Capitol Ideas / Congress, Lobbied by Mountebanks
Bethell, Tom
C A P I T O L I D E A S CONGRESS, LOBBIED BY MOUNTEBANKS by Tom Bethell I t is with a heavy heart that one turns to the querulous topic of civil rights. The very phrase conjures up an...
...Ideally, one should not have to think about civil rights at all in a civil society...
...Moderation and wisdom still prevail...
...What a rumpled and roisterous Falstaff he would make...
...Second--and this is quite apparent but somehow it never seems to be brought up--collectivism (the hope that someday individuals will subordinate their interests to that of the group) is itself the goal of socialism...
...The gene pool, if you will...
...bearing down upon him and talking loudly about expanding civil rights for all, our poor beleaguered citizen would prudently run to the nearest porch and request asylum...
...Are we still so churlish as to try to weaken such an act...
...Fine, we'll give you 90...
...What "results" test could the one who had been fired invoke to make the argument that he had been discriminated against...
...Because there was another cause, and to discern what it was you had to read the fine print very carefully indeed...
...say the Republicans and the dwellersin-the-suburbs...
...In short, it was an extension of the tried-and-true affirmative action strategy into the realm of voting...
...In the first place, of course, white males, collectively guilt-ridden as they still seem to be, will certainly be the losers in any political allocation of position in society...
...One did not, in fact, have to think about these things in the post-World War II England in which I grew up...
...Even with the present round of Reagan tax cuts, taxes went up 15.8 percent in the last calendar year...
...He might also be abounding in Christian charity and all the desiderata glorified by the masters of your local mental health association, but unless he can actually demonstrate these personal treasures he might as well be a sausage...
...Yet this is one important area--the right to life itself--in which our murky "civil rights groups" show precious little interest...
...Rights, of course, cannot be expanded by extending political privileges to more and more groups at the expense of everyone else...
...He is not explaining that he also wants to deny the little fellow the pleasure of the third round of the Reagan tax cuts...
...Bear in mind that the Democratic leadership through the Brodhead Amendment has already lowered the top tax rate on the highest personal incomes from 70 percent to 50 percent...
...The alert citizen who saw Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill strolling down the street and telling everyone bow compassionate they were feeling that day would sensibly cross the street, firmly gripping his wallet as he did so...
...The very phrase conjures up an unappealing image of "righteous" people with picket signs and loud slogans coming out of their mouths, the Rev...
...Watching him profess his solicitude for the poor and the lame and the halt reminds the theatergoer that here is one of the great greasepaint moralizers of all time...
...And there is an organization called the "Leadership Conference on Civil Rights," which actually represents some 161 civil rights organizations...
...In the same way, were he then to spot Jesse Jackson and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr...
...This, the politicians often see, is preferable to being labelled racist or sexist...
...That sounds good, doesn't it...
...Mary Thornton, for example, described in her lead paragraph on page one of the Washington Post the following development with regard to the Voting Rights Act: The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved a bipartisan compromise bill to extend and strengthen key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, defeating a series of weakening amendments...
...Well of course the controversy over the Voting Rights Act has got nothing to do with allowing blacks to vote, which is not at issue...
...No one ever seems to make this obvious point: If a company is, for the sake of example, under a government order to employ one hundred blacks, what is to stop the boss from quite arbitrarily firing one black, and replacing him with another...
...None that I can think of...
...As Congressman Jack Kemp is pointing out, the Reagan cuts will merely preserve a tax cut for the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1982 5...
...E D I T O R I A L ONE FAT THESPIAN I have long considered those who disparage our President for his Hollywood roots supremely obtuse...
...It retained the "results" test among a "totality of circumstances...
...It should be obvious to almost everyone by now--Jews especially, I should imagine, considering how well they have done in America without government privileges and how overrepresented they are in proportion to their numbers in important positions (and thus how exposed they are to danger)--that the word"rights" now signals a clear and present danger to individual liberties...
...Elements within the news media seem to have followed this strategy, whether out of ignorance or ideological preference it is hard to tell...
...He does not reveal that the Reagan Administration is cutting only the rate of budgetary growth that he and his spendthrift colleagues built into the budget by passing idiotic laws that enjoin the government to pay more and higher benefits whether the funds are available or not and whether the taxpayers have approved or not...
...Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, who, had he not been Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Extending the right to more people would not take it away from the previously enfranchised...
...And that is a prospect devoutly to be hoped for by almost any leftist...
...just as one should not have to think about the money supply, the erosion of savings by inflation, or one's personal safety while walking down the street...
...it is the group that counts...
...He took his finger out of the dike and put it in the wind...
...On to the sports pages...
...Results, not intentions, could prove society to be sinful and thus in need of government's whip...
...This was like rescuing a man who cannot have one thing (say, cigarettes) by offering him many things (including cigarettes...
...The Voting Rights Act means letting blacks vote, right...
...otherwise known as "the right to control one's body...
...In any event, one can see from this example that the allocation of " r i g h t s " on the basis of group membership not only does not protect individual rights, but actually undermines them, for the simple reason that individuals are no longer what counts...
...But the judiciary committee defeated the forces of reaction and even managed to "strengthen key provisions...
...There was also the Hon...
...the results of exams, the results of 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1982 admissions, the results of hiring-and now the results of voting...
...Accusations of racism were in the air, so he came out with a "compromise" which was wholly satisfactory to Joseph Rauh, the Left, the "civil rights groups," and the lVashington Post...
...As for the Voting Rights Act, the potential for unintended consequences down the road is so great, as with almost all other liberal reforms, that one does wonder whether the liberals ever stop for a minute and furrow their brows...
...Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has seen fit to subordinate this right to unencumbered participation in the indoor sport called sex...
...Thus rights could be "expanded," to the extent that groups previously excluded-e.g., blacks--were now included...
...How reassuring...
...Tom Bethell, The American Spectator's Washington correspondent, holds the De IVitt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Their purposes are never clearly defined, but one understands readily enough that it is not the general welfare they have at heart...
...You want redistricting, with the lines drawn so that some districts include at least 65 percent blacks...
...Nor, by and large, did one have to pay attention to such matters in the United States until about 15 years ago...
...Voting rights" meant roughly that all above a certain age (save the incarcerated and insane) should be allowed to vote...
...He laments the cruelties of the Administration's budget cuts...
...The Supreme Court in 1980 shot this idea down, however, sensibly ruling that litigants who didn't like the election results would have to prove discriminatory intent...
...It is here that one begins to see the basic weakness of the claim that the concept of rights can meaningfully be extended to groups...
...Maybe Dole had it figured out all along_9 But I doubt it...
...Thus a notion of collective entitlement is about as direct a path to socialism as is possible to imagine...
...engaged in the politicalarts lo these last four decades, might very well have become a Shakespearean player of the first rank...
...But the Speaker wants more tax revenue and he wants it from the very same little fellow whom he claims to protect...
...Unfortunately for America, the man responsible for holding his finger in the dike at this point was Bob Dole of Kansas, who has turned out to be a man of almost indiscernible principles...
...Everyone knows that racism still flourishes...
...Trim him down, cross-garter him and he would give you a splendid Malvolio...
...I t is interesting to consider why shifting the concept of rights away from individuals to groups is such a key element in the leftist agenda...
...or that the budget for fiscal 1982 will probably expand in real terms by at least five percent over fiscal 1981 with the growth in non-defense spending roaring along, gouging a record 17.4 percent of the GNP, up from 15.9 percent in fiscal 1979...
...To suggest otherwise is to promote conflict in the guise of encouraging harmony...
...and with suitable alterations he is the constable Dogberry...
...He pretends to be totally ignorant of one of Washington's most appalling realities, namely, that the growth of the federal budget is wholly out of control, insulated from the will of the American people by a praetorian guard of liberal Democrats by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . and old-time pork-barrelers who have no intention of cutting it back_9 With great flourishes of emotion the illustrious Speaker is explaining how he has saved the little fellow from the Reagan budget cuts...
...This same reasoning applies, obviously, to free speech, the freedom of worship, the right to bear arms, and so on...
...Well how nice...
...Then, in a most unusual development, the House of Representatives moved to the Left of the Supreme Court and incorporated a "results" clause into the extension of the Act...
...A country in which civil rights groups are multiplying is clearly becoming less civil, not more so...
...An aspiring statesman might be brave, bold, and brilliant...
...He does not reveal that the budget for fiscal 1983 is $38.1 billion more rotund than fiscal 1982...
...Every American pol is, au fond, an artist in false face, or he is no pol at all...
...and as general counsel for the aforementioned leadership conference...
...Let's see now _9 . . 53 percent of the pie of privilege to women, another 6 percent (say) for black males, the same again for Hispanics, then some thinner slices for Indians, Orientals, homosexuals, handicapped . . . this could leave almost nothing left over for the wimps (white male Protestants--I leave it to your imagination to fill in the vowel...
...They are mostly organized pressure groups whose function is to bully politicians into conferring privileges upon them...
...Something else is at stake, as indeed the alert reader of the New York Times and the Washington Post could tell simply by reading the headlines, prominently displaying the phrase "voting r i g h t s . " Otherwise, why would they be mounting this big newsroom campaign on behalf of a cause that was not in dispute...
...The illustrious Speaker acts as though the Reagan Administration is thrusting orphans and cripples into the cold...
...Somewhere off to one side there is a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, taking notes and making sure that no one does anything to interfere with the stream of vilification from the righteous...
...Rauh is a left-wing lawyer in Washington who today serves both as vice-president of the A.D.A...
...White liberal Democrats are likely to be the losers--the very people who have been pushing this absurd scheme...
...Jesse Jackson somewhere in the picture, and buckets of accusations being emptied out over the heads of less indignant segments of the population...
...The subsequent editorial drum-beating by the Was/Jington Post and New York Times, accompanied by their not-very-subtle failure to elucidate that more was at stake than blacks being allowed into voting booths, was clearly intended to browbeat the Senate into going along with the House...
...At stake was providing litigants with a legal basis for alleging that elections are discriminatory without requiring them to show that anyone intended to discriminate: The election results themselves should be permitted to form the basis of suits...
...Lurking not very far in the background was the implicit and looming accusation of racism...
...That way, the remaining districts will tend to be more Republican (since blacks are overwhelmingly Democratic...
...The boss, in fact, could replace him with someone who was even blacker than the first...
...Today, however, one cannot help but notice that there are multiplying, ominous entities called "civil rights groups...
...The conferred "privileges are then called--with defiant tone and accusatory glare--"rights...
...Last month Ronald Reagan was not the only actor sitting in the ornate President's Room of the Senate discussing a budget compromise...
...Rights in this genuine sense really could be broadened today, by extending the most basic right of all, the right to life, to unborn fetuses...
...A net that is large enough to encompass a whole group of people must by the same token have interstices large enough to allow individuals to fall through them...
...Why of course we are...
...O.riginally, rights applied to everyone, not to one or another group demarcated by genes or peculiarity of behavior...
Vol. 15 • July 1982 • No. 7
