Professional Documents
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The New American - May 19, 2014
The New American - May 19, 2014
Americans Need Not Apply Equal Pay for Equal Work Means Paying Men More
$3.95
www.TheNewAmerican.com THAT FREEDOM SHALL NOT PERISH
on the Range
NeoConservatives?
Have you ever been
surprised that the
conservative Republican
you voted for ended up
voting for big government
and for the United Nations?
If so, you actually voted
for a NeoConservative
Republican.
Have You Been NeoConned?
Understand how you were NeoConned by viewing a trailer
for the upcoming video, Who Are The NeoConservatives?,
on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_I1L5HK9c8
www.shessomebodysdaughter.org
LETS TALK ABOUT IT
s h e s s o me b o d y s
d a u g h t e r
COVER STORY
PROPERTY RIGHTS
10 Showdown on the Range
by William F. Jasper The issues that caused the standoff between
the federal BLM and a Nevada rancher are being clouded by
deliberate misinformation from government officials and the media.
17 Feds vs. the West
by William F. Jasper
21 Lynching a Rancher with Racism
by William F. Jasper
COVER Photo: Josh Warburton, The Independent (southern Utah)
suindependent.com
FEATURES
CULTURE
22 Americans Need Not Apply
by Selwyn Duke A recent move against the Boy Scouts and
the forced resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich are part of a
growing movement against people who espouse traditional morality.
25 Equal Pay for Equal Work
Means Paying Men More
by Selwyn Duke Once experience, hours worked, and job types
are figured in, mens and womens wages are comparable.
BOOK REVIEW
31 Honesty Is the Best Economic Policy
by Michael Tennant Morality ought to be part of making
economic decisions.
HISTORY PAST AND PERSPECTIVE
34 Lawmaking Decision
by Jack Kenny The Brown v. Board of Education decision may
have undone unjust treatment of blacks, but it imposed judicial
opinion in place of written law.
THE LAST WORD
44 The Tragedy That Might Have Been
by Alex Newman
17 21
22
25
34 31
DEPARTMENTS
5 Letters to the Editor
7 Inside Track
9 QuickQuotes
33 The Goodness of America
40 Exercising the Right
41 Correction, Please!
10
Vol. 30, No. 10 May 19, 2014
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by William F. Jasper
T
he Nevada cattle rancher in the
white cowboy hat and his support-
ers had massed in defiance of fed-
eral policies and agencies that threatened
to drive them into extinction. To the cheers
of locals, the rancher climbed aboard a
Caterpillar bulldozer and plowed open a
county road that had been closed by the
U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Are we talk-
ing about Cliven Bundy in 2014? No, the
white-hat rancher to whom we are refer-
ring was Richard Dick Carver, a long-
time county commissioner in Nevadas
sprawling and sparsely populated Nye
County, and the date was July 4, 1994
Independence Day, 20 years ago. Carvers
act of defiance earned him a cover on Time
magazine, which showed Carver and some
of his supporters, with a super-imposed
headline Dont Tread on Me, followed
by the subtitle, An inside look at the
Wests growing rebellion.
While the federal government claims
84.5 percent of Nevada the highest
of any state in Nye County the fed-
eral footprint covers over 93 percent, and
federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.,
dominate virtually every aspect of Nye
County inhabitants lives. Nye County,
the nations third largest county, was also
home to the late Wayne Hage, the feisty
rancher/scholar who, for decades, coura-
geously fought the federal government in
court and won landmark decisions for
property rights. Hage was also author of
the 1989 book Storm Over Rangelands:
Private Rights in Federal Lands, a ground-
breaking work on the history of the West-
ern states, particularly as it relates to poli-
tics, governance, land use, and property
rights. It is not surprising then that Nye
County became the face of what is known
as the Sagebrush Rebellion II, an ef-
fort by citizens in Western states to wrest
control away from oppressive federal bu-
reaucrats. The efforts by Carver, Hage,
and others in the late 1980s-1990s were
a continuation and resurgence of earlier
efforts in the 1970s-1980s, often referred
to as Sagebrush Rebellion I. Carver chal-
lenged the federal road closures in court.
In 1866, Congress passed the Mining Act
(Revised Statute 2477) providing the right
of way for construction of roads over fed-
eral public lands. For a century this gave
protection to county roads, many of which
are literally lifelines for small towns and
rural communities. But following passage
of the 1964 Wilderness Act and the 1976
Federal Land Policy and Management Act,
the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
and USFS began restricting and closing
roads, even those that had been grandfa-
thered in for protected legal status owing
to their legacy under the 1866 Mining Act.
But in 1996, U.S. District Judge Lloyd
D. George decided against Commissioner
Carver and Nye County, ruling that the
federal government owns and has the
power and authority to manage and ad-
minister the unappropriated public lands
and National Forest System lands within
Nye County, Nev. Dick Carver died
in 2003. Wayne Hage died in 2006. But
Judge Lloyd George is still on the bench
as a senior judge, and it was he who signed
the permanent injunction against Cliven
Bundy that initiated the recent standoff
with the BLM. And, of course, the BLM,
USFS, National Park Service (NPS), and
the other federal agencies that dominate
the Western public lands are still alive and
kicking more than ever. In fact, even
though these agencies already own vast
swaths of territory covering hundreds of
millions of acres, virtually all of them
have been on huge acquisition drives to
acquire still more land. The accompanying
map graphically portrays the enormous
fedgov footprint in the Western states.
Even a quick glance easily reveals there
is a striking difference between the federal
governments claim to physical real estate
in the states of the East and the Midwest
versus those of the West. In Maine, for in-
stance, federal agencies occupy only 1.1
percent of the states land area; in New
York its a mere 0.8 percent. The federal
government claims only 1.8 percent of
17 Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
PROPERTY RIGHTS
Americas Founders intended for the federal government
to transfer the Western lands to the states. Failure to do
so has led to more than a century of conflict.
Indiana, 1.6 percent of Alabama, and 1.7
percent of Ohio.
But in the Western states, the federal
footprint covers from nearly one-third to
over four-fifths of the area of the states.
Consider and contrast the rest of the coun-
try with the federal governments owner-
ship in the Western states:
Nevada: 84.5 percent
Alaska: 69.1 percent
Utah: 57.4 percent
Oregon: 53.1 percent
Idaho: 50.2 percent
Arizona: 48.1 percent
California: 45.3 percent
Wyoming: 42.4 percent
New Mexico: 41.8 percent
Colorado: 36.6 percent
Washington: 30.3 percent
Montana: 29.9 percent
The Founding Fathers never intended that
the federal government would permanent-
ly own and control these vast expanses
of land in the new territories that would
be admitted into the Union. In fact, at the
time our nation was being formed, sev-
eral of the original 13 eastern states (the
former colonies) had laid claim to lands
to the west. Those states without Western
claims knew they would be disadvantaged
and argued that the Western lands should
be transferred to the federal government
for temporary custody, until they could
be disposed of to settlers, and, later, to
what would become states, as the territo-
ries were admitted as sovereign states.
Virginias Act of Cession of 1784,
which became a model for others, stipulat-
ed that the ceded lands would be disposed
of for revenue for the United States and
the creation of new member states, and
shall be faithfully and bona fide disposed
of for that purpose, and for no other use or
purpose whatsoever.
Thomas Jefferson insisted that the
federal government must dispose of all
its vast domain, and that the land should
never after, in any case, revert to the
United States.
However, virtually from the beginning,
the powerful East Coast commercial and
banking interests sought to keep as much
of the Western lands that they were un-
able to purchase bottled up, so that new
dynamic centers of productivity and com-
merce would not emerge to compete with
and challenge their dominance. Although
the new states were promised that upon
admission the federal government would
extinguish title, the Western states
of 1828 (Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Ar-
kansas, Louisiana, Alabama) had to force
the federal government to dispose of the
lands, as promised in their Admission Acts
or Enabling Acts.
In a speech before Congress in 1828,
Representative Joseph Duncan of Illinois
reminded Congress of the duty to dispose
of federally held lands. He noted:
If these lands are to be withheld, which
is the effect of the present system, in
vain may the People of these states
expect the advantages of well settled
neighborhoods, so essential to the ed-
ucation of youth.... Those states will,
for many generations, without some
change, be retarded in endeavors to
increase their comfort and wealth, by
means of works of internal improve-
ments, because they have not the
power, incident to all sovereign states,
of taxing the soil, to pay for the ben-
efits conferred upon its owner by roads
and canals. When these States stipu-
lated not to tax the lands of the United
States until they were sold, they rested
Unequal footing: The federal
government holds vast expanses
of public lands in the Western
states, compared to almost none
or very little in states to the east.
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 18
While the federal government claims 84.5
percent of Nevada the highest of any state
in Nye County the federal footprint covers
over 93 percent, and federal bureaucrats in
Washington, D.C., dominate virtually every
aspect of Nye County inhabitants lives.
PROPERTY RIGHTS
upon the implied engagement of Con-
gress to cause them to be sold, within
a reasonable time. No just equivalent
has been given those states for a sur-
render of an attribute of sovereignty so
important to their welfare, and to an
equal standing with the original states.
This equal standing or equal footing
principle was confirmed by the U.S. Su-
preme Courts 1845 decision in Pollard v.
Hagan. The court ruled against the federal
governments claims in Alabama, which
had been created from territory ceded by
Georgia. In the landmark Pollard deci-
sion, the court held:
The United States never held any
municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction
or right of soil in and for the terri-
tory, of which Alabama or any of the
new states were formed, except for
temporary purposes, and to execute
the trusts created by the acts of the
Virginia and Georgia legislatures,
and the deeds of cession executed
by them to the United states, and the
trust created by the treaty with the
French republic of the 30th of April,
1803, ceding Louisiana.
