I'll Be Representing Conservative Media at Pomona Event on Sept. 9

From the [slightly edited] email pile:

Email dated August 2, 2009:

Hello,

My name is John Thomason. I'm a Pomona Sophomore and a board member on the Pomona Student Union (PSU). For those of you that may not know, the PSU is a non-partisan student run organization focused on promoting and preserving the intellectual diversity of the public sphere on campus, as well as exposing 5C students to a multiplicity of perspectives.

Each semester, we choose a particular theme on which to focus additional attention – next semester’s theme will be the press. For our first event addressing this theme we will be hosting a panel discussion concerning student media on campus. I am sending this email to you because you are a prominent editor/writer at a 5C public publication and I would like to guage interest in this event. Questions to be addressed by the panel at the event include: Where do 5C students get information about life in their immediate community? Do campus publications do an adequate job providing this? What do students and faculty think about the quality of 5C publications (including blogs)? Do students and faculty feel like they are or can be participants in media on campus? In short, what role does student media play in campus dialogue, and should (or how should) this role be re-assessed?

. . .

Hope to hear from you soon,
John Thomason

Email dated August 30, 2009

Ilan and Charles,

Thanks for your willingness to participate in the event! The event will take place on Wednesday, September 9 at Rose Hills Theater at SCC.
. . .

This is a great opportunity to get some good PR for the CI and Claremont Independent and attract new writers, etc. For my part, I'd really appreciate it if you guys could help spread the word about the event... Rose Hills is a big venue and we want it to be full.
Also let me know of any further ideas you have for the event.

Best,
John

Kesler's Leadership Lecture at 11:00 AM Convocation Tomorrow

Professor Charles R. Kesler will be giving a talk tomorrow (in McKenna?) titled "Leaders and Followers" to institute the 63rd convocation in CMC history.

You won't want to miss it, but on the off chance that you do, I'll be YouTubing it for later. Rumor has it that he should be speaking for only ten minutes.

Politicizing Food Decisions at Collins Continues...

From Dean Maranan's email today with relevant part:

As always, Collins dining hall is committed to providing you with the freshest quality food ingredients, variety and fast, friendly service and is part of the Claremont Colleges Tray-less Dining initiative with an on going goal to reduce waste and minimize our carbon footprint.

For our customers with special needs, a limited number of trays will be available from our cashiers.

CJ: Isn't this collusion? When all of the dining halls sign on to an initiative and no students can leave the meal plan (unless they provide a medical reason)?

For those brave students seeking to bring their own tray, buying an entire tray costs $1.75, which just goes to show how much of a rip off the 50 cents for a take out container really is. I wonder what would happen if CMC students just started buying their own trays and bringing them to campus dining halls...

I'm curious, as to what constitutes a "special need." If the enviro-left thinks that anyone who doubts the wisdom of uprooting our economy is a dolt, does that constitute a special need and could you get a tray?

The Real Ted Kennedy: Welcome Post-Kennedy Era

I resisted writing something on Ted Kennedy until after I had read a great deal more about him. And now that his body has grown cold, I am prepared to finally put into print what I think about Kennedy.

It should go without saying that I remain vehemently opposed to much of Ted Kennedy's legacy, even more so as I learned that he used to joke about Chappaquiddick. (Listen to his friend, Ed Klein, explain how one of his favorite topics of humor was Chappaquiddick itself!)

I see it as my duty as a native of the Bay State to work in whatever way I can to undermine that legacy, which with the exception of deregulation of the trucking and airline industries, has been responsible for much of the high cost of college education, unemployment among young people, and whole host of other maladies that uniquely make Massachusetts the butt of jokes virtually everywhere outside of its borders.

I find myself lamenting several things with his passing. The most important of which is that he died too soon. I would have preferred him to die ten years from now. Why might you ask? Because no Republican or Independent in Massachusetts has the courage to run against the Kennedy and I would have, assuming I had a considerable fortune behind me, thrown my hat into the ring. A fantasy of mine is to transform Massachusetts politics and I wouldn't have minded going up against the aged, greying Democratic machine. Turnover in Massachusetts is quite rare, given how corrupt and self-serving Massachusetts political culture has become.

In any event, everyone from the Bay State seems to have a Ted Kennedy story and I am no exception, for Ted Kennedy and I have something in common: We are both alums of Milton Academy, one of Boston's best college preparatory schools.

And so I've taken his death as an opportunity to describe the kind of school we both attended. I have no idea if it was as left-leaning when he attended, but I figured now is as good a time as any to show the kind of place where his family sends its own -- while they damn much of the rest of us to mediocre (at best) public education.

Whereas Kennedy was scion of a wealthy family, I was just lucky to get some of the opportunities that my parents worked so hard to give me. I was on financial aid, with my family and me working vacations and holidays just to keep me there. A narrative, not too dissimilar to right now, given Kennedy and others love of throwing lavish subsidies on higher education that simply ends up pushing tuition higher. (He also severely mucked with the minimum wage, which has led to youth unemployment at a record high. At 51%, it is the highest since they started keeping records in 1948.)

At Milton Academy, Kennedy boasted a C average and I routinely made honor roll and took some of the more challenging classes, despite having a sick mother and working two part-time jobs. I was editor of the school paper and wrote for nearly all of the campus publications; he was, by all accounts, a lackluster football player. Of course, Mr. Kennedy got into Harvard, while I got into Claremont McKenna. But then again, I ain't no Senator's son, or rather the son of a Nazi-accommodating ambassador, so perhaps things worked out as they should have. (Kennedy, to his shame, cheated on an exam at Harvard and so was expelled and then re-enrolled.)

When Ted Kennedy came to speak at the very far left prep school which I attended, Milton Academy, it was rumored that a Board of Trustee member took down a banner, displaying the school's motto, "Dare to Be True," from the podium when he spoke. (They also took it down for Bill Clinton.) And that banner went back up afterwards.

At the time, I took special comfort in this subtle little act of courage from an otherwise staid, yet oddly appeasing administration, given that I was among two outspoken conservatives on the entire campus. For many students, I was the first Republican (and likely remain) they had ever met. I imagine the sight of me as a conservative that didn't have horns and was articulate was a shock to a great many of them, some of whom went to surprising lengths to label me a nut or otherwise socially ostracize me for my views.

Being a conservative at Milton Academy was an ordeal that I was quick to put behind me. I tend to eschew the narrative that too many campus conservatives fall into of being persecuted, but I know of no other word that would do what I experienced there justice.

Such was the way the school treated conservatives. But I was not alone. Students who openly admitted and advocated conservative principles, were pilloried, mocked, threatened, and graded down on paper after paper. Our signs were defaced, and regrettably, in at least one instance, our lives were even threatened, with a member of the black student group threatening to do bodily harm on at least a few of our members. Punishment was not forthcoming, of course. This, at a school, that would call campus wide assemblies when some miscreant drew a quarter inch swastika on a bathroom stall.

Mr. Richard Hardy, our principal and later head of school, would refuse to let me or any other conservatives speak before the school about such conservative, despite allowing left-leaning students to advocate for their preferred candidates. (He gave stirring speeches about leaders who dared to criticize President Bush.) Naturally, there were only two Republican speakers during the four years I attended there. One of them, talk show host, Michael Graham, came at my invitation and the assembly was nearly canceled when he questioned the wisdom of defining ourselves all on the basis of race. He made a bunch of jokes about Bill Clinton, and others, and basically, brought down the house -- to the ire of the P.C. progressives who seemed to favor free speech for anyone but conservatives as I soon learned as editor of an online conference.

