Free-market espionage
Carlin, David R. Jr.
the same time, congressional supporters of domestic programs found themselves joined in opposition to the bill with the biggest of the Pentagon big spenders. Nonetheless, Congress voted for this...
...In politics -- practical and otherwise -- the politically powerless have never fared as well as the po!itically powerful without committed national leadership on their behalf...
...By way of rebuttal, I'll be told that this theory plainly does not justify espionage, since espionage injures others...
...they could be cut early in the process to forestall triggering the automatic cuts...
...The "exempted" list includes Social Security benefits (but not the costs of running the system), cash welfare, food stamps, veterans' pensions, railroad retirement, and Medicaid, but not Medicare, housing subsidies, programs which help low-income people get or keep a job, or any of the grant programs which currently make it possible for cities and counties to meet the needs of lowincome people not covered by programs on the exempted list...
...But what if the commander of the citadel, under some avant-garde theory of defensive warfare which teaches that nothing is lost till everything is lost, invites the enemy to march with full force up to his gates and only then makes his longdelayed stand...
...Instead of viewing the spies as traitors who would sell their country for thirty pieces of silver, why not regard them as entrepreneurs (ah, my heart leaps up at that word...
...They are only protected at the point when automatic cuts are needed...
...Significantly, nothing in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings would prevent the Congress from cutting any (or all) of the" exempt" programs at other points during the budget process...
...People who hold this theory are remarkably tolerant of social diversity...
...What odds will Jimmy the Greek give on the citadel's remaining inviolate...
...If a theory of morality isn't willing to keep up these defense perimeters, it has to take the blame when the citadel falls, no matter how loudly and sincerely it may swear that it believes in the value of the citadel...
...By that one measure, G-R-H may be said to be a victory for poor people...
...My hunch is that in a spirit of secular ecumenism they've imbibed both...
...in a nation founded on tolerance of diversity, this is what makes them and their theory so attractive...
...So you see, potential traitors have their choice of poisons...
...In some way, that shouldn't come as a surprise...
...17 January1986:7...
...They head straight for the good old USA...
...My guess is that this has something to do with what is quickly becoming, if it has not already become, the prevailing theory of morality in contemporary America...
...Like buildings and bridges and automobiles, moral rules are constructed with a built,in margin of safety...
...Along the way, Congress agreed that a short list of domestic programs would be "exempt" from the automatic budget cuts required by G-R-H whenever Congress and the president fail to meet yearly deficit targets...
...the president first opposed the bill, then signed it...
...When Russia, China, Israel, and even Jane's Fighting Ships want to get the best military secrets money can buy, you don't see them running off to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore...
...If"Thou shalt not betray thy country" is the citadel, attitudes of publicspiritedness and dignified pride are the surrounding walls and outworks...
...then we'll set up defensive outworks beyond the walls...
...Some might wonder why the Soviets would pay good money for military secrets when President Reagan has promised to make a gift to them of the biggest secret of all: the science and technology that will make Star Wars, or SDI, possiCommonweal: 6ble...
...Without the exempt list, this "bad law" might have been defeated -- or at least more easily undone at the point of implementation...
...I I Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Ultimately, most chose to oppose G-R-H, reasoning that this bad legislation was particularly bad in its potential impact for poor people, and the claims of practical politics won't change that...
...No, sir...
...conservatives prefer the kind which leads to high rates of white collar crime...
...II II II FREE-MARKET ESPIONAGE THE AMERICAN WAY OF SPYING H AVINGjUSt passed through the season to be jolly and all that, I've decided to look on the bright side of the recent spate of espionage scandals...
...If I were poor, old, and relied on government benefits to keep a roof over my head or food on the table, I'd be scared...
...The problem is one of appearance as much as reality: having some programs which help some poor people exempted during some part of the process is widely misunderstood...
...Gorbachev that the latter shouldn't waste any rubles doing his own SDI research...
...Instead, we'll bear the cost of a trillion or two dollars, and as soon as we're finished, we'll ship the blueprints to Moscow as a token of our good will...
...Hindsight is always clearer of course, but choices of the sort made by supporters of G-R-H, while practical in an immediate sense, are positive for poor people only in the most short-run and narrowest of terms...
...To show ray even-handedness, however, let me point out that the liberal theory is simply a transposition to a non-business key of the traditional laissez-faire justification of business egoism...