Moreover, said the court:
Alabama is, therefore, entitled to the
sovereignty and jurisdiction over all
the territory within her limits, subject
to the common law, to the same ex-
tent that Georgia possessed it, before
she ceded it to the United States. To
maintain any other doctrine, is to
deny that Alabama has been admit-
ted into the union on an equal footing
with the original states, the constitu-
tion, laws, and compact, to the con-
trary notwithstanding.
President Andrew Jackson, in 1833, de-
scribed the commitment to dispose of
land in agreements with the original states
as solemn compacts where the States
claiming those lands acceded to those
views and transferred their claims to the
United States upon certain specific condi-
tions, and on those conditions the grants
were accepted. Further, he stated:
The Constitution of the United States
did not delegate to Congress the
power to abrogate these compacts.
On the contrary, by declaring that
nothing in it shall be so construed as
to prejudice any claims of the United
States or of any particular State, it
virtually provides that these com-
pacts and the rights they secure shall
remain untouched by the legislative
power, which shall only make all
needful rules and regulations for
carrying them into effect. All beyond
this would seem to be an assumption
of undelegated power.
Much more recently, a unanimous U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Hawaii v. Of-
fice of Hawaiian Affairs (2009) confirmed
the importance of federal commitments
made at the time of entry into the Union
and the inability of Congress to renege on
those commitments, stating:
The consequences of admission are
instantaneous, and it ignores the
uniquely sovereign character of that
event to suggest that subsequent
events somehow can diminish what
has already been bestowed. And that
proposition applies a fortiori where
virtually all of the States public
lands are at stake.
Now, after more than a century of delay,
many of the Western states are demand-
ing their equal footing as sovereign
states, free from the shackles of an oppres-
sive federal landlord. Which is to say,
merely, that they are refusing to continue
tolerating a second-class status that is not
tolerated by the other supposedly co-equal
states to their east.
On March 23, 2012, Utah Governor
Gary R. Herbert signed House Bill 148,
which demands the federal government
make good on the promises made in
Utahs 1894 Enabling Act (UEA) to ex-
tinguish title to federal lands in Utah.
We need a paradigm change when it
comes to public lands management. This
bill creates a mechanism to put the federal
government on notice that Utah must be
restored to its rightful place as a co-equal
partner, said Governor Herbert. The fed-
eral government retaining control of two-
thirds of our landmass was never in the
bargain when we became a state, and it is
indefensible 116 years later.
This is only the first step in a long
proc ess, but it is a step we must take. Fed-
eral control of our public lands puts Utah
at a distinct disadvantage, specifically
with regard to education funding, Herbert
continued. State and local property taxes
cannot be levied on federal lands, and roy-
alties and severance taxes are curtailed due
to federal land use restrictions. Federal
control hampers our ability to adequately
fund our public education system.
The bill signed by Governor Herbert
gave the federal government a deadline of
December 2014 to relinquish tens of mil-
lions of acres of public lands to the state,
excluding National Parks and Wilderness
www.TheNewAmerican.com 19
Nevada rancher Wayne Hage (left) was a victim of a decades-long criminal conspiracy by
federal agencies to kill his ranch business, said Judge Robert C. Jones.
Areas, which are left under national con-
trol. That deadline date is fast approach-
ing. However, considering the potential
significance of this political move, it has
received almost no media coverage, hence
very few people have heard about it be-
yond the borders of the Beehive State.
One explanation for the silence is that the
powers that be in the political, financial,
and chattering classes havent taken it
seriously. However, that may be about to
change, as more states are looking to fol-
low Utahs example.
On April 18, more than 50 political
leaders from nine Western states gathered
in Salt Lake City to attend the Legislative
Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands.
Those of us who live in the rural areas
know how to take care of lands, said
Montana State Senator Jennifer Fielder,
one of the organizers, who lives in the
northwestern Montana town of Thompson
Falls. We have to start managing these
lands. Its the right thing to do for our peo-
ple, for our environment, for our economy
and for our freedoms, Fielder said.
Utah State Rep. Ken Ivory, one of the
summit organizers, pointed out that there
is an estimated $150 trillion in mineral re-
sources locked up in federal lands across
the West wealth that can be put to use
to help struggling American families and
make the American economy stronger, more
competitive, and less dependent on foreign
sources for energy and critical minerals.
Idaho Speaker of the House Scott Bedke
noted that Idaho forests and rangeland
managed by the state are in better health
and have suffered less damage and water-
shed degradation from wildfire than have
lands managed by federal agencies. Its
time the states in the West come of age,
Bedke said. Were every bit as capable of
managing the lands in our boundaries as
the states east of Colorado.
One of the absurd (and tragic) ironies
of the public lands story is that the big-
gest political lobby for keeping the huge
tracts under Washington, D.C.s control is
composed of urbanite environmentalists
who have been duped into supporting the
present system that is killing our national
forests and destroying our wildlife, habi-
tats, and natural wonders on a monumen-
tal scale. As weve reported in these pages
before, many government and scientific
reports have noted that tens of millions of
acres of national forest are dying and burn-
ing up due to neglect and mismanagement.
Likewise, a report released last October by
Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) shows that,
despite increases in funding, the National
Park Service continues its decades-long
trend of deferring maintenance, with the
result that most of our crown jewel parks
have fallen into serious disrepair even
as they continue to expand their holdings.
The report notes that, despite a $256
million shortfall in maintenance funding
and an $11.5 billion backlog, more than
35 bills have been introduced this year
to study, create or expand national parks,
monuments and heritage areas, including
a bill to establish a national historic park
on the moon. Yes, a park on the moon
a fitting abode, many might think, for
federal lunatics.
End Fedgov
Occupation of the West
The critics who say Senator Harry Reid
has never uttered a sentence that wasnt a
lie probably would exclude from that gen-
eralization the senators remark on April
14, Its not over.
Reid was referring, of course, to the
BLM-Cliven Bundy conflict, and his
threatening comment implied that the next
round would not end so auspiciously for
the rancher. Senator Reid also must know
that there are thousands more hardwork-
ing Americans like Bundy who face im-
minent economic ruin and loss of family
farms, businesses, and homes due to the
destructive policies that he and his ruling
class collaborators are fastening upon our
nation. This is especially true across the
West, where the federal landlords lash
falls hardest and has the longest reach.
One thing is certain: The arrogant and op-
pressive federal agencies will drive many
rural people to desperation, making more
Bundy-BLM confrontations inevitable.
Perhaps Reid and his Beltway cohorts
are prepared to label as domestic terror-
ists all those who oppose their steady usur-
pations. Perhaps they even want to provoke
violent opposition as justification for ever
more concentration of federal power to deal
with the chaos and civil unrest.
But there is no need to continue on the
same flawed course that will guarantee
continued, and escalating, conflicts. The
Western states can take the path that has
been trod previously by other states. Now
is the time, and the way is prepared for a
peaceable, sensible, moral, and just solu-
tion to the long-standing inequity of fed-
eral dominance that has troubled the West
for over a century.
Do the Western states not have same
right as all the other states of these United
States to determine their own destinies and
manage their own affairs, free of the shack-
les imposed by federal bureaucrats and
outside politicians? Is it not time to evict
the federal bureaucrats from their Western
empire and transfer the land, as originally
intended, to the states and the people? n
A
P
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U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) calls Bundys supporters domestic terrorists, but has done
nothing to rein in agencies that are abusing his constituents.
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 20
PROPERTY RIGHTS
by William F. Jasper
W
hen the Left wants to distract
America from the central point
of a burning issue, they find (or
manufacture) a gotcha moment and yell
RACISM!
So it is no surprise that embattled Ne-
vada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose struggle
against the federal governments overreach
has won widespread sympathy, has ended
up as another victim of race card politics.
In a videotaped press conference, the
plainspoken cowboy made some impromp-
tu comments that caused a raging firestorm
amongst the progressive media commen-
tariat, and also caused panic amongst many
who had supported him. But, in the full, un-
censored video, from which the New York
Times selected its excerpts to stir up the
racism charge, Cliven Bundy made state-
ments that are unquestionably sympathetic
to blacks and Mexicans:
Weve progressed quite a bit from
that day until now, and we sure dont
want to go back. We sure dont want
these colored people to go back to that
point. We sure dont want the Mexican
people to go back to that point. And
we can make a difference right now by
taking care of some of these bureau-
cracies and do it in a peaceful way.
Any fair rendering of the above comment
(and other similarly sympathetic remarks)
would admit that Bundy was saying hes
glad for the gains that racial minorities have
made and he doesnt want to see them re-
turned to the pre-1960s status. So, was he
then saying in the next breath that he wants
to see them go back to their status in the
pre-1860s? Was he really saying they were
better off under slavery, that he would have
favored slavery back then, that they should
have stayed in slavery, that he would like
to see them in chattel slavery once again?
Much of what Bundy said closely
parallels what even many black lead-
ers, authors, and intellectuals such
as Professor Walter Williams, Rev. C.L.
Bryant, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson,
Bill Cosby, Alveda King, Star Parker,
and Alan Keyes have been saying.
But Cliven Bundys sin is that he is an
elderly white man who is unschooled in
traversing the minefield of political cor-
rectness and he was careless in failing
to make important distinctions and clari-
fications. He sinned by failing to keep
up with the constantly changing terminol-
ogy for ethnic designations. He still uses
the terms Negro, colored people, and
Mexican but then, race activists still
argue amongst themselves concerning
the proper ethnic label to apply to their
group identity.
Lets look at the few sentences that have
caused the uproar. Bundy observed of the
government housing in Las Vegas:
They didnt have nothing to do....
And because they were basically on
government subsidy, so now what
do they do? They abort their young
children, they put their young men in
jail, because they never learned how
to pick cotton. And Ive often won-
dered, are they better off as slaves,
picking cotton and having a family
life and doing things, or are they bet-
ter off under government subsidy?
They didnt get no more freedom.
They got less freedom.
Was Cliven Bundy maybe trying, albeit
clumsily, to say much the same thing, for
instance, as Professor Walter Williams,
the popular economist and author? Dr.