With some regularity, our online conference was shutdown and heavily regulated by nearly administrator after someone (me) had the temerity to suggest that America really wasn't a racist country (and this was pre-Reverend Wright.) On the message board, despite being called a Nazi repeatedly, I defended free speech and said that given what I had read about the African subcontinent and the successes of black Americans (despite their high crimes rates), I found myself rather privileged to be living in America. For that, I was brought before a show trial that was orchestrated by then Principal Richard G. Hardy. (He waited until our then Head of School, Robin Robertson was out of town to punish me. She had previously given me her word that no one would be punished for voicing their opinion while she was Head Master.)

Initially, I was told that I might be given a Discipline Committee or a DC, as we referred to them. This punishment carried a significant blemish as I would be suspended and a black note would be sent off to colleges and so I was very grateful that I would not be punished in this manner. Instead, I was given another punishment -- the highest one possible without an official letter being sent off to the colleges that I hoped to attend.

Despite guarantees in the student handbook that I had the right to an open hearing and to notice before the Deans Committee, I was called down, seemingly at random, and spent a good hour arguing for why I shouldn't be punished at all. My friend's mom, who incidentally is black, wanted to come in and argue on my behalf. She was not allowed entry. Neither was another character witness. No, in this, I was entirely alone, as a combination of my advisor, the Academic Dean, and Mr. Hardy wanted to be very clear that I understand that I thought wrong and therefore needed to be punished.

Of course, Mr. Hardy had already written why I was punished. It was verdict and then trial. Apparently, my commentary had made some students feel uncomfortable. When I asked which students I had made feel uncomfortable, he refused to give me any names. So much for confronting your accusers! (Hence my love affair with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education!)

My punishment was to write two reflection pieces, one from my perspective and one where I had to interview a "student of color." I ended up interviewing my friend, Lucas Fowler, and my then-girlfriend, who was also a student of color. (She ended up leaving me after people criticized her for dating me.)

I thought that this whole assignment was mildly racist and even entertained going to the press, but thought better of it. (At the time, my mother was going through chemotherapy and so didn't need the stress and with one more year left of school, I needed to graduate.)

* * * *

I owe my political writing debut to a piece that I wrote about Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy when I was the founding editor of the short-lived newsletter, The Bastion. It was so named because my co-editor, Ryan Sebastian, and I sought to bring a sort of balance to an otherwise totally unbalanced political discourse. My favorite piece was one I wrote, titled French Whines, which took to task France's lack of support for the Iraq War and how they had been waging some would say neocolonial wars in Africa. All in all, the newsletter was rather sophomoric, which was fine because I had founded it as a Freshman.

The piece I wrote about Kennedy challenged his reputation as a liberal lion and brought up such character blemishes as cheating at Harvard, using his dad to get out of combat in Korea, and the now infamous Chappaquiddick. At the time, I didn't quiet understand the economic rationales for why so many of the programs he seemed to favor winded up harming, rather than helping people, but it seemed clear to me that the minimum wage was an exercise in clossal stupidity.

The school tried to stop me from using school funds to print the paper, arguing that as a student currently attending Milton Academy was a member of the Kennedy family, she too might feel uncomfortable. Instead, I resolved a compromise. I printed it with my own money and handed it out. (Looking back as it, it was my first real foray into politics.)

In doing so, I resolved, after this, and many other brushes with that politically correct administration that two things would happen: I would one day become one of the best known graduates of Milton Academy and that I would do so by honoring its motto, "Dare to be True," even its most famous graduates would not.

Will Mitch Daniels Be Our Next President?

With the possible exception of Mitt Romney, I suspect that Mitch Daniels is the only Republican that could actually defeat Obama. His down-to-earth folksy demeanor and his toughminded budget balancing would be welcome in Washington D.C. His campaign biography pretty much writes itself: Forget Hope; Forget Change; We're About Competence.

Of course he says that he won't run for office --which is just perfect -- but as Professor Pitney says to the Associated Press, Daniels may have no choice but to run for office, given how, in Daniels' phraseology, "how slim the pickins are."

Given the turmoil, Daniels may not stay on the sidelines, said John Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in California.

"If you look at the list of presidents who said they weren't going to run for president, it's a long list," he said.

The 60-year-old millionaire governor is equally at home in Washington and Indiana after serving as President George W. Bush's budget director and an adviser to President Ronald Reagan. He earned a reputation in Washington as the "blade" for his efforts to promote fiscal responsibility in Congress and carried that to Indiana, where he took over a state with a $800 million deficit and worked with lawmakers to pass a balanced budget in his first year. The state's fiscal year ended June 30 with a $1.3 billion surplus.

I fell in love with Mitch Daniels after watching his hour long interview with C-Span and his speech before Butler University where he criticized his Boomer generation for being too self-serving and getting our country into tremendous debt. (Oh and did I mention he's a motorcycle rider? He's got my vote.)

Cars on Campus: Washington Post Comments

From today's Washington Post:

... almost three-quarters of the nation's 18.4 million college students will return to campus with a car, AAA said. The association's annual guide said some students will spend as much as $8,095 a year to keep and maintain a new car at school.

CJ: But not at Claremont McKenna, no sir! Here we ban freshman from having cars even though public transit is notoriously awful.

Students willingly shell out the money to pay for parking, especially in D.C. Why wouldn't they here? Just look at how much people are prepared to spend.

The AAA survey of [Washington] area colleges found that the annual student parking fee at Howard University was $240. A permit for the general parking lot at George Mason University cost $225. At American University, it cost an estimated $964 to park on a Nebraska Avenue lot. In College Park, the University of Maryland charges $412 for those who live on campus and $213 for those who commute daily to school.

George Washington University students pay $550 a semester for a parking decal, and students who commute to Georgetown University pay $656 a semester to park at satellite lots in Rosslyn.

CJ: I don't understand why CMC doesn't treat parking on campus as it treats tuition: Charge more for rich students and less for poor ones. Ideologically, I'm opposed to that, but you have to wonder why they don't do that. I hope CMC doesn't experience the parking ninjas that I warned about, but I wouldn't be a tad surprised if we did, especially seeing as the other colleges can't stop you from graduating for having unpaid parking tickets.

Dr. Matthew Spalding, CMC Alum, Assails Obama's Civil National Security Force

The clip is fairly short, only about 7 minutes, and aired a few days ago on Glenn Beck. Obama, apparently wants half a trillion dollar worth of funding for AmeriCorps, seeking all the while to turn it into some personal fiefdom. You can watch it here.

I've criticized this obsession with national service when I challenged David Gergen at the Athenaeum. As I pointed out to Gergin, I'm not interested in extra-constitutional, militarized, compulsory bureaucratic corp that owes its allegiance to the state. Thanks to CMC alum, Matthew Spalding, and Glenn Beck, we're finally exposing the inner workings of the Obama administration.

Is Akshata Murthy CMC's Youngest Richest Alum?

A profile puts newlywed Akshata Murthy's net worth at 1600 Rs (which, by my calculations, puts it at around $320 million.)

Does this makes her the youngest richest alumna? Does this make her the wealthiest woman graduate? Or am I missing someone?

Charles Murray Cites Professor Pitney on Nixon; Pitney's Honors Government Class

One of my favorite authors of all time, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, cited Professor John J. Pitney Jr., one of the country's foremost Nixon scholars, in a follow up blog post he wrote he showed some graphs showing how the country is becoming more conservative, while the intellectual upper is becoming vastly more left leaning.

He dubbed that phenomenon the Pauline Kael syndrome after the famous film critic who expressed incredulity that Nixon had won a landslide. Murray quoted Kael as saying the following after Nixon's reelection, "How can he have won? Nobody I know voted for him."

