THE WANDERER, JUNE 15, 2006
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
Equality versus Discrimination
Open the loony bins! Turn the patients loose! I used
to work in a mental institution, and I can assure you
that the people who were locked up there weren't much
crazier than this country is today. Imagine debating
whether to amend the Constitution to outlaw flag-burning
and sodomite "marriage."
Why didn't the Founding Fathers think of this? In
those days, I suppose, people putting Betsy Ross's
handiwork to the flames had not yet become the public
menace it is today, and Washington and Jefferson could
complacently assume that the problem might be dealt with
locally rather than nationally.
Likewise, the Founders might pardonably assume that
marriage by definition meant a union between persons of
opposite sexes, for the same reason that sodomy rarely
occurs between two bulls in the same pasture. How were
they to know that the judiciary branch of government,
making creative use of the principle of equality, would
one day rule that it was "discriminatory" to require that
it, marriage, be denied to two persons of the same sex?
Well, you can't think of everything, as it turns
out, so now we have to deal with the Founders'
oversights. Come to think of it, why arbitrarily stop
with the number two? Why not three or more parties?
Restricting the institution of matrimony to couples
clearly discriminates against Mormons, for example. Isn't
that religious discrimination?
Anticipating future judicial lunacies is quite a
challenge, and amending the Constitution is a cumbersome
method of meeting it. Impeaching judges or stripping them
of jurisdiction might be better approaches, but these
would also require a level of sanity in the state and
federal legislative branches that no longer exists. At
the official level, this country has gone plumb loco.
Welcome to democracy, folks. In a democracy, every
form of discrimination is intolerable. It is our duty to
be the opposite of discriminatory. In all things,
equality requires us to be indiscriminate.
Superdebt
To most of us, and I emphatically include myself,
the words "economics" and "financial" are arid signals of
bafflement and boredom. I guiltily rush past them to get
to the sports pages. I don't really care how the dollar
is doing on the world market today, even though I realize
my own fate and the future of my beloved grandchildren
are involved.
A startling book has me paying more attention.
EMPIRE OF DEBT: THE RISE OF AN EPIC FINANCIAL CRISIS, by
Bill Bonner with Addison Wiggin (John Wiley & Sons),
contends that the United States is headed for no less
than "catastrophe."
Why? Previous empires have tried, with varying
success, to live off tribute from their conquests; the
United States, perversely, has created a false prosperity
by borrowing from poorer countries, building an enormous
debt that has far outrun its ability to pay.
Bonner traces most of the trouble to Woodrow Wilson,
a fool of colossal proportions. Wilson combined imperial
ambitions with economic folly, backing the Federal
Reserve System which, allegedly founded to stabilize the
currency, has actually reduced the dollar's real value,
in less than a century, to that of a 1913 nickel. He also
took this country into World War I, the first of many
costly foreign misadventures. George W. Bush, equally
blind and profligate, is his worthy successor in the
final stages of America's decline.
(Bonner also blames others for continuing this
baleful tradition: Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Alan Greenspan.)
Nothing could be further from the truth, in Bonner's
view, than Francis Fukuyama's thesis that we have arrived
happily at "the end of history." The United States is
only the latest of many empires Bonner surveys with
cold-eyed detachment to succumb to the temptations of
power; its follies have been aggravated by the delusion
that it has been acting, every step of the way, for the
benefit of all mankind.
It isn't history that is coming to an end, but
American prosperity. The superdebt is bound to collapse
soon. Then Americans will bitterly learn the old lessons
our ancestors knew, but which we thought didn't apply to
ourselves.
If you think Patrick Buchanan's DEATH OF THE WEST
was pessimistic, read EMPIRE OF DEBT.
Cover Girl
By now I always get a little nervous when one of my
old friends' photos appears on the front page of the New
York tabloids. On June 7, Ann Coulter was featured on the
DAILY NEWS, with the headline "Coulter the Cruel"
(subhead: "Right-wing author's brutal TODAY show tirade
on 9/11 widows" and "New book accuses victims' wives of
exploiting their grief"). The NEW YORK POST gave her
similar coverage.
Well, nobody can accuse Ann of parroting the
conventional wisdom! In her new book GODLESS: THE CHURCH
OF LIBERALISM, she calls four high-profile 9/11 widows
"witches" and adds, "I've never seen people enjoying
their husbands' deaths so much." She fires off red-hot
opinions -- the only kind she has -- and doesn't take
refuge in context, nuance, and the safe middle ground.
If you wait for her to back off, you'll wait a long,
long time.
As William Blake said, "The tigers of wrath are
wiser than the horses of instruction." Ann's most
excessive-sounding opinions usually turn out to be right.
And her wrath, though sincere, is full of fun and humor.
When she's wrong, I just stand back in the confidence
that she'll come around.
As Blake also said, "If the fool would persist in
his folly, he would become wise." And: "The road of
excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
There He Goes Again
While most pundits are distracted by such ephemera
as war in Iraq, federal spending, and global warming, one
man is keeping his eye on the ball. Writing from Rome,
Richard Cohen decried Pope Benedict's "deafening silence"
on, yes, the Holocaust.
Good old Richard! He never disappoints. The Pope had
actually just spoken at Auschwitz, saying the pious
things dignitaries always say there, but Cohen wasn't
taken in. He found the Holy Father insufficiently
apologetic for the Church's conduct during World War II,
and for good measure got in a swipe at St. Maximilian
Kolbe.
More and more often these days, I find myself
agreeing with Cohen on other matters. I simply resign
myself to the expectation that he'll also keep writing
these periodical monotonous tirades about the Church and
the Holocaust.
It's tempting to offer him a few facts, but it seems
cruel to deprive an old-timer of his pet peeve.
+ + +
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