Williams, who happens to be black, has
said: The welfare state has done to black
Americans what slavery couldnt do, what
Jim Crow couldnt do, what the harshest
racism couldnt do. And that is to destroy
the black family.
Former ambassador Alan Keyes is one
black leader who immediately came to
Bundys defense. He wasnt talking so
much about black folks, but about the harm
and damage that the leftist socialism has
done to blacks, Keyes said in an interview.
Niger Innis, a spokesman for the Con-
gress of Racial Equality (CORE) and a
candidate for Congress in Nevada, and
Derrick Grayson, a candidate for the U.S.
Senate in Georgia, are black leaders who
have also come to his defense.
Black radio talk-show host Kevin Jack-
son has posted a defense of Bundy by a
black U.S. Marine, who identifies himself
merely as Charlie Delta along with a
photo of himself with Bundy. The media
distorts information to the point of social
division, said Charlie Delta. This is a
photo of myself and the resilient, often
charismatic, and maybe not so tactful
Cliven Bundy. Hes a cowboy and a hellu-
va family man, not an orator. One thing he
definitely isnt a racist. n
a Rancher With Racism
21 Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
PROPERTY RIGHTS
by Selwyn Duke
On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.
Boy Scout Oath
Hes a real Boy Scout, the sneering
worldly would say, using an organization
defined by virtue to symbolize a brightness
of light with which their darkness had no
fellowship. But that was before bad became
good and good became bad and the Boy
Scouts of America (BSA) found itself in the
crosshairs of our Great Sexual Heresy. And
now, in a truly brazen move, the California
Supreme Court Advisory Committee on the
Code of Judicial Ethics has proposed that
no one affiliated with the BSA be allowed
to serve as a judge because of the organi-
zations prohibition against homosexual
troop leaders. The committees thinking is,
explained Catherine Short, legal director
for Life Legal Defense Foundation, that the
BSA is an organization whose members
must be assumed to be biased and thus unfit
for the bench.
Speaking of the wrong associa-
tions brings us to the forced resignation
of erstwhile Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich
after only a week and a half on the job.
He also was unfit, having committed
the trespass of donating $1,000 in 2008
to Californias pro-marriage Proposition
8. Of course, his defense of marriage was
shared by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton
at the time, and the anti-liberty libertine
Left isnt demanding the presidents resig-
nation. But the little Eichmanns did target
Eich, recognizing the obvious difference
that he might actually have been sincere
about his position.
Californias anti-BSA proposal coming
on the heels of Eichs ouster is curious; its
as if a message has been sent that the time
is right to persecute citizens for politically
incorrect past associations. And, oh, how
effective this could be. If California is able
to prevent BSA members from becoming
judges, it will just be the first of many ca-
reer paths blocked to them. And what par-
ent will enroll his son in the Boy Scouts
today if it means career destruction tomor-
row? Who will dare support marriage if it
means that today? Its the Swedish model
for concluding the post-culture war pacifi-
cation effort, which, as Swedish journalist
Ingrid Carlqvist put it, is to ensure that if
youre labeled a bigot, you will have no
job, no career, you might lose your fam-
ily. You will have no future. And Swedish
may not be a bad characterization. For one
thing is clear when youve reached a point
where you may not support an organization
and an institution as American as apple pie:
That Americans need not apply.
And while this phenomenon is wax-
ing, it is, tragically, nothing new. In the
past Ive reported on the plight of Or-
egon Christians Aaron and Melissa Klein,
whose bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa
was shut down via community pressure
after they refused to bake a wedding
cake for a lesbian couple in 2013. Fox
News Todd Starnes reported on other
such cases, writing earlier this year:
In December a Colorado baker was
ordered by a judge to either serve gay
weddings or face fines. Jack Phillips,
the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop,
was told to cease and desist from
discriminating against gay couples.
Phillips is a Christian.
New Mexicos Surpeme [sic]
Court ruled in August that two Chris-
tian photographers who declined to
photograph a same-sex union violat-
ed the states Human Rights Act. One
justice said photographers Elaine and
A recent move against the Boy Scouts and the forced
resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich are part of a growing
movement to stigmatize, and economically handicap, people
who espouse traditional Christian morality.
CULTURE
22 THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014
The last Boy Scouts? The effort to prohibit
people affiliated with the BSA from becoming
California judges may be a portent of an
ominous trend, one that would place the BSA
in the same category as the KKK.
Americans
Need Not Apply
Jonathan Huguenin were compelled
by law to compromise the very reli-
gious beliefs that inspire their lives.
And the Washington attorney gen-
eral filed a lawsuit against a florist
[Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Ar-
lenes Flowers & Gifts] who refused
to provide flowers for a same-sex
couples wedding.
Going even further back, its likely that
pro-homosexuality protests helped scuttle
therapist Dr. Laura Schlessingers short-
lived 2000 television show. There also was
a little start-up newspaper some years ago
called the Liberty Tree News, which used
to run my articles; it was forced to shut
down after homosexual activists targeted
its advertisers. In fact, this treating of ho-
mosexuality as hallowed is so obvious
that even notoriously left-wing comedian/
commentator Bill Maher said recently
when commenting on the Eich situation,
I think there is a gay mafia; I think if you
cross them, you do get whacked.
Yet this phenomenon neither started
with nor is limited to our great sexual de-
volution. For example, a certain college
professor (I dont currently have permis-
sion to use his name) who would send me
e-mails praising my work was fired from
a college teaching position for, as an ex-
student put it, being conservative. And
as American Thinkers Sally Zelikovsky
wrote in Brendan Eich and the New
American Totalitarian State, We have
seen Tea Parties shaken down by the IRS.
We know there is a Hollywood blacklist
for conservatives. It has been a slow trick-
le that is fast turning into a full stream.
For sure. As Newt Gingrich put it on This
Week With George Stephanopoulos, If
you have the wrong views, meaning con-
servative, too often you have no career.
Before delving into deeper matters, Id
like to propose a possible solution for tradi-
tionalist businessmen targeted by discrimi-
natory anti-discrimination law. Why not
remove yourselves from the public ac-
commodation category by declaring your
concern a private club? In other words, if
you have a bakery, it technically becomes a
bakery club only serving members, who
join on a per diem basis, with a fee added
to their bill once approved.
And that fee would be a penny.
Its an in-your-face move, and, sure,
its based on a technicality. But note that
people spend decades in prison and
sometimes avoid having to do so based
on technicalities.
Whether or not this remedy would
work, however, it doesnt solve the deep-
er cultural problem. As to this, Im prob-
ably supposed to now complain about
tyranny and intolerance, about how no
one should be fired for what he believes.
This very idea was expressed by openly
homosexual commentator Andrew Sulli-
van, who wrote at The Dish, The whole
[Brendan Eich] episode disgusts me as
it should disgust anyone interested in a
tolerant and diverse society. If this is the
gay rights movement today hounding
our opponents with a fanaticism more
like the religious right than anyone else
then count me out. His attitude is
most principled and honorable; the prob-
lem is that it overlooks the realities of
mans nature and of culture wars and
of the necessities of arranging a society.
Someone once pointed out that stigmas
are the corollaries of values: If youre
going to value certain things, it follows
that what contradicts them will be de-
valued. For example, to value the Seven
Heavenly Virtues means that the Seven
Deadly Sins will be devalued. And what
if sin becomes style? Then Gods plan is
turned on its head. Envy supplants kind-
ness (admiration), as in politicians class-
warfare appeals; sloth waxes and diligence
wanes, as encouraged by the welfare state;
and pride is stressed over humility, as in
schools self-esteem training. And lust
becomes a right and that which contra-
dicts it, chastity a wrong.
This brings us to tolerance, the most
interesting of ruses, in that many of those
embracing it con themselves. That is to
say, not realizing that tolerance always
implies a negative youd have to toler-
ate a bad cold, but you dont tolerate a
delectable meal some consider it a vir-
tue unto itself. Its only so, however, when
the tolerated thing either isnt objectively
bad (such as a disliked but healthful veg-
etable) or when something objectively bad
cannot be remedied (such as bad weather).
But tolerating a true yet preventable evil
renders one a masochist or a doormat.
Whether or not we like the sound of
this, it gets at how things work in the real
world. We can say, I dont care what you
do in your private life; just dont shove
23 www.TheNewAmerican.com
Freedom of association is so yesterday: Baker Jack Phillips has been, as comedian/
commentator Bill Maher would say, whacked by the homosexual mafia. The Colorado
government has ordered Phillips to bake wedding cakes for homosexual couples or else.
A
P
I
m
a
g
e
s
it in my face, but tolerance leads to ac-
ceptance. This then brings the thing out
of the closet, and marketing usually fol-
lows. And if this marketing is success-
ful enough, the marketed item becomes
valued and what opposes it is devalued
proportionately. And then face-shoving
can ensue.
This refers to the establishment of tra-
ditions, conventions, and social codes,
those unseen laws that every civiliza-
tion has, has always had, and always
will have. For example, if anyone had
advocated todays libertinism in early
America, hed have been ostracized and
perhaps warned out of town. And how
many traditionalists would hire a staunch
Marxist or Nazi to work
in any capacity or have
one teach his children in
school? Then there is the
real-life example of Bill
Clintons sexual indiscre-
tions. While many said
they had no bearing on his
job, such behaviors can be
proxies for qualities that
certainly do; most obviously, they speak
to character.
Because the Eich case and many of my
examples concern private hiring decisions,
not government action, they illustrate how
social laws (codes) can ruin good people
just as easily as can state laws if you
lose the battle to legislate those social
laws. And this becomes inevitable when
you dont even show up on the battlefield
to fight.
A good example of this failure is Stu-
dents for Liberty co-founder Alexander
McCobins emphasizing that libertarian-
ism is a political philosophy, not an ethical
philosophy. True, and for this reason
and the same can be said of mainstream
American conservatism it is insuffi-
cient to secure liberty. No movement that
loses the culture can prevail politically.