Professor Pitney wrote in with the correct quotation, which Murray commented on here.

Prof. John Pitney at Claremont McKenna sent me the actual quote, from the New York Times of 28 December 1972: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” Sort of the same thing, I know, but then I got another email from someone who wrote, “Pauline was a good friend, and was the farthest thing from a smug, unself-aware adherent of dumb liberal cant as you could imagine . . . She undoubtedly viewed Nixon as a sick puppy. But she was no insular, snobbish Margaret Dumont.” I take his assessment at face value, and will henceforth strike “Pauline Kael Syndrome” from my rhetorical arsenal.

Freshman should consider contacting Professor Pitney about joining his freshman Honors Introduction to American Politics. (I took it two years ago.) The class is a bit trivia-ladden, but that's to be expected. Daniel Pawson CMC '03 and the fourth most successful Jeopardy contestant ever, credited Pitney and CMC with his win.

Freshmen seeking to improve their writing should also consider applying by emailing Professor Pitney at this address. Good luck to you!

Was a Riverside Man Assaulted at a Claremont Health Care Debate?

Watching this past August's commentary on the health care debate, I'm more and more convinced by what Judge Andrew Napolitano has said, that the camera is the 21st century equivalent of the gun. Reading the report of what allegedly happened to Charles Cox, a pro-life activist, at a Claremont Townhall meeting, I'm wishing he had been armed with a video camera.

Here's the account in The Contra Costa Times.

CLAREMONT - A Riverside man injured his knee after he allegedly tried to disrupt a meeting on health care Thursday night, people attending a townhall meeting said.

Charles Cox, 21, of Survivors of Abortion Holocaust entered the Padua Room at the Alexander Hughes Community Center three times trying to shout down the discussion, observers claimed.

Before his injury, Cox said he was at the meeting because he felt the health care bill would tax financed abortions.

Cox said he was pushed by a man and fell on his knee, dislocating it. Observers said he tried to slip in the meeting through a side door for the second time, was pushed back and then injured.
Cox's group is a Christian, pro-life activism organization, according to its Web site at www.survivors.la.

The first time Cox entered the building and tried to raise points yelling, but he was led out physically, which caused some observers to question officials' tactics.

The Claremont Police Department was at the meeting and said it would not discuss what happened until everything was sorted out. Officers were seen questioning people at the scene.

The meeting, hosted by the Peace and Justice Committee of the Religious Society of Friends and the Claremont Democratic Club, had been formed to discuss health issues.

Here's the account in elsewhere. But boy, would I like to see some video before making up my own mind!

Pro-Lifers Attacked by Claremont Town Hall Meeting Staff, Others Threatened
Contact: Charles Cox, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, 559-308-2873

CLAREMONT, Calif., Aug. 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- Pro-life activists were attacked Thursday, August 27th, while voicing dissent at a town hall meeting in Claremont, CA. The meeting, held in the Alexander Hughes Center, was intended as a forum for discussing the health care reform bill currently in the House, HR 3200. The 7 p.m. event was hosted by the Democratic Club of Claremont.

Cox, a representative from the pro-life group, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, says he attended the meeting, "to discuss a bill which opens the floodgates to tax-funding for abortion."

At around 7:20 p.m., a representative from Progressive Christians United stood up to speak in favor of HR 3200. Cox, who was seated in the second row, retorted that tax-funded abortion was not something Christians should support.

The speaker motioned asked that Cox be removed. Approximately 10 people assisted in removing him.

Claremont police later declared that the individuals had no right to remove Cox, and he was readmitted into the meeting.

At approximately 7:45 p.m. another speaker asked that a man be removed for booing, and warned that any others who booed would be removed as well. When a woman associated with the event attempted to pull the man from his seat, he cried, "Don't touch me! I'm a lawyer. I'll sue you."

Cox then shouted, "You can't remove him just because he disagrees with you." At this, a crowd of people forcefully removed Cox from the room again.

Cox reentered through a side door where people were listening in on the meeting. The panel continued to threaten those who disagreed with the removal and threats. After a few minutes, a staff member for the event, Rudy Mann, noticed Cox and began to choke him. Mann pushed Cox to the ground by applying pressure to his handicapped knee, causing it to dislocate.

When another member of Survivors attempted to film the incident, she was shoved by the host of the event, Zehpyr Tate-Mann, in an attempt to block the camcorder.

Paramedics arrived and provided medical aide to Cox.

According to officer Christopher Abarca, Mann was arrested and brought to jail.

"It seems that the Democratic Club of Claremont was only interested in hearing one side of the story," said Cox. "And so they chose to use violence as a means to silence opposition."

I wasn't there when this happened, but somehow I find myself more inclined to believe Charles Cox's version of the story. It seems a tad bit more credible...

I wonder what the outcry would be from the Left, if a group of right leaning people forced someone out of a public, townhall event. Yeah, they would probably call them 'Nazis', 'un-American', etc., sort of like they are already doing.

Eagerly Awaiting Superfreakonomics Speaker at the Ath

I'm almost ashamed to admit that Freakonomics was one of the first books on economics I had ever read. (The first -- no joke -- was Das Kapital.) Freakonomics was one of the books read by the school's high school economics class, which I never took, preferring to go through the entire syllabus on my leisure.

So it should come as no surprise that I'm super excited about the sequel, SuperFreakonomics, and the fact that one of its authors, Steven Levitt, will be coming to speak at the Athenaeum this semester. The date of his talk -- October 22nd -- is 21st my birthday, as luck would have it, and what better Ath talk to toast to! I hope to rise bright and early so that I might sit at the head table, ever mindful of potential waterboarding -- err, "pondings."

And to whet my appetite I've been reading Dr. Levitt's blog, where he recently wrote about my second favorite sport --after poker, of course -- competitive eating and record breaking memory. Human achievement, at least in so far as food and memory, it seems, is limitless. Julian Simon would be proud.

Exit question: When Levitt takes the podium, can somebody please play she's a super freak?

Pomona's Dean of Admissions Discusses Endowment Troubles

Pomona College mentioned in Bloomberg. Here are the important graffs:

Pomona College, in Claremont, California, offered grants instead of loans to families that typically earned less than about $45,000 annually. In December 2007, with its endowment at $1.8 billion as of the previous June, and up from $1.3 billion at the end of fiscal year 2005, the school expanded the program to include all students who qualified for financial aid.

Investments from the endowment have fallen about 21 percent to an estimated $1.3 billion as of June 30, according to controller Andrew O’Boyle. The school has frozen salaries and reduced the number of replacements for teachers on sabbatical, according to Karen Sisson, the school’s treasurer and vice president. The expanded no-loan program will cost an additional $2.4 million annually, said Bruce Poch, the school’s vice president and dean of admissions. In the year before the expansion, about 10 percent of students qualified for loan-free financial packages; now, all students who qualify for financial aid, or 54 percent of the school’s 1,530 students, receive loan- free awards, Poch said.

Decision in Hindsight

“If we were making the decision in December ‘08 rather than December ‘07, would we do it? I think we probably wouldn’t have,” Poch said in an interview. “We were looking at a different world. If we knew then what we know now, we may not have gone this route.” Poch said trustees are still committed to the program.

No-loan policies began to spread after Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, in a September 2007 Senate Finance Committee hearing introduced the topic of endowment growth as tuition continued to rise and families struggled with affordability, said Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman. Later, Grassley raised the idea that university endowments should follow the same rules as foundations, which must pay out 5 percent of their total values each year, she said. At least 10 schools announced their new no-loan programs in November and December 2007

One of the people that has suggested that colleges pay out five percent is a former CMC professor, Richard Vedder. I will be interviewing him for the next issue of The Claremont Independent about the increasing costs of college.

