FALLACIOUS
CLIPPINGS ANALYSIS REASONING IN EVERYDAY
ARGUMENTATION
By Eric C. Talaska
A PROJECT
Communication Dr. Dennis Bailey
University of Arkansas April 21, 1994
NAME
~c__,I
DATE
~
COMM 3351, Argumentation
~,31
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tl[
EVALUATION
CUPPfNG-FALLACY
b_f,
_
ANALYSES FORM
---_._--,---Relevant Info on Assignment Response: Davs late x2= . points penally () (LApproxunate number of clippings and analyses
--------Ratings defined:
10 Superior, could not be improved upon 9 Excellent, only slight room for improvement 8 Good. average and above 7 Acceptable, ok but considerable room for improvement 6 Inadequate, unacceptable 0-5 Little or no response on criterion
1. Assignment presented in clear, well-ordered. and attractive manner.
.LQ_
2. Clipping choices reflect substantive issues and argument.
/D --
3. Relevant portions of clipping are highlighted and fallacy clearly identified in heading or first sentence of cnticaJ response.
10 ---
4. Bibliographic data complete and correctly stated in MLA form.
10 ---
S. Critical responses identify "best calls" on fallacies. 6. Analyses accurately and fairly describe argument from clippings,
/0 ._-_.1 D
7. Analyses effectively justiJ)' "calls" on fallacies,
--/0 .
8. Analyses reflect an a wareness of current news.
---
__ q
/0
9. Composition reveals clear and effccth e writing style. 10. Text of critical analyses carefully proofread to delete errors in spelling and grammar.
Evalaetien lo~1
-3qg _._-
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y
Wilbert Rideau
Why Prisons Don't Work
I
WAS AMONC
(Ju ~J
31 MURDERERS
SENT TO THE
LOUISIANA
State Penitentiary in 1962 to be executed or imprisoned for life. We weren't much different from those we found here, or those who had preceded us. We were unskilled, impulsive and uneducated misfits, mostly black, who had done dumb, impulsive things-failures, rejects from the larger society. Now a generation has come of age and gone since I've been here, and everything is much the same as I found it. The faces of the prisoners are different, but behind them are the same impulsive, uneducated, unskilled minds that made dumb, impulsive choices that got them into more trouble than they ever thought existed. The vast majority of us are consigned to suffer and die here so politicians can sell the illusion that permanently exiling people to prison will make society safe. Getting tough has always been a "silver bullet;' a quick fix for the crime and violence that society fears. Each year in Louisianawhere excess is a way of life-lawmakers have tried to outdo each other in legislating harsher mandatory penalties and in reducing avenues of release. The only thing to do with criminals, they say, is get tougher. They have. In the process, the purpose of prison began to change. The state boasts one of the highest lockup rates in the country, imposes the most severe penalties in the nation and vies to execute more criminals per capita than anywhere else. This state is so tough that last year, when prison authorities here wanted to punish an inmate in solitary confinement for an infraction, the most they could inflict on him was to deprive him of his underwear. It was all he had left. IÂŁgetting tough resulted.in public safety, Louisiana citizens ".w~~e safest in the nation. They're not. Louisiana has the highest murder rate among states. Prison, like the police and the courts, has a minimal impact on crime because it is a response after the fact, a mop-up operation. It doesn't work. The idea of punishing the few to deter the many is counterfeit because potential criminals either think they're not going to get caught or they're so emotionally desperate or psychologically distressed that they don't care about the consequences of their actions. The threatened punishment. regardless of its severity, is never a factor in the equation. But society, like the incorrigible criminal it abhors. is unable to learn from its mistakes. Prison has a role in public safety, but it is not a cure-all. Its value is limited, and its use should also be limited to what it does best: isolating young criminals long enough to give them a chance to grow up and get a grip on their impulses. It is a traumatic experience, certainly, but it should be only a temporary one, not a way of life. Prisoners kept too long tend to embrace the criminal culture, its distorted values and beliefs: they have
,,-MOo
p~qtctl
80
little choice-prison is their life. There are some prisoners who cannot be returned to society-serial killers, serial rapists, professional hit men and the like-but the monsters who need to die in prison are rare exceptions in the crirninallandscape. Grime is a young man's game. Most of the nation's random violence is committed by young urban terrorists. But because of long, mandatory sentences, most prisoners here are much older, having spent 15, 20, 30 or more years behind bars, long past necessity. Rather than pay for new prisons, society would be well served by releasing some of its older prisoners who pose no threat and using the money to catch young street thugs. Warden John Whitley agrees that many older prisoners here could be , freed tomorrow with little or no danger to society. Release, bow- : ever, is governed by law or by politicians, not by penal professionals. Even murderers, those most feared by society, pose little risk. Historically, for example, the ~ domestic staff at Louisiana's Goverf,.Js,o u-ill nor's mansion has been made up of , murderers, hand-picked to work ~lle~f. among the chief-of-state and his famtill ily. Penologists have long known that , murder is almost always a once-in-alifetime act. The most dangerous I criminal is the one who has not yet killed but has a history of escalating offenses. He's the one to watch. ~ Rehabilitation can work. Every- I one changes in time. The trick is to influence the direction that change takes. The problem with prisons is that they don't do more to rehabilitate those confined in them. The convict who enters prison illiterate will probably leave the same way. Most convicts want to be better than they are, but education is not a priority, This prison houses 4,600 men and offers academic training to 240, vocational training to a like number. Perhaps it doesn't matter. About 90% of the men here may never leave this prison alive, The only effective way to curb crime is for society to work to prevent the criminal act in the first place, to come between the perpetrator and crime. Our youngsters must be taught to respect the humanity of others and to handle disputes without violence. It is essential to educate and equip them with the skills to pursue their life ambitions in a meaningful way. As a community. we must address the adverse life circumstances that spawn criminality. These things are not quick, and they're not easy, but they're effective. Politicians think that's too hard a sell. They want to be on record for doing something now, something they can point to at re-election time, So the drumbeat goes on for more police, more prisons, more of the same failed policie~\ Ever see a dog chase its tail? N.lft! a"'~/t>8~ ('uy.b/~(;()uJ).
I
r
I
I•
Wi[ben Rideau is editor of the Angolite, the Louisiana State Penitentiary newsmagazine, and co-editor oJLife Sentences.
TI~IJ::. MARCH 21. 19!H
A ,IJIII,.d eref' (orfjf.l)t¡P{ z.et/-, OU)/ ,
In CO/?Si(t""'C.'1 'l
)
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y
Eric Talaska Rideau,
~'''')::
1994:
Don't
Work."
Time
keep prisoners
states that prisons (not immates?)
do not work because
are well managed and lawyers.
by "authority"
He says prisons,
most ineffective
in solving
The arguments first noticeable
prove they do.
outweigh prison
fallacy
7 and
different
The
in the
don't work just because we cannot
(at least some!),
"work" is somewhat
sense to
that is, the benefits
We cannot simply close down a for proof.
IIworW
Another
What does 1I,.,ork"
do not have one single advantage? ambiguous.
is a false charge of fallacy when he states that
liThevast majority here so politicians
of us are consigned
charge of fallacy He says that
to suffer and die
can sell the illusion
people to prison
that permanently
will make society
is the appeal
safe. II The false
to authority.
"excess is a way of life
ll
That is a fallacy of suppressed questionable
fallacies.
is an appeal to ignorance
the disadvantages.
There
the courts are
crime problems.
in the ti tIe is the word
The word
that prisons
We can use good reason and common
do work
they
such as politicians
POlic
several
Does it mean prisons
exiling
figures
and see if things get better
fallacy mean?
present
He claims prisons
say prisons
t!(
too long and do not educate
He argues that we are under the illusion
title.
21 Man•.
80.
The writer
them.
"Why Prisons
Wilbert.
premise.
evidence
He asserts
in Louisiana.
and a fallacy of
they all live in excess.
He is charged with the fallacy he says that young criminals "only effective prevent
should be imprisoned,
way to curb crime
the criminal
of inconsistency
is for society
act in the first place."
