The message of the page, briefly summarized, is: Al Gore believes that industrial civilization is bad for the environment. So does the Unabomber. Therefore, Al Gore, like the Unabomber, is a nut.

But in fact, the Vice President's remedies for the problems of industrial society are far different from the Unabomber's remedies - even leaving aside the latter's penchant for blowing up people. The Unabomber's infamous manifesto reveals that he wants to reverse the past several thousand years, to go back to the days when people roamed the Earth in small tribes. In the Unabomber's own words: "The positive ideal that is proposed is Nature. That is, wild Nature". By contrast, Gore believes that the answer to the problems of technology is more technology. Instead of eliminating electricity, Gore wants to reduce pollution by bringing us electric cars and other antipollution technology. And instead of damning the Internet as the spawn of Satan, as the Unabomber would presumably do, Al Gore claims credit for its wide distribution (if not for its very invention). Indeed, Gore and the Unabomber are at opposite ends of the pro-technology spectrum, with most Republicans (like, for example, me) somewhere in the middle - more pro-technology than the Unabomber, but maybe a bit less willing than the Vice President to use government spending to spread technology throughout the citizenry.

Similarly, the Vice President and the Unabomber have very different views of the role of government. The Unabomber is a self-proclaimed anarchist, who would gladly eliminate even the smallest government. By contrast, the Vice President wants to use some of the federal budget surplus to make Big Government a little bigger and would, if elected, nominate liberal Supreme Court justices who would, if confirmed, redistribute power from state and local governments to the national government. Indeed, the Unabomber is the ultimate reactionary, an opponent of virtually every trend that has taken place since the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, while Al Gore is the ultimate progressive, a man who wants even more government, centralization and globalization than we already have. And here too, most Republicans and responsible conservatives are somewhere in between the extremes: they believe that the existence of government is on balance a good thing, but would probably spend less of the surplus than would Vice President Gore.

So from my standpoint and that of many other moderates and conservatives, Al Gore's problem isn't that he is too much like the Unabomber. Instead, his problem is that he isn't enough like the Unabomber.- that is, that he and the Unabomber are at opposite ends of the pro-government/anti-government spectrum, and that conservatives are (or at least think they are) somewhere in the sensible middle.

THE SOCIAL SECURITY HOAX (10-26-00)

Democrats and Republicans alike claim that Social Security is on the ropes - that, in the words of the Atlanta Journal, "left unattended, Social Security will begin running a deficit and dipping into its surplus in 15 years, and that the surplus will be eliminated around 2037 [at which point] Socail Security will be bankrupt." And indeed, the Social Security Administration (SSA) projects that if its economic and demographic assumptions are correct, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037.

But there is no consensus as to the remedy for this so-called crisis: conservatives want to privatize Social Security (i.e. force or allow workers to put their retirement at risk in the casino of Wall Street), while liberals want to use general revenues as well as Social Security payroll tax revenues to bolster Social Security (a radical shift from America's current policy of having workers finance their own retirement by paying Social Security payroll taxes into the Social Security trust fund).

Both liberal and conservative supporters of radical Social Security reform reason as follows: under the existing payroll tax system, today's workers support today's retirees. In a few decades, America will have more retirees (because of the retirement of the baby boom generation and longer life spans) and fewer workers (because of declining birth rates). Thus, the Social Security system is unsustainable. This argument makes sense if, and only if, the workers of 2037 produce just as little revenue as the workers of 2000. For example, the SSA's famous projection that the trust fund will go bust in 2037 is based upon the assumption that the gross domestic product (GDP) will grow at only a 1.7-2% rate- a rate which was below America's growth rate for all but 5 of the past 25 years.

But in recent years, the economy has grown at more than twice the rate projected by SSA. If the economy continues to grow, the workers of 2037 will pay far more money into the Social Security trust fund than the workers of 2000, which means that even though the number of retirees will grow, there may well be enough tax revenue to support them. In other words, the widely held assumption that "Social Security is going broke" is based on incorrect economic assumptions.

If Social Security isn't going broke, why do both liberals and conservatives continue to rant and rave about a "Social Security crisis?" Because both liberals and conservatives desperately need to believe that Social Security is in trouble.