Kesler's Excellent Essay in The Claremont Review of Books

Professor Charles R. Kesler's latest essay in The Claremont Review of Books is simply a masterpiece. In my estimation, it is the best essay I have ever read of his in nearly three years of reading his work.

In the essay, he traces the rises and falls of political orders in the United States and what conservatives must do "after Reagan, Bush, and Obama" to answer "The Conservative Challenge." It is essential reading for anyone wondering how the Right will win again.

A blog post on his essay cannot do it justice, but perhaps a few quotable paragraphs might shine a light on how solid of a writer the W.F. Buckley protégée - turned Claremont Review of Books editor is. He writes with characteristic humor and insight and I have selected only a few of my favorite paragraphs.

On how poor of a conservative Bush has been:

In his 2001 Inaugural Address, Bush drew attention to what he termed "a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion, and character." To these four c's he didn't trouble to add a fifth, the Constitution, despite the fact that he owed his election to one of its provisions, the Electoral College.

On how Obama’s politics represents a threat to all manner of laws:

To make the auto company deals happen, the Obama Administration had to subvert the existing laws of bankruptcy, but then once you've accepted the theory of the living Constitution it's a small matter to swallow a living bankruptcy code, too.

On how you can’t fool all of the people all of the time:

To overcome the contradictions of Big Government, liberals cheerfully offer Bigger Government. Consider the present case. Medicare and Medicaid are going broke. Doctor Obama prescribes a brand new, expensive health care program, which the Democrats cannot figure out how to fund, to cure the ills of the existing system. A third deficit-laden program to save two already verging on bankruptcy? The reality is that massive middle-class tax increases lie just over the horizon, along with draconian cuts in benefits, which will come partly disguised by long waiting lists, rationing of care, and shrinking investment in new drugs and technologies. Obama is betting that the socialist ethic of solidarity, of shared pain, can be made to prevail over democratic outrage at broken promises, shoddy services, and diminished liberty.

Claremont Politics Round Up

Here goes the round up.

CMC alum and would be U.S. Senator, Chuck DeVore, criticizes Fiorina for being pro-choice, but it turns out she's pro-life. True, the links in the post constitute statements she made on the campaign trail with John McCain, but we don't exactly have a voting record for her anyways.

Frankly, I'm surprised DeVore is bringing this up. The life issue won't really give him that much traction in an election in which he'll need the independents to win.

I wish DeVore would recognize that some of the statements he's making will be used by the Democrat opposition. I also wish he'd follow Reagan's 11th Commandment -- to never criticize another Republican. Doesn't he recognize that it's to the betterment of the entire country to get at least someone that can defeat Boxer?

------------------------------------------------------

At National Review Online, Professor Pitney asks why the Democrats haven't been able to accomplish any of their goals. My suspicion? Democrats depend upon the health care issue to garner votes. If they deliver what the far left wants -- the road to a single payer system -- then they'll lose a reliable vote getter and mobilizer of their base.

Today, Pitney pays tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy. Frankly, I'll never understand why it is that people feel the need to always say nice things about people when they die.

Reading the post a little closer, I'm inclined to think that Pitney was getting his digs in against the rationing of health care he argued against earlier in the week.

-------------------------------------------------------

Professor Frederick Lynch wonders who speaks for the Baby Boomers now that AARP is hemorrhaging membership. I'm very glad that the Baby Boomers aren't united on anything. If they were, that sucking sound you hear coming from your wallet would be all the more deafening.

Another Salvatori Speaker for the Coming Year

The Claremont Conservative has learned that the Henry Salvatori Center will be bringing Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute to the Athenaeum this semester.

Steven Hayward has written a marvelous new political biography, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989. The book concludes his volumes on Reagan.

You can hear him discuss it here. And to read what Professor Kesler has written about Hayward's work, please read this review here. (h/t: Powerline blog.)

William Calley Admits Wrongdoing for My Lai; Remembering the CMC Whistleblower Who Brought it To National Attention

William Calley, the former lieutenant convicted of 22 counts of murder at My Lai, publicly apologized for the massacre of Vietnamese civilians on Friday. It is believed to be the first public apology he has ever made for the massacre that landed him prison time.

Few remember that CMCer, Ron Ridenhour, Class of 1972, exposed this corruption to the light of day. For more on Ridenhour, please read this post I wrote on the 40th anniversary of My Lai.

Professor Pitney Argues Against Death Panels for Ted Kennedy

Professor John J. Pitney Jr. has a stirring argument against rationing health care found here. He's arguing against supposed medical ethicist and Harvard professor, James Sabin, who believes that Ted Kennedy should send a "message" and refuse his expensive treatment.

Sabin's message is that Ted Kennedy should pass up life-prolonging treatment and go gently into that good night. The ethicist would applaud if he gave a farewell speech saying "I should die more quickly!" But Americans admire the Kennedys because they fight like hell against illness and injury.

The comparison to Buffet is nonsense. If Buffet gets his way and pays more tax, he's still a billionaire. If Kennedy pulls his own plug, he's dead.

This is the ethics of redistribution applied to life and death. This is the world of Sophie's Choices and overcrowded lifeboats. It's not the world Americans want to live in.

Professor Pitney raises an interesting question. Just who is to judge the value of a life? What is an extra day really worth? An extra hour?

For most of us, that decision is a horribly difficult one to answer, but not, it would appear for those who insist that we must ration care. For them, it seems an increasingly easy choice. Rather than grow the pie of health care, others quibble about how to divide the slices.

I've criticized Charlie Sprague CMC '10 for much the same kind of thinking here.

CGU Professor Paul Zak Mentioned in City Journal

The question for our time is whether or not morality and markets must reach some kind of societal equilibrium for them to be most effective. Some favor regulations as a means of keeping us more honest. Others, like me, are skeptical of such regulations and argue that more often than not, they end up creating perverse incentives and distorting trust.

The latest article up on City Journal by Steven Malanga makes much this point, but looks at the importance of moral fiber in markets. (He also cites CGU Professor Paul Zak.)

Needless to say, this is not what Adam Smith had in mind. Smith laid the groundwork for the economic theories of The Wealth of Nations in his preceding book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which traces the evolution of ethics from man’s nature as a social being who feels shame if he does something that he believes a neutral observer would consider improper. Smith proposed that as societies evolve, they form institutions—courts of law, for instance—that reflect and codify these ethical perceptions of individuals, and that these institutions provide the essential backbone of any sophisticated commercial system.

Modern experiments in neuroscience have tended to confirm Smith’s notion that our virtues derive from our empathy for others, though with an important qualification: the ethics of individuals need reinforcement from social institutions and can be undermined by the wrong societal message, as neuroeconomist Paul Zak writes in Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy. When people find themselves bombarded by the wrong message—like the Washington Mutual employees whose supervisors constantly pushed them into riskier and riskier actions—some will resign in disgust, but others will gradually suppress what scientists call the brain’s “other-regarding” behavior and the shame that goes along with it and violate their own ethics.

Chuck DeVore Attacks Carly Fiorina for Not Voting, Being Rich

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I have unfailing respect for Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (CMC '85) and want him to win the nomination for the G.O.P and to take on Barbara Boxer in 2010.

I think he'll easily defeat any nominee for the nomination, and so I have to ask myself: What is DeVore doing in The San Francisco Chronicle criticizing his fellow Republican, Carly Fiorina over her spotty voting record?