because
but the
to work to
By Michael Kramer
Frying Them Isn't the Answer troublesome, declared Supreme Court Justice Harry Blacklearned that lesson late, but he learned it well. After mun, the death penalty "remains fraught with arbitrariness, regaining Arkansas' governorship in 1982, which I discrimination, caprice and mistake:' According to a 1987 he had lost in 1980 to a law-and-order rival, Clinton Stanford University survey; at least 23 Americans have been set 70 execution dates for 26 prisoners over 10 years; three Vll'ongl짜executed in the 20th century. Just since 1973 an adwere actually put to death. To reaffirm his mettle as he ran ditional 48 have been freed from death row when evidence of their innocence surfaced before their sentences were carfor the White House, Clinton rushed home from New Hampshire to deny a condemned murderer's clemency plea. ried out. Too, says Blackmun, the "virus of racism" pervades the penalty's application. Studies confirmed by the General The brain-damaged killer barely knew his own identity, let alone the fate that awaited him (at his last meal, he saved the Accounting Office in 1990 report that blacks who kill whites pecan pie to eat later), but Clinton proceeded 'without apparare sentenced to death at "nearly 22 times the rate of blacks ent qualms. "I can be nicked on a lot:' he said afterward, "but who kill blacks and more than seven times the rate of whites no one can say I'm soft on crime." who kill blacks." Thus, despite the many supposed safeguards, what matters most is still who Whatworked for the candidate is you are, who you kill and who your doing even better for the President. lawyer is-a reality made worse as the The muscular, get-tough themes that Supreme Court repeatedly restricts have become a staple of Clinton's the convicted killers' rights of appeal. rhetoric have won the public's blessSerious crime fighting would, ing. Last week, for the first time, the above all, emphasize the certainty of majority of people surveyed in two :::=...::-_;;;: capture. "Criminals calculate the national polls said Democrats are "W>:?!~;~:""".~'! odds of apprehension and rightly better able than Republicans to "hanconclude that crime pays;' says Alfam dle crime problems:' Walinsky, the New York lawyer reTime, then, to deliver. A crime bill sponsible for the- crime bill's comis struggling through Congress. mendable police-corps proposal, While Clinton avoided involvement which would award college scholarduring its drafting, he is now comships in exchange for four years of plaining about the delay in its paslaw-enforcement work. "As recently sage. Far worse; he is supporting its as a decade ago, arrest rates for homimost emotionally appealing proposcide exceeded 95%, even in the big als instead of seeking to shore up the cities. It's now down to 50%. The robsingle measure that has been proved bery arrest rate is down to 24%; it's to work: more cops on the beat. Last 13% for burglaries." Why? Well, for. week, for example, Vice President AI one thing, there-are currently 3.3 vioGore offered the Administration's lent crimes committed for every ROversion of a "three strikes and you're lioe-efficer, exactly opposite the ratio out" scheme that modifies the crime of 25 years ago. "Until you invert that bill's harsh life-imprisonment Ian- Clinton wants more death sentences, but bias balance;' says Walinsky, "you can guage only slightly by narrowing the and bad trials could condemn the innocent forget about it. Until you catch 'em, list of applicable felonies. Any threeyou can't even think about what to do with 'em." strikes proposal, however, will affect only several hundred '[he solution? Get more cops, which is exactly what the federal inmates each year. "We hope the states follow suit;' crime bill proposes: almost $9 billion would be allocated to says a Clinton aide, an inefficient course that could bankrupt help localities hire an additional 100,000 officers over five those that do. In California, a three-strikes provision would years. But after that money runs out, financially strapped double the incarcerated population, require :20 new prisons communities may be forced to fire their new cops. What's and swell the current $2.8 billion corrections-department needed, then, is a rejiggering. The crime bill's many porkbudget by about $2 billion. "We can't afford it." says John barrel provisions, like the one that would combat the intro- , Vasconcellos, chairman of the state assembly's Ways and duction of "nonindigenous plant and animal species" into ~ Means committee. "There would be no California left, exHawaii, should be junked. Every available dollar should go cept for the police and prison state:' for more cops-forever. As Gore claimed dubiously that a three-strikes law would Those like AI Gore, who says "we're searching for what make a "huge dent in violent crime;' Clinton endorsed exworks," should stop searching and work to beef up the one panding the death penalty to 52 federal offenses, including remedy proved to make a difference. If, on the other hand, the attempted assassination of the President: today, only a toughness is defined by proliferating three-strikes laws, or by drug-related killing is a capital crime. Those on the front executing a few more of the worst among us, then, as the relines are appalled. "1 know of no law-enforcement profescently resigned D_epucyAttorney General Philip Heymann sional who believes the [new] death-penalty provisions says, polities will continue to "overwhelm reason," and we'll (r();)J would affect public safety in the slightest;' says Robert Morbe back "searching for what works" after the next election. genthau, Manhattan's respected district attorney. Equally
N
EVER GET TARRED AS SOFT ON CRIME. BILL CLINTON
*
32
Tl:"vlE. MARCH 14, 1994
II
Eric Talaska Kramer,
Michael.
Mar~
"Frying Them Isn't the Answer."
14
1994: 32.
The argument possible
suggests
that we spend as much money as
from "the crime bill" on hiring new police officers
and ban executions unjust
Time
because
executions
are "proven
II
to be
"too ofte0
The fallacy of misleading the essay.
liThe majority
polls s:V
polls may occur throughout
of people
surveyed
in two national
How many people were surveyed?
they surveyed?
Who did the survey?
people
could be 50.5 percent.
surveyed
error, that could run counter fallaciously
irrelevant
that Democrats crime problems?
The "majority"
I~relevant
The poll is
Why does it matter
than Republicans reasoning
of the
With a plus or minus
to the argument.
to the topic.
may be better
Where were
to handle
is evident.
One survey given does not make sense and is therefore an insignificant
poll.
It states that a 1987 Stanford
University
survey showed at least 23 Americans
have been
wrongfully
executed
Americans
questionable
in the 20th century. ~
and senseless
surveyed
what they thought.
educated
guess.
Statist~cs Lawy er , ~
Âť->:
I
college
It is assumed
students
to be an average
It seems to be an unknowable are given by Adam Walinsky,
were
statistic.
a New York
cannot be taken ser iously due to the subj ect
matter because habits
because
is
police officers
to alter statistics.
simply change their recording
Police
records are not accurate.
E
s Bar o ar.
y :.ha'enreich
Kicking the Big One N EVIL GRIPS AMERICA, A LfFE-SAPPING,
A
DRUG-RELAT-
ed habit. Itbeclouds reason and corrodes the spirit. It undermines authority and nourishes a low-minded culture ofwinks and smirks. It's the habit of drug prohibition, and it's quietly siphoning off the resources that might be better used for drug treatment or prevention. Numerous authorities have tried to warn us, including most recently the Surgeon General, but she got brushed off like a piece of lin t. After all, drug prohibition is right up there with heroin and nicotine , among the habits that are hell to kick. Admittedly, legalization wouldn't be problem-free either. ? Americans have a peculiarly voracious appetite for drugs, and probably no one should weigh in on the debate who hasn't seen .afriend or loved one hollowed out by cocaine or reduced to selling used appliances 00 the street. But if drugs take a ghastly toll. drug prohibition has proved itself, year after year, to be an even more debilitating social toxin. -Consider the moral effects of marijuana prohibition. After booze and NyQuil, pot is probably America's No. 1 drug of choice-a transient, introspective high that can cure nausea or make the evening sitcoms look like devastating wit. An estimated 40 million Americans have tried it at some point, from Ivy League law professors to countryand-western singers. Yet in some states, possession of a few grams can get you put away for years. What does it do to one's immortal soul to puff and wink and look away while about 100,000 oth-I er Americans remain locked up for doing the exact same thing? Marijuana prohibition establishes a minimum baseline level of cultural dishonesty that we can never rise above: the President "didn't inhale;' heh heh. It's O.K. to drink till you puke, but you mustn't ever smoke the vile weed, heh heh. One of the hardest things a parent can ever tell a bright and questioning teenager-after all the relevant sermonizing, of course-is, Well. just don't get caught. But the prohibition of cocaine and heroin may be more corrosive still. Here's where organized crime comes in, the cartels and kingpins and Crips and Bloods. These are the principal beneficiaries of drug prohibition; without it they'd be reduced to three-card monte and numbers scams. Legitimate entrepreneurs must sigh and shake their heads in envy: if only the government would ban some substance like Wheat Chex, for example, so it could be marketed for hundreds of dollars an ounce. Yes, legal drugs, even if heavily taxed and extensively regulated, would no doubt be cheaper than illegal ones. which could mean more people sampling them out of curiosity. But this dan70
ger has to be weighed against the insidious marketing dynamic of illegal drugs, whose wildly inflated prices compel the low-income user to become a pusher and recruiter of new users. Drugs can kill, of course. But drug prohibition kills too. In Washington, an estimated 80% of homicides are drug related, meaning drug-prohibition related. It's gunshot wounds that fill our urban emergency rooms, not ODs and bad trips. Then there's the perverse financial logic of prohibition. The billions we spend a year on drug-related law enforcement represents money not spent on improving schools and rebuilding neighborhoods. Those who can't hope for the lasting highs of achievement and self-respect are all too often condemned to crack. So why don't we kick the prohibition habit? Is it high-minded puritanism that holds us back, or political cowardice? Or maybe it's time to admit that we cling to prohibition for the same reason we cling to so many other self-destructive habits: because we like the way they make us feel. Prohibition, for example, tends to make its advocates feel powerfully righteous, and militant righteousness has effects not unlike some demon mix of liquor and amphetamines: the eyes bulge, the veins distend, the voice begins to bray. But the most seductive thing about prohibition is that it keeps us from having to confront all the other little addictions that get us through the day. It's the NutraSweet in the coffee we use to wash down the chocolate mousse; a dad's "Just say no" commandments borne on martini-scented breath. "Don't do drugs," a Members Only ad advises. "Do clothes:' Well, why "do" anything? Why not live more lightly, without compulsions of any kind? Then there's TV,the addiction WhOSJ name we can hardly speak-the poor man's virtual reality, the substance-free citizen's 24-hour-a-day hallucinatory trip. No bleary-eyed tube addict, emerging from weekend-long cata~ nia. has the right to inveigh against "drugs:' When cornered. the prohibition addict has one last line of defense. We can't surrender in this war, he or she insists, because we'd be sending the "wrong message:' But the message wire sending now isthis: Look,kids, we know prohibition doesn't work, that it's cruel and costs so much we don't have anyfhing left over with which to fight the social causes of addiction or treat the addicts, but, hey, it feels good, so we're going to keep right on doing it. To which the appropriate response is, of course, heh heh. We don't have to quit cold turkey. We could start with marijuana, then ease up on cocaine and heroin possession, conc-entrating law enfQr~ement on the big-time pushers.. Take it slowly. see how it feels. One day at a time. •
"1"1.\11::,FEBHUHY
4
(~~ .' !
I t
I ..
J
28. [994
'I
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~ I,J
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Eric Talaska Ehrenreich,
Barbara.
"Kicking
the Big One."
Time 28
Feb~ _ .". 1994: 70. Barbara schools
suggests
and rebuilding
currently
neighborhoods
analogies
is counter
opposite.
to popular
Tricky paragraph
An especially prohibition
not relevantly The arguer
belief
structure
to the popular
is used.
is made by arguing
that are hell to kick."
"drug
and nicotine The cases are
They cannot .be in the same category.
is not convincing
in any logical manner
that
is a habit that is hell to kick.
She says that Americans for drugs.
have a peculiarly
How many Americans?
it look like at least most Americans and statistic
She asserts
One
that drug prohibition
as compared
bad analogy
alike.
drug prohibition
~ll
in this essay.
is right up there with heroin
among the habits
premise
and slowly legalize
flourish
is an evil that grips America
appetite
money on
illegal drugs.
Questionable analogy
we spend drug enforcement
voracious
She tries to make
do, a questionable
that can probably
that drug prohibition
be proven wrong. has taken an even
than drugs, a questionable premise because there
is no proof of that via statistics, ~
an~;fs unbelievable.
She says "it's O.K. to drink until you puke." a questionable
premise.
How many people really believe
There is a questionable Checks were banned,
That is
analogy
that?
when she says if Wheat
it could be sold for hundreds
of
•
dOllars.
Only a rare idiot MQuld
those c1rc~aetancea.
buy thAt pruduct under
It is not a relevunt anal09Y.