Some conservatives are opposed in principle to government support of the elderly. To quote one of my right-wing friends, "retirement is something you should plan for in your own budget" - and if some old people wind up eating dog food, its their own fault for being poor or imprudent in their investments. This argument has been a vote-loser because most Americans reject the proposition that caring for the elderly is none of the government's business. But today's conservatives seek to privatize Social Security without seeming hardhearted, by arguing that even if Social Security is a good idea in principle, it is going to die no matter what we do to save it. But to make this argument, conservatives need to persuade themselves (and everybody else) that Social Security is in fact dying.

Liberals too wish to imagine a Social Security crisis, albeit for radically different reasons. In a world of unlimited resources, liberals would gladly redistribute enough money to give all seniors a middle-class standard of living. But under today's system, the amount government can spend on Social Security is limited to the amount government takes in through Social Security payroll taxes, thus limiting liberals' ability to throw money at the elderly. But if Social Security is financed through general revenues as well as payroll taxes, liberals can raise benefits with reckless abandon, secure in the knowledge that an ever-growing number of elderly voters will support them. As a result, liberals have always wanted to plunder general tax revenues in order to preserve and raise Social Security benefits - and the alleged bankruptcy of Social Security gives them an excuse to do exactly that.

Predictably, Vice President Gore and Gov. Bush claim that Social Security needs to be "reformed" to save itself. Gov. Bush wants to privatize Social Security by allowing younger workers to invest their payroll taxes in the stock market - thus depriving the Social Security system of revenue, and hastening the very crisis of which he complains. Vice President Gore seeks to dump part of the budget surplus into the Social Security trust fund - in other words, to begin to use general revenues to make retirees better off. To the extent Americans take either plan seriously, they do so because they believe in America's great bipartisan hoax - the Social Security crisis that may never happen.

TWO FOR GOVERNOR BUSH (7-20-00) (Although President Bush did not pick either of my top two choices, the person he did pick, Dick Cheney, is a lot like Sen. Lugar- experienced but dull).

At the end of July, George W. Bush must pick his party's nominee for Vice President. Presidential candidates have generally employed one of two major strategies in deciding who to nominate for Vice President.

Candidates employing the "Big State" strategy (including Tom Dewey in 1948, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and John F. Kennedy in 1960) have picked senators or governors from big states in order to bring the running mate's state into the presidential candidate's column. Dewey picked Governor Earl Warren of California, Eisenhower picked Richard Nixon of California, and Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson of Texas.

Governors who ran for President, by contrast, have usually employed the "Washington Insider" strategy: in the past half century, every governor or former governor who won a presidential nomination (including Adlai Stevenson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton) has picked a running mate with significant experience in Congress or the Executive Branch. The purposes of the Washington Insider strategy is to show voters that even if the candidate himself lacks Washington experience, he can succeed as President by surrounding himself with experienced subordinates . Moreover, a running mate with decades of Washington experience will often be experienced enough to serve capably as President (should something happen to the President) and to impress the voters in a vice presidential debate. For example, in 1988 Michael Dukakis's running mate, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, cleaned the clock of the less experienced Dan Quayle in such a debate. Some candidates have combined the two strategies by picking Capitol Hill insiders from big states (like Bentsen, a Capitol Hill veteran from Texas). And a few candidates have picked running mates who did not fit either category-but these candidates (such as Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's infamous vice president) generally embarrassed, rather than aiding, their party's ticket.

Unfortunately for Governor Bush, many of the would-be vice presidents who are being prominently mentioned this year don't fit either strategy. For example, it has been rumored that Bush is considering Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating. Keating doesn't help Bush win Oklahoma, which will go Republican no matter who Bush picks. But Keating (whose highest-level Washington job was as general counsel of the Department of Housing and Urban Development) doesn't add significant Washington experience either: his qualifications for the Presidency are if anything dwarfed by those of Bush himself (who at least has been a governor of a large state).

Other potential running mates have either publicly refused the office (like Colin Powell and John McCain) or would antagonize the Republican Party's powerful anti-abortion faction (like Gov. Pataki or New Jersey's Gov. Christine Todd Whitman). Elizabeth Dole suffers from neither defect, but her dull, wretched presidential campaign suggests that she would add neither substantive policy expertise nor political star quality to the Republican ticket.