...The theory of morality I've been criticizing is obviously more popular with people who think of themselves as liberals than with conservatives, who proclaim themselves to be supporters of a more traditional morality...
...This theory, which is more popular with the college-educated than with the non-college-educated, and more popular with the under-forty crowd than with the over-forty crowd, holds that any conduct is morally permissible provided it doesn't injure others in a direct and tangible manner...
...But if the force getting through has been reduced to a small enough size, thanks to the attrition the enemy suffered as it broke through one defense perimeter after another, there is reason to hope the citadel will hold...
...If wc picture some indispensable moral rule -- for instance, "Thou shalt not betray thy country" -as a citadel, and if we're serious about defending the citadel, we won't let the enemy have free passage right up to its very gates...
...Meanwhile, Gorbachev can sink his money into things the Soviet people really need, like wheat, cruise missiles, and psychiatric hospitals...
...Soon after, on December 20, Congress adjourned after killing House-passed provisions to impose modest controls on costly military contracting abuses, and failing to act on the far less draconian, three-year, $74 billion deficit reduction package that had absorbed most of their time since last January -- proving once again a preference for tough rhetoric over tough choices...
...More exactly, what is it in recent American culture that teaches this...
...NANCY AMIDEI (Nancy Amidei, whose frequent articles in Commonweal included ""The Caretakers" in the last issue, is a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered...
...The magic of our free enterprise system (a system lately revivified by Ronald Reagan) produces imaginative people with a willingness to take risks and who are able to accommodate them...
...By almost any other measure, "victory" would not be the noun of choice...
...But the theory does justify attitudes of sclf-ccntcredncss and unpatriotism which, given proper conditions, can easily pass over into traitorous actions...
...We may not be doing so well in shoes, textiles, cars, and TV sets, but America leads the word by miles when it comes to the production of first! class military secrets...
...Or to put this in other words: liberals prefer the kind of egoism which leads to high abortion rates...
...For not long ago, only a generation or so back, when people betrayed their country they at least had the decency to do so for ideological reasons, not for money...
...Because the president remains adamant about increased spending for the Pentagon, and equally adamant in his opposition to any tax increases, the budget he sends to Congress on February 3 is bound to make G-R-H look good (by comparison) in its treatment of poor people's programs...
...Instead, we'll build a wall beyond the citadel...
...Nonetheless, Congress voted for this "bad law" on the grounds that "practical politics" demanded it...
...The down side of this theory is that it sanctions attitudes of hardcore egoism, which it considers to be as unobjectionable as attitudes of patriotism and Christian charity: and among egoisms, the low egoism of the crude hedonist is no less unobjectionable than the lofty egoism of the person of culture, an egoism which, in a famous estimate given in an earlier age, lost half its evil in losing all its grossness...
...So long as he doesn't pick their pockets or break their legs, they don't object to their neighbor's conduct, however odd it may otherwise be...
...For them, the matter turned on the issue of the "exempt" list...
...When, however, I'm not able to keep my eyes fixed on the bright side of the spy picture, I wonder what it is in American culture that teaches people to betray their country for cash...
...Many believe that all the interests of all poor people have been taken care of all through the process, (G-R-H has been explained in TV news reports with simple charts showing just that...
...Let me shift from an architectural to a military metaphor...
...And if, as some in Congress have claimed, exempting programs like Social Security benefits and veterans' pensions left these representatives without any politically viable argument for voting no, that raises other questions about the value of practical politics...
...Or at least they used tobe...
...Occasionally some portion of the enemy may be able to break through all these defensive lines and arrive at the citadel's gates...
...The president, despite his longstanding dislike of Communism, has so soft a heart that he told his good friend Mr...
...Quite so...
...who not only want.to make a buck for themselves but want to make it in an international market, thereby helping to correct America's balance of payments problem...
...G-R-H is just the latest evidence of how sadly that leadership is lacking...
...then we'll send troops of soldiers out from time to time on search-and-destroy missions...
...This was the theory behind the famous sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, but its application isn't limited to sexual behavior...
...Like members of Congress, the various groups that lobby on issues important to poor people also had to consider "practical politics," and decide whether or not to support G-R-H...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
Vol. 113 • January 1986 • No. 1
