In the Belly of the Beast

The reason we need the welfare state, liberals tell us, is because we need a safety net to protect us from the excesses of the free enterprise system.  Without the rights and the protections of an activist government people would suffer.  Corporations have no mercy.  The moment you can’t do the job, you are out on the street.  That’s why we need workers’ rights and consumers’ rights and a host of benefits provided and enforced by government.

No doubt we do need protection from corporations.  And fortunately governments are only too glad to pass laws to curb their power. So when someone gets chewed up by a corporation they can hope for redress. 

So, we’ve taken care of Big Business.  But what about Big Government?  What about Big Education and the good folks hiding behind Our Teachers?

Unfortunately Big Ed can chew you up and spit you out just like the robber barons of old.  Of course, they don’t have the company goons, like they did in the old days. No, they are much more sophisticated.  They can rough you up and kick you out without leaving a mark on you, at least not on the outside, as Nancy Coppock found out.

Nancy worked as “a middle school remedial reading teacher in a small Texas town outside this major university town.”

I took my job very seriously because to me, the best thing I could do for mid- to below-average students, many minority and poor, was to make sure they could read to the best of their ability.

You can say that again.

One special ed student, Duane, had extreme emotional problems.  Cunning and streetwise, Nancy was still “able to shame the young man into accepting just discipline” and the school principal noticed and recognized her for her achievement.

Then came the day when Duane suddenly “plunged a sharp pair of scissors downward toward my face” and stopped just inches from Nancy’s eyes.

Nancy reported the incident but asked that the boy not be punished.  She wanted to settle the problem herself.  But she never got a chance.  The boy was not punished, yet eventually came “into the office and demanded to be punished.”

Nancy approached the boy’s psychiatrist and requested a chance to attend a session with the boy; the boy needed absolution, she told him. 

Oops!  Back up Nancy.  Wrong religion!

I was told it would be *inappropriate *for me to attend another session and was sent on my way. Evidently, the doctor went straight to the school counselor, who then typed up a memo listing the reasons why I should be sent home from school because I was dangerous to Duane.

Then “I was informed that I was to not return to work until a psychiatrist had examined me and found me suitable for work.”  Then nobody would talk to her at school.  Then she was being tested by a psychologist.  Then she was telling the principal that she wasn’t being treated fairly.  Then she was told: “Well that’s your opinion.”  She decided to quit at the end of the term, but she got to teach Duane until then.

On the last day of school, Duane cried like a big baby, wondering what he was going to do without me... He was in anguish because he knew I had been punished for what he had done.

They spat Nancy out.  But they saved the system, and it can continue to make a difference in the lives of kids.  That’s a relief.  Duane went on to commit a robbery and shot at a pursuing policeman; but at least the school did all it could.

One thing is certain.  The school district needs additional funding so that it can deal better with at-risk kids.

The thing about people and corporations is that, however bad they are, you can shame them, and fine them, and tax them, humiliate them, and cut them down to size.

In fact the dirty little secret about people is that, from time to time, if you extend a little love to them they will kneel at your feet.

But government is shameless and it is sovereign. 

Who will protect us from the government?

It's a Regional War, Stupid

From the very beginning of the war on terror, it was obvious that the war was not just a war against Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, but a war to prevent the emergence of a single regional hegemon in the Middle East.  Democrats profess not to know this, and Republicans barely seem to know it.  But President Bush does, according to Michael Ledeen.   In his press conference Monday, the president said:

The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that’s unfolding across the region.

The fight is, of course about the expansionary ambitions of Iran.  It has been the policy of the United States for decades to oppose the emergence of a single controlling power in the Middle East, for the obvious reason that such a hegemon would come to control all the oil in the region.

First it was Saddam Hussein who was the problem.  That is why we went to war in the first Iraq war, to prevent Saddam from moving south from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.

Now that Saddam’s regime has been liquidated, the problem is Iran.  So whether the United States stays in Iraq or retreats, the problem is still the same.

And it’s likely that the Middle East will remain a problem until the end of the oil age. 

Germany and France on Collision Course

The euro has climbed to stratospheric levels in recent months, approaching $1.40 to the euro.  But  Ambrose Evans- Pritchard thinks it will all end in tears.  The high euro is sitting on the back of a revived German economy, achieved by a signal achievement of German companies in moderating the wages of German workers.

By screwing down wages, Deutschland AG has deflated costs since 1995 by 20pc against France, 30pc against Spain, and 40pc against Italy.

Unfortunately the other countries in the euro are hurting badly, France in particular, and they want a weaker euro.  In particular the French love their Airbus.

Airbus chief Louis Gallois said a rate above $1.35 means death for European aviation. "If there is a prolonged slippage in the dollar much beyond that, then we need to ask ourselves if we can still build airplanes in Europe," he said.

The problem all along for the euro is that it needs harmonized economies to succeed.  But the EU nations are not harmonized economically.  Each country sports it own beloved home-grown market distortions reflecting its correlation of political forces.

The Germans are sensitive to the need for a successful economy. They had three economic meltdowns in the twentieth century and it seems to have concentrated their minds.

Plus they are, or were, the most advanced country in Europe.

