Discovery News

In early 1950s England Noel Coward lampooned the whining pessimists of the time--a time when, in fact, life was improving in that country--with a song called "Wait Until We Drop Down Dead." I think of it when I hear people (you know who you are) state that America is terrible shape.

Those of dismal opinion usually are doing just fine themselves, of course, but they want everyone to know their stout opinion that the country needs "change"--and never much mind the details. Why, if we stay on our present uniquely awful course (Oh, how the present generation has suffered!), the future is bleak.

"There are bad times just around the corner
We can all look forward to despair
It's as clear as crystal
From Bridlington to Bristol
That we can't save democracy and we don't much care
If the Reds and the Pinks
Believe that England Stinks
And that world revolution is bound to spread
We'd better all learn the lyrics to The Old Red Flag
And wait until we drop down dead."

Of course, what may really do us in is boredom, the deadly disease of elites throughout history. Unlike the solid, striving middle class, they seldom have patience for long struggles, let alone ambiguities.

Yes, it seems that 21st Century America, led by that "most unpopular" President George Bush, is so disappointing that we need to undergo a thorough cleansing. Everything's got to go.

To get the economy moving we should let the Bush tax rate cuts expire. That is another way of saying, raise taxes. The way to encourage investment is to increase the capital gains tax to 28 percent, right? That would be particularly helpful for the tech sector that is the country's leading source of innovation and new employment. As for the income tax, never mind that the marginal rate cuts of 2003 led to a huge influx of new federal revenue; the thing is that high taxes on high earners are more "fair." That class-conscious fairness will do great things to balance the budget, won't it?

Then we need to re-open NAFTA, because the Canadians and Mexicans are taking such unfair advantage of us. And, in fact, the whole regime of free trade that enjoyed bi-partisan support until literally last year should be"revisited". Start now by repudiating the pending trade pact that the Administration has negotiated with Colombia, even though it greatly helps our businesses and provides moral support for a country hard-pressed by leftist guerrillas that are financially backed by Hugo Chavez. We need to send a message to the budding Castros of Latin America: "We surrender!"

In Iraq, even though we are winning an historic, possibly transformative victory and public opinion there for the first time supports a combined Shia-Sunni government and opposes both al Qaeda and the Iran-backed Sadrites, we need to make pledges to pull out by a time-certain. (Let's just pretend we lost and come home.) The promise, of course would undercut America's clout elsewhere in the Middle East and around the world, inviting new security probes and revive radical extremists, and it is consoling to learn that the leading people proposing the pledge are not really serious. They know that in the end the U.S. can't just cut and run. But they like to say that to keep "the base" happy. The base knows it, too. But striking the peace stance makes them all feel virtuous, a major aim of liberal foreign policy. Never mind what happens how the people in the Middle East take it.

Meanwhile, the great strides we have made in terrorism counter-intelligence are really embarrassing and should not be acknowledged. (No attacks on the U.S. Homeland since 2001? So what!) Instead, we need to expose the phone companies to lawsuits for cooperating with the government in monitoring and tracking prospective terrorists, even though that cooperation is essential to the government's job of protecting the citizenry. By killing the FISA bill we can expiate our guilt for, well, whatever you want.

America's economy still benefits for energy costs below those of our competitors. So this summer, as gas prices rocket upwards, the main thing is to resist the wicked Bush Administration's efforts to find more oil or build nuclear power plants. Plug-in hybrids are fine, of course, but not a high priority. Indeed, the high priority thing is to demand a cessation of that ethanol program that the same "change" artists were demanding be created five years ago. (By the way, the trendy left demands that you stop drinking the bottled water that they were promoting five years ago, too. You gotta stay in style.)

While we are at it, the worst of the housing finance follies may have run most of its course and this country has more home ownership and better housing than 95 percent of the world, but we still need "change" there, too. So let's back the plan now in Congress to bail out the speculators and people who bought a house for nothing down. We'll show the banks who's boss--by giving them a handout through the back door.

At the state level, it is deplorable that several states (Mississippi, amazingly, among them) are finally standing up to the tort artists and reclaiming their prospects for economic growth. Those states that have enacted tort reform are seeing their employment rates go up and new businesses opening. So let's get behind the trial lawyers and unions to reverse this reprehensible trend. Let's also make sure that unions can organize businesses without an actual election of the workers. How's
that for progress?

"Change, change, change!"

Well, okay. Perhaps the truth is that many of the people who fashionably deplore conditions in America today and are backing "Change" don't really want these kinds of changes. Not really. They just are in the self-indulgent phase of summer when a little campaign contribution helps maintain standing at elite cocktail parties on Bainbridge Island or Martha's Vineyard--and avoid arguments with one's brilliantly mis-educated children just home from college. It is like renting and admiring the DVD of "There Will be Blood," the film the Academy of Motion Pictures think speaks most truly about this country's economic and social development. One is just striking a pose.