The Left has long understood this. Al-
most a century ago, Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci tackled the problem of why his red
creed hadnt taken root in the West as his
fellow travelers had hoped; he concluded
that Western institutions the culture
were not conducive to Marxisms spread.
His prescription was that leftists had to
engage in a War of Position. This meant
placing Marxist-leaning individuals in the
media, academia, entertainment arena, and
all other areas of cultural influence and
gradually co-opting them.
That War of Position is now complete.
We now live in a time where hold-
ing views the Founding Fathers took for
granted, positions embraced by most
Americans for most of our history and
once considered as American as apple pie,
can mean scorn, ostracism, and career de-
struction. Weve now descended to a point
one we wont be able to ascend from
without reclaiming the culture where
Americans need not apply. n
STANDING
for Family & Freedom
CULTURE
We ve now descended to
a point one we wont
be able to ascend from
without reclaiming the
culture where Americans
need not apply.
Appleton, WI 54912-8040 (920) 749-3780
Less government, more responsibility, and with Gods help a better world.
by Selwyn Duke
W
ith another election nigh, Dem-
ocrats fortunes fading, and the
contraception deception hav-
ing run its course, liberals have decided
they need to fall back on an older War on
Women narrative. Enter the male-female
pay gap. Barack Obama and his minions
have been hitting this issue hard of late,
with the president saying in his January
State of the Union address, You know,
today, women make up about half our
workforce, but they still make 77 cents for
every dollar a man earns. In his April 12
radio address he opined, Earlier this week
was Equal Pay Day. It marks the extra time
the average woman has to work into a new
year to earn what a man earned the year
before. You see, the average woman who
works full-time in America earns less than
a man even when shes in the same pro-
fession and has the same education. Thats
wrong. In 2014, its an embarrassment.
Women deserve equal pay for equal work.
Not surprisingly, WhiteHouse.gov has a
page dedicated to the issue entitled Your
Right to Equal Pay, which touts Obamas
support for the Paycheck Fairness Act;
the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the
first bill the president signed into law; and
he recently issued two executive orders
addressing pay, one of which compels
the Labor Department to collect data on
federal contract workers compensation,
based on race and sex.
Yet as Republicans point out, Obama
is hypocritical on this issue because his
White House pays its women staffers only
88 cents on its men staffers dollar. In fact,
as American Thinkers Dr. Warren Beatty
wrote in Democratic Equal Pay Hypoc-
risy, For all Democrat Senate staffers,
men made an average of $5,500 more an-
nually than women, with avowed socialist
Bernie Sanders being the worst offender.
My, we men just cant resist discriminat-
ing against the fairer sex, can we even
when were pedal-to-the-metal progres-
sives? Or could there be another reason
for the pay gap?
When saying that women earn 77 per-
cent of what men do, Obama is factual
in a way. While the Census Bureau
Though it is often claimed that men make more money than women, once experience,
hours worked, and job types are figured in, mens and womens wages are comparable.
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today! 25
CULTURE
M
eans Paying M
en M
ore
did find a 77/100 female-male wage gap
in 2012, the Labor Departments Bureau
of Labor Statistics (BLS) which uses
a different formula for calculation now
says it is 82/100.
And if you consider hourly rates the gap
shrinks to 86/100, according to BLS data.
(Perhaps this is another good reason not to
have unconstitutional, rabble-rousing fed-
eral bureaucracies duplicating each others
tasks.) However you crunch the numbers,
though, a little more truth came out in the
political crunch when the White House
defended its pay regime. As Major Gar-
rett reported on the April 8 edition of CBS
This Morning, The White House said its
gender pay gap is tied to job experience,
education, and hours worked, among other
factors. This matters because those expla-
nations, according to the Labor Depart-
ment, explain a good deal of the gender
pay gap nationally. And Obamas defense
is believable; after all,
were the White Houses
intersex pay gap not due
to legitimate market fac-
tors, Obama could elimi-
nate the political liability
that is his hypocrisy with
his favored stroke-of-a-
pen governance. But how
significant are these market factors really?
So significant that what is wrong,
and what should be an embarrassment,
is Obamas rhetoric. And a good place to
start refuting it is with journalist Carrie
Lukas 2007 piece A Bargain At [sic] 77
Cents To a Dollar, in which she called the
77-cent battle cry the most misused of
(erstwhile?) Labor Department statistics
and wrote:
In truth, Im the cause of the wage
gap I and hundreds of thousands
of women like me. I have a good
education and have worked full time
for 10 years. Yet throughout my ca-
reer, Ive made things other than
money a priority. I chose to work in
the nonprofit world because I find
it fulfilling. I sought out a specialty
and employer that seemed best suit-
ed to balancing my work and family
life. When I had my daughter, I took
time off and then opted to stay home
full time and telecommute. Im not
making as much money as I could,
but Im compensated by having the
best working arrangement I could
hope for.
Lukas analysis is neither anecdotal nor
dated. First, while analyses often com-
pare men and women working full time,
not all full-time is equally full. As the
Wall Street Journals Mark J. Perry and
Andrew G. Biggs wrote last month in
The 77 Cents on the Dollar Myth About
Womens Pay:
Men were almost twice as likely as
women to work more than 40 hours
a week, and women almost twice as
likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per
week. Once that is taken into consid-
eration, the pay gap begins to shrink.
Women who worked a 40-hour week
earned 88% of male earnings.
Then there is the issue of marriage
and children. The BLS reports that
single women who have never mar-
ried earned 96% of mens earnings
in 2012.
The supposed pay gap appears
when marriage and children enter
the picture. Child care takes moth-
ers out of the labor market, so when
they return they have less work ex-
perience than similarly-aged males.
Many working mothers seek jobs
that provide greater flexibility, such
as telecommuting or flexible hours.
Not all jobs can be flexible, and
all other things being equal, those
which are will pay less than those
that [are] not.
(In keeping with this, studies have also
shown that women are more likely than
men to turn down promotions citing fa-
milial responsibilities.) Cementing this
point in a 2012 Truth-O-Meter arti-
cle stating that an Obama equal-pay ad
takes a solid statistic [what Ill hence-
forth call Myth 77] and describes it
incorrectly, PolitiFact wrote, Men
have typically held their jobs longer than
women in the same position. According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men in
2010 who were between 45 and 54 years
CULTURE
Obama is hypocritical
on this issue because his
White House pays its women
staffers only 88 cents on
its men staffers dollar.
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 26
Unseen female victims: When government equal-pay schemes take a bite out of mens salaries,
it takes food off the table of the stay-at-home moms and children they support.
AP Images
old had a median job tenure of 8.5 years,
compared to 7.1 years for women in the
same age group.
But it isnt just how long men and
women hold their jobs, but what they
choose to hold in the first place. As Politi-
Facts Truth-O-Meter pointed out in a
January piece analyzing Obamas State of
the Union Myth 77 maneuvering:
Men and women historically enter
certain fields more than others a
phenomenon known as occupation-
al segregation. Women more often
choose to be receptionists, nurses and
teachers, while men pursue paths as
truck drivers, managers and com-
puter software engineers, according
to the Institute for Womens Policy
Research. When data from all these
fields is combined together, as in the
Census and BLS studies, the gap is at
least partially explained by the pre-
dominance of women in lower-pay-
ing fields, rather than women neces-
sarily being paid less for the same job
than men are.
In addition, women dispropor-
tionately obtain degrees that lead to
lower-paying jobs than men.
For sure. Where women are more likely to
major in soft sciences, such as psychol-
ogy and sociology and even fields such
as Womens Studies, men tend toward
the hard sciences; in fact, the disparity is
great enough that statists have proposed
applying Title IX dictates to the STEM
fields (science, technology, engineering,
and math) to artificially equalize the sex
ratio in them.
Moreover, as Perry and Biggs also point
out, Males are more likely to pursue occu-
pations where compensation is risky from
year to year, such as law and finance. And
speaking of risk, men dominate the ranks
of virtually all the most dangerous jobs,
which have to pay more in order to attract
workers. Yet we see neither feminists en-
couraging women to be lumberjacks, iron
workers, or Alaskan king crab fishermen
nor politicians proposing social engineer-
ing to achieve equality in work-related
death an area in which 92 percent of
the victims are men.
There is also a contradiction evident
here. On the one hand, statists will claim
that business is greedy and only cares
about the bottom line, strenuously trying
to squeeze every penny from an endeavor;
on the other they tacitly assert that even
though these Scrooge businessmen could,
apparently, get employees (women) who
do the same work for less pay saving
23 percent they nonetheless will hire
more expensive men. I guess thats the
price you pay to be able to emit a devilish
laugh while fiendishly rubbing your hands
together and contemplating the blow you
struck for the patriarchy.
Of course, what is actually going on
here is that we have a market that, inso-
far as it isnt trumped, rewards merit
and people who dont like this when the
wrong groups excel. Why, for instance,
is there focus on only Myth 77 when its
also true that Jews earn more than gen-
tiles, and homosexuals more than straight
people, and a 2012 Pew study found that
Hindus were the highest-earning reli-
gious group in the United States? There
are three main reasons. While its fash-
ionable to attack live white males almost
as much dead ones, implying that these
other wage gaps are unjust would get you
branded a bigot. Second, leftist dogma
states that advantages enjoyed by vic-
tim groups can never be due to discrimi-
nation. As an example, a few years ago I
had a radio debate on white privilege
with a man who had a Ph.D. in ethnic
studies. After he cited as proof of this
privilege the fact that whites earn more
than minorities, I put him on the spot
by asking him if, since Jews earn more
as well, he would begin campaigning
against Jewish privilege. His response?
The higher earnings cannot be attribut-
able to privilege because we know that
Jews suffer discrimination.