Nevertheless, Bush has some plausible candidates under either strategy. To successfully employ the Big State strategy, Bush must pick a candidate from a big state that is likely to be closely contested. The three biggest states (Texas, California, and New York) will not be close if the national election is close: California and New York are so heavily pro-Gore that Bush will not win them unless the election is a GOP landslide, and Texas is likely to be equally pro-Bush. That leaves four toss-up states with over 20 electoral votes: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and maybe Florida. However, statewide Republican officeholders in Florida, Ohio and Illinois are not plausible candidates: Florida's Sen. Connie Mack has publicly refused the Vice Presidency, Ohio's Senator George Voinovich and Illinois's Governor George Ryan have been plagued by petty scandals, Ohio's Governor Robert Taft and Florida's Governor Jeb Bush has been in office for less than two years, and Ohio's Sen.Michael DeWine has not been tested with significant opposition. Pennsylvania's Gov. Tom Ridge, who was reelected by a 57%-31% margin in 1998, would be an excellent choice in every respect but one: he might be too moderate for many Republicans, especially religious conservatives unimpressed with his support for legal abortion. (Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is even more liberal than Ridge, and thus unlikely to be picked).

That leaves one Pennsylvania Republican who both would unify the Republican Party and give Bush an edge in the Keystone State: Senator Rick Santorum. Santorum, whose conservative credentials are impeccable, would (unlike Ridge and other moderates) unite rather than divide the Republican Party. Moreover, Santorum's electoral record is magnificent. He began his political career in 1990, whipping a long-time Democratic incumbent in a Democratic district even though he was outspent by a 70-30 margin. In 1994, he took on one of the Democrats' stars, incumbent Sen. Harris Wofford. Just a few years earlier, Wofford had mauled a former governor and U.S. Senator, Richard Thornburgh, by a 55-45 margin. Nevertheless, Santorum beat Wofford.

Today, Santorum is favored for reelection, despite the fact that he is Pennsylvania's first conservative Republican senator in recent memory. (Pennsylvania has often elected Republican senators-but the Republicans have usually been moderates like Specter). So there is a good chance that Sen. Santorum can bring Pennsylvania into Bush's column.

Because Santorum has only been in the Senate for six years, he would not be the perfect "Washington Insider" candidate: he might lose a vice presidential debate to a more seasoned Democrat, and his selection would not lead anyone to conclude that Bush has surrounded himself with heavyweights. But there are plenty of conservative Republican senators who have been on Capitol Hill for decades and would ably distinguish themselves in a vice presidential debate: New Mexico's Pete Domeneci, Indiana's Richard Lugar, Utah's Orrin Hatch, and Mississippi's Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, to name a few.

But Lugar is the class of the field, for a variety of reasons. First, Lugar has the executive experience that most Senators lack. As mayor of Indianapolis, Lugar, in a stroke of foresight, persuaded the Indiana state legislature to allow the city to annex most of its suburbs through a merger of the city and surrounding Marion County. As a result, Indianapolis is one of the few Midwestern cities to gain rather than lose population in recent decades. After serving Indianapolis for seven years, he was elected to the United States Senate 24 years ago.

Second, Lugar is more qualified than most to serve as President. According to the Almanac of American politics, Lugar's "great interest is foreign policy" - a useful interest, since as a practical matter foreign policy is the President's job. The Constitution itself gives presidents power over war and peace by designating the President as commander in chief, while hamstringing presidents at home by giving Congress power over taxation and spending. In 1985-86, Lugar was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he took the lead in easing Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos out of office. In 1991, Lugar (along with Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn) developed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threats Program to pay Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to dismantle their nuclear weapons. By 1998, nearly 5000 nuclear weapons had been dismantled. In fact, Lugar's unsuccessful 1996 presidential campaign focused on the important but boring issue of deterring nuclear terrorism. Lugar is also a good ideological fit for Bush: both are strong internationalists, favoring NAFTA and other international commitments.

