Public Nuisances
Tyrell., R. Emmett Jr.
"Public Nuisances" TAKE OUT SADDAM —WASHINGTON those of us with a memory for American military action in the world, the sudden and seemingly increate controversy over whether to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein is...
...America is going to have to act...
...Poets and playwrights satirized our generals and our hard-line politicians...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 77...
...The consequence is that he is fit, beyond the dreams of any Prohibitionist or trial lawyer...
...They want it to cut back its lobbying, its advertisements to children and its distribution of foods they deem unwholesome...
...Now it is the fast-food industry whose executives will be called before government bodies...
...I have just finished reading an advanced copy of a biography of the critic and wit, H. L. Mencken...
...Those who predicted that these Prohibitionists' campaigns against tobacco would spread to other industries have been vindicated...
...American military might has saved Europe and much of the world from the domination of tyrants and the incineration of nuclear war...
...The story quotes Attorney General John Ashcroft as he put down the telephone after receiving word of the attacks on the World Trade Center...
...He says of his numerous health problems, "I trace it all back to the high fat, grease and salt, all back to McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King...
...When it comported with the anti-American propaganda of the KGB and its dupes, it was no longer amusing, and those who continued to espouse it were either very stupid or nihilists...
...We have no option now...
...His body fat is 14.5 percent...
...Even Robert Novak seemed hesitant...
...The vigorous President has taken personal responsibility for his diet and his lifestyle...
...I well remember a CNN television show where I was surrounded by the likes of Al Hunt, Mark Shields and Pat Buchanan, all prophesying endless war if we hit Saddam...
...Long before September 11, I tired of this anti-Americanism...
...There was an energetic anti-American-ism then...
...In a refrain that we have heard before, they depict those who would eliminate Saddam as cowboys and war hawks unmindful of coalition-building and the long-term consequences of toppling Saddam...
...The other day I heard the goggle-eyed Larry King intone that September 11 changed us Americans "forever...
...The problem has been that throughout the 20th century it was chic to snicker at that patriotism...
...He once drank too much...
...His heart rate is that of a varsity athlete, 44 beats a minute...
...A laugh or two at some American excess is one thing, but to portray America as a malign civilization is just the opposite of the truth...
...There is no doubt that we shall consult our allies...
...FAT CITY PROHIBITIONISTS —WASHINGTON ow did the Prohibitionists take the news...
...There is also a return to citizenship, to the idea of the good citizen...
...A staggering 50 percent of adolescents in some minority populations are overweight...
...He was famous for snickering at American patriotism, as the new book, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L...
...As I have said there is a return to patriotism...
...He took stock of his health a decade or so back and did not need lawyers or Prohibitionists to tell him what was necessary...
...That is how two health busybodies from Yale University and Harvard Medical School put it in The Washington Post in June...
...Now we face roaming bands of suicidal terrorists and, in a backward country, a malevolent dictator...
...In New York City this summer, lawyer Samuel Hirsch filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC Corporation, claiming his client became obese and ill because of the delicious products of these profitable corporations...
...I am thinking of the Prohibitionists, who are patrolling our diets and lifestyles always with their loyal servitors, the trial lawyers, at their side...
...He did not need the Prohibitionists' remonstrances...
...In the most august circles, the hand-wringers were wailing...
...We had no other option but to resist the tyrants...
...He runs 7-minute miles...
...If that is the great change of which Larry speaks, I am for it...
...Their record of false prophecies and of futile diplomatic panaceas has discredited them with the American people...
...TAKE OUT SAD DAM —WASHINGTON o those of us with a memory for American military action in the world, the sudden and seemingly increate controversy over whether to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein is another example of public persons frivoling with serious matters...
...How about you...
...To those seated around him he said, "Our world has changed forever...
...Yet these congenital snoops tell us that there is the Other America...
...There will also be the public statements of the woebegone of this Other America...
...but it is not all that new...
...Moreover he is more apt to use it than the eminently more rational Soviets were to use theirs...
...They have been pretty much marginalized...
...From there it is a short journey to Larry King's formulation that Americans have changed forever...
...Nor is there any doubt that we shall demonstrate the prudence that we have customarily demonstrated when using our military might...
...I also wondered what precisely Larry meant...
...Today America is the good country that it has always striven to be...
...Mencken, by Terry Teachout, makes clear...
...It is a land where "obesity in children has tripled in the past 20 years...
...In as much as America has changed since September it is a reversion to certain qualities of the past...
...But over the last two weeks we have seen the emergence of such hand-wringers as Brent Scowcroft, Congressman Dick Armey and in the media, The New York Times and itsconfreres...
...I have tried to discover the origin of this cliche and the best I can do is trace it back to a Washington Post story dated September 28, 2001...
...Saddam will never have the Soviets' nuclear arsenal, but his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons would be a grave menace to the world...
...The trial lawyers and Prohibitionists will come up with such sad sacks as Caesar Barber, the complainant in Hirsch's suit...
...It is unlikely that any event, no matter how momentous or tragic, can change the essential qualities of a people...