It was circular reasoning: His thesis was
that higher incomes were proof of his left-
ist dogma except when his leftist dogma
decreed that higher incomes werent.
The last reason is that there is little politi-
cal downside for Democrats when attack-
ing men; it fires up their feminist base, their
public-relations team the U.S. media
wont beat a War on Men drum, and men
arent one of their constituencies, anyway.
But Jews, homosexuals, and Hindus vote
Democrat by wide margins and you
dont attack your own phalanx.
The truth is that the male/female wage-
gap focus is completely arbitrary. Con-
sider, for instance, the issue of how po-
litically correct forces once lobbied for
women tennis players to receive the same
prize money as the men. It was a masterful
exercise in propaganda: The women play
the same sport, so they deserve the same
money! was the cry. But do we complain
that lightweight boxers dont earn as much
as heavyweights? Why not? They have to
endure blows; they still can suffer brain
damage. The answer is that they get paid
less because theyre less marketable; peo-
www.TheNewAmerican.com 27
The colorblind market: The male-female wage gap is only one of many in America. One of the
least known is that Hindus are the highest paid religious group in the United States.
AP Images
ple prefer watching the big boys. But they
do have recourse. If they want the heavy-
weights money, all they need do is fight,
and succeed, in the heavyweight ranks.
Likewise, if female tennis players want
the mens money, they should try passing
muster on the mens tour. To do otherwise
is to request equal pay for unequal work,
in that both lightweight boxers and female
athletes have separate and unequal arenas
protected from the best competition
in which to compete. And, of course, if the
Equality Police truly cared about intersex
equality, they would advocate elimina-
tion of womens tours, leagues, and teams
instead of, in a striking but mostly unno-
ticed contradiction, basing a plea for more
money on an equality argument while ac-
cepting an inherently unequal system.
Yet even this misses the point. For what-
ever constitutes equal work, it has noth-
ing to do with equal or exceptional pay. The
top 10 female fashion models earn 10 times
what their male counterparts do, yet it isnt
because theyre better. And is a million-
aire rapper better than a top-notch classical
musician earning a relative pittance? Like-
wise, heavyweight boxers and male athletes
dont earn more because theyre better, ei-
ther; this is merely an indirect cause. Its no
doubt a major reason people prefer watch-
ing them, but the direct factor in their high-
er income, as with female fashion models,
is that they satisfy the market more.
You might think that citing the true
reasons behind the pay gap the sexes
different educational, career, and lifestyle
choices would end the discussion. But
leftists have a response: Those choices
themselves are due to discriminatory con-
ditioning, to societys sex stereotyping and
suppression of girl-power gusto. But as an
excellent Norwegian documentary entitled
The Gender Equality Paradox (GEP) ex-
plains, this is simply untrue.
After pointing out that even in 2011
Norway virtually all nurses are women
and most every engineer is a man, the
GEP outlined research indicating a strong
biological basis for sex-specific job pref-
erence. From the age of nine months, boys
gravitate toward masculine toys while
girls choose feminine ones. Why, even
during the first day after birth, boys are
more likely to look at mechanical objects
whereas girls are drawn to faces. Explain-
ing the significance of this finding in my
October 2013 piece Why Girls and Sci-
ence Dont Mix, I wrote:
This is one reason why, as California
State U. Fullerton psychology profes-
sor Richard Lippa put it [in the GEP],
Men are much more interested in
thing-oriented occupations, things
like being an engineer or a mechanic;
women, relatively, are much more
interested in the people-oriented oc-
cupations. Lippa appeared in the
GEP because he conducted a study
of 53 nations and found that the sex-
specific preference for jobs was uni-
versal. Said he, You would expect it
to change across countries if cultures
were a big influence.... [Yet the phe-
nomenon] was every bit as strong in
Norway as it was in Saudi Arabia or
Pakistan or India or Singapore or Ma-
laysia.... When you see a result like
that that gives you a hint that some-
thing biological is going on there.
Yet the GEP points out that there are some
cultural differences:
Women in less egalitarian countries,
such as India, are more likely to pursue
the masculine-oriented STEM fields than
women in places such as ber-feminist
Norway.
How could this be? In rich nations
people can afford to follow their hearts,
to indulge their natural inclinations, while
citizens of poor lands must pursue what-
ever puts bread on the table (not too many
gender researchers in the land
of sati and saris).
Moreover, despite all the kow-
towing to the coven of the cater-
wauling, some groups of Ameri-
can women are putting more
bread on the table than their
male cohorts. For example, con-
sider what an April 8
PunditFact
Truth-O-Meter article reported
about research conducted by James Chung
of private research firm Reach Advisors:
The median full-time salaries of
young women in Americas metro-
politan areas are 8 percent higher
than those of the guys in their peer
group.
A breakdown provided for Time
magazine included a look at specific
cities. In Atlanta, young unmarried
childless women made 21 percent
more than men, Chung found. In Los
Angeles, young women made 12 per-
cent more than their cohorts.
The reason why young women
in metropolitan areas earn more than
young men is that they are 50 percent
more likely to graduate from college.
This brings us to another striking double
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 28
If equality and
proportionality are so
important, why do the
social engineers not
insist that 50 percent of
undergraduates be men?
CULTURE
The death gap: One reason men earn more
on balance is that they do virtually all the most
dangerous jobs and account for 92 percent
of work-related deaths.
AP Images
standard. Title IX has been
used to enforce proportion-
ality in college sports
meaning, since 57 percent
of U.S. undergraduates are
women, 57 percent of col-
lege athletes also should be
and, again, there are those
who would apply this stan-
dard to STEM as well. But
if equality and proportionality are so im-
portant, why do the social engineers not
insist that 50 percent of undergraduates
be men? It seems that some equality is
more equal than other equality.
The problem is focusing on equality at
the expense of reality. People simply arent
equal in their capacities, motivations, incli-
nations, talents, or priorities, and the market
rightly reflects these differences. And it will
continue to do so, unless
In her 2012 article The case against
the Paycheck Fairness Act, the American
Enterprise Institutes Christina Hoff Som-
mers warns that this misnamed Demo-
crat act would encourage class-action
lawsuits and force defendants to settle
under threat of uncapped punitive dam-
ages. She continues:
Employers would be liable for the
lingering effects of past discrimina-
tion.
Universities, for example, typi-
cally pay professors in the business
school more than those in the school
of social work. Thats a fair outcome
of market demand. But according to
the gender theory permeating this
bill, market forces are tainted by
past discrimination. Gender ex-
perts will testify that sexist attitudes
led society to place a higher value on
male-centered fields like business
than female-centered fields like so-
cial work. Faced with multimillion-
dollar lawsuits and attendant public-
ity, innocent employers will settle.
They will soon be begging for the
safe harbor of federally determined
occupational wage scales.
And Paycheck (un)Fairness Act or not,
this government pressure has already long
had an effect. As writer Carey Roberts
wrote in his 2008 article McCain lam-
poons the gender wage gap myth:
According to the National Associa-
tion of Colleges and Employers, in
many fields female college grads are
being offered higher starting salaries
than their male counterparts.
Female physicists are getting
$6,500 more [than men are]. Co-eds
who majored in petroleum engineering
are being offered $4,400 more. And
women computer programmers are
being enticed with $7,200 extra pay.
In fact for dozens of majors and occu-
pations, women coming out of college
are getting better offers than men....
Why these disparities? Because
in traditionally male-dominated pro-
fessions, employers are willing to
ante up more greenbacks to attract
females in order to forestall a costly
discrimination lawsuit.
And for a glimpse of what lies ahead on
Equality Lane, look no further than Norway.
That nation mandated in 2002 that 40 per-
cent of all corporate boardroom members
must be women. Since only seven percent
were previously, one can only imagine how
many men with superior qualifications have
been passed over in deference to the quota.
The tragedy here is not just that Myth
77 is an attack on the market, but also on
something even more central to a healthy
civilization. Think about it: Since em-
ployers only have so many resources,
compensating women above and beyond
their productivity level means lowering
mens salaries proportionately. And just
imagine the effect of government occu-
pational wage scales. In general, such
factors would make it more difficult for
men to support wives who would prefer
to tend to hearth and home. Thus, Myth
77 is, among other things, an attack on
traditional married women and children,
on the central building block of civiliza-
tion the family.
Why do we never hear these facts in
the political debate? Well, the Women
make only 77 cents on a mans dollar!
battle cry trumps whys and statistics and
stuff of textbooks for the same reason
Nike uses the slogan Just do it! and
not long technical explanations of its
sports gears virtues. Demagogues may
want to eliminate unfashionable pay
gaps, but the knowledge gaps that allow
their sloganeering to beat sublimity suit
them just fine. n
29 www.TheNewAmerican.com
Nature trumping nurture: While psychologists warn about sex stereotyping, the truth is that
women are even more likely to choose feminine professions in wealthy, feminism-oriented
Norway than in patriarchal India.
AP Images
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CONCRETE PAVING
CONCRETE PAVING
by Michael Tennant
Free Prices Now!: Fixing the Economy
by Abolishing the Fed, by Hunter Lewis,
Edinburg, Virginia: AC
2
Books, 2013, 276
pages, hardcover.
F
ive years after the global econ-
omy was falling at its fastest
rate, Western economies are
still failing to gain much-needed momen-
tum, despite the efforts of central bankers
on both sides of the Atlantic, the New
York Times reported in November.
There is no question that the economy
remains sluggish. But perhaps it is not
struggling despite central bankers efforts
but because of them. That is the thesis of
Hunter Lewis Free Prices Now! Sub-
titled Fixing the Economy by Abolishing
the Fed, the book makes the case that the
Federal Reserves monetary machinations,
coupled with other government interven-
tions in the marketplace, are precisely
what has led to the current economic mal-
aise and that the solution to the economys
woes is to end the Fed, to reform the bank-
ing system, and to get the government out
of the business of picking winners and
losers in the marketplace.