Lugar also has one advantage that is unrelated to his qualifications to hold the Presidency. If Bush is elected and serves two terms, he will leave office in 2008. His vice president will probably become the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, and Bush's brother Jeb (the governor of Florida) will thus be unable to continue the Bush dynasty. But Lugar will be 76 in 2008, possibly too old to run for President himself. So if Bush picks Lugar, he will dramatically increase Jeb's chances of becoming the third President Bush.

THE VICE PRESIDENT'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH (8-27-00)

The most recent polls show that Vice President Gore is 11 to 18 points behind Governor George W. Bush - a margin of landslide proportions. But Gore may be able to cut that margin if he makes a strong, positive impression on the electorate in the Democratic convention this month. Because much of the electorate finds his personality to be at best boring and at worst annoying, he cannot, unlike Gov. Bush, win a contest of personalities. Instead, he will have to persuade voters that despite his lack of charisma, he is more competent to govern than his genial rival. Although I question whether this is so, I concede that there are a few arguments he can make with a straight face. So if I were him, I would give this speech:

"I would like to begin this speech by leveling with the American people. During the last year, I have made a huge mistake. I twisted myself into a knot trying to make you, the American people, like me: changing the shirts I wear and hiring fancy consultants telling me how to act like an alpha male. So far, it hasn't worked. The time has come to concede the obvious: if this election is about who is more likable, who is more fun, who you'd rather have a beer with, I'll lose to my Republican opponent ten times out of ten. He has charisma and I don't. He has the common touch and I don't. Unfortunately, there are only two good reasons to vote for me: issues and experience.

On many issues, we agree. We're both for improving education, both for bolstering America's defenses, both for the death penalty. There are three major issues that separate us: the economy, taxes, and Social Security.

Governor Bush seems to think that the Clinton-Gore Administration had nothing to do with low unemployment and the booming stock market. But if its so easy to keep the economy prosperous, how come his father, a man far more experienced than his son, couldn't keep it going? In 1992, Alan Greenspan headed the Federal Reserve, just as he does today. The only difference between 1992 and today was that George Bush was President instead of Bill Clinton. Yet in 1992, the country was in the toilet. Unemployment was 7% then; it's 4% now, the lowest it's been in a generation. There were riots in the streets of Los Angeles, the murder rate was a third higher than it is today. Obviously, we must have been doing something right over the past eight years. As you vote, I suggest that you ask yourself the following question: are you better off now than you were eight years ago? If the answer is yes, vote for me.

We disagree about how to keep the economic boom going. Gov. Bush wants to blow the budget surplus on a huge tax cut - which means that if the economy slows and the government starts losing tax revenue, its bye-bye surplus, hello deficit. By contrast, I want to use the surplus to pay down the debt, and perhaps spend a little on prescription drugs for the elderly. If you favor budget surpluses, vote for me.

We disagree about Social Security. I believe that Social Security is one of the best things government does. Thanks to Social Security, poverty among the elderly is lower than among the young- something that would have been unimaginable 60 years ago. Governor Bush says he wants to preserve Social Security too - but he has a funny way of showing it. He wants to drain the Social Security trust fund of revenue by having a chunk of Social Security taxes go to the stock market. That way, when you retire, the government won't have nearly as much revenue to pay Social Security benefits with, and maybe we can all go back to the good old days when old people ate dog food. So if you want to get Social Security benefits when you get old, vote for me.

A final issue separating us is experience. Governor Bush has held only one job in government: he's been governor of Texas for a grand total of five years. Thanks to the Clinton-Gore economic boom, Texas's economy has been doing relatively well. And Texas is less divided than most states, because just about the entire state legislature is as conservative as he is, including the Democrats. In other words, Texas is so easy to govern that a hamster could get reelected, let alone George Bush. By contrast, I've was in the House for six years, in the Senate for eight, and Vice President for eight. I've had a ringside seat for every tough foreign policy decision, and I've dealt with presidents and prime ministers of superpowers like Russia and China. I'll be a President you won't have to train - a factor that gets more important every year as more and more countries get nuclear weapons. If you believe that someone with experience is more likely to prevent the world from being blown up, vote for me.