However it may seem from the point of view of schadenfreude a economic row between Germany and France really would not be fun for anyone.

L.A. Diocese Pays for Abuse

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay out over $600 million to plaintiffs to settle claims of sexual abuse by clergy, reports the Associated Press.

The settlement pushes the total amount paid out by the U.S. church since 1950 to more than $2 billion, with about a quarter of that amount paid by the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

It is, of course, right and proper that the Catholic Church should be held to account for the abusive behavior of its priests and religious.

And it is a tragedy that the hard work and the contributions of lay Catholics, who responded to the call made in the nineteenth century to first build the school and then build the church, should be paid out in this way.

What many of us would like to know, and of course what we can never know, is whether the abuses represent the culture of the pre-Vatican II culture or the post-Vatican II culture, or both.

The simple answer, of course, is that all organizations, secular or religious, big or little, cover up to protect the institution.  And in the effort to hide the truth the individuals that the institution is sworn to serve get chewed up and spat out.

The Catholic Church can be grateful that this evil has been brought to the light.  Other great institutions should take note, and clean out their stables before it is too late.

Religion is Safe With Democrats Says TIME

For years Democrats have warned that religion and politics don’t mix.  You’d expect them to say that because Democratic voters are secular.  Democratic voters don’t mix religion and politics.  In fact they don’t really “get” religion at all.  If they feel a religious impulse they call it “spirituality.”

The trouble is that the American people are religious.  That makes it difficult for Democrats to win elections.  But now things are changing.  Hillary Clinton is talking about her faith.  John Edwards is organizing conference calls with progressive religious leaders, and Barack Obama “has run six faith forums in New Hampshire,” according to Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy in TIME.

In this campaign season, if Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards are any measure, there will be nothing unusual in Democrats’ talking about the God who guides them and the beliefs that sustain them.

Gibbs’ and Duffy’s article about the Democratic focus on religion in this campaign cycle is a classic.  It takes an issue that has been a problem for Democrats and tells a heartwarming story about how Democrats are learning their lesson and reaching out to the people, working to understand the problems they are wrestling with and nodding approval for their solutions.

It makes you wonder.  What would it be to live in an America where the mainstream media was sympathetic to all religion, not just the religion of Democratic presidential contenders?

But can Democrats pull it off?  After all, they have spent the last generation riling up their base against organized religion.  Now, all of a sudden, they care about religious people and their concerns.  Can they really turn on a dime like this and make it work?

Or are they trying to have their cake and eat it too?

Working Moms Want to Cut Back on Work

Woman, we know, is the “victim of the species.”  That’s what Simone de Beauvoir, haute bourgeoise and existentialist, wrote in The Second Sex, and she should know.

Back then, high-born victims like the Beaver wanted jobs, careers, anything that men did.  But now the average working victim, according to the Pew Research Center, wants to work part time.  Here’s how AP reported the Pew findings of their opinion poll of working mothers.

Sixty percent of the working mothers said a part-time job would be best, up from 48 percent 10 years ago. And 19 percent said not working at all would be ideal -- roughly the same as in 1997.

Here’s how the folks at Pew interpreted the results.

Cary Funk, a Pew researcher on the survey, said the trend reflected women’s latest thoughts on the ideal arrangement for their children.

When you get to non-working mothers, or stay-at-home mothers, you get a definite break of opinion against working outside the home at all.  Asked if mothers should work, moms split according to whether they worked or not.

Among stay-at-home moms, 44 percent viewed this situation as bad, 22 percent as good, and the rest said it made no difference. Among working moms, 34 percent saw the situation as positive, another 34 percent as negative.

As Beauvoir wrote, woman’s life is “subservient to maternity.”  It takes a French intellectual to be scandalized by the obvious.

Here is the link to the report at Pew Research Center

Hewitt Talks to Republican Jews

Conservative talk-show host talked to the Republican Jewish Coalition recently, reports Current Jewish Issues.  He was not optimistic when it came to the next presidential election.

People look back at the 1980 election, Hewitt told his audience, and remember only that it was a landslide.  But, of course, in fact it was a close-run thing and Reagan only began to break away in the last week.  Hewitt remembers.  He was there. 

The 2008 election is going to be just as difficult.

[I]t is going to be a long and difficult and often bloody 20-30 years ahead of us. That’s a very tough hard message to sell in 60 seconds . . . especially when Democrats insist on saying it’s not so, and that we can retreat from Iraq without the carnage following us home, and that we can pretend that the radicalization of the Islamic population in Europe is neither far advanced nor continuing.

Sooner or later, rank-and-file Jews are going to break conservative and Republican.  Jewish intellectuals have been a major force in the conservative movement.  Jews are prominent in conservative talk radio.  But most Jews are still hesitant to join a party that is identified with Christianity, the scourge of Jews for a thousand years.

But Jews have survived the progroms, and they have done it by being adaptable.  They have never known from where the next progrom would come.  For over a century they have thought that the Enlightenment and secularism have been the safest place for the Jews.

But now we see rising anti-Semitism among western secular elites and the secular rank-and-file.  Is there really safety for Jews on the left?

What will flip Jews into the Republican column will be a defining event in the Middle East.  Let us hope it is not the destruction of Israel.