Lewis knows whereof he speaks. He is a
co-founder of global investment firm Cam-
bridge Associates, LLC and even spent
some time at that hotbed of central plan-
ning, the World Bank. He has written nine
books and numerous articles on the sub-
jects of economics and moral philosophy.
Those two topics might at first glance
seem to be an odd pairing. It is often said
that economics particularly Austrian
economics, of which Lewis is an adherent
is value-free. That is, it may tell us
that an increase in the minimum wage will
lead to more unemployment, but it does not
tell us whether it is therefore either moral
or immoral to hike the minimum wage.
For Lewis, however, economics and
morality go hand-in-hand. He is particu-
larly passionate about the need for hon-
esty in the marketplace.
The most reliable barometer of eco-
nomic honesty is to be found in prices,
Lewis writes. Honest prices, neither ma-
nipulated or [sic] controlled, provide both
investors and consumers with reliable
economic signals. They show, beyond
any doubt, what is scarce, what is plen-
tiful, where opportunities lie, and where
they do not lie.
The problem, of course, is that humans
do not always want to tell the truth. But
since prices in a free market never lie,
those who wish to deceive in the market-
place must call upon the state to manipu-
late prices in their favor through various
schemes, from outright price controls to
inflation and regulation. Besides aiding
their friends in the private sector, govern-
ment officials have their own incentives to
prevaricate, not least of which is conceal-
ing the true cost of their profligacy.
Governments could not get away with
their deceptions, however, without ac-
complices in academia and media. These
modern day Magi, Lewis says, confi-
dently argue that dishonest prices are re-
ally honest; honest prices are really dis-
honest; the resulting chaos is really order;
and a future filled with jobs and plenty lies
ahead with just a few more manipulations
and controls.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that the
progenitor of todays Magi, British econ-
omist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946),
once declared, I remain, and always will
remain, an immoralist. Lewis writes that
Keynes did not trust the common man to do
the right thing, instead believing that gov-
ernment experts must guide the masses
in the right direction and , if necessary,
resort to a bit of seduction or mendacity to
achieve necessary ends hardly a prob-
lem for someone with no scruples.
For example, Keynes argued that unem-
ployment develops because people want
unreasonably high wages. To counter this,
he said, central banks should simply print
more money and convince the people that
the new money is as good as the old. In-
flating the money supply allows wages to
remain nominally high while stealthily
sapping them of their purchasing power.
Such methods, which Keynes called eco-
nomic tricks, are guileful and manipu-
lative, asserts Lewis.
Not surprisingly, these methods
stimulating the economy by inflation
and massive deficit spending, combined
with bailouts of private interests in-
troduce enormous amounts of dishonesty
into the economic system. They distort
prices and create bubbles in certain sec-
tors. And when those bubbles burst, rather
than letting the market correct itself, the
central bank just doubles down, lowers
interest rates further, floods the economy
with even more money, all in the hope
that it can generate even more borrowing
and spending, observes Lewis. How can
anyone think that this will work?
It doesnt work, as evidenced by its fail-
While economics as a science merely predicts how an economy will function if certain
decisions are made, morality ought to be part of the decision-making process.
Honesty Is the Best Economic Policy
31 www.TheNewAmerican.com
BOOK REVIEW
ure to end the Great Depression, the cur-
rent recession, and other economic down-
turns over the years. Japan, for instance,
has been employing Keynesian methods
on an unprecedented scale since its econo-
my crashed in the 1980s to no avail. In
sharp contrast, notes Lewis, other Asian
economies that crashed in the late 1990s
side-stepped the standard Keynesian rem-
edies and recovered swiftly.
Another perverse result of Keynesian
methods is the rise of crony capitalism, that
is, an economic system in which the gov-
ernment manipulates prices to favor its pals
in the private sector. Often this is done in
the name of equality; but as Lewis remarks,
the result is not a more equitable or suc-
cessful economy. It is, instead, an increas-
ingly corrupted economic and political sys-
tem. In trying to equalize outcomes, we
create an epidemic of lying, cheating, theft,
and corruption, with more and more people
trying to get something for nothing, relying
not on what they can do, but on whom they
know in government.
All of these interventions are aided
and abetted by the central bank, which, in
the case of the United States, is the Fed-
eral Reserve. The Fed creates
money out of thin air, deplet-
ing the value of existing cur-
rency so much so that, ac-
cording to Lewis, the dollar
has lost 97 percent of its pur-
chasing power since the Fed
came into existence in 1913.
The Fed drives down interest
rates, creating bubbles and
inevitable busts. It buys gov-
ernment bonds, injecting more money into
the economy and concealing the true cost
of federal spending. It has lately taken to
bailing out failing corporations. And those
are just its (arguably) lawful activities. As
Lewis points out, much of what the Fed
does is clearly illegal.
The banking system in general is a
hopeless tangle of rules, subsidies, guar-
antees, and outright price controls, Lewis
writes. Its hard to tell if banks are even
earning profits, he says. The truth is that
almost nothing in banking today is real
anymore. It long ago lost any solid con-
nection to market reality and is all fictional
to one degree or another.
If, as Lewis contends, todays economic
disaster, which is certain to become even
worse as the welfare state collapses of its
own weight, is the result of central banking
and other government interventions, then
the solution is obvious: Get rid of the Fed
and drastically scale back the government.
That is precisely what Lewis recommends.
He also calls for banking reform not
the Dodd-Frank method of piling on more
bureaucracy that only ends up favoring
the big banking interests, but bringing an
end to fractional reserve banking, whereby
banks keep in reserve only a fraction of the
money needed to pay their depositors on
demand, using the money that should have
been kept in reserve to create additional
loans. End fractional reserve banking, he
maintains, and banks will be solvent at all
times, eliminating any perceived need for
government deposit insurance and, in turn,
all other government controls.
Echoing former congressman Ron Paul
and Ludwig von Mises Institute chairman
Llewellyn Rockwell, whom he quotes at
length, Lewis stumps for ending govern-
ment control over the money supply and al-
lowing the market to determine what will be
used as money, thereby preventing it from
being subject to political manipulation.
Finally, Lewis argues for one over-
arching principle in making all econom-
ic policy: that prices must be free, fully
emancipated from government. Thats
certainly a tall order in this day of quan-
titative easing, corporate bailouts, sub-
sidies, and countless other interventions.
But considering that the opposite approach
has been tried and has failed miserably,
maybe its time to give freedom a chance.
Free Prices Now! is a relatively easy
read. Lewis writes in a direct, lucid style,
with none of the obfuscatory terminology
so often found in economics literature.
He does not assume that the reader has a
prior understanding of economics, instead
spending several chapters laying out the
basics of supply and demand and how they
relate to prices, profits, and losses. That,
combined with his easy-to-read style,
makes Free Prices Now! something even
a high-school student could comprehend
and benefit from.
A few minor criticisms are, however,
in order. Lewis has a tendency to overuse
block quotations, even going so far as to
use them for single words at times, which
can interrupt the flow of the writing a
bit. Also, the book would have benefit-
ed from some more careful editing. My
review copy contained several spelling
and punctuation errors and one instance
of misuse of a homophone (sews the
seeds). Those relatively small quibbles
notwithstanding, I unreservedly recom-
mend Free Prices Now! to anyone who
wants to understand how the economy
got into its current state and, more im-
portantly, how to get it out. n
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 32
If todays economic disaster is the result
of central banking and other government
interventions, then the solution is
obvious: Get rid of the Fed and drastically
scale back the government. That is
precisely what Lewis recommends.
BOOK REVIEW
Robber Meets His Match
An armed man in Sarasota, Florida, didnt
stand a chance when he attempted to rob a
CVS Pharmacy on April 13.
Sixty-five-year-old Freddie Johnson
entered the CVS and began demanding
prescription pills from a CVS worker. A
gun was quite visible in his jacket pocket.
Johnson then proceeded to the back of the
store. Janus Jurisoo, 33, witnessed the in-
cident and instructed the clerk at the front
of the store to call the police. Jurisoo fol-
lowed Johnson and heard him yell to em-
ployees to put all the pills in the bag or
Ill shoot.
Jurisoo waited until Johnson seemed
distracted and then tackled him from be-
hind, bringing him to the ground. I just
grabbed his hand and neck and forced him
to the ground so I could have full body
control, so I can make sure hes not aiming
at anybody anymore, Jurisoo recalled.
Then I just flattened him down, and
choked him out. I told him not to resist, to
stay down or Id punch him too, Jurisoo
told WTSP.
Police arrived shortly after the take-
down.
According to Jurisoo, it was obvious
even before the ordeal began by what the
man was wearing that he was there for the
wrong reasons. Jeans and a leather jacket,
and it was 82 degrees outside, he said.
Sarasota Police Chief Bernadette Di-
Pino stated that Johnson had been seeking
large numbers of oxycodone and hydro-
mophone pills.
When asked how he learned to take
down a man like that, Jurisoo answered,
Self-defense lessons. And a little prac-
tice.... Its like a hobby. Jurisoo ex-
plained he was motivated to act because
there were others in the store whose lives
he wanted to protect, particularly women
and children.
Man Stops Rape
Thanks to the intervention of a Harlem,
New York, man, a young Fashion Insti-
tute of Technology (FIT) student was
spared from something horrific. The New
York Post reported in February that Dale
Green, 46, helped stop a 19-year-old FIT
student from being raped.
Demetrius Edwards, 54, had attacked
the teen from behind after she emerged
from a cab, following a night of partying
with friends. Edwards grabbed the girl and
slammed her head against the icy pave-
ment, the Post reported.
Green was in his home at the time
watching the Olympics. He heard a com-
motion outside but first perceived it to be
a lovers quarrel. Green recalled hear-
ing the girl yelling, Please no! God no!
F***ing no! Dont do this! Dont do this!