Most of you think I'm boring - and maybe I am. But if you think experienced leadership is more important than charisma, you'll have to agree with me that this year, boring is beautiful."

DID THE MILLION MOM MARCH MISS THE MARK? (6-8-00)

A few weeks ago, gun control supporters sponsored the "Million Mom March" (MMM) in Washington. Although this march did not in fact feature a million moms, it was nevertheless large enough to attract significant public attention - enough to make me curious about the MMM agenda.

On their web page (www.millionmommarch.com/mission.html) the MMM proposed a variety of new gun control laws, including requiring gun sellers to design child-proof guns, more consistent enforcement of laws requiring background checks for gun buyers, limiting purchasers to one gun per month, and national registration and licensing of all handguns.

Some of the MMM proposals seem to be fairly harmless. For example, the MMM's assertion that gun manufacturers "should have to design guns with locks built in"does not infringe upon the rights of gun owners any more than requiring grocery stores to sell fresh meat infringes upon the rights of meat eaters. In both situations, the ultimate consumer has the right to disregard the safety regulations - in the first example by leaving his or her gun unlocked in order to ease access in an emergency, in the second example by exercising his or her own judgment as to when the meat is rotten.

The MMM also explodes the gun lobby myth that all we need do is "enforce existing laws" by showing that new laws can facilitate the enforcement of existing laws. In addition to calling for "No-Nonsense Enforcement of Gun Laws", the MMM proposes background checks for all firearms buyers (not just those who purchased guns from federally licensed gun dealers) and limiting purchases to one handgun per month. Background checks make it more difficult for felons to purchase guns, because if Joe Criminal goes to a gun show and tries to buy a gun, a background check will reveal his criminal record, and a law-abiding gun dealer will then refuse to sell the gun to Mr. Criminal. Similarly, the one-gun-per-month limit facilitates the enforcement of existing gun laws by making it harder for someone to buy dozens of guns at a time and sell them either directly to persons who are not allowed to purchase the guns (e.g. juveniles, criminals, or persons who live in areas with unusually strict gun laws) or to black market gun traffickers who will do the same

But one MMM proposal is far more radical. The MMM calls on Congress "to require all handgun owners to be licensed and that they be required to register their weapons with the proper authorities." National gun licensing and registration, unlike the other MMM proposals, operates directly upon gun owners rather than upon gun dealers or manufacturers.

30-35 million Americans own handguns, and a national handgun licensing statute would require the cooperation of all of them to be successful; otherwise, the federal government would be forced to either let the law become a joke, or institute a "War on Guns" as costly as the "War on Drugs" or America's unsuccessful attempt to prohibit alcohol during the 1920s. If the United States was a law-abiding country like Sweden or Canada, such a scheme might work: everyone would quietly register their guns and then go about their business, and the issue would quietly go away.

But the United States is not such a country. Americans have historically been more violent and more distrustful of government than Europeans (as proven by our higher crime rates and lower taxes). As a result, laws restricting what goods Americans may own, such as attempts to prohibit drugs and alcohol, have historically turned otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals and created black markets in the contraband to be prohibited.

Anti-gun legislation is even less likely to be obeyed than legislation governing drugs and alcohol. Here's why: the gun lobby has historically argued that registration of handguns is the first step to handgun prohibition, and that handgun prohibition in turn will lead to (a) crime sprees by felons who need no longer fear armed law-abiding citizens, and (b) tyrannical behavior by an out-of-control government that need no longer fear its disarmed citizens. Gun owners who believe these arguments may take these arguments to their logical (and lawless) conclusion: that they need to ignore gun laws in order to protect their lives, their property, and their freedom. By contrast, users and sellers of illegal drugs generally lack such a strong motive for their conduct. It logically follows that a federal gun licensing law will be at least as widely disregarded as drug laws, and perhaps even more so. So at best, such a law will turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, breed disrespect for the law, and increase the size of the firearms black market.

The worst-case scenario is even more ominous. If gun owners begin to believe that federal gun laws are tyrannical, a few of them may start to believe that such tyranny, like any other tyranny, justifies armed rebellion. So the more enranged gun owners may become radicalized, and start to heed the appeals of right-wing extremists such as militia groups. Eventually, a few fanatics may engage in terrorist acts like blowing up federal buildings - or worse still, find a few thousand like-minded fanatics and try to plunge the nation into civil war.