Comparing the tvo is not a lair co.par!eon.
•
E
s
s
A
y
Dennis Overbye
BOTIl
to Raise Hell?
OME OF us, IT SEEMS, WERE JUST BORN TO BE BAD. Institutes of Health canceled its financial support for a planned ' Scientists say they are on the verge of pinning down conference on the biology of violence. Now,however, bolstered genetic and biochemical abnormalities that predispose by a cautious approval from the National Academy of Sciences, their bearers to violence. An article in the journal the conference is back on, and Goodwin is head of the National Science last summer carried the headline EVIDENCE FOUND Institute of Mental Health. FOR A POSSIBLE "AGGRESSION" GENE. Waiting in the wings are Science marches on. Or does it? The whole affair is unchild-testing programs, drug manufacturers, insurance cornpacomfortably reminiscent-as the scientists admit-of the 1960s, nies, civil rights advocates, defense attorneys and anxious citi- when researchers theorized that carriers of an extra Y,or male, zens for whom the violent criminal has replaced the beady- chromosome were predisposed to criminality, or of earlier ateyed communist as the boogeyman. Crime thus joins tempts to read character from the bumps on people's skulls. As homosexuality, smoking, divorce, schizophrenia, alcoholism, any doctor who ever testified for a tobacco company in one Of] shyness, political liberalism, intelligence, religiosity, cancer those trials knows, the statistical association of two things, like ) ~ . and blue eyes among the many aspects of human life for which smoking and cancer, or guns and murders, does not necessari- ~ it is claimed that biology is destiny. Physicists have .---_..... ly imply cause and effect. We know too little about ~ been pilloried for years for this kind of reductionthe biochemical cocktail that is the brain, and :: ism, but in biology it makes everybody happy: all too much about how stigmatized chil- ; the scientists and pharmaceutical companies dren live down to our expectations. ~ expand their domain; politicians have Being a great fan of science, I'm all in 2'" "progress" to point to; the smokers, divorfavor of more research, testing, poking, a ces and serial killers get to blame their drugging, jailing, genetic therapy, amnio- ~ ~I problems on biology, and we get the satcentesis, just as soon as someone can give'" isfaction of knowing they are sick-not me a scientific definition of impulsivity, like us at all. one that provides, say, a cultural- and Admittedly, not even the most rabid color-blind distinction between a spiritsociobiologists contend that babies pop ed child and an impulsive one. If bar out of the womb with a thirst for bank robfights are the criteria, it's nice to think that bing. Rather, they say, a constellation of ina simple blood test might have spared us the fluences leads to a life of crime, among them antics of people like Billy Martin or George poverty, maleness and a trait known as "irnpul~""-~~'~" Steinbrenner. sivity;' presumably caused by bad brain chemistry. My real complaint is that the violence initiative caused in turn by bad genes. What, you may ask, is irndoesn't go nearly far enough. Some laboratory should be pulsivity? The standard answer tends to involve people who looking for the racism gene, or the homophobia gene. Goodwin can't control their emotions or who get into bar fights. A study was right; the inner city is a jungle. But so are the corporation, conducted in Finland found that men so characterized tend to the newsroom and the White House staff. The language of tribe deficient in the brain hormone serotonin-one of several allawyers or bond traders in full testosterone fury is as bloodchemical messengers that transmit signals between nerve cells. curdling as any mugger's. When it comes to social carnage, the In another study researchers found that the men in a Dutch convenience-store stickup can't compare with a leveraged buyfamily with a history of male violence seemed to lack the ability out, trickling-down unemployment, depression, anger, aleoto break down certain neurotransmitters, including serotonin, holism, divorce, domestic abuse and addiction. I'd like to see that build up in the brain during flight-or-fight situations. Couwhite men with suspenders and cellular phones tested for the pIe this with persistent statistical surveys purporting to show that greed gene. The genomes of presidential candidates should be criminals tend to run in families and you have the logic behind a matter of public record. the Violence Initiative dreamed up a couple of years ago by the I'm a middle-aged white man as afraid as anyone else of beDepartment of Health and Human Services, which included re- ing not quite alone on a dark New York City street, and I've search to discover biological markers that could be used to dis- stared into the stone-cold eyes of a mugger while he told me, "It's tinguish violence-prone children as early as age five. "-illy doubts just you and me:' When you hear those words, it's too late to fight about the potential for abuse in such a program were erased the war on crime. The rush to define criminals as sick obscures when Frederick Goodwin, then director of the Alcohol, Drug an uncomfortable truth about our society, which is that crime Abuse and Mental Health Administration. lapsed into a com- and violence often pay handsomely. Just ask the conquistadores, parison of inner-city youth to murderous oversexed monkeys the Menendez brothers, Oliver North or the comfortable and reduring a speech about the initiative. "Maybe;' he said, "it isn't spected descendants of bootleggers and slaveholders. Ask the just the careless use of the word when people call certain areas purveyors of the most violent television program in recent of certain cities jungles .. :' Amid the ensuing outcry. the National memory: the Gulf War. •
S
I I
76
TIM E. fEBRUARY 21,1994
_V
Eric Talaska Overbye,
Dennis.
"Born to Raise Hell?"
Time 21 Feb. 1994:
76. Dennis
argues that more time and money
on researching evolve.
the primary
reasons why criminals
He uses scientific
good at evading qUestio~ut portrays
fallacies.
argumentation He doesn't
gives possibilities.
a fetus as a genetic
well,
Although highly
emerge or so he is
really answer his
The comical
drawing
criminal.
There are perhaps many questionable to become violent.
should be spent
Some are presented
causes
for people
in his essay.
he does not state as a fact that violence
related
to genes, he surly must believe
that "some laboratory
should be looking
it.
is He says
for the racism gene,
or the homophobia gene," implying that science has proven ~~~. such genes. He even says there is a greed gene. Maybe there are such genes, but he does not admit that they are not proven
scientifically
hasty conclusion
(although
because
but not enough evidence
it is relevant
to everything
but there is almost,
thinking.
Dennis
to know such genes are a
We want a quick fix solution
bad about ourselves,
We want to believe
That is a
to prove such genes exist.
might have assumed the readers result of wishful
close).
so why not blame genes?
genes cause certain
things rather than
our free will and other factors. All in all the essay is well written purposes.
Dennis
appears
to be honest
for argumentation
and unselfish.
•
PAlI'r 11,
IlliALTO REP,ORM .!\lID PUBLIC n:u.uru
•
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THE
LAST WORD
GEORGE
F WILL
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I
:.:~,:,::;~,~,,;<-!::,~~~
The Clintons'Lethal~~!楼~i:~1~ik~" RE DEBATE ABOUT THE CUNTONS' HEALTH CARE PLAN IS, per capita expenditures on the insured pre-Medicare population, terally, a matter of life and death. Ifanything like that plan according to Irwin Stelzer. becomes law, there will be much unnecessary premature Writing in Commentary, Stelzer refutes the notion that we must eath and other suffering. The plan would reduce the quanbe spending "too much" on health care because other nations spend tity and quality of health care and medical technologies vastly less, or because we spend more than we used to, or because the expanding govemment's'coercive role. To see why support for the results are not commensurate with the expenditures. Yes, other plan plummets as analysis ofit proceeds, see the analysis in The New nations spend smaller percentages of GDP on health care. But Republic by Elizabeth McCaughey of the Manhattan Institute. when did, say, Japanese living standards (Japanese doctors see an The plan authorizes seven presidential appointees, the National average of 49 patients a day for an average of five minutes per visit) . Health Board, to guess the nation's health care become America's aspiration? Canada? There are needs and decree how much the nation may spend 1.4 million Canadians queuing for care and 45 permeeting them. Everyone would be locked into one cent of those awaiting surgery say they are in pain. system of low-budget health plans picked by the America spends twice as much per student on highgovernment. Fifteen presidential appointees, the er education than the average for 24 industrial National Quality Management Council, not you and nations. Stelzer wonders: How many professors enyour doctor, would define the "medically necesdorsing the Clintons' "global budgets" to limit sary" and "appropriate" care a doctor could give health care spending would favor capping profesyou. Escaping government control to choose your sors' salaries? doctor or buy other care would be virtually imposAmerican values are one reason health costs are] sible. Doctors could be paid only by the governhigh. About 80 percent are incurred in the last six ment-approved plans, at rates set by the governSUPPORT FOR months of patients' lives. American behavior-vioment. It would be illegal for doctors to accept lence, diet, unsafe sex, drug abuse, teenage illegitiTHE PLAN money directly from patients, and there would be macy (severely underweight babies cost an average 15-y-earjail terms for people driven to bribery for of $158,000 in care) - produces health costs that canPLUMMETS AS not be blamed on inefficiencies in the system. care they feel they need but the government does ANALYSIS OF not deem "necessary." The Clintons' "projection" that without their plan Government would define a m.inimum level of IT PROCEEDS health care spending, currently 14 percent of GDP, care and herd people in particular regions into dewill reach 26 percent by 2030 is akin to the governpendence on the lowest-cost organization able to ment's projection-remember?-of oil at $100 per deliver that level. Doctors would be driven into organizations in barrel. Market forces-new discoveries, conservation, alternative which they would be punished financially for giving more treatfuels - refuted the hysterics who trumpeted the "energy crisis" as an ment than the organizations' budget targets permit. The primary excuse for expanding governmental command of the economy. Govcare physician assigned to you would be, McCaughey notes, a ernment is even less competent to anticipate the future of medicine. gatekeeper with an incentive to limit your access to specialists and Health care costS percent of GDPin 1960.All in favor of spending bigh-tech. medicine. The premise of the Clintons' plan is not just at 1960 levels signify by saying let's do without bypass operations that government knows best, but that government knows every(300,000 this year), CAT and PETT scans, MRIs, endoscopes and thing relevant, including how many specialists there should be - no other diagnostic technologies, laser microsurgery and all the other more than 45 percent of all doctors. McCaughey says many medical capabilities that have come with increased costs, students will be told that the specialties they prefer are closed. or Roy Porter, a medical historian, limns the astonishing acceleraclosed to them because they are not the right race or ethnicity. Yes, tion of medical advance in our lifetimes. Since the 1930s sulfa drugs the plan subordinates medical values to "diversity." and antibiotics have made childbirth safe for mother and child. In To further suppress, through rationing, consumption of other 1940 penicillin was still being tested on mice, and pneumonia, than low-budget, low-tech medicine, the plan would empower a meningitis and comparable infections were frequently fatal. The presidential appointee (the secretary ofHHS) to control the price of 1950s produced polio vaccines, psychotropic drugs for mental any new drug. Control would be based on the development cost illnesses and medicines for biochemical abnormalities. Pediatric andprofitability of each drug, rather than a company's full range of cardiology leapt forward as did, in the 1960s, organ transplants. drug development outlays. But for every drug that becomes profit- Treating prostate cancer with hormones and arthritis with cortiableLOOO do not. Thus the Clintons' plan would certainly suppress sone, deciphering the role of slow viruses in chronic diseases of research that might spare millions of persons some of the ravages of the central nervous system-these and many more marvels constiAIDS, Alzheimer's, breast and ovarian cancer and other diseases. tute a therapeutic revolution in a half century. The Clintons' plan's subtractions from public health and perAll this success is driven by a subtle symbiosis among complex, sonal freedom would be preposterous prices to pay even to mature professions and institutions, It-is horrifying tothink of these gire insurance to 38 million uninsured Americans. But the aclife-enhancing jewels of our civilization coming under the control tual number of chronically uninsured - those uninsured involunof political b\Jreaucraeie!>. The Clintons' plan presents the face of tarily and for prolonged periods-is only about 6 million! less paternalistic liberalism. of government that is bullying because it is thanJ3 percent of the papulation, and TIiey are not denied mediarrogant, and arrogant because it does not know whatit does nor cal care. Indeed, per capita spending on them is 60 percent of know ..It is unlovely and, literally, lethal.
