Editorials/SALT Free/My Generation

...Economic activity has been concentrated here because the U.S . is one o f the few countries in the world wher e property rights do include minera l rights...

...He added that he had heard stories of owners "bribing their workers not t o say a word to anyone if they found oil seeping up to the surface somewhere o n the estate...

...The point is that the Argentine situation described by Utley i s highly detrimental to any kind of economic growth . The divided contro l of surface rights and mineral rights pits government and property owners i n permanent war...

...By American law a treaty is not a treaty unless it is ratified by our Senate, and the Senate never ratified SALT II . By the conventions of international law a treaty is not a treaty unless both sides adhere to it, and the Soviets repeatedly contravened it . They never cu t their intercontinental systems to 2,25 0 as the treaty specified . Instead they promised not to increase the number o f these systems above 2,504 . Now, according to the independent International Institute for Strategic Studies , they amassed nearly 2,550 by the en d of 1985 . And there have been other Soviet derelictions...

...I'm not sure I have the answe r to that one...

...The laments we now hear about th e President 's decision to ignore a treaty that the Soviets have so successfully ig - nored or circumvented are laments ove r lost illusions . Of course, many people live on their illusions: the drunk wh o thinks his booze renders him eloquent , the faded beauty who believes her pow - ders and perfumes hide her years, th e former defense experts Paul Warnke and Robert McNamara, who believe SALT II has saved us from a huge Soviet arms buildup...

...Mark it down as an indication o f the slovenliness of thought surrounding the Me generation that it is at once praised for idealistic social commitment and recognized today for its reluctance to participate in organized society, for its pursuit of personal happiness down all the kook byways of exotic therapy, and for its increasingly lonely absorption with self...

...I mention it only because I would like to hear from you if you have any clues or suggestions...

...That generation has just entered middle age, and the signs 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1986 are all around that its anointed herald s are going to get together to have a good cry . . . and, incidentally, to continue to distort it...

...There would be a Stravinsky or at least a Gershwin, a Chagall or a sweet old Rockwell...

...Andropov and from the urban e Mr...

...The Soviets have built two, though they claim that th e second, the mobile SS-25, is merely a modernization of an older missile...

...Utley then said that he thought abou t 85 percent of oil wells and explorator y holes in the world have been drilled in the Lower 48 states...

...All countries are assumed to be somehow alike in their foundations, like Levittown houses . And all international problems considered "economic" are assigned the same solution : More money must be extracted from our (your) pockets and handed over t o whatever foreign ruler has so mismanaged his country's affairs as to be considered worthy of more cash...

...McMahon, and made quick to console him , abounding as I was with Christia n charity and the expectation that a pr o bono beer awaited...

...Moving at his own elusive pace and with his own disarming style, Ronal d Reagan usually makes the right decision and leaves his opponents flummoxed...

...The moderate majority was right when these insufferabl e brats were wrong . This time around we ought not quietly to endure their legends and their whines . q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C A P I T O L I D E A S MINE YOUR OWN YOUR BUSINESS by Tom Bethell Pay attention class...

...securi - ty...

...Gorbachev, but the fact is that since SALT II the Soviets have in - creased their strategic weapons targete d on us by over 80 percent...

...Anything valuable under the surface belonged to th e government...

...Aside from turbulence and stupidity their social bequest has bee n decidedly mediocre...

...In our private lives our illusions ma y make life more bearable, but in th e realm of defense policy illusions ma y make life dangerous and war inevitable...

...And, of particular interest, why has the Unite d States been (until recently) so much more productive than all other countries...

...Certainly many Frenchmen who in the 1930s put their trust in the Magino t Line would agree...

...It is our histori c burden, beginning with the generatio n that overthrew an English king and affirmed the Declaration of Independence...

...What the owners feared was the arrival of government employees, trucks, and drilling equipment, trampling over the land and tearing everything up...

...To be legal this modernizing process mus t only increase a missile's punch by 5 percent . The SS-25 ' s increased capacity is estimated to be 92 percent higher tha n its predecessor's . Finally, in contraven - tion of SALT II, the Soviets are scram - bling signals transmitted during missile tests...

...As Calvin Coolidge memorably said : "The prime element in the value of al l property is the knowledge that it s THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1986 I i...

...Since the signing of SALT II the Soviet Union has targeted 4,500 more ballistic missile warheads on th e United States and doubled the number of its bomber weapons . We have heard many peaceful suavities from the dashing Mr...

...q meant to his generation of the 1930s, or was it the 1940s...

...Otherwise the decision was prudent , and if enough American tourists see the light and recognize that summer i n the Old World is as safe and pleasurable as ever, doubtless our allies' complaints will evanesce even as thei r recriminations about our raid on Libya have faded . Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...

...Of it Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his memoirs, "Vance hoped that a new SALT agreement would pave the way for a wide r U.S.-Soviet accommodation, while I saw in it an opportunity to halt or reduce the momentum of the Soviet military buildup...

...My generation can probabl y boast of the achievements of its scientists and engineers, but when they were numbered among the youth of the 1960s I doubt that many had time to play at communal living, drugs, an d radical politics . The Me generation's trumpeted idealism is another canard...

...and now he was in heat to tell me just how much the Glenn Miller band had by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...I was discussing some of these matters with my friend Jon Utley the othe r day when he casually said somethin g that switched on an electric light in m y head...