If Republicans have any chance of winning in 2010 in California or elsewhere, they'll need to appeal to that pragmatic middle that has sat out elections. Many Americans have spotty voting records because few have felt that politics mattered as much as it does now that the government is trying to nationalize the health care sector of the economy, after it successfully nationalized the automotive industry and financial services sectors.

DeVore should be applauding wealthy people like Fiorina for joining the fight against Barbara Boxer. Instead, he caricatures her campaign and casts aspersions on her character. In language that sounds like it could have been written by the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, DeVore says that he,

... believes that Cornyn and other GOP biggies are drawn to Fiorina because, as "a telegenic self-funder," she's like an Instant Candidate - "you just add water." He also sees the influence of "consultative mercenaries" who "create their own candidates" with big checkbooks, then "turn around and work for them."

Earlier DeVore attacked Fiorina for having a "casual association with the democratic process." He even suggests that Fiorina doesn't appropriately value our "participatory democracy." Shame on you, Mr. DeVore. We're a republic. Perhaps Ms. Fiorina felt represented by those in office already? Democrats are the ones that fetishize the democratic process, prefering to nationalize or regulate.

It is policies, not procedures, that interest voters. DeVore should wise up and criticize Fiorina for her lack of substance, not her lack of going to the ballot box.

I'm disappointed in DeVore.

My Piece for the Forum on the Friedmans

I wrote a piece for The Forum on the legacy of the Friedmans and how they continue to have an influence. Here are some of the important paragraphs.

In many respects, it could be said that Claremont helped launch the Friedmans’ ideas into the mainstream. In 1958, Milton Friedman, along with F.A. Hayek and Bruno Leoni, gave a series of lectures at the Fifth Institute on Freedom and Competitive Enterprise at what is now Claremont McKenna. According to Professor Arthur Kemp, the lectures from this meeting were profoundly influential. Those lectures became Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, (which Professor Pitney recommends), Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom and Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law. With Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman established himself as the intellectual advocate of economic and political freedom, with Rose, being very much behind and supportive of every thing he wrote. Where Milton went, so went Rose. In awarding Milton Friedman the Presidential Medal of Honor, President George W. Bush joked that the only person who had ever beat him in an argument was his wife.

The Friedmans’ influence on the national culture began at another time of mass unemployment and American pessimism — during the late 1970s. In 1980, Rose and Milton co-wrote a book and a PBS series Free to Choose, that became one of the most influential television shows of a generation. The book sold some 400,000 copies that year alone and the television program average 3 million viewers per episode. (You can watch it all – legally – for free here.) Unsurprisingly, for a school whose motto is that civilization prospers with commerce, Claremont, too, got in on the act. In 1986, the Economics Department screened and discussed four episodes at the Ath. Since the publication of Free to Choose, the Friedmans visited the Ath twice – in 1986 and 1996 – at Claremont. (Unfortunately, the Ath has lost the videos.) They warmly mention Claremont McKenna in both of Two Lucky People and Free to Choose.

Just What Kind of College is Pitzer?!

I have to admit that I'm laughing pretty hard after I read some of the statements from Pitzer's Admission department in an article from U.S. News & World Report.

Here are two kernels of advice from Pitzer.

• Don't overdo extracurriculars. "If you add all the hours they say they're doing, you wonder how the hell are they going to school," says Arnaldo Rodriguez, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Pitzer College. "It becomes suspect at that point. Are they careless or just trying to pad the application to make themselves look more committed than they really are?"

• Handwriting counts. A few students apply the old-fashioned way—with penmanship so sloppy the college can't read the E-mail address to ask for clarifications. "Sometimes you get a handwritten application and it's clearly not the student who filled it out," adds Rodriguez of Pitzer College. "You wonder who's interested, parent or student?" One obvious tipoff is when the writing doesn't match the signature.

Just what kind of school is Pitzer? Apparently, some of the applicants are just so burning with social activism -- and their extracurriculars -- that they couldn't be bothered to fill out an application!

Two Salvatori Speakers for Next Semester

Some of the Henry A. Salvatori Center speakers this semester will include.

On October 6, 2009, Richard Brookhiser will speak on his current book, “Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley, Jr.” Hillel Fradkin, a scholar of Islamic thought and politics will talk in November 12, 2009, on “What Went Wrong? What Went Right: What’s Next? Reflections on Muslim History and the Modern World.”

The official list hasn't been released yet and I will let you know more when I know more.

For those interested in what they might say, allow me to direct you to several videos.

Click here if you'd like to see what Mr. Brookhiser has to say about his involvement with Buckley. (I have blogged on that in the past, here.)

Click here if you'd like to listen to what Dr. Fradkin has to say about the Middle East. (The title of the talk is an allusion to one of my favorite books, What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis.)

Chuck DeVore on Reason.tv

Reason.tv's Ted Balaker interviews CMC alum, Chuck DeVore '85. The title of the interview is "Every Last Penny and Then Some": Chuck DeVore on Government Spending Sprees, Tea Parties, and Running for Barbara Boxer's Senate Seat.

RIP, Major. Steven Hutchinson (and a CMC Professor)

A military man's life of contrasts

Soldier and scholar, a 'bleeding heart' with a gruff exterior, Maj. Steven Hutchison established an unlikely connection with a stray Iraqi dog.

By Jason Felch, The Los Angeles Times

August 9, 2009

In his final months in Iraq, love came unexpectedly to Maj. Steven Hutchison.

His 11-man crew was running errands on an Army base near Basra when Hutchison ordered a lunch break.

The transition team, whose job was to train Iraqi police and soldiers, pulled their armored vehicles into the base's Subway restaurant and ordered sandwiches.

Hutchison paid, as was his wont, and gave the thumbs up to roll out, team members recall. But the logistics advisor threw back a thumbs down.

Soldiers had gathered around the back of one vehicle and were playing with a scrawny yellow puppy, one of the many strays that wander Iraqi streets.

New mission, Hutchison barked. He took the 1-month-old puppy back to his armored vehicle, fed her his turkey sandwich and gave her water from his bottle.

"Maj. Hutchison was hooked," Sgt. Andrew Hunt later wrote in an e-mail to Hutchison's family. "She slept in his bed with him at night" and napped under his bed during the day, Hunt wrote. "She rode in his lap the entire day while we visited our Iraqi counterparts at several locations."

Hutchison was not a typical soldier. For starters, he was 60. Born in Cincinnati, he grew up in Long Beach and attended Wilson High before enlisting in the Army in 1966. He served two tours in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne and was awarded a Bronze Star.

Along with his chest full of medals, he had a doctorate in psychology. After a 22-year military career, he received the degree from the University of Delaware and then taught organizational psychology at Loyola Marymount University, Claremont McKenna College and Cal State Long Beach. Among the 29 publications listed on his resume was this one: "What ego-strength, hardiness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism and maladjustment have in common: Health-related personality constructs or neuroticism revisited?"

He was gruff and private, not exactly a family man, said his younger brother Richard Hutchison of Mesa, Ariz. He had been married four times and was estranged from his two adult daughters. The military had always been his real family.

When his fourth wife, Kandy Rhode, died of cancer in 2006, Hutchison was devastated. He put his house in Scottsdale, Ariz., on the market and signed up for the Army's Retiree Recall program, which brings back former soldiers -- up to 64 years old -- who want another shot at active duty.

The decision shocked many in his family.

"He was the most liberal man I know," recalled his niece Laurie Hutchison. "Everybody said, 'Why are you going back into the military to fight for this cause that most liberals wouldn't be for?' But he had a bleeding heart for all those Iraqi and Afghani people, and he felt passionately that many people don't see the human side of why we're there."

Hutchison was sent to Ft. Riley, Kan., where the Army's transition teams train before deployment. When he arrived, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his team members were skeptical; most were three decades his junior.