Ti
64
NEWSWEEK
oy
FEBRUAIH
7,1994
e
:
~ : I
Eric Talaska Will, George
F.
Newsweek
"The Clintons'
health
many technical
care plan.
about the possibility deaths. health
George assumes
presents
slope.
our health
"coercive"
it does not know what
begging
the question).
The government sector
and credibl~
He calls
it does not know
(a sort of
compared
to the
in some areas such as mail service (although
The government
a
in its role and "arrogant"
is quite efficient
protection
organizations.
may be right
the other side of the argument,
because
and
these organizations
is necessary
could be
to manage
such
Health care may be one of them due to the
corrupt money making insurance
companies.
a corrupt
slippery
and make it worse? quality
controls
failed with. ~e
step in being trustworthy
improved).
sector does now.
it will do more harm than good just like all of
the entire government
national
would manage
the fallacy of a slippery
that once our government
but he does not mention
private
the
is concerned
government
than the private
the other things the governent
necessary
against
of the plan causing many unnecessary
care much worse
The argument
arguments
He especially
He says that our national
care system,
Paternalism."
7 Feb. 1994: 64.
George presents Clintons'
Lethal
schemes Perhaps
slope now. Goerge
some doctors employ with the private
sector
bur:
is causing
will the government
says it will by lowering
step in the
of care and thus killing many care recipients.
c1~ ~
My
TURN
care plans and keep in mind one unalterable fact-we now have more advanced medical technology than we can pay for. We cannot make all this highly advanced medical technology available to all those who need it without allocating an unreasonably large part of our national budget for payment. Look at other nations. 'Which of those without government control have good health care available for everyone? Which of those federally funded medical schemes is not in trouble? (Only recently I heard that the Canadian system is experiencing financial difficulties.) Our politicians don't want to hear this. They want to be heroes and let others decide how to allocate resources. Allocation means value judgments; and votes are lost when politicians have to make value judgments. It involves who gets what treatment and who doesn't. In a country that cannot resolve issues about abortion, gays, gun control, drugs, how will we ever come to grips with this one? Hard choice: Currently we have an informal multilevel health-care system. Those with the most resources get the best care. We can formalize this multilevel system so that some can obtain the best care (if they can pay) and make a lower level of care available and/or mandatory for all; or we can have one level of care for all, knowing that level must be significantly less than it is today. Whichever it is, we cannot have the highest level of care available for everyone without an unacceptable increase in cost. This is the single hard choice we face. We can't have it both ways. Beware of someone who insists we can, no matter how much data is made available. That person is either lost in a jungle of numbers or is simply lying-probably. for personal aggrandizement and glory. I have no inkling what kind of health-care plan may evolve in the future, but I know we all must get involved in shaping it. Itis too important to ignore. One way we can help our elected officials attempt to come up with a reasonable plan is to insist that any health-care reform passed by Congress be accepted by them and by all government employees. totally and with no exceptions. Sen. Bob Dole's prostate-cancer surgery of several years ago was and is a controversial procedure that most likely will be unavailable to a man of his age under a future managed health plan. Sen. Arlen Specter had to request an MRI scan for persistent headaches. which were caused by the brain tumor picked up by the scan. The MRI scanner is an expensive and sophisticated instrument, and its numbers and usage will surely be targeted for rationing. The doctors of Pennsylvania's Gov. Robert Casey miraculously found a donor with not just one but two organ transplants he needed (a heart and liver) just in the nick of time. The average citizen now often waits months for a transplant organ to be become available. In the future. selection of candidates for transplantation will be rigorous. How will these powerful figures fare in any future health-care system? When we come to understand the hard choice we face. we will insist that our elected officials be full and obligatory beneficiaries ofany health-care plan they deem acceptable for the general public. Maybe then we could get meaningful reform. Maybe.
Who Will Get the Best Health Care? ART WILSON HAD BEEN A PHYSICIAN FOR 18 YEARS WHEN I FIRST
I
held a beating human heart in my hands. The image of that pale. pulsing organ freshly amputated from its host will remain with me forever. True. it wasn't beat. ing strongly and that's why it was removed and replaced with another. The replacement heart was taken from a newly deceased victim of massive, irreversible trauma. . The .first organ transplant at our hospital was the scene of high drama, and I was but a bit player. The heroes were the patient and the surgeons and the charitable family of the deceased donor. As a pathologist I was asked to take the diseased heart to the laboratory to determine why it had failed. This was a mundane task compared with the drama of surgery, but one that allowed me time to reflect on this miracle of modern medicine: we had the technology to successfully transplant diseased organs and give patients a new lease on life. I find myself reflecting on this again as we enter the beginning of the congressional debate on health-care reform. We have the most technologically advanced health care in the world, but we seem unable to make it available to everyone. We are told there remain 39 million uninsured people in the United States and the number is rising. In the recent past the Clinton administration has demonized the insurance and the pharmaceutical industries for profiteering. I suspect that in the near future physicians will become the next target. Like many others. I chose the profession of medicine for idealistic reasons. I wanted to be a hero. I have come to accept being considered a mercenary by the general public because I wish to be paid for my services-and as a pathologist. I chose long ago not to be on the front line of patient care. But I will chafe if cast as a greedy villain by those in government who refuse to face the problem of health care today. The health-care system certainly does need reform. But all this technology will not become readily available to every patient even if we rein in all the supposed excess profit from the health-care industry and levy a payroll tax. Why not? Because high-technology health care is expensive and inefficient. Who would pay 81,000 for a test that has only a I-in-lOO chance of finding a tumor? No one, unless you are the patient. And would ajudge and jury in a malpractice case lend a sympathetic ear to the doctor's defense after a missed diagnosis: "I didn't order the test. because it was too expensive and it usually isn't helpful"? Not likely. We must cut through all the political rhetoric we are about to hear from politicians touting the entire spectrum of health-
The government is spending too much making new technology available only to some
I
WILSON is a partner in the Duckworth Pathology Group, Memphis, Tenn.
FEBRUARY
28.1994
I
NEWSWEEK
1111
'1
Eric Talaska wilson,
Art.
"Who Will Get the Best Health Care?"
Newsweek
28 Feb. 1994: 11. Art answered the best health Clintons'
his own question.
The ones who can afford
care will get it whether
plan.
it be now or under
He says that since high-technology
care is expensive
(too) and inefficient,
we should use that
extra cost to even the care as other countries His essay with statistics
is almost fallacy proof. and word choices.
health
do.
He is very careful
He uses relevant
examples
for comparison. The fallacy of questionable he blames government
the increase spending
is insufficient
is present
Americans
because
on the
too much money on new technology.
He makes a value
judgement
it.
There
of such an accusation. about determining
should make new technology
those who can afford fair to those ~
of uninsured
evidence
not the government
cause
He is against
whether
available
the idea.
to
Is it
worked hard all their lives to be able
to afford the best care to have to pay taxes for the more lame to get equal care
(assuming many are too lazy to get
what it takes to become more wealthy)?
or
My
TURN
A Plea for Video-Free Zones WYATT TOWNLEY
T
URN IT OFF, THEY SAY, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT. WE
tried that. Dismayed by the banality of children's programming and the brutality of prime-time television, my husband and I canceled our cable service a few months ago-which in our part of the world means we get no reception at all. But then we leave the house. We go to the health club and there's Oprah chatting about incest on two wide screens above the treadmills. And in the club's day-care center, where we leave our 5-yearold, the television is blasting kidvid, We take our little girl to the pediatrician's office and find a set tuned to Special Report Television, which promotes health insurance and pharmaceuticals. When images of a violent drug bust flash on the screen (part of an anti-drug message), all the children become fascinated. We ask the nurse to turn the set off. "It can't be turned off," she says, smiling. We go to a baseball game. What could be more outdoorsy? An immense TV monitor the size of Grant's Tomb draws our attention throughout. It's useful for the occasional instant replay, but after every three outs it pounds us with loud, unzappable ads for blue jeans, soft drinks, chewing gum, the local bank, the local supermarket-and the new lineup of television shows. We go out to eat. A shouting television, like an offensive drunk, drives us from the bars of upscale restaurants as well as family-style eateries. Even at the grocery store. TV sputters among the soda cans. We take our car in for an oil change and carry a book along to read while we wait. But there It perches, like Poe's raven. high in the corner of the waiting room, squawking about which price is right. No one.in the room is paying attention to it, but no one can concentrate on anything else, either. These days we find ourselves identifying with Winston in George Orwell's "1984," who discovered that "The instrument [the telescreen, it was called] could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely." And so, when people ask us how it is to be without TV,we tell them we don't know. Our child doesn't know either. Soon after we'd pulled the plug, we enrolled her in a day ~camp at a prestigious private school that offered water play, science demonstrations, field trips, art projects, stories-all kinds of imaginative programs for preschoolers. Tucked into the list was "films." They should have called it Television Camp. The set was on every day at nap time. as well as in the morning when it rained, on Fridays for a "treat" and when a teacher had trouble managing the kids.