He looked out the window and realized
that he was wrong. I saw this guy pick this
Asian girl up and put her on the ground be-
tween two cars, he said. I cant believe
somebody tried to rape somebody in that
spot. Its right out in the open. She was
saying No, no, take my keys. It seemed
like he was trying to hit her really hard, so
I started dialing 911.
While on the phone with authorities,
Green yelled out the window to the vic-
tim, asking her if she was okay, and she
indicated that her attacker was trying to
rape her. Green gave operators a descrip-
tion of the suspect and then ran outside
to grab the attacker, who, upon seeing
Green, fled the scene. Fortunately, Green
managed to chase the perpetrator toward
the police.
One law-enforcement official said, His
description of the suspect and his direc-
tion of travel, toward the Madison Avenue
Bridge is really what helped us get him.
After the police stopped the assailant,
Green went to go look for the victim,
who had already run to safety. Police later
caught up with her and were able to ques-
tion her about the incident. Edwards re-
portedly had been arrested for sex attacks
three different times in the past, and in this
instance was charged with attempted rape.
A Life for a Life
A teenage boy in northern California was
killed on March 21 by an oncoming freight
train. In his final moments, he pushed
aside his date so that she could be spared
from the trains blow.
NBC Bay Area reported that the acci-
dent occurred in the town of Marysville,
near the high school and a little league
park where a game was being played.
People who were at the game told the
Marysville Appeal-Democrat they heard a
long blowing of the trains horn, and many
raced to the scene as the train came to a
stop, NBC reported.
The victim, Mateus Moore, was with a
16-year-old girl, Mickayla Friend, whom
he was escorting to the schools Sadie
Hawkins dance that evening. KCRA re-
ported that the train approached the couple
from behind, traveling in the same direc-
tion as the two teens as they walked to-
ward a store on the tracks.
Witnesses stated that Moore made a
split-second decision that saved the life of
the girl. Police are unsure why both youths
were unable to get out of the way of the
oncoming train. The conductor stated that
he saw the couple and had blown the horn
to warn them. The conductor activated the
emergency brakes, but the train could not
stop in time.
The engineer was on the horn.... Then
finally, they both looked back at the same
time. They would have both been under-
neath that train if he didnt push her out of
the way at the last second, witness Sean
Stark said. You saw him try to save her.
Yeah, he pushed her. There could have
been two tragic deaths that evening if not
for the young mans selfless act.
According to friends and family, Moore
was Mickaylas first boyfriend. The
16-year-old female survivor was in criti-
cal condition following the tragic event,
but was able to attend the memorial ser-
vice for Moore and has since experienced
a full recovery.
At the service, Moores father told
Friend, My family wants to see you sur-
vive much longer now and enjoy what life
has to offer, with children and family.
Mickaylas mother, Sandy, offered praise
about her daughters hero at the service.
I never met a boy like him. He was
always maam this and maam that,
Sandy said. I asked him to just call me
Sandy, and he said, Yes, maam. n
RAVEN CLABOUGH
33 Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA
by Jack Kenny
I
n the summer of 1957, wrote a promi-
nent black American, life seemed
peaceful in her quiet, undistinguished
southern city, where a hundred thousand
citizens, black and white lived side by
side with little surface friction. The city
had a progressive Public Housing Author-
ity that made it possible for low-income
families Negro and white to move
into well-appointed, but segregated, public
housing. There was also a good, but segre-
gated, school system, with several modern
educational plants of recent construction.
Despite incidents of police brutality and
the vicious southern system of relegating
the black population to the role of second-
ary citizens, the writer noted, a spirit of
calm pervaded the atmosphere and there
was a notable lack of tension.
The city was Little Rock, Arkansas,
and the calm before the storm was de-
scribed by Daisy Bates in her 1962 book
The Long Shadow of Little Rock, a history
of the battle over the integration of the
citys Central High School in September
1957. Governor Orval Faubus, in defy-
ing a federal court order, sent National
Guard troops to the high school to prevent
the black students from entering. The fol-
lowing day, with the Guard withdrawn,
Little Rock police removed the students
from the school to protect them from mob
violence. President Eisenhower sent fed-
eral troops to the city to enforce the court
order. The nation and much of the world
saw nine brave but frightened black high-
school students escorted by members of
the 101st Airborne past an angry white
crowd into Central High School. Some
white students reportedly jumped out of a
school window to avoid contact with the
incoming black students.
The intense opposition to integration
that had been boiling below the little
surface friction came crashing one sum-
mer night into the home of Daisy Bates,
then the state president of the NAACP,
and her husband, L.C. Bates, publisher of
the states largest black newspaper. A rock
thrown through their living room window
had a note attached to it: STONE THIS
TIME. DYNAMITE NEXT.
The little-known capital of Arkansas
had suddenly become a symbol of the long
and often bloody battle over race relations
The Brown v. Board of Education decision, which desegregated schools, may have undone
unjust treatment of blacks, but it imposed judicial opinion in place of written law.
Lawmaking Decision
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 34
PAST AND PERSPECTIVE
HISTORY
HISTORY
Forced together: After the Supreme Court ruled that public schools must be desegregated, the first nine black students who attended Central High
School in Little Rock, Arkansas, had to be escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army for their own safety.
A
P
I
m
a
g
e
s
in America and of Southern resistance to
federal court orders following the 1954
Supreme Court ruling that racial segrega-
tion in public schools violated the Consti-
tution of the United States. Barely a dozen
years after the United States and its allies
had triumphed over Nazi Germany, the
courts decision represented, in one sense,
an effort to overcome the shameful state
practice of categorizing people by race.
As such, it enjoys today what appears to
be the nearly unanimous approval of legal
scholars and lay people alike. Yet few
decisions were in their time more contro-
versial. Not only segregationists favoring
laws protecting the Southern way of life,
but others, concerned about the revolution
in federal-state relationships and its impli-
cations for the Constitution and the rule
of law, pointed out the Courts apparent
disregard for the rules of evidence and its
willingness to impose social theories of
questionable modern authority under
the guise of constitutional law. Whether
the schools should be segregated or not,
many Southerners believed, was a ques-
tion for the people in the states, and not
the federal courts, to decide.
Separate but Equal
In the long battle over segregation in
America, two U.S. Supreme Court de-
cisions stand out as bookends: the 1896
Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which de-
clared a separate but equal standard; and
the Brown v. Board of Education decision
of May 17, 1954, which explicitly rejected
that rule as it applied to public schools.
The Plessy decision, upholding an 1890
Louisiana law requiring separate railroad
cars for the white, and colored races,
served for over half a century as the legal
bulwark for much of the Jim Crow leg-
islation that prevailed in the deep South.
Yet the legal finding that segregation was
within the competency of state legisla-
tures in the exercise of their police power,
as Justice Henry Billings Brown said, rest-
ed upon established precedent.
One of the earliest of these cases,
Brown noted, is that of Roberts v. City of
Boston in which the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts held that the gen-
eral school committee of Boston had power
to make provision for the instruction of
colored children in separate schools estab-
lished exclusively for them, and to prohibit
their attendance upon the public schools.
The Roberts case was decided by the Mas-
sachusetts court in 1850, 18 years before
the ratification of the 14th Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, requiring all states to
provide the citizens within their respective
jurisdictions the equal protection of the
laws. The case for Roberts was argued by
the famous abolitionist and future U.S. Sen-
ator Charles Sumner on the basis of Article
I of the Massachusetts Constitution, declar-
ing all men to be free and equal. It was the
same article the states high court had relied
on to outlaw slavery in the Commonwealth
in 1763. In its ruling against Roberts, the
court would not disturb what Chief Justice
Lemuel Shaw described as the odious dis-
tinction of caste:
Whether this distinction and preju-
dice, existing in the opinion and feel-
ings of the community, would not be
as effectually fostered by compelling
colored and white children to associ-
ate together in the same schools, may
well be doubted; at all events, it is a
fair and proper question for the com-
mittee to consider ... and we cannot
say, that their decision is not founded
on just grounds of reason and experi-
ence, and in the result of a discrimi-
nating and honest judgment.
The language, as well as the substance, of
Shaws opinion was reflected in the deter-
mination by the U.S. Supreme Court, 46
years later, that Adolphus Plessy was not
denied a constitutional right when arrested
in New Orleans for attempting to ride in
a first-class coach reserved for whites.
We consider the underlying fallacy of
the plaintiffs argument to consist in the
assumption that the enforced separation
of the two races stamps the colored race
with a badge of inferiority, Justice Brown
wrote. If this be so, it is not by reason
of anything found in the act, but solely
because the colored race chooses to put
that construction on it. Brown drew a dis-
tinction between legal and social equality.
The argument also assumes that social
prejudices may be overcome by legisla-
tion, and that equal rights cannot be se-
cured to the negro except by an enforced
commingling of the two races, he wrote.
We cannot accept this proposition. Iron-
ically, the opinion upholding the segrega-
tion mandate was written by a New Eng-
lander, while the courts lone dissent was
issued by a former Kentucky slave owner.
The Kentuckian, Justice John Marshall
Harlan, wrote the words that became a ral-
lying point for future challenges against
segregation mandates: There is no caste
here. Our Constitution is colorblind and
neither knows nor tolerates classes among
its citizens. In respect of civil rights, all
citizens are equal before the law.
www.TheNewAmerican.com 35
Lucky few: Though in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that public schools must desegregate, schools
today are almost as segregated as they were then with blacks still fighting for a proper education.
This is mainly the result of welfare state actions that led to the breakdown of black families.
AP Images
The impassioned and even violent re-
sistance to integration at Little Rock was
in marked contrast to the more peaceful
desegregation at higher levels of learn-
ing. Arkansas had already desegregated
its medical and law schools without a
court order. In the decades between the
Plessy and Brown decisions, a number of
legal challenges succeeded in breaching
racial barriers in university post-graduate
programs where separate opportunities
for black students were either non-exis-
tent or fell far short of what was available
to their white counterparts. By 1950, the
U.S. Supreme Court found the law school
at the Texas State University for Negroes
was still demonstrably unequal to that
of the University of Texas. In Sweatt v.