"I immediately said to myself, 'Are we that desperate that we have to put old people on a transition team?' " Elext Holmes, the team's logistics advisor, recalled at Hutchison's memorial service.

But his men quickly came to respect his quiet leadership. Hutchison never told anyone what to do, but his actions set a high standard. He was always the first to volunteer for grunt work around the base. And after returning from an exhausting patrol, he'd casually ask who wanted to join him for a run.

"He was a psychology professor, and he knew what he was doing," Holmes said.

Hutchison spent the first year of his two-year tour in Afghanistan, the second in Iraq. He was based at Ft. Riley and assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division.

His team in Iraq called him "the stubborn old goat." He was set in his ways, had little patience for "New Army" rules, and occasionally ignored some, his family and team members said.

The free thinker in him came out in odd ways, including the old-school purple short-shorts he insisted on wearing on his morning jogs around the base. More than once, he was ordered to change into his government-issued training gear. Within a few days, he'd be spotted again -- a 6-foot-4 gray-haired man running in the purple short-shorts.

Push eventually came to shove with his superiors over Laia, the name Hutchison gave the puppy his team had adopted as its mascot. Central Command does not allow service members to keep indigenous pets; strays were generally put down the same day they were caught. Several times, Hutchison's senior officers ordered him to get rid of the dog.

Hutchison repeatedly defied the orders, risking punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his team members recall. He hid Laia in his tent or sent her to another base when his superiors were in the area.

On May 10, Hutchison left Laia behind when he went out on patrol with his team in Al Farr, Iraq, near Basra. A roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle, and Hutchison died of shrapnel wounds.

He was a month short of his 61st birthday, making him the oldest U.S. casualty in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.

After a memorial service at Ft. Riley, he was buried in Scottsdale on May 19, and is survived by his mother, brother, a half brother, a half sister and his two daughters.

After Hutchison's death, Hunt asked a senior officer -- the same man who had ordered Hutchison to get rid of Laia -- if they could arrange to send her to the United States as a tribute to the major.

"Just get her out of here and don't let me see her," the officer said, according to Hunt's e-mails.

To arrange for the trip, Hunt worked with the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and SPCA International’s Baghdad Pups program, which has resettled 146 dogs and cats since it began in February 2008, according to SPCA spokeswoman Stephanie Scroggs. It costs an average of $4,000 for the nonprofit organization to rescue each pet.

Laia, who suffered a setback recently when she lost a leg to infection, is now living in Michigan with the family of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent who worked in Iraq with Hutchison's team. Hutchison's brother Richard plans to visit her soon; his mother already has.

"She has grown immensely since we had last seen her," Hunt told Hutchison's family in a recent e-mail. "Like Maj. Hutchison, you cannot tell Laia what to do."

jason.felch@latimes.com

The Silly Civil Libertarianism of Charlie Sprague

I'll confess that this post is baiting, but I cannot resist, having just nearly finished another Peter Singer book. Given the love that many on the Far Left have for Peter Singer, I have taken it upon myself to read his books so that I might be better able to respond to Singer's arguments.

Singer is one of the most radical thinkers in academia. Among other incredible things, such as suggesting that two year olds aren't human, he has indicated that were it up to him, he would euthanize his own mother. (She suffers from advanced Alzheimer's.) And yes, in true progressive fashion, his latest book, titled, The Life You Can Save, purports to lecture the rest of us about how we need to be more generous to the global poor among us.

You'll remember that Charlie Sprague CMC '10 has called Singer's argument in favor of rationing health care, "bold and courageous." Mr. Sprague, as Singler has, has also written in favor of euthanasia and so we might also ask ourselves just how much more Sprague thinks is "bold and courageous," but I leave that for others to judge.

In one of his pontifications for The Forum, Mr. Sprague writes against torture, which he suggests is both widespread and immoral. Mr. Sprague, who fashions himself a civil libertarian, except apparently when it comes to matters of race, life, and health care choices, argues that Barack Obama ought to eliminate detention and "torture" of terrorists picked up on the battlefield. Sprague's steadfast opposition to the detention of these terrorists -- many of whom have been picked up on a battlefield later on -- is all the more alarming when we think about how he rides roughshod over the rights of students to be free from racial discrimination or the freedom to live at whatever cost of our oldest Americans. It seems that he's a civil libertarian that promotes liberty for would be terrorists rather than the least among us: students and old folks.

Rather than recognizing that perhaps good men must do evil to protect the people, which is why Obama and Bush have similar policies vis a vis the terrorist threat in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sprague dismisses them as somehow both bad for us to "flagrant[ly] violat[e] international law."

I disagree. In fact, I think that having a Gitmo actually saves lives by working against the incentives to kill terrorists on the battlefield, which I suspect would prolong the war and make it even more intractable. Using coercive intelligence techniques, such as waterboarding, may be tantamount to torture, but if the stories surrouding Khalik Sheikh Mohammed are correct, then I have no practical reservations against it. (Sprague, no doubt, has heard this argument as it was repeated often -- and at length, as per usual-- by CMC debate coach John Meany.)

In his most recent book, The Life You Can Save, on p. 152, even Sprague's hero, Peter Singer, justifies using torture in an (admittedly) "highly improbable scenario."

Take the basic argument that torture is always wrong. Given the well-documented tendency of police and guards to abuse prisoners, and the low probability that torture will yield useful information, that rule seems likely to have the best consequences. Yet, I would argue, if I find myself in the highly improbable scenario where only torturing a terrorist will enable me to stop a nuclear bomb from going off in the middle of New York City, I ought to torture the terrorist. What the individual ought to do, and what the best moral rule directs one to do, are not necessarily identical.

As much as I am personally discomforted by torture, I recognize that it has been shown to save lives and I dispute the notion that a scenario, elsewhere denoted as a "ticking time" bomb is really all that implausible. On the contrary, it seems to me to be all too common, as I have written elsewhere, and as I have learned when I worked for my mentor, Alan M. Dershowitz, if we take a generous sense of what it means to have a "ticking time" bomb scenario. Yes, I think that nuclear weapons in Midtown might be more than a bit far fetched -- thank God -- but torturing someone to stop a suicide bombing or a 744 slamming into a building.

I concede that it may be difficult to draw a line between torturing one person to save the lives of two, but the kind of utilitarianism that would ration the health care of the dying should certainly take it up, if only for the intellectual challenge its adherents purport to seek.

Professor Pitney Recommends Obama Read Some Hayek This Summer

Over at The National Review Online, Professor John J. Pitney Jr. recommends that our centralizer-in-chief get his hands on some F. A. Hayek -- and given the state of the country, the health care de-form and his own popularity rating, here's to hoping he gets around to it quickly.

Pitney writes,

I’d recommend two by Friedrich Hayek. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek cautioned against the delegation of authority that is inevitable in something like Obamacare. If the law empowers officials to direct important areas of economic life, he said, “It must give them powers to make and enforce decisions in circumstances which cannot be foreseen and on principles which cannot be stated in generic form. The consequence is that, as planning extends, the delegation of legislative powers to divers Boards and Authorities becomes increasingly common.” (See section 123 of the amended HR 3200, on the “Health Benefits Advisory Committee.”) In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek wrote of many things, including schemes for national health insurance: “One of the strongest arguments against them is, indeed, that their introduction is the kind of politically irrevocable measure that will have to be continued, whether it proves a mistake or not.”