If we are unlucky, the most far-reaching anti-gun proposals risk terrorism and civil war. If we are lucky, we risk creating another unenforceable law. How lucky do we feel?

THE MEDIA MONOPOLY THAT ISN'T (5-18-00)

by Michael Lewyn

On the Left and on the Right, Americans are as worried as ever about the power of Big Media. On the Left, politicians and pundits worry about recent media mergers. For example, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) fears that information may become "controlled by just two or three sources", and a policy paper endorsed by Consumers Union and numerous other liberal-leaning groups suggested that the Time Warner/AOL merger may lead to a "giant media-Internet dictatorship." On the Right, "liberal media bias" is a constant concern. For example, one article on the conservative Media Research Center's website suggests that unnamed "reporters" are conspiring "to create a new Republican Party that casts aside its Reaganite past in favor of an older, more liberal-friendly Nelson Rockerfeller model."

These concerns over "liberal media bias" and "corporate media monopolies" made a great deal of sense 30 years ago. When I was a little boy, most Americans got their news from three moderately liberal sources (ABC, CBS, and NBC) who in turn got their news from the moderately liberal New York Times. But today's media contains something for everyone. The old news giants are still around, but have to face dozens of competitors, including:

*Cable television. C-SPAN gives viewers unmediated coverage of Congress, while other cable networks such as CNN, the conservative-leaning Fox News and Family channels, and the feminist-leaning Lifetime cover politics and culture from a variety of perspectives.

*National newspapers. At least three newspapers are truly national in their reach: the liberal New York Times, the conservative Wall Street Journal, and the in-between USA Today.

*The Internet. The Internet contains web sites to suit every ideological taste- not just on major national issues, but even on relatively obscure issues like suburban sprawl.

*Local and national talk shows (mostly, but not entirely, on the Right).

In sum, America now has exactly what the Framers envisioned-not a stodgy media monopoly, but a joyous cacaphony of competing voices.

If there is a media monopoly, it exists not at the national level, but at the local level. Decades ago, most cities had multiple newspapers that were as ideologically diverse as today's press. But today, all but the largest cities have just one daily newspaper. So instead of worrying about media monopolies on Wall Street, you should probably be worrying about the monopoly in your own back yard.

A BAD DOWNTOWN MEANS A BAD CONVENTION CENTER (5-25-00)

Not long ago, I read an article in the Atlanta Constitution about Atlanta's weaknesses as a convention destination. Alf Nucifora, the incoming chairman of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, stated that even though Atlanta had more conventions that most smaller cities, "There are great clouds looming on the horizon." According to the Constitution, Nucifora stated "that the city will have to work hard to preserve its prominence as a convention destination." Specifically, Nucifora "ticked off downtown's problems: a lack of vibrant attractions, panhandlers, poor taxi service, a perception that the area isn't safe."

In other words, Nucifora was arguing that Atlanta's downtown was dragging down its convention center, and that without a vibrant downtown, Atlanta's convention center would be unable to compete with those of livelier cities.

Nucifora's argument was supported by the fact that of the five cities with more trade shows scheduled for 2000 than Atlanta, four (Toronto, Las Vegas, Chicago and New York) have more vibrant business districts or nearby areas than Atlanta. The only exception, Orlando, benefits from Disney World and other theme parks. As Nucifora complained, "We [Atlanta] don't have a Bourbon Street [New Orleans' entertainment district near downtown], we don't have a beach, and we don't have a mouse [that is, Mickey Mouse]." So without a livelier downtown, Atlanta can't compete.

Nucifora's concerns have a great deal of relevance for smaller cities like Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Small city politicians often fall victim to the delusion that a large convention center will provide a boost for their ailing downtowns. But Atlanta's convention officials believe that the reverse is true - that a successful downtown will create a successful convention center, and that an unsuccessful downtown will drag down their convention center. It logically follows that until cities like Buffalo and Niagara Falls rebuild their downtowns, investments in convention centers might well be a waste of money.