But "Change" is not an empty slogan in the end. Politicians are sometimes in the custom of enacting the proposals they lay before the public. "Change" is treated as a mandate.

So if you are one of those people calling for "Change", go ahead and enjoy your self-delusion. Only, may it be temporary. The genius of America remains in the traditional values that are exceptional in the world and have made us immensely strong and free. Putting America on the right track means doing more of what we historically have done well. It does not mean bigger government, more liberal courts, more regulation, less free trade, higher taxes and a U.N.-dominated, essentially pacifist foreign policy. And it does not mean social policies that trivialize human distinctiveness and dignity.

The country is not in the bad shape the media and the caustic critics claim. It could be, however, if we listen to them.

Until then I'm singing, "Wait until we drop down dead."

There are several good news stories on today's development in the federal court case in which Yoko Ono seeks to prevent further distribution of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the Ben Stein film. And then there is this one from ars technica:

Notice the way the writer feels obliged to abuse free speech—by misrepresenting intelligent design—even as he defends it.

We still do have free speech protections in America, but we also have the right to tie up opponents in tactical lawsuits, which is just what Yoko Ono did at a crucial point in the screening of Expelled. Nonetheless, Expelled has become one of the most-viewed theater-released documentaries ever.

We are not quite at the point where there should be a film about the way Expelled itself was attacked, but there is a story there.

The spirit of authoritarian censorship is all over the cultural left these days. These were the same people who opposed authority back in the 60s, weren't they—people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono? "Imagine"!

Would someone please screen this fine excerpt from "Reason.tv" for the presidential candidates--and the MSM?

Memo to Congress:

If you want to save Americans money on gasoline, reduce dependency on foreign oil and reduce air pollution (whether global warming related or not), why are you unable to address a simple thing like traffic light synchronization in the thousands of municipalities where your federal dollars support the roads?

Here is how, by Discovery's IT man, Matthew Scholz...

For years the political left has fought nearly any efforts to drill in new fields in America, at least where there was any controversy at all.

The fact is, there is lots of oil in America if the government will allow the drilling. Likewise, we need clear federal encouragement of new refineries.

Conservatives and liberals alike should support conservation and new energy sources, and they should do so vigorously, from nuclear to passive (architectural) and active solar. They should support new transportation technologies (see blog below) and plug-in hybrid autos. But we also need to do whatever we can to substitute our own oil for imported oil.

Trying to blame oil company executives for the rising world-wide oil prices insults the intelligence of the voters. Unreasonable liberal government has held up U.S. oil production for twenty years or more.

We're having the coldest winter, er, spring in 100 years in the great Northwest. There's new snow in the mountain passes and even freak frosty flecks in Seattle's hilliy suburbs.

The way to pass all this off is to say that, meanwhile, there is "humid, near-100 degree swealtering heat (in) New England." However, according to the weather map, daily high temperatures in New England actually are in the 80s. That may seem like "near-100" to some people, I suppose.

Of course, a cool spring, or a cool year, doesn't prove anything. Oh, and neither does a hot one. Projections for the IPCC indicate that temperatures should go up about 0.5 degrees C per decade. In fact, while mean world temperatures have fluctuated yearly, in the past ten years, overall, they've gone nowhere. Alarming, isn't it?



Marvin Olasky interviews Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter, author of The Long War Ahead (Discovery Institute Press, 2008) in the June 14-21 issue of World magazine. The link is good for a few introductory paragraphs, then you have to pay--and it's worth it.

John is prophetic with his warning--in an interview that took place before the new Supreme Court ruling on Guantanomo--that "9/10 judges" "would give terror detainees more rights, despite their being unlawful combatants who do not comply with the laws of war, greater rights than we have given to lawful combatans in prior wars." In fact, as he observes, lawful combatants, if freed by a court, often would be less dangerous to public safety than a terrorist who is freed on some technical ground.

Find a comfortable chair out of the sun this Saturday, Flag Day, and read The Long War.

The Indians have built an automobile that runs on compressed air. Air is not free, exactly, but it is cheap. (At least, it's cheaper than bottled water.)

They look a bit small and tinny, but I'd rather buy air from India than oil from Iran.

Of course, it undoubtedly takes energy to compress the air!

The Irish voted against the new EU treaty.

But is it dead? Some of the bureaucrats in Brussels think they will just go ahead. They will try to find ways to make wholesale reductions in national sovereignty of member states, including Ireland, without ever again applying for permission to the nominal sovereigns--the people. Thus do elites overplay their hand.

The peoples of such diverse nations as Greece, Ireland and Germany are well-suited to work together on economic cooperation, but there is no crying need for much more. On defense, a stronger NATO makes more sense.

The Irish vote is especially a liberation for Ireland's neighbor and former nemesis, the U.K. It is hard to believe that the English would ever knowingly give up the ancient rights and powers of Parliament and cede them to what in fact is the world's first true bureaucracy--government by government--in Brussels. Now perhaps the British public can look at the whole European identity more honestly.