Painter, the court considered the usual
factors in measuring inequalities, includ-
ing curriculum and library facilities. But
the justices based their ruling on intan-
gible factors as well, including the repu-
tation of the faculty and the comparative
prestige of the two universities. In a sig-
nificant development for the future Brown
case, the court, in its unanimous decision,
noted that the students in the black law
school were denied an equal education by
the fact that they were segregated from
the much larger number of students at
the white university, from whose ranks
would come the future lawyers, judges,
and other officials, as well as witnesses
and jurors in future court cases.
The Battle Over Schoolchildren
The stakes were higher when NAACP
lawyers shifted the focal
point of their efforts from
universities to the segregated
public schools that educated
many of the nations chil-
dren. There were actually
five cases from three states
that were combined into
what entered the Supreme
Court docket as Brown v.
Board of Education of To-
peka, Kansas. In addition to
Topeka, the challenges came from plain-
tiffs in Clarendon County, South Caro-
lina, and Prince Edward County, Virginia.
There were also appeals from Delaware,
where the states Supreme Court, in two
separate cases, ordered immediate deseg-
regation of public schools with a possible
modification of the order if and when the
defendant school districts had equalized
the facilities. A challenge to the District
of Columbias segregated schools, Bolling
v. Sharpe, was considered separately.
In South Carolina the legal issues were
joined with psychological and sociologi-
cal arguments, as Kenneth Clark, a social
psychologist at City College of New York,
testified about a series of tests he con-
ducted with black children, using white
and black dolls. When asked which dolls
they preferred, the children, ages three to
seven, consistently chose the white dolls.
They showed a preference for the white
as well when asked which was a nice
doll, which looks bad, and which they
liked to play with. The results were of-
fered as evidence of a sense of inferiority,
perpetuated by school segregation. Law-
yers for the state focused on the brick-and-
mortar issues, conceding the facilities in
the black schools were not equal to those
in the white, while assuring the court that
the disparities would be eliminated by the
states equalization program. The trial
court agreed to give the state time to com-
plete the necessary construction projects,
while declaring the segregation of races
in the public schools is a matter of leg-
islative policy for the several states, with
which the federal courts are powerless to
intervene.
Foreign policy entered the mix when
James P. McGranery, attorney general
under President Harry Truman, argued
in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court:
Racial discrimination furnishes grist for
the Communist propaganda mills, and it
even raises doubts among friendly nations
as to the intensity of devotion to the dem-
ocratic faith. That argument, though far
from a legal issue, found its way into the
courts decision.
The cases were argued at the Supreme
Court in December 1952. Before adjourn-
ing the following spring, the court ordered
a rehearing of the case in the fall term,
with briefs submitted to answer a series
of questions posed by the court, regard-
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 36
Kenneth Clark, a social psychologist
at City College of New York, testified
about a series of tests he conducted with
black children, using white and black
dolls. When asked which dolls they
preferred, the children, ages three to seven,
consistently chose the white dolls.
PAST AND PERSPECTIVE
HISTORY
HISTORY
Overly optimistic: Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for the NAACP in the fight to desegregate
schools, said that he believed there would be little resistance to an order by the Supreme Court to
desegregate schools and that it would be widely implemented in five years.
A
P
I
m
a
g
e
s
ing evidence, if any, of the intent on the
part of Congress in its vote for the 14th
Amendment and, of the states in ratify-
ing it, regarding public schools. The court
also asked for arguments over whether
the power to abolish segregation in the
schools rested, under section 5 of the 14th
Amendment, with the Congress, or the ju-
dicial branch. Section 5 says simply: The
Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of
this article.
When the cases were re-argued, there
was a new chief justice to hear them.
Frederick M. Vinson died on Septem-
ber 8, 1953, and President Eisenhower
named former California Governor Earl
Warren as the new chief justice. War-
ren was on the bench when the court
began the second round of hearings on
December 7, 1953. Thurgood Marshall,
the lead attorney for NAACP and a fu-
ture Supreme Court justice, pressed the
argument that the federal courts had the
authority under the 14th Amendment to
bar state-sponsored segregation. Argu-
ing the case for South Carolina was John
W. Davis, a former U.S. solicitor general
and ambassador to the United Kingdom,
and Democratic candidate for president
in 1924. Though semi-retired at 80, he
was still widely regarded as one of the
nations most formidable lawyers.
Davis cited a lack of evidence that the
amendment was intended to empower the
federal government to outlaw segregation in
the schools. During Reconstruction, he said,
the Freedmens Bureau, established by Con-
gress, set up segregated schools through-
out the South. During that same time, the
District of Columbia, under congressional
rule, continued to run segregated schools.
Congress had also rejected an amendment
offered by then-Rep. Sumner to require
Confederate states to outlaw segregated
schools as a condition of their readmission
to the Union. Davis cited other failed efforts
in Congress to enact legislation concerning
racial composition of schools, as well as nu-
merous court decisions upholding the Plessy
v. Ferguson doctrine. The court, he argued,
should not decree an end to the Southern
way of life because of some fancied notion
of racial prestige.
Marshall, in rebuttal, insisted the issue
was one of fundamental rights and equal-
ity before the law. The only way for the
court to uphold the practice of school
segregation, he said, was to find that for
some reason, Negroes are inferior to all
other human beings.
Earl Warren and Modern Authority
Along with precedent and custom, the
defenders of state-sponsored segregation
claimed to have on their side the legal doc-
trine of stare decisis, the principle that a
previous ruling should stand in the absence
of overwhelming evidence that it had been
wrongly decided or that the facts and cir-
cumstances surrounding the case had sig-
nificantly changed. Yet the role of public
schools in American life was far different
from the time when the 14th Amendment
was adopted, Warren wrote in the opinion
of the court. The court could not turn
the clock back to 1868 when the Amend-
ment was adopted or even to 1896 when
Plessy v. Ferguson was written, Warren
said. We must consider public education
in the light of its full development and its
present place in American life throughout
the Nation. On that basis the court would
determine that racially segregated schools,
even though the physical facilities and
other tangible factors may be equal,
nevertheless deprived minority children
of equal educational opportunities. War-
ren noted that the court in Kansas, though
ruling against the black plaintiffs, found
segregation in the schools had a detri-
mental effect upon the colored children
by implanting in their minds a sense of
inferiority [that] affects the motivation of
a child to learn.
Whatever may have been the extent of
psychological knowledge at the time of
Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply
supported by modern authority, Warren
wrote. Any language in Plessy v. Fergu-
son contrary to this finding is rejected.
The chief justice cited in a footnote the
modern authority on which that finding
relied, including the studies among black
children conducted by Dr. Clark. Several
texts on the psychological and sociologi-
cal effects of segregation, including An
American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal,
were also cited. The unanimous decision
of the court, issued on May 17, 1954,
was that segregation left members of
the disadvantaged race deprived of the
equal protection of the laws guaranteed
by the Fourteenth Amendment. Since
the amendment, as written, applied to the
states and not the federal government,
the court found in the D.C. case that the
districts segregated schools left the black
students deprived of liberty guaranteed
under the Fifth Amendment mandate that
no person shall be deprived of life, lib-
erty or property without due process of
law. The court decided to postpone until
37 Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
He felt that the decision was correct: Earl Warren, chief justice at the time of the Brown v.
Board of Education decision, placed a great deal of emphasis on the sociological testimony in the
case, rather than legal precedents.
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the following year a ruling on compliance
with the decision, with arguments sched-
uled for the following fall.
The Southern Manifesto
On May 31, 1955, the court, in its Brown
II decision, upheld the decisions of the
Delaware Supreme Court, while remand-
ing the other cases to the District Courts
with instructions to issue such orders and
decrees as would be needed to desegregate
the schools with all deliberate speed. In
the U.S. Congress, 101 senators and repre-
sentatives from 11 Southern states signed
a statement that became known as the
Southern Manifesto. The statement, is-
sued on March 12, 1956, all but guaranteed
more years and even decades of legal and
political battle over segregated schools.
The very Congress which proposed
the amendment subsequently provided for
segregated schools in the District of Co-
lumbia, the manifesto reminded, a point
that had also been raised in briefs submit-
ted to the court. The Plessy precedent had
been reaffirmed by the court numerous
times, including a 1927 decision (Lum v.
Rice) in which chief justice and former
president William Howard Taft, speaking
for a unanimous court, found the separate
but equal rule left segregation within
the discretion of the State in regulating its
public schools and does not conflict with
the 14th Amendment. Neither a constitu-
tional amendment nor an act of Congress
had changed that rule, now struck down
by an act of naked judicial power, the
congressmen declared, with the justices
substituting their personal political and
social ideals for the established law of the
land. The lawmakers pledged to use all
lawful means to bring about a reversal of
this decision which is contrary to the Con-
stitution and to prevent the use of force in
its implementation.
A more detailed argument was made by
a pair of Southern lawyers, Eugene Cook
and William I. Potter, in the April 1956
issue of the American Bar Association
Journal. The 14th Amendment delegated
to Congress the power to implement its
provisions, and Congress had yet to leg-
islate against segregated schools, they
noted. As recently as 1946, Congress had,
in legislating grants for school lunches,
required just and equitable distribution
of the funds where a state maintains
separate schools for minority and major-
ity races. If the states had intended to ban
segregated schools by their ratification of
the 14th Amendment, Cook and Potter
argued, they were remarkably unaware
of it. The overwhelming majority either
established or continued segregation in the
public schools contemporaneously with
their votes for ratification.
The lawyers further argued that the
court violated the rules of
judicial procedure by basing
its decision on sociological
writings not introduced as
evidence in any of the cases.
In one of the texts cited by
the court (Personality in the
Making by Helen Leland
Witmer and R. Kotinsky),
the authors acknowledged
that thoroughly satisfactory