NO BAD SCHOOLS, JUST BAD STUDENTS (4-27-00)

Most readers of this article knows someone who lived in the city of Buffalo in their twenties, but moved to the suburbs after marriage or childbirth in order to avoid city schools. The same problem exists in metropolitan areas around America: from coast to coast, families flee to suburbia in order to flee urban public schools.

Why are urban schools so obnoxious to so many parents? The conventional wisdom is that urban schools are simply "bad schools": that is, that suburban schools provide children with a better education. The liberal version of this argument is that urban schools are bad only because they are underfunded, and that if they were funded as generously as suburban schools the "quality gap" between city and suburbs would disappear. The conservative version of the argument is that due to some mysterious quirk of fate, suburban schools have better teachers and administrators. But both theories are easily disposed of.

The liberal "bad schools" theory is based on the assumption that urban schools do in fact spend less than suburban schools - an assumption that is false as often as not. On average, big city schools and their suburban counterparts spend taxpayers' money at a roughly comparable rate. In 1989-90, for example, big-city school districts spent $5447 per pupil, compared with $5427 in suburban areas and $4507 in rural communities.

More importantly, big city schools cannot successfully compete with suburbs even when they go on spending sprees. For example, in the early 1990s, a federal court's desegregation degree mandated that the Kansas City, Mo. school district be given state subsidies in order to compete with the suburbs for white students. As a result, the Kansas City school district spends at least 30% more than the most well funded suburban districts, and over twice as much as less well funded suburban districts. Yet the city/suburb gap (as measured by performance on statewide tests) did not narrow very much, and the Kansas City school district remains unable to attract white suburbanites.

The conservative version of the "bad schools" theory requires one to believe a variety of bizarre assertions. First, this theory requires one to believe that even though urban teachers and administrators are selected by the same rules and take the same education courses as their suburban counterparts, urban teachers and administrators nevertheless perform badly (relative to their suburban peers) not just in Buffalo or Cleveland, but in every urban school district in America - an incredible coincidence if true. Similarly, this theory requires one to believe that by an even more unusual coincidence, the richest suburbs just happen to have the best teachers and administrators in every corner of America, even when they spend just as little as less affluent communities.

Second, the conservative "bad schools" theory requires one to overlook the fact that when urban schools in otherwise "bad" school districts can limit their student body to high achievers, they perform just as well as suburban schools - for example, Buffalo's City Honors is as prestigious as any suburban school. It follows that the only difference between urban schools and suburban schools is the aptitude of the students.

Third, the conservative "bad schools" theory requires one to believe that suburban schools, due to their superior teachers and administrators, could turn urban children into well-scrubbed geniuses if they were only given the chance. But even suburbanites do not believe this myth. Instead of admitting urban children in order to turn them into productive citizens, suburban school districts have done their best to lock out those children. For example, Cleveland's suburban public schools have excluded urban children by refusing to participate in Cleveland's small school voucher program, and some states have even created the crime of "enrollment fraud" in order to imprison and fine urban parents who seek to sneak their children into suburban schools. Why? In the words of Cynthia Tucker, the liberal editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, "Very few upscale parents - black, white or Hispanic - warm to the idea of sending their children to school with poor underachievers." For example, in exurban Coweta County, Georgia, an attempt to merge a predominantly middle-class school with a predominantly poor one met with the following response from school board member Wade Corley: "Do we want to spread all the low-income children around the schools so we can achieve mediocrity?" Mr. Corley evidently believes that a school's "mediocrity" arises from the presence of "low-income children" and not from what is taught or who teaches it.

And the Wade Corleys of the world may be right. Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks has concluded that "qualitative differences between high schools seem to explain about 2 percent of the variation in the students' educational achievement" and that "equalizing the quality of elementary schools would reduce [test score] inequality by 3 percent or less." This view is supported by the fact that low-income children achieve less than their more affluent peers even within the same school or school system. For example, P.S. 24 in Riverdale (an affluent "outer borough" New York City neighborhood) has a regular program for relatively gifted students and a "special" program for slower students. The "special" programs are dominated by children who are poor enough to qualify for government free-lunch programs, while the regular program is dominated by students from middle-class households. The disproportionate presence of poor children among low achievers does not mean poor children are uneducable - but does mean that, in the absence of truly exceptional measures, the educational gap between rich and poor will not be completely eliminated.