...Today Saddam is vastly weaker than he was in the early 1990s...
...It means there is a new patriotism in the land, which is all to the good, but there has always been a love of country in the AmerBLIC I B Y R. E M M E 76 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 1ISANCES Y R R E L L, J R. ican land...
...The sentiment is doubtless well intentioned, but what does it mean...
...My response then was the same as my response today, to wit: "If Saddam is so powerful, how is it that Israel has remained in existence...
...Company documents will be scrutinized and the industry demonized, which is not that difficult...
...Why has Saddam not conquered the lands Alexander the Great took with an army on foot...
...Without benefit of the Prohibitionists he cut out the booze and picked up the personal-training regimen...
...Yet an awareness of the responsibilities of citizenship seems to be spreading through the land...
...I know that among public figures it is common to claim that after the tragedy of a year ago, we as a people "will never be the same," or some variation thereof...
...Its faults should surprise no one, and its virtues—given the dark side of human history—are amazing...
...It is only a matter of time before we do the rational thing and oust him...
...They raise the specter of another Vietnamese quagmire...
...I am not thinking of the anti-war elements on the left...
...STILL THE SAME —WASHINGTON here is a habit of mind, among pundits and TV's talking heads, of apprising Americans of how they "feel" or what they "think" about this or that...
...During the first decades of our history Thomas Jefferson, the authors of the Federalist Papers and other wise American scribes occasionally referred to "the genius of the people...
...Do you feel an urge to rebel when, say, the marmoreal Dan Rather solemnizes, "Today, Americans as a people, are feeling (fill in the blank...
...His appetite for weapons of mass destruction is as great as ever...
...Yet from nowhere the hand-wringers have emerged...
...Of course, after all the hand-wringing and strutting subsides, we are going to take out Saddam Hussein...
...It was relatively harmless until evil people exploited it for their own propaganda purposes, for instance the Nazis, the Communists and more recently the Islamicists...
...The poets and the playwrights' satirization of "hawkish" America is precisely the opposite of the truth...
...Their plays and films look foolish now that the Cold War has been concluded peace-fully, the American policy of resistance having been vindicated...
...For three or more memorable decades during the last half of the 20th century the most dangerous place on earth was the geography near the Iron Curtain...
...The news I have in mind is that George W. Bush, arch-typical middle-aged Americano, has just passed his physical with glowing marks...
...And the Middle East is possibly even more incendiary than it was before our first attempts at "regime change...
...Is there an industry in the land that does not have critics insisting that the industry is up to no good...
...When we stood staunchly against Soviet might, "hawkish" America was the butt of ridicule...
...The sudden controversy puts me in mind of the very same controversy that preceded our last attack on Iraq in 1991...
...Allow me to recommend to Mr...
...When the states start imposing more regulation and taxes on junk food, the opportunities for corruption will multiply...
...The study of civics is not returning to the classrooms, busy as they are with sex education classes, anger management seminars and other conscience-raising bilge...
...And the campaign will get worse...
...As American citizenship stresses freedom and responsibility, that seriousness about citizenship will only make for a freer America...
...Frankly, when I hear one of these mind readers making such a presumptuous asseveration, I reach for the remote...
...Regulated industries are always subject to the corrupt practices of pressure groups...
...Heart attacks may become a disease of young adults...
...Preying on the disparity of onerous taxes on tobacco, organized crime is now extending its grip on tobacco sales...
...I wondered if his equivalent, speaking to a radio audience in December 1941, ever said anything like that...
...He demonstrated personal responsibility and he is now in the pink...
...He is precisely Barber's age, 56...
...Barber the splendid figure of Our President...
...He is a dangerous man whose treacherous ambitions have made the most dangerous place on earth—the Middle East—even more dangerous...
...They would doubt Larry King's easy pronouncement that Americans are fundamentally different today from what we were anterior to September 11...
...He achieved all this without benefit of the Prohibitionists, and despite an occasional cigar...
...He did not need more government regulation and higher excise taxes to direct him toward a better diet and toward exercise...
...Just as the Prohibitionists of the 1920s were the Mafia's best friend, history is repeating itself...
...Their instinctive anti-Americanism gives them away...
...I was never invited back on that show and the false prophets of our doom have never acknowledged their error...
...His total cholesterol level is 177, considered in the "desirable" range...
...What is even clearer is that many significant literary and political figures of the first half of the last century applauded his snipes, and even more, his disparagement of America...
...Every nation's people have a genius, and those who wrote our Constitution and early laws did not think that genius was a plastic or ephemeral thing...
...Ironically, if the tobacco scenario taught us anything, the result of what the Prohibitionists demand will be not be a leaner but a more corrupt American...
...When we chose to resist the Soviets in 1947 they possessed the most powerful army on earth and the world's largest empire...
...That is even more beneficial than patriotism...
...Their solution is to hound the food industry...
...During the 1990s, when some politicians lied in office with impunity, and we now know some accountants and corporate executives deceived the public, some of us called for a return to the study of civics, which is to say the study of the rights and responsibilities of the good citizen...
Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5