It may be that. having disconnected our own television. t ~I we're extra sensitive to all the TVs around us. Smokers who (~ kick the habit, they say, are often irked by other people's smoke. On the other hand, sometimes there's an awful lot of smoke in the air. Maybe we need a television equivalent of the smoke alarm. Too much video in public places and a ouzzersounds. ~~~. Television saturates our lives so completely that it doesn't occur to people to object to it. We all just assume that secondhand video is harmless. But that's what they used to say about secondhand smoke. Educators bemoan the shortening attention span of TV-addicted students and their inability to pursue a line . of thought to its conclusion. The problem is not just with students. We're all Tv-impaired, Whether the set is in our rec room, the departure lounge or the pediatrician's office, the result is the same: we can't concentrate. The big new federal study on literacy reports that barely half of adults can make sense of what they read - this in the era of the much vaunted Information Highway. Of course, television is not solely responsible for this appalling state of affairs, but it must share the blame. Our nation's romance with the tube and subsequent divorce from literature have compromised our ability to persevere in mental tasks, or even to value perseverance. Americans break for commercials. As a marketing experiment, someone ought to open a restaurant and advertise it as a "video-free environment." Or open a school and announce that television - yes, even "educational" programs-will not be used as a teaching aid. "All classes will be taught by an actual human being," the brochure would read. If the idea flopped, we'd learn something valuable (if scary) about ourselves. We'd learn that we love television so much that we'll stare at it every chance we get, no matter how inappropriate the context or vapid the content. From there it is but a short leap to imagine a brave new world of Orwellian intrusiveness, in which viewing is valued over doing, and "virtual reality" is preferred to the real thing. But what if the idea took hold? what if video-free stores, lobbies, day-care centers and waiting rooms turned out to have public appeal? What if all this time we'd been tolerating TV in public places because we didn't think we had a choice? We've heard so much from network apologists about free speech that we have forgotten other rights. What about noise pollution? What about thought pollution? What about the right to privacy-the right to daydream, read a book. write a poem without electronic interference? Soon video-free zones, small pockets of resistance, would spring up around the country. Before long, celebrities would 11 spot the trend and make it "in" to turn off the tube. Sequential thinking might be reintroduced, first as a parlor game like Trivial Pursuit and ultimately as a normal human function. But like all revolutions, this one must start with individ5 • uals, people gutsy enough to stand up in a crowded room and yP} say for all to hear, "Would anybody mind if I turned this thing off?"
Maybe secondhand television is harmless. But that's what they used to say about secondhand smoke.
8
NEWSWEEK
JANUARY
31.1994
TOWNLEY is an author and freelance writer living in Shawnee Mission, Kans.
Eric Talaska Townley,
Wyatt.
31 Jan.
"A Plea for Video-Free
Newsweek
1994: 8.
Mrs. Wyatt Townley
presents
should take the initiative environment
Zones."
the argument
to ~art
someplac7 such as~
that somebody
a television-free
public busines,
could start a domino effect of video-free She argues that t.v. is pulling
~
which
environments.
us from literature.
The argument
presents
the fallacy of inconsistency.
She says "virtual
reality"
(t.v.) is preferred
thing but she says the preference more preferred
literature.
from reality.
Literature
Literature simply
Who can prove that educational less able to concentrate She fails to mention
is divorcing
to the real us from the
also divorces
us
is not real experience.
videos cause! us to become
compared
to reading
the potential
literature?
superiority
of t.v. over
literature. A false dilemma "secondhand
exists because
televisio~r
~?t
"real thing" and deprives
us of concentration.
What about changing
If we restrict
wonder we are hooked
for reasons
So, it is not the physical t.v. stations
the programming
With our current
is
and commercials?
time, what could be
advertising,
it is no
such as subliminal
presence
choose to transmit
However,
is bad, avoiding
air time to intelligent
the disadvantage?
is to stop
causes us to avoid the
there is more to it than "watching good."
her solution
of a t.v.,
that makes
messages.
it is what
it a mess.
PlUIT Ill:
t'lIB
ECONOMY AND 1)1!JPTC1T
•
JUDGMENT
ROBERT
CALLS
J. SAMUELSON
Here's Some Good News, America CONSTANT ClUPE ABOt.IT THE PRESS IS THAT WE HAVE plaints with the government. About half involved flight delays or nothing good to say about anyone or anytb..ing. We cancellations. In 1992, complaints totaled only 5,600. revel in sleaze and scandal We glory in human frailty. 6. Most children still live with both natural parents-and the We specialize in character assassination. We enjoy divorce rate ~ be stabilizing. natural disasters. Is it true? Of course. The news about For all the ta1k of family breakdown, roughly seven of 10 the press is like everything else. It's bad and getting worse: our children under 18 live with both parents. The rate is highest for news standards, always low. are sinking lower. Well, America, whites (77 percent), lowest for blacks (36 percent) and in between here's an antidote. It's an unabashed good-news column. for Hispanics (65 percent). The number of divorces has actually If you're tired of mayhem and misery, this is for dropped slightly from the peak year, 1981 you. It's a dose of straight optimism. I have just (1,213,000);in 1988, there were 1,167,000 divorces. received my latest edition of the "Statistical Ab7. We'Ve Improved the environment and energy stract of the United States." Published by the Cenuse enormously. sus Bureau. it's full of intriguing facts about AmeriThe air is a lot cleaner than it used to be. Since ca: everything from the share of U.S. households 1970, lead emissions are down 97 percent; particuwith pets (37 percent have dogs) to the number of lates (soot. smoke) have dropped 61 percent and libraries (31.167).I have scoured it for underreporthydrocarbons 38 percent. The record in energy use, ed or underappreciated good news. What follows is though not as good, is still impressive. Homes built 10 trends you can actually smile about. in the late 19805 use nearly 30 percent less energy 1. American industry, far from going out of busithan those built in the 19505. In 1991, cars got an ness, Is now producing more than ever. average of 21.7 miles to a gallon of gasoline, up from DOWE 13.5 mpg in 1970. Population and economic growth In 1992. manufacturing output was 39 percent UNDERPLAY higher than in 1980 and 95 percent higher than in have offset some efficiencies; still, total energy use 1970. Things that were hardly made 20 years ago are REAL SIGNS in 1991was only 4 percent higher than in 1978. now produced in massive amounts. In 1991, for 8. Foreign tourism here Is booming. OF PROGRESS? example, U.S. factories shipped 10.2 million personWhatever's wrong with us, it isn't deterring foral computers. But we need fewer people (18.2 mileigners. Since 1985, the number of overseas tourists OF COURSE. lion in 1992) than in 1970 (19.3 million) to make all has more than doubled, to 14.7 million, in 1991.Two these things. This greater efficiency is not an ecofifths are from Europe; Japan sends more (2.9 milnomic drag; it releases more Americans to supply other things we lion) than any other country. want-from software to health care. 9. We remain remarkably generous with our tJme and money. 2. The United States still leads the world in Nobel prizes. About a fifth of adults do volunteer work. Of these, 37 percent Hey, it's no contest. Between 1976 and 1991,Americans won 68 work for churches and religious groups, while 15 percent work in of the 102 awards in chemistry, physics and medicine. The next schools. In 1991, we gave $125 billion to charities. Most ($103 closest countries. Britain and Germany, had nine each. billion) came from individuals. Americans now give more of their 3. We are healthier and less accident prone than ever. disposable income to charity than in 1970. Since 1970, the death rate in auto accidents is down one third; 10. Our homes are getting bigger and better equipped. cars are safer, more people use seat belts. On-the-job deaths have In 1992, the typical new home had 1,920 square feet, up from dropped by more than one quarter (from 14,000 to 10.000) since 1,385 in 1970. Three quarters had central air conditioning, com1960. although the labor force has doubled. With cancer and AIDS pared with only one third in 1970. Over the years, there's been a as glaring exceptions, death rates from diseases are down; the constant shift from smaller to larger houses. decline for heart disease is 40 percent since 1970. Life expectancy The message from all this is not quite what you think. It might is up. In 1991, it was 76 years; in 1970, it was 71 years. be that, amid all our national pessimism. we must be doing something right. It might be that the press, preoccupied with the 4. One reason we're healthier is that we smoke less and take fewer drugs. Our diets have also Improved. latest social pathology or political scam, is missing deeper social trends that more directly affect most of us. It might even be that The demise of smoking as a social institution is one of the great our much-maligned government actually succeeds once in a while events of our era. In 1965, 42 percent of the over-18 population smoked; in 1991. 26 percent did. Casual drug use also is on the (note the lower pollution and greater auto safety). The message wane. Among 12- to 17-year-olds. marijuana use is down from 23 might be all of these things; but it isn't. The real point is that good news is boring, I mean: how much percent in 1979 to 13 percent in 1991. We're eating better. Compared with the late 1950s. we eat 11 percent more protein and 44 more of this can you stand? Do you really want to know that the share of public schools offering computers rose from 18 percent in percent more vitamin E per persoD. Meanwhile, cholesterol intake 1981 to 98 percent in 1991? Hey, the "Statistical Abstract" is also per person has declined 14 percent. 5. Consumer complaints against airlines are way down. crammed with lots of bad stuff. In 1991, there were 1.8 million reported cases of child abuse and neglect involving nearly 2.7 Airlines may be losing tons of money. but they must be doing something right. In 1987. passengers lodged nearly 41,000 com- million children. Now. that's real news.
A
JANUARY
31.1994
NEWSWEEK
5
51
Eric Talaska Samuelson,
Robert J.
Newsweek
"Here's Some Good News, America."
31 Jan. 1994: 51.
He gives ten broad reasons why America He explains
that "we" and the press thrive off of bad news,
not good news.
It appears
that all or most of his data
comes from the "Statistical There
to determine good news?
fallacy). the purpose
It is difficult of his essay.