Thus, it seems clear that there is little educational difference between "good" suburban schools and "bad" urban schools: rather, the difference is in the schools' student bodies. In other words, if the Buffalo and Clarence school districts retained their current school boards, teachers, and administrators, but switched students, parents would be fleeing Clarence for Buffalo, and would be complaining about the alleged idiocy of the Clarence school board.

Given that a school's academic reputation is nearly always dependent on its students' test scores (which in turn is partially dependent on the socioeconomic status of its students) what are the policy consequences of this fact? Two points come to mind:

1. To attract middle-class families back to cities, urban school districts will probably have to cater to suburbanites' desire for schools which, like City Honors, are dominated by high achievers. If an urban school district focuses on improving its allegedly "worst" schools it may at most narrow the gap between rich and poor - a worthwhile result, but not one that will bring the middle class back to those schools.

2. Suburban politicians should stop blaming cities' decline on their "bad schools", because the major reason cities have schools with bad reputations is that they have a disproportionate share of the region's poor - a fact which, in turn, is caused by factors largely beyond any urban politician's control (e.g. the city's disproportionate share of older housing and antiurban state and federal policies such as highway, sewer, and housing subsidies that favor migration to suburbia). In other words, there are no truly good or bad public schools: only good and bad students.

STICK IT ANYWHERE (6-26-98)

County Executive Gorski, Mayor Masiello, and most other local politicians and pundits seem to agree that Buffalo should and will have a new convention center - but cannot agree about its proper location. Mayor Masiello wants the building to be located just south of the Theater District, County Executive Gorski leans towards a waterfront site, and others have raised alternatives to both sites. Theater District partisans fear that if a convention center is placed on the waterfront, the waterfront will suck new businesses away from the Theater District, which in turn will revert to its former squalor. Some members of this faction also argue that a new site would expand the Theater District's renaissance south along Delaware Avenue. Says Mayor Masiello, "[a Delaware Avenue site would] link up with the existing cultural entertainment district . . . It also would create an opportunity to resurrect Delaware Avenue as the main sstreet in Buffalo for retail." (Buffalo News, 6-14). Conversely, waterfront partisans see the convention center as the beginning of a waterfront renaissance. Members of every faction seem to believe that a convention center will spur development near the site of the center (and possibly harm other downtown areas).

But both the desires of conventioneers and the experience of other cities suggests otherwise. Richard Geiger, president of the Buffalo Convention and Visitors Bureau, has stated: "Groups would choose the Adam's Mark (hotel) over (a convention center) every time if they can just . . . meet, eat and sleep in one facility." (Buffalo News, 5-23). In other words, many conventioneers don't want to run around Buffalo looking for a place to shop or eat; they just want to sit through their meetings, network with each other, and stay cooped up in their hotel for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If this is so, a convention center will not do anything for the surrounding blocks, because conventioneers will avoid those blocks.

And experience from other big cities supports the view that convention centers do not help surrounding neighborhoods. For example, in Atlanta, the convention center is on the southwestern fringe of downtown, a lonely and scary area even by the low standards of downtown Atlanta. (In downtown Atlanta, as in the rest of the Atlanta area, north is the fashionable direction.) The area around the convention center has recently been spruced up a bit, but only because of an unrelated development - the growth of Ted Turner's media empire, which is headquartered nearby

Washington, D.C. has a convention center at the northeastern fringe of downtown. As in Atlanta, the blocks surrounding the convention center are more sluggish and rundown than those a few blocks away at the west end of downtown. In both cities, the convention center is less a gateway of fun than a line of death separating the drabber parts of downtown from the really nasty neighborhoods a few blocks away- kind of like the Greyound bus station in Buffalo.

If Washington, Atlanta, and Mr. Geiger's opinions are any guide, the blocks surrounding our new convention center will probably be some of the dullest blocks in Buffalo. So we should build it not where we want to develop a bustling new downtown, but where we can build an uninteresting place as cheaply as possible, with as little disruption as possible to the surrounding businesses.