...So why do they do it, to fool thei r enemies, the insidious Afghans ? The purpose of arms control- is to control the growth of armaments . SALT II obviously failed to do this . The purpose of arms development is to improve a nation 's security...

...I've talked to landowners in Argentina who were terrified if they found oil on their property," Utley said...

...McMahon's grief had been evoked, apparently, by a funereal scene from a movie flickering on the television set at the end o f the bar, The Glenn Miller Story...

...France's revolutionary generation of the lat e eighteenth century at least culminated in an orgy of blood ; the 1960s generation culminated in whimpering and endless monologues about self...

...to no interest to most economists an d journalists...

...Now they are just ignoramuses...

...that it does not hinder U.S...

...If fault is to be found with hi s decision to pursue American strategic policy without regard to the unratified SALT II treaty's limits, it is the Ad - ministration's failure to counsel sufficiently with our NATO allies before th e President made his announcement...

...He said that the problem with the South American countries was tha t property owners didn't own the mineral rights to their land...

...The majority o f young people in the 1960s participated in no protests or any of the other anti - social doings that were boomed as idealistic and progressive...

...They were arrogant ignoramuses from the start...

...In fact SALT I I presaged no new U.S.-Soviet accommodation nor any respite in the momentum of the Soviet buildup . Instead there was the appearance of a Soviet brigade in Cuba, the Soviet broadcasts into Iran inflaming anti - American feeling when American diplomats were being held by the Ayatollah's kidnappers, and the invasion o f Afghanistan . What is more, contrary to Brzezinski's hopes the Soviet buildup continued...

...All American generations have bee n somewhat idealistic...

...E D I T O R I A L S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SALT FREE The maestro in the White House ha s apparently once again had his political way, and it is a testimony to his artistr y that only a pianissimo of confuse d murmurings has accompanied his decision to abandon the strictures of SALT II...

...This is called encryption . The Soviets admit that they do it but insis t MY GENERATION In a Chicago bar not so many years ago my beery meditations were shaken by the sight of a man old enough to be m y father whimpering on a bar stool . I recognized him as a Mr...

...Government, whic h should protect property, becomes it s adversary...

...When in the fullness o f time all the superlatives about the baby boomers have been scaled down, one new superlative will stand and endure , to wit: No generation in American history has been so misrepresented . Truth be known, my age cohort constituted just another generation of Yanks, n o better and no worse, merely bigger an d tinged by a bit more decadence...

...Now that Ronald Reagan has broken out of the illusio n of SALT he can proceed to protect u s from the 80 percent increase in strategi c weapons that the Soviets have targeted on us since the signing of SALT II . Or would the Soviets rather participat e honestly in real arms control...

...And that is not even a culmination, much less a decent orgy...

...The most egregious falsehoo d disfiguring the reality of my generation, of course, is the canard that it wa s a radical generation...

...It was not better educated than past generations, though it was arguabl y more vulgar...

...SALT I I has obviously endangered U.S...

...The SALT II agreement was always an illusory one...

...The SALT II agreemen t allows the creation of only one new in - tercontinental missile...

...Jude Wanniski in the paperback edition of The Way the World Works puts the figure at 75 per - cent in 1975 . John Baden in Dallas (I'll come to him in a minute) puts the figure today at 80 percent...

...All these points have been made be - fore, and the somber fact is I anticipated them 16 years ago in a dissent - ing contribution to an anthology of baby boomer gasconade, fittingly title d Youth Manifesto—an obscure book , whose radical contributors time ha s forgotten...

...Why North America, not South America...

...So, put on you r thinking caps . Among the great economics questions of our day are : Why is it useless , indeed, why is it harmful, to transfer American income to foreign countries...

...I shall have to as k my friend Professor Arthur Schlesinger the next time we play croquet . I do not strongly object to sentimen - tal accounts of the mores and folkways of another's generation, particularly i f the beer flows freely ; but I draw the lin e when it comes to the drivel laid upon my generation, variously referred to as the baby boomers, the Now generation, the Me generation, and "the brightes t and best educated generation" presumably of all time...

...verification...

...I mean, harmful to the recipients . ) Why are Islamic countries unable to establish the rule of law, hence property rights...

...But as we shall see in connection with John Baden, that is not true all over the United States . ) Please note: The point I am makin g is not simply that oil production is th e sine qua non of prosperity, or that th e U.S . is rich simply because it has provided encouragement to oil companies . We know from Japan, Hong Kong, an d South Korea that national prosperity does not depend on the mining o f minerals...

...Yet now the aging heralds o f my generation are at it again, crankin g out the party line . Their every enthusiasm, from dope to abscondin g from Vietnam, turned out a botch, and still we have to listen to them . Thei r latest complaints are that their parent s have done better financially and tha t they themselves are mysteriously col - lapsing into conservatism . Their comparative unhappiness serves them right...

...This is one o f those economics lectures you all loo k forward to so much . You will be learning something that is of basic importance, quite easily understood, and yet , almost inexplicably, beyond the ken o f most economics professors and (need I say) journalists...

...To be sure it hauled in more degrees, but throughout the 1960s university degrees grew steadily cheape r as standards were discarded . If mine were an intellectually distinguished generation, by now its Faulkners would be observable or at least its Fitzgeralds...

...It's an amazing fact that the underly - ing substratum of law, lawlessness, or tyranny in different countries is of next Tom Bethel/ is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...Most supported American policy abroad, and the majority voted for Richard Nixon in 1972 over the most radical presidential candidate theretofore...