His answers
His last sentence
are not real news. equivocation
because
if not impossible
suggests
u.S. Census Bureau. more protein
that his ten points reasoning.
The word
are probably
can the given
For example,
to the 1950s.
It UGSoeOSd~ ,
and ambiguous
statistics to achieve,
of the
be?
They
even by the
he says we eat 11 percent E per person now
data to be collected.
research
is used to compare
of inconsistency
the heart
Such data is much too precise
1950s, they used different A false analogy
j/'
"we" is ambiguous.
and 44 percent more vitamin
such difficult
and contradict
real is meant to mean preferred.
statistics
How accurate
are ambiguous
don't sound like they are possible
because
a common
Is it to tell us
That is fallacious
to mean preferred.
Unknowable
compared
(obviously
Does his title suggest his real point that good
his title.
essay.
of the United States."
Or is it to tell us bad news because we prefer
news is boring?
is meant
Abstract
is a fallacy of inconsistency
and important
bad news?
has improved.
methods
for
In the
than they do now.
statistics
with the 1950s
with his other compared
decades.
,
R
US
I
N
E
S
S JUDGMENT
ROBERT
CALLS
J. SAMUELSON
The Budget: Back to the Future N THE' BUDGET, OUR MO'ITO OUGHT TO BE "BACK Eisenhower actively defended balanced budgets. "In good times, to the future." We need to revive the traditionwe must at the very least pay our way," he said in 1960. al view of the budget as mainly a political docWe didn't. The deficits didn't become serious only with Presiument that divides private from governmental re- dent Reagan. The best indicator of this is the "structural deficit" as sponsibilities. In this framework. a balanced budget a share of our national output (gross domestic product). What it is simply a prudent discipline. It confronts everyone with shows is the basic gap between our demand for government and a question: is any new government program so valuable or our tolerance for taxes. It removes the effects of inflation, economic desirable that people will pay for it with higher taxes? growth and recessions - all raise the deficits in dollar terms - from As a nation, we had this philosophy until the the deficit measures. In Eisenhower's second term. 1960s, when the Kennedy-Johnson economists conthe structural deficit was essentially zero. Since vinced public opinion that the federal budget is then, it has climbed steadily, as the table shows. largely a tool of economic policy. Ever since, budget STRUCTURAL DEFICITAS A SHARE OF GDP debates have disintegrated into arcane economic 1960s 1.0 percent arguments. Would a given budget change (say, a rise 1910s 1.8 percent or fall in the deficit) help or hurt the economy? 1980s 2.9 percent ! Because there is no consensus on the economic The increase of the deficits in the 1980s occurred consequences of deficits, elected officials take the mainly because President Reagan halted a drop of path of least resistance: they tolerate deficits. defense spending that had, in the 1910s, financed a All this is now so routine that it hardly attracts huge increase in domestic spending. (Between 1969 notice. In his 1995 budget (to be released Feb. 7), AS A RULE and 1980, defense spending declined from 45 to 23 President Clinton will surely claim that he is being GOVERNMENT percent of federal outlays.) The post-cold-war drop • tough on deficits-without, almost certainly, proin defense spending is now pushing the structural jecting a balanced budget in this century. This inertia SHOULD PAY deficit toward 2 percent of GDP, estimates the explains the pressure for a constitutional amendITS OWN WAY. Congressional Budget Office. This is better, but not ment requiring a balanced budget. In my view; an amendment would be unwise, In some circumIT DOESN'T. good enough. We should be aiming for a zero structural deficit by the end of the decade. stances, it could easily be evaded. In others, it might Adopting Eisenhower's rule-paying our way in prove too rigid. Either outcome would undermine constitutional authority. But the goal of a balanced budget is right good times -would compel Congress and the president to be more discriminating in the use of government. There would be more even if the instrument for reaching it is wrong. The point is not that federal budgets have no economic conse- pressures to weed out the least useful programs and to curb quences. But their short-term effects-for good or ill-are consist- entitlement programs (from social security to college loans) for ently exaggerated. In the 1960s, it was said that deficits would well-to-do recipients who aren't terribly needy. Any major expanraise economic growth; after three decades of deficits, we know sion of government spending wo~and a consensus in favor that this is not true. More recently it has been said that lower of higher taxes. Obviously, even this discipline can be evaded. deficits would raise economic growth by reducing interest rates. Clinton's health plan would put massive new spending off budget At best, this is a huge exaggeration. Today's lower interest rates via federal mandates. But Eisenhower's budget standard would mostly reflect lower inflation. still be a huge advance. In my view, it would also be good economics. Bigger government What mainly drives the U.S. economy are the decisions of consumers and companies. This is not to say that the budget plays is more likely to burden the private economy. Whatever deficits' economic dangers. they are mostly long term. These include the no role. but the main uses of government involve social goalswhether more defense or less poverty. The obsession with eco- possibility that government might inflate its way out of debt or that nomics distracts us from basic political issues. What can and high federal borrowing might depress private investment. The antidote for both is an end to pennanent deficits. This need not should government do? Who deserves help? Which governmental functions are national and which are better left with states and require self-defeating behavior: trying to cut spending or raise taxes in recessions. Even in the 19th century. government often localities? All these questions have suffered from neglect. tolerated deficits (or reduced surpluses) during slumps. It was not always so. Political scientist James Savage has shown What permanent deficits do is to pay for present spending with that the early belief in balanced budgets (promoted most by Jefferfuture tax increases or spending cuts. We are handcuffing tomorson) reflected a popular desire "to limit the purpose and size of ... government." This did not prevent government's growth. In the row's governments with today's debt. The alternative to a constitutional amendment is for the president to lead public opinion tolate 19th century, Republican presidents raised public-works spending. But growth had to be financed from an expanding econo- ward a new discipline. If Clinton doesn't propose to balance the budget, the obvious question is: why? And the next question is: my (which generated new revenues) or explicit tax increases. This ethic survived the Depression and World War II. Between 1946 who, then, will balance the budget? The answer is Chelsea, .her friends and our children. It's the wrong answer. and 1952, President Truman balanced four budgets. President
O
FEBRUARY
14,1994
NF.WSWEEK
41 . .....,y
Eric Talaska SamuelsonJ
Robert
Newsweek
J.
"The Budget: Back to the Future."
14 Feb. 1994: 41.
we
He gives us some truly bad news here. de.ficit that keeps on growing. be the victims
have a budget
Our future generations
unless we figure out a way to balance
wi 11
it by
the end of this decade. Going back to the future the fallacy of inconsistency buffs of ~Back
and scientific
to throw comical
He is inconsistent an amendment balanced
for reaching
question
because
(amendment)
it is wr oriq.
for reaching
It /presents reasoning.
understand analogy.
but
is
at.
he says that, in his view, Then he says the goal of a
is right even if the instrument How can its goal be right if its
it is wrong?
There exists
a
of value that most of us would agree to be wrong.
for well-to-do
recipients
not "terribly"
needy.
people
the phrase,
analogies
He says there should be more pressures
ambiguous
Movie
The deficit
and ambiguous
would be unwise.
budget
instrument
in sci~n~ific
to the Future"may
it is not a valid too serious
is a paradox.
in entitlement
What
of measurement; Although
into statistics,
therefore
programs
is meant by terrible?
word that would vary greatly
if changed
to cut programs
or other means
is used.
he does not state his credentials,
to accept his numerous appeal-to-authority
opinion~
trap.
thereby
It is an
among different
percents,
equivocation
who are
pulling
He often starts with
he wants us us into the "In my
,
v lev • .•
valid.
II
",ithout
q Lvi.nq ha.rd evidence 111iy· his vie .. is
Page 4
THE WASHINGTON POST NAnONAL WEEKLY EDITION
March 7-13. 1994
CAPITAL POLITICS
Clinton's Cut and Run By David S. Broder there f is one thing that could convert me to support of the balanced-budget constitutional amendment, it is the way the Clinton administration has opposed it 'The amendment, defeated in the Senate last week but likely to be revived by¡ the House of Representatives, is a bad idea; the arguments the White House is using to try to defeat it are
I
worse,
~ f
On the eve of the Senate debate, the White House released a preposterous stack of paper, purporting to show how much each state would be hurt if the government were required to cut spending or raise taxes enough to bring the budget into balance. "The balanced budget' amendment would cost Arizona $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion a year: a typical page warned. Then' it broke down that number into so many hundreds of dollars a person in tax increases, Social Security and Medicare cuts, etc. . The scare tactics were an abandonment by the White House of perfectly sound economic, legal and political arguments against a seriously flawed constitutional amendment. Worse, they made it seem as though Clinton was arguing against the desirability of balancing the budget. . . There are people in the administration who opposed these tactics. They would like to see Clinton use the fight over the amendment to commit himself and his allies in Congress to a long-term plan for ending deficit spending. That is what Leon Panetta. now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, did two years ago when, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, he led the fight against the amendment on the floor of the House. . But these administration officials have not been able to prevail against the political operatives who have convinced Clinton that a serious plan to balance the budget during his presidency would entail too much sacrifice from the middle class and too much of a slowdown in his program of domestic "investments." His political advisers are wrong, but so far they have convinced the president that he should not offer any long-term strategy for ending deficits. Clinton and Congress made a good first step toward reducing deficits in last year's budget. With a healthy economy, the Clinton budget projects that deficits will fall from the $290 billion level of 1992 to about $165 billion in 1995. But then they start to climb again. Last year Clinton said the second stage of deficit reduction would come with health care reform. But the Congressional Budget Office has demonstrated that in the next decade, Clinton's health plan wiil boost government spending, not reduce it / He is, quite simply. without any strategy for ever ending deficits even if the economy continues to prosper. The White House pretends there is no problem in let-
fr"!....