The European Community was a great achievement. So is the European Union. But there are limits, and those may have been reached.

You seldom hear anymore the canard that the Iraq war was "all about oil," not when we are paying more for oil than ever. Still, it has been a nearly unmentioned truth that Iraqi oil fields contain some of the biggest petroleum reserves in the world.

Now it seems that, quietly, the flow that was about two million barrels when the war started is about to nudge close to three million. If security holds, and the much-maligned oil companies are allowed to invest in improved infrastructure, Iraq oil production will go up month after month.

Michael Barone usually gets it right, and does so again, on the current prissy pretense of candidates that they don't want any "lobbyists" in prominent campaign roles.

The worst thing about "reform" as a rallying cry is not its sanctimony, but its insincerity. It becomes just another club to beat an opponent and seize power. Claiming that your campaign will not take money from pacs--political action committees that were themselves set up as a reform thirty years ago--is a form of false chest thumping. It's laughable, since money will always find a way into campaigns. Trying to keep out lobbyists is also a fulsome gesture, a way to bamboozle the rubes who think that a good campaign can be run with inexperienced personnel.

I heard an otherwise sensible person comment a few days ago, "It is unclear whether we human beings are a virus or a species on this planet." People are being taught to think like that. My Discovery colleague Wesley J. Smith, one of the few traditionally-minded ethicists around, tears into a piece by an Australian TV network that represents anti-humanist propaganda. It also illustrates where materialist science and philosophy meet a literal dead end.

The Bush Administration is accused of never admitting mistakes, though the President did, in fact, acknowledge last year that the hope of prevailing In Iraq with relatively small forces was misplaced; and hence the "Surge". John McCain claims credit for being right all along on that point, and I don't see anyone disputing him.

How about the Left; will they admit errors on Iraq? Pete Wehner, now at Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington after years on the policy staff of the White House, has written an opinion piece that asks this question with concussive force. What he says about the columnist Tom Friedman is especially apt. The media that have done everything they could to besmirch President Bush may now start to change their representation of reality--because they must--without ever taking back their harsh previous judgements.

Pertinently, Sen. Obama now seems to be changing his most crucial views on the war, which is all to the good.

What is not acceptable is continuing to play "Blame Bush," while pretending that we are winning in Iraq through chance or someone else's efforts. That is the kind of thing the Left tried with Reagan and the end of the Cold War. History, fortunately, will be more dispassionate.

Howard Chapman describes how Philadelphia cracks down on lenders who try to foreclose on delinquent home purchasers. What a great way to promote economic populism.

And this article in the San Francisco Chronicle describes the way in which San Francisco fights poverty--by driving out the middle class.

The reliable Mustafa Akyol reminds Americans that Turkey is facing a constitutional crisis because of misplaced secularism, or, as he calls it, "secular extremism." If courts depose the current, democratically elected government--with the military standing behind the courts--Turkey will be damaged in its international dealings, its economy, its democracy (certainly) and in other ways that can't even be calculated yet.

It is the kind of issue that Americans are ignoring during the long sleep of the 2008 election campaign.

The announcement by Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida that his state will pay $1.75 billion to buy out the 187,000 acres of sugar cane grown by U. S. Sugar Corp. around Lake Okeechobee is being welcomed--correctly--as great news for the cause of improving clean water flow south into the endangered 1.5 million acre Everglades National Park.

But isn't it also potentially good news for the some 40 friendly countries, including many in Latin America, that have had trouble breaking the U.S. sugar quota all these years? The biggest thing the United States could do to help the people in certain tropical lands of limited export potential would be to end the tariff-rate quotas that artificially prop up the sugar industry in the U.S. That industry is not a very big employer, but it has huge political clout. The new Florida deal is bound to reduce that clout.

Every farm bill that seeks to end agriculture quotas finds an agile lobby opposing increased sugar imports. Cane growers in Louisiana, Hawaii and Texas, and sugar beet growers in the Mountain West, are among the foes of relaxing quotas, but some of the most weighty political opposition has come from Florida.

There will still be 300,000 acres of sugar cane in production in Florida after U.S. Sugar phases out its production over seven years. But mighty U.S. Sugar has been the key to Florida's anti-free trade mood on this issue, just as Florida has been key to sugar protectionism in Congress.

The sugar issue makes the U.S. look like a hypocrite on free trade. As the sugar lobby weakens, the free trade lobby--including not only many allies in warm climates, but also the huge domestic confection, soft drink, cereal and baking industries--should grow relatively stronger. And free trade may become more feasible.

One of the highlights of the recent Telecosm conference organized by George Gilder at Lake George, N.Y. was Steve Forbes' keynote speech on the economy. Discovery Institute is one of the conference sponsors and the video of all the conference highlights is up on our website.

Forbes is surely right, sadly, about the damage done by weakening the dollar.

Here is the full Steve Forbes speech. If you want to buffer it all before listening, apparently you can push the pause icon on the bottom of the screen and wait a few minutes for the whole thing to be available.