Meanwhile, CMC alum and would be U.S. Senator from the State of California, Chuck DeVore lists Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty on his Facebook page, along with CMC professor Harry V. Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided. You can read Mr. DeVore's review of Professor Jaffa's masterpiece here, which he calls a "must-read for policymakers" and a review of another Hayek book, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism here.

As Forrest Gump once said about shoes, so too can you tell a lot about a person by what's on his book shelf.

Another Semester of Lackluster Ath Speakers?

Last semester, Scripps College clearly brought the better speakers to campus. (Excepting, of course, the offerings of the Salvatori Center, which brought far fewer speakers than it usually does to campus.)

For my money, I think it's fair to say that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was one of the best speakers I have ever seen, especially when she demolished those Muslim radical students who hijacked the question of answer period.

In any event, the Ath this semester looks to be as boring as it was last semester. The list isn't up yet, but here's what I have found from looking around on the schedule.

Here's who we have in September.

Before I tear it what I consider to be one of the worst semesters ever, here are some of the Ath talks I'm looking forward to.

There's CalTech Professor Edward C. Stone, who has written on the universe and our role in it. (I'm a sci-fi geek what can I say?)

And as much as I find a lot of what Steven L. Spiegel has to say to be somewhat dated and wrong on the Middle East. (He famously suggested that Iraq would become just like Aghanistan before 9-11 and he was very wrong, thanks to the efforts of our military forces.)

I'm most looking forward to Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota and freelance journalist who was imprisoned by the Iranian regime and released after a grueling ordeal. She's got a book in the works about her experiences dealing with Iranian censorship. (Did I mention she's a fox?) I'll definitely be going to this talk.

I could go either way on these talks.

• There's a promised CMC student Debate. The topic hasn't been announced yet, so here are a few suggestions likely to get shot down: affirmative action (always relevant at a college campus) or health care. Given how left leaning John Meany, the head of the Claremont Debate Union is, I'd be willing to bet that it'll be a topic where the majority of students are on one side -- say, "gay marriage" (which Ilan Wurman argued against as a freshman) -- provided he has anything to do with it.

• (September 10) Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker is a good get, but I don't understand why he's the Class of 2013's speaker. Hasn't the tradition been to have a CMC professor do the talking so as to acquaint students? I thought that tradition worked, but maybe I'm mistaken and just generalizing too much from the past few years. Still, I would pay to see Professor Jaffa give him a dressing down on his book that compares Darwin and Lincoln. The idea that America wouldn't be a democracy or a good republic if it didn't free the slaves is simply historicism.

• Because the Roberts Environmental Center is ideological rather than empirical, you can bet that Professor David Rutledge's talk on peak oil will be depressing and an appeal to mitigate against so-called global warming. Just watch his YouTube video. Instead, the Roberts Environmental Center should have invited Professor Vaclav Smil who gave a great talk on oil and its future here (audio only.) Smil has studied, modeled, and predicted oil markets and biogeochemical cycles. He's advised China on environmental options and energy. By contrast, Rutledge has no background in climate research, but then Smil might say things that make Roberts uncomfortable.

But here are some of the more lackluster talks.

• The paragraph describing Francisco Vazquez CMC '72 is just another example of how the diversicrats have taken over the attention and the funds of the academy. The title of the talk? "Latinos in the United States: A Continental Quest for Democracy." I quote,
  
  Francisco Vazquez '72: professor of liberal studies; director, Hutchins Institute for Public Policy and Community Action, Sonoma State University; co-author,Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society (2003)

• And yes, the rumors are true. Claremont McKennan will be embarassing and disgracing the reputation of the Athenaeum by bringing RuPaul Charles. Yeah, we're bringing a drag queen radical to campus. Best quotation? Wikipedia says that s/he/it/xe is "noted" among drag queens for his indifference towards the gender-specific pronouns used to address him. He says, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care! Just as long as you call me."

Pomona Professor Weighs in on Clinton's Visit to Africa

Pierre Englebert, a Pomona professor of African politics, wrote a great summary of the issues affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo in The Christian Science Monitor and what, if anything, the United States can do to help in ameliorating the corruption and violence there.

It's a story I know well. When I worked at Harvard Medical School in high school, one of my bosses, Dr. Oscar Kashala, told me about the millions displaced, killed, and tortured in the DRC. He later came to speak at my high school where he recounted how the educational facilities at my prep school were perhaps better than any university in Africa and where he allowed me to interview him after he gave an evening talk. The slide show of misery he presented is indelibly seared in my mind. Later Dr. Kashala ran for president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, garnering just 4% of the vote. He remained determined, nonetheless, to return to his native country and work to develop it where he is today.

Since the presentation, I have often wondered: why was the Democratic Republic of Congo run so poorly, when it had so much promise in the years following independence and so many natural resources to use? Why is DRC such a miserable place?

Pierre Englebert summarizes much of my inclinations:

A major reason for this tragedy is that Congo's governance resembles a racket. Its politicians and administrators are mostly corrupt, getting rich from keeping their state dysfunctional, and promoting local violence to serve their interests. Throughout the country, people in positions of state authority systematically dominate and extract resources from those below them, all under the guise of sovereign power.

In short, the state is run by gangsters who relentlessly exploit the people of the country. Those who can leave, do.

Twenty-thousand U.N. troops and billions of aid have only added to the misery as that becomes something else to exploit and fight over. The U.N. troops, meanwhile, have been tarnished by the revelation that some workers sexually assaulted young, Congolese girls.

Pierre continues:

Although Clinton will speak against "gender-based violence," and Congress has approved a $15 million project for a "professional rapid reaction force" of Congolese trained in "the fundamental principles of respect for human rights," this is unlikely to achieve much. Soldiers terrorize because they, like other state officials, benefit from near total impunity; they steal because their officers and politicians hijack their pay; and they rape because it is an easy way to control and dominate civilians.

There is simply no accountability in DRC, which is part of the reason why I suspect that the efforts that Englebert suggests to stabilize Congo will prove fruitless. Our efforts to rid the problems may just encourage more problems to form. Forgive me for being too pessimistic, but I have just finished Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in An Age of Plenty and Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations. From those books, I have learned that corrupt countries oftentimes evolve that way, which is why corruption proves so difficult to root out and that more often than not, that corruption is the product of nearly intractable incentives.

I agree with his first suggestion, that there must be something done to eliminate the 5000 or so Hutu rebels responsible for the genocide, but find it difficult to imagine Rwanda wanting to engage in a protracted campaign against them, despite the U.N. sanctioning a hypothetical scenario.

In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame continues to be in control and part of the way he maintains that control is the constant security threats that Rwanda faces. Despite his tie and talk of entrepreneurship and modernization, remember Kagame was first a military man and his appeal stems from ridding Rwanda of the violence of '94. Seeking to demobilize the rebels in Eastern Congo is all well and good, but it fails to understand that part of the reason so many people seek to arm themselves is a fear of instability.

Next, Englebert calls for the U.S. to get more involved in encouraging the DRC to reform its predatory ways and its abuse of human rights, but hoping for the Obama State Department to offer a forceful voice for human rights might be an exercise in futility given his capitulation to Hugo Chavez, Kim Jung Il, the Mullahs of Iran, and Communist China.

I find the efforts at a land reform to be less than promising. In part, it's because land reforms have become far worse than just redistributing to one's ethnic kind. No one has yet been able to answer who would do the land reforming and when it's left up to the government, I see a Zimbabwe-esque situation ready to bloom.

I think Englebert's final idea is worthy of some serious reflection. He write that the United States should help develop a

...manufacturing sector that would deflate the importance of land and public office, and offer youth an alternative to warfare. Congolese labor is cheap. Rwanda, whose leadership has visions of becoming an African Singapore, could help create a free-trade zone with eastern Congo. Congo would then become eligible for the many benefits of the US African Growth Opportunity Act, which Clinton has promoted throughout her trip. Together, these efforts may finally give the country a fighting chance to escape misery.

While he is correct that a manufacturing sector would help deflate the importance of land, I'm worried that he might fall victim to what many African intellectuals did in the early days of independence which was to stress manufacturing to the exclusion of agriculture, rather than recognizing that manufacturing is an outgrowth of agriculture.

On pages 32-33 of Enough, Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, point out the problems that this has caused in the past by leading to mass hungers when world food prices rise.

"Given the struggles of those poor small farmers, exacerbated by exhausted spoils and fickle climates, some development experts argued that helping them produce bigger harvests would only prolong their penury. They were poor because they were shackled to subsistence farming; they needed to be freed by finding jobs in manufacturing, tourism, or services, jobs from which they could make money to buy food instead of growing it themselves. . . . Better to invest in manufacturing where local labor was cheaper, than in agriculture where foreign food was cheaper. In Haiti, for instance, farmers stopped growing rice and instead drifted to factories making underwear. Food production plummeted, but as long as prices remained low, the country could import what it needed, paying for food with money earned from exporting the underwear made by former farmers. "In all my years that we asked for help," said former Haitian agriculture minister Philippe Mathieu, "the answer was: NO. Agriculture is not a tool for development."

The authors of Enough argue that what is needed is a Green Revolution for this part of Africa, with specific focus on creating and nurturing commodities markets as the newly developed one in Ethiopia which seeks to redistribute some of the risks of farmers. Many African nations, such as Malawi, are starting to subsidize their own farmers, against the protests of the World Bank. In 2005, Malawi began subsidizing 1.4 million small farmers with a $55 million fertilizer and seed program. In 2007, the corn harvest topped 3 million tons and they sold their surplus to Zimbabwe for $120 million. Once the World Bank saw its success, it offered to help extend the program.

Similarly, in Economic Gangsters, the authors argue that what's needed is some kind of drought insurance -- be it private or government-- that allows farmers to mitigate against the likelihoods of drought. Their research indicates that drought and the famine it produces, is leading predictor of civil war and that it actually increases the case of civil war to one in three in a given year. They suggest a plan that monitors water levels and then swings into action with water or food stuffs before famine strikes. Such a system would hopefully preempt a war from occurring.

It is those kinds of programs that I would like to see the U.S. State Department advocate for, not a manufacturing approach. The U.S. government cannot even get manufacturing right in this country, to say nothing of it overseas.

Will Obamacare and the Coming Inflation Lead to Some Serious Rationing? Plus: DeVore's Position on Nationalized Health Care

More and more people are starting to realize that Obamacare is a single-payer system by stealth after the release of the video I showed earlier.

Glenn Beck, with CMC alum and scholar of progressivism at Hillsdale College, R. J. Pestritto, discusses the history and dangers of rationing and eugenics in the United States and Germany in this segment last evening. It's one of the most commanding special segments I have ever seen. You can watch them and two other panelists discuss Princeton professor Peter Singer's radical pro-eugenics, pro-euthanasia views (which Charlie Sprague presumably supports, calling him, "bold and courageous"), the threat of euthanasia in a hyperinflation, and government rationing and who in the Obama administration is pushing for it now and has written on it in the past. (Transcript here.)

Meanwhile, CMC alum and candidate for United States Senate against Barbara Boxer, Chuck DeVore. When viewed from this angle, DeVore's strategy of targeting older women voters that The Politico reported on earlier this month. At the time, I thought it was silly to target older voters. Now I'm increasingly convinced that DeVore is clever like a fox. Watch the ad and note how Barbara Boxer wants a single-payer system in the form of a stealth, public option.

Why Democrats Want A Single Payer Health Care System and Will Lie To Get It

In the comment section of The Forum, Andrew Bluebond CMC '11 criticizes me for suggesting that Obama wants a single payer health care system.

How you can say that Obama wants single-payer health care is beyond me. No one has made a serious effort to bring about such a system during the entire fight over health care reform, and you have yet to substantiate that claim. The misinformation campaign waged by those who are against health care reform has gotten tired. There are legitimate concerns about how we are going to pay for this and how it will be instituted, but you didn’t voice a single one of them. [Emphasis mine]

Andrew's either ignorant of the debate or dishonest. I leave it up to you to take your pick.

Here's the long comment I wrote in response. (I have cleaned up the links and added a bit more. You can read the original comment here.)

Sorry Andrew, but you’re absolutely wrong about Obama and a single-payer health care system and I would appreciate it if you would stop telling me and others what is a “legitimate concern.” Let me substantiate those claims, as you are an ideologue and likely only read the left-leaning blogosphere. Truthfully, the only thing that has been "tired" in this and most every other debate we’ve had is fact checking you. That’s OK, I don’t mind it, but the onus is usually on the person that wants to change the status quo and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t malign people who have a genuine disagreement and have actually looked at the facts of the bill. Thanks.

Just watch this video right here and it does all my proving for me.

In the video, you’ll see Jacob S. Hacker wants a single payer system and has advised Democrat candidates and that numerous members of the Senate and the House have called for it, including one who admitted that the public option was a steal means of getting rid of a private market. In time, we’ll hear, as sure as rain falls from the sky, that the government needs to get more involved due to increasing health care costs once Obama’s public option goes through.

In this video, you’ll see Barney Frank admits that he’s going to get a single payer system.. Here’s what he says on camera, “If we get a good public option it could lead to single payer,” Frank said. “The best way to get single payer — the only way — is to have a public option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”

Obama himself said he supported a single-payer health care system in 2003 and suggested as much in 2009. You can watch the video here, if you don’t believe me.

In 2002, in his regular column for the Hyde Park Herald, Obama wrote, “I have been one of the leaders in the General Assembly on universal health care as the chief State Senate sponsor of the Cardinal Bernardin Amendment, which would change Illinois to a single-payer system where everyone received health benefits.”

He ran, in part, on his record in the Illinois State Senate. Are we to overlook this? He has also stated that there are “countries where a single payer system works well.” I’d like to know which countries those are from Obama. In the past, he’s said it was Canada or France, but Canadians have been changing their law to allow more private competition. At least 1000 Canadians doctors and many thousands of Canadian nurses have migrated to the U.S. to avoid price controls on their salaries and ability to offer care. They’ve been going the opposite way Obama wants to go! (France's system is facing proposed, and highly unpopular, cuts.)

Forgive me, but I tend to take Obama at his word. And I know enough economics to know that when you have a public option, it tends to lead to less investment in the private sector. Higher education is a perfect example of how government involvement tends to increase costs, rather than curtail them. The cost of higher education escalates as the government has gotten more involved with subsidized loans, grants. etc.

As for “refusing to pay for such treatments until heath care providers…” you basically explain yourself why so many of us fear that a system to control American health care will lead to government rationing.

Who are you to argue that a treatment is “superfluous”? When I have a choice between paying for a supposedly “unnecessary” test — just who is going to make that determination I haven’t a clue — and risking not paying for a necessary test, I think I’m not alone in choosing the first option every time. Americans should have the choice to spend their money as they see fit on their own health.

As for the idea that the uninsured cannot receive “basic preventative care”, I would just point out that that’s because of the mandates imposed by special interests which drive up the cost of health insurance. It’s simply too costly to insure such people. But the idea that they do not receive care is unfounded. It is federal law for a hospital to treat anyone who arrives at its doorstep. Certainly this leads to increased costs as the poor (or the lazy or the young or illegal immigrants) use emergency rooms as their primary care.