.~',
It is exactly this kind of delusional thinking that got us to a debt so huge that ~e interest bill each year now tops $200 billion and will rise by $10 billion each year under the Clinton budget ' Clinton wants to protect his "investment agenda" for such worthy goals as health care, education, job training and technology initiatives That's .fine. But as Robert J. Shapiro of the Progressive Poliey Institute, which was candidate Clinton's favorite think tank, points out in a newly published report, those investments can and should be financed from the billions of dollars that are spent each year in tax loopholes and special-interest subsidies "that provide no economic benefit for the country.' The report details dozens of such subsidies, offering $225 billion in potential five-year savings. ling the deficits continue year after year.
iii Bur CUNTON'S BIG HANG-UP IS HIS RELUCfANCE to ask anything from middle-class voters. The same syndrome that caused him to dangle a middle-class tax cut before the voters in New Hampshire two years ago now keeps him from suggesting that middle-income people should give up anything in order to spare their children and grandchildren from the burden of compound interest payments on the runaway national debt. Instead, .Clinton would add $1.25 trillion to that debt during his first term. . The 4-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax hike Congress approved last year was supposed to be the middle class's contribution to the 1993 deficit reduction package. But it has been offset by the collapse of the OPEC cartel. In - many states, gasoline sells for less than $1 a gallon. Nationally, the Congressional Budget Office says. it cost 2 cents a gallon less this January than last. That's some sacrifice! The most maddening thing about Clinton's refusal to submit a serious plan for eliminating the budget deficit is that it risks giving proponents of the balanced budget amendment a victory they do not deserve. The Senate turned the amendment down. falling four votes short of the two-thirds margin needed for passage. But the House is almost certain to pass the amendment later this spring. And then the pressure will be on the Senate to reconsider. The amendment would effect a radical change in the fundamental workings of representative government. by giving a 40 percent minority in either the House or Senate veto power over every future decision on taxes and spending. As this debate shifts to the House, Clinton should be reminded of history's priorities, This battle should not end without extracting from the reluctant president a serious blueprint for a second stage of deficit reduction. •
Eric Talaska
~ ~
Broder, David S.
"Clinton's
Post National
Weekly
The Washington
Cut and Run."
Edition
7-13 Mar.
q(
1994: 4.
Mr. Broder argues that the idea of the balanced budget
amendment
is bad because
Bill Clinton
is not taking
it seriously. The argument He concludes
presents
the fallacy of hasty
that the amendment
paragraph
and "the arguments
to defeat
it are worse."
inSUfficient
is a bad idea in the first
the White House
His mediocre
are exaggerated.
~use
He concludes
evidence
evidence
evident because
about Clinton
is
thinking.
his opponent
attacking
are wrong
He accuses the White
An ad hominem
he is attacking
words without
and his staff
that his advisors
or good reasoning.
of delusional
conclusive
is using to try
for a "good" sized essay.
Too many of his accusations
without
conclusion.
argument
is
with hastily
the opponent's
evidence
or argument. He claims that demonstrated
"the Congressional
that in the next decade,
will boost government they have
"demonstrated"
of a common gambling current sample because
spending,
trends. (of causes
fallacy because
There is a fallacy
health
plan.
/
health plan
it."
How could
They might be guilty they predict
from
of unrepresntative
spending,
many other things boost government
Clinton's
Office has
Clinton's
not reduce
the future?
for government
Budget
not population) spending
besides
•
PUT IV,
MISCELLANEOUS
• PERSPECTIVE
Why It Isn't Watergate There is no evidence of criminality in 1tVhitewater-but that doesn't mean its trivial calling for one thing that "Watergate" pointed to a whole pattern of activity at the top of the government that former (later ATERGATE. WE1IEWATER. ~OTH CONTAIN THE jailed) Attorney General John Mitchell referred to as the letters w~a-t~e-T.Adopt the fashion of attaching "White House horror stories:' The rifling of the safe in the ofthe suffix -gate to-any scandal whatsoever (refice of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, the creation of the member Ice Cream-Gate? Doublebillingsgate? plumbers' unit, the "dirty tricks" in the 1972 campaign. the never mind, nobody else does either) and the second besurveillance of anti-Vietnam War protesters, the "enemies comes Whit~atergate; identical to the first except for an list"-these things had only a peripheral relationship, if that, extraneous syllable. But do the two share any other to the burglary of Democratic National Committee headsimilarities? quarters at the Watergate complex, but they were part of a Some, certainly, and not altogether superficial ones. Both pattern of dictatorial and in some cases criminal behavior concern allegations of impropriety directed at a President of that has not found even alleged parallels in the Glinton White the United States (though only 'Whitewater also involves the House. First Lady; one would have to look very long through the As for "Watergate" proper, remember Richard Nixon, mountain of Watergate clippings before coming across even 37th President of the United States, musing on tape about a glancing mention of Pat how much money would be Nixon). Both triggered required to buy the silence probes by a special counsel, of the burglars, and rumand both may yet lead to bling that he knew where to congressional investigaget it? Remember White tions. Both touched off parHouse counsel John Dean tisan howling for a Presisemi-joking that Nixon's dent's head, and both helpers were unschooled in featured official defenses of such criminal activity as said President by aides who leaving the money for payobviously had next to no offs where it could not be knowledge of what had haptraced, and one ofhis listenpened. George Stephanoers remarking plaintively poulos and Ron Ziegler that Mitchell ought to know might equally resent that how to find somebody comparison, but there it is. skilled in money launder~ But what, ifanything, is ing? The onetime chief lawreally similar? Right now, enforcement officer of the an honest answer would country being mentioned as have to be: We don't knmw a conduit to recruit a sucThe identity of "Deep cessful crook! What comThroat" is one of the few REMEMBER WHEN? White House counsel John Dean, who beeame a parison can be drawn bechief accuser of Nixon, is sworn in by Senate probers Watergate mysteries left. tween that and meetings We know not only the details of the cover-up but what it was concerning the Madison investigation between Treasury ofthat was covered up. In contrast. probers into \\ 'hitewater ficers and White House aides that some commentators doubt have been sorely puzzled by the disparity between the intencan be considered improper at all? sity of White House efforts to obfuscate the matter and what Yet if Watergate-so fur-surpasses Whitewater by lightcan be discovered so far about what might have been obfusyears in seriousness, there are disturbing parallels. Both concated. So what if the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & cern whether what a President (and in the case ofWhitewater, Loan really was being operated as what Republican Cona First Lady) says can be believed. Whitewater, as Congressgressman Jim Leach calls a "private piggy bank" for Arkansas man Leach asserts, may be important "precisely because it is politicians, including the then Covernor? So what if Bill and small [and] truth of character is more generally revealed in Hillary Clinton did in fact take income-tax deductions to small acts than large gestures:' It mattered that Lyndon.johnwhich they were not entitled, and underpaid their personal son lied about small things because he eventually lied (to the taxes? Admitting as much no doubt would be embarrassing. nation and, probably, to himself) about a very big thing, the Avoiding that embarrassment, however, is so far from being Vietnam War, It matters if Bill and Hillary Clinton are telling worth all the trouble that the Clinton \ Vhite House is in now the truth about Whitewater, How much they invested; how as to stir suspicion that there 1HtLSt be something more waitmuch, if anything, they really lost; whether they were actually ing to be unearthed. entitled to all the tax deductions for interest they took. BeThis much, however, can be said, Whitewater has a very, cause these things are very important in themselves? No. Bevery long way to go before it can be considered within 16 cause if their veracity cannot be trusted on those matters, who miles of being equal in gravitY to Watergate. Xlemories are can believe them when they say their health-care plan will dimming. People voted in 1992 who were not yet born when really cut costs" or improve the quality of medical care, or not the Watergate break-in occurred 20 years earlier, or even 1ead to rationing, or increase rather than narrow our choice of when President Nixon resigned in 19i·t But it is worth rewhich doctors to consult? • By GEORGEJ.CHURCH
W
39
n:VIE. :-'[i\RCH 21. [994
"1"<' AfibohY.I.rJ&,
NY '/01.-
/11
1'1
(2.
Eric Talaska Church, George J. 1994:
"Why it Isn't Watergate."
39.
The argument more different foundations, satisfy
is about why Watergate
than alike,
between
The conclusion
side false.
presents
and somewhat
that Whitewater
are addressed
issues of health
That is relevant
to do with to make become
The conclusion
from the given premises.
the Clintons
care
care plan, especially
at the very end.
does not follow logically
evidence
are not similar.
and Whitewater
health
It
of insufficient
It could be an attempt
in the Clinton's
to what he did before
the issue.
little or nothing
in Watergate
since it is addressed
significant
because
that have ~
interested
we can believe
evading
and Watergate
reasoning
the rest of the essay.
interested
the fallacy of irrelevant
to evade the issue because
It is irrelevant
anything
from the appeal to
I
~quitur)
is an attempt
work.
that would
the two "waters" because he does not
~7
~on
readers
a strong comparison
He also refrains
attempt to prove either
evidence
are
even though he says "we don't know" the real
similarities
reason
and Whitewater
even though they have similar
thus providing
Howard Kahane.
ignorance
Time 21 Mar.
Maybe
when they say their plan will
to Bill's oath in office as opposed
taking the oath. that the Clintons
every since Bill was sworn in.
So far there
is no
have lied about
;
My
1\
TURN
What Would Dr. King Say? JESSE
L. JACKSON LTHOUGH
A
WE
WILL
HEAR
MUCH
ABOtIT
DR.
I'
black unemployment is rising to 13 percent-50 percent for our youth. The gap between rich and poor is wider now. Our schools are becoming more segregated, not less. A savage inequality in funding for education helps track some children for Yale and some for jail. The ghettos and barrios of our cities are poorer, more isolated and more desperate. Our youth are killing each other in the streets with no regard for human life. What would Dr. King do or say? If the president is going to preach, Dr. King would call on him to preach on the great defining issue of race, to call upon our 'nation to resume its historic struggle toward creating equal protection under the law. Dr. King would call upon him to use his power not simply to exhort and preach, but to set priorities in our nation's interest. He would urge the president to seek out relief and remedies born of hope, not reactions born of fear and expediency. Spiritual redemption: He would appeal to the president to honor his covenant to the people to invest $20 billion a year in rebuilding our cities and putting people back to work. He would appeal to the president to launch an urbandevelopment plan to encourage teachers, police and firefighters to move into areas of greatest need. If we offer them subsidized mortgages, it will provide an economic incentive to rebuild neighborhoods. This plan should be modeled after the plan developed for Poland, which offered 4O-year loans at % of 1 percent interest, first payment due in 10 years. If we can help Poland, Russia, Europe and Japan, surely we can rebuild our own cities. As a vocal opponent of excessive military spending, Dr. King would be shocked to find that four years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States will spend $274 billion on its military. The Russians will spend less than $50 billion. Germany is united but we pay to keep more than 300,000 troops and dependents in Gennany looking for something to do. Let us decide that a safe measure of our security is to spend only as much as the rest of the world combined. That would free up more than 850 billion a year to reinvest in this country. We have the money; we need a change. Dr. King would be leading the fight against a crime bill that offers more jails and more police instead of preventive measures against crime. More jail cells. more ways to kill are not the answer. It is morally wrong and cost-inefficient to cut the Housing and Urban Development budget by $4 billion while funding $100,000 new condo-style jail cells. Dr. King would be leading the offensive for change in this country. He would be asking the president for an urbanpolicy plan, rural development, education for the children and jobs for their parents. He would be leading the charge for moral and spiritual redemption. If Martin Luther KingJ r. were here today. he would tell us that we have the power to change our present state. He would spend his own birthday, as he did in 1968. in struggle. And he would be proud of us if we did the sarne. If we stand together with moral authority and honor, we can again change the state of America today. We overcame before. We shall overcome again.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "dream" this week, he was no flighty dreamer. He had vision, true, but he was a man of action. He worked incessantly to rouse the victims of injustice to protest. I was one of a few who had the privilege of spending King's last birthday, Jan. 15. 1968, with him: How he spent it is testimony to how Dr. King himself would want his birthday commemorated. FIrSt, he had breakfast that morning with Mrs. King and the children, a reflection of his commitment to his family. Then, around 10 o'clock, he came to church, dressed in work clothes, to meet with his staff and allies from around the country. He met with them to organize a poor people's campaign, a campaign to lift the boats stuck at the bottom of the river, to move forward those left behind in search of the American Dream, to challenge the nation's oonscience and to change the nation's priorities. Around 1 o'clock, Zernona Clayton, a friend, brought a cake. That was the only way we knew it was his birthday. We stopped. ate cake and drank punch, laughed together, and then went right back into the session on how to end the Vietnam War and revive the war on poverty. In his famous "I Have A Dream" speech at the 1963 march on Washington, D.C., the dream was his refrain, one he had used many times before. His focus was on the promissory note for opportunities, jobs and education that had been issued to African-Americans upon their release from slavery. It had bounced. he argued, labeled "insufficient funds," and he led the protest march to demand that it be honored. We've come a long way since. The walls of Jim Crow apartheid have come down. African-Americans have their civil rights. We have the right to vote. Today, doors are open that once were closed. Yet I cannot help but wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have to say to America if he were alive today. Recently, President Clinton spoke to a church in Memphis about how Dr. King would be dismayed and disappointed at the level of violence in our society. Yes, that is true. The cost in lives lost and hopes crushed is incalculable. ~ But Dr. King would not and never did stop at a condemnation of our violence. Dr. King went on to demand a change in our priorities-we need only look at his actual words for confirmation. "A nation," he warned. "that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." THE REV. JESSE The realities of Dr. King's statement are now painfully bow Coalition. revealed. Unemployment is falling overall to 6 percent, but
If Martin Luther King were alive, he would applaud our advances but press us to work for more change
t
~o
JACKSON
is president of the National Rain-
I.
Eric Talaska Jackson,
Jesse L.
"What Would Dr. King Say?"
Newsweek
24
Jan. 1994: 40. Perhaps
the most popular writer
Jesse Jackson Dr. Martin
Luther
conditions. military
attempts
to predict
King would
He can't. evidence
be telling
the full-truth
"Dr. King may
so accurately
"excessive"
what Dr. King would is a fallacy
(similar to hasty conclusion).
" but instead Jesse claims
of
He would
if he would say something
fact what Dr. King would say.
like
to know as a
A hasty conclusion
is there
even though Dr. King seems like the type to do
what Jesse says he will do, tha~sinsufficient There
about what
"moral" spending.
That is why there
suppressed
so far,
say and do today under current
and for more
How can Jesse predict
because,
many details
He, like Dr. King, is against
spending
say today?
in this project
evidence.
is more to Dr. King than what Jesse knows. Jesse says the U.S. will spend much more than quadruple
the amount the Russians
will on its military
after the fall of the Berlin wall.
four years
That is a fallacy
of
questionable
statistics.
Where did he get such an
unbelievable
comparison?
With such a cut in our military
in the past several referring
years, how can that be so?
to Russia as a small division
Maybe he is
of the Soviet Union.
s
E
s
A
y
Charles Krauthammer
Enough Bear Stroking
J
UST OVER A YEAR AGO IN STOCKHOLM,
RUSSIA'S
FOREIGN
Minister delivered a shocking speech announcing a return to empire and cold war. No more Mr. Nice Guy for "Greater Russia," declared Andrei Kozyrev. "The space of the former Soviet Union ... is essentially a post-imperial space, where Russia has to defend its interests by all available means, including military and economic ones" The speech created a sensation. Western delegates were stunned-until Kozyrev explained an hour later that he was playacting. The speech, he said, was one Moscow hard-liners would deliver were they to seize power. He was warning of the dark future awaiting the world should Yeltsin fall. Well. Yeltsin did not fall. The Soviet-era hard-liners Kozyrev warned against fell. Some are in jail. But now it is Kozyrev himself declaring last week that Russia should keep its troops in neighboring republics: "We should not withdraw from those regions that have been in the sphere of Russian interest for centuries:' This time he is not kidding. And because he is not, Kozyrev; a man who truly represents Russian moderation, has given the world a measure of how far Russian moderation has traveled in the past year. For months Russia has been interfering in neighboring republics. notably Georgia and Azerbaijan, to bring them under Russian domination. Withdrawal from the Baltics is stalled. And Be1arus, which agreed to scrap its currency and restore the ruble, is in effect being economically annexed. . Market reform is in retreat as well. The day after President Clinton finished his Moscow summit, Yegor Gaidar, chief architect of economic reform. resigned. Four days later, Boris Fyodorov, the other major reformer, was purged from the government. The ruble is collapsing. The Prime Minister talks of a return to wage and price controls. All this is acutely embarrassing for Clinton, who had trumpeted Yeltsin's commitment to reform during his Moscow visit. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, in particular, waxed enthusiastic about the assurances he had received that reform would continue. Assurances from whom? From the doomed Gaidar and Fyodorov; with whom Bentsen had excellent meetings. Within a week of the trip to Moscow, the President's Russia poliey had collapsed. Russia's slide is not, mind you, a failure of Clinton's personal diplomacy. There are limits to. personal diplomacy. (Something politicians often have difficulty recognizing: "Lord;' said Senator William Borah after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, "if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.") Personal diplomacy cannot reverse the trajectory of a great power. Russia's retreat
~
116
is an aftershock of the December elections in which the totalitarian parties campaigning against reform and for empire won about half the vote. The people have spoken, and Yeltsin has listened. Clinton has not. He keeps campaigning for Russian democracy, but he refuses to acknowledge what the people voted for ina democratic eleetienl Why did Clinton spend so much of his Moscow trip cheerleading for economic reform? That is Yeltsin's job. Why should an American President expose himself and his country to blame for the suffering such reform inevitably brings? By the same token, now that the Russian people have spoken, it is time to change our attitude to Russia's foreign policy too. During the fight to the finish between the Soviet-era Congress and Yeltsin, it made sense for the U.S. to back him to the hilt. That meant bending over backward not to offend Russian .: nationalism: leaning hard on Ukraine to disarm; raising no fuss when Russian troops intervened in Georgia, Tajikistan and Moldova; keeping the East Europeans out of NATO.
We gave bear stroking a try. It did not work Despite our extraordinary deference to Russian national feelings, the antireform and antiWestern parties did exceptionally well in free elections. "Yeltsiu is accommodating to.reality. Time for us to.follow suit. Yeltsin still represents as moderate a government as Russia is going to produce. But that highlights all the more clearly the limits of Russian moderation. It would be foolish, therefore, to continue a purely Russocentric policy that bets the house on the hope that with enough Western coaxing and acquiescence, Russia will turn into a Western democracy, a Cyrillic England. It is far more prudent for the West to demonstrate some firmness, to show we will respect Russia's national interests but not its imperial impulses. If Russia tires of reform, that is her business. But if Russia hungers for empire, that unfortunately is our business. As leader of the West, we must be the one to say no. Instead, for fear of offending Russia, we say no to the pro-Western Poles, Czechs and Hungarians seeking admittance to NATO. Russia needs to be told that it does not have a veto over NATOmembership. That only an imperial Russia would take offense at East Europeans finding shelter in NATo-the Polish army, after all, is no threat to Moscow. And that if Russia insists on military pressure on its neighbors, it will pay a high price, economic and diplomatic, in relations with America. The current unpleasantness is neither Yeltsin's fault nor Clinton's. But it is a f~et. The free ride given Russia. based on hopes for a kind of Russia that is not, has got to end. •
TI ME, JANUARY 31.1994
Eric Talaska Krauthammer, 1994:
Charles.
"Enough Bear Stroking."
Time 31 Jan.
116.
~Krauthammer with Russia's
argues
economy.
He says that
Russia, based on hopes got to end." is difficult
that we have no business
mingling
"The free ride given
for a kind of Russia that is not, has
Due to the ambiguous to restate.
Whatever
nature of that quote, it means,
it
it is his main
argument. One argument He accuses
Clinton
he presents
of not listening
people",
but Yeltsin
"refuses
to acknowledge
democratic
refusing
listened
Mr. Krauthammer to reality.
to somefhings
the public
because addressed.
his next election
by
what the people voted for in a
Clinton's states that
position
is misrepresented.
"Yeltsin
is accommodating
Time for us to follow suit."
Does that mean
that, unlike Yeltsin, equivalent
is
are out of proportion
Jl/'
election.
for in a
on both accounts
surlY would not jeopardize
democratic
says that Clinton
wha t the people voted Evidence
to acknowledge
(at all) to "the
Mr. Krauthammer
The statements
we know Clinton Clinton
has.
election."
suppressed.
has the fallacy of straw man.
"we" (a token reflexive
to "us") are not accommodating
is what he implies.. ~. There in a sense that if Russia
is a fallacy
term
to reality?
of common practice
is doing something,
we ought to.
In this essay, we ought to stay away from their economy face reality
like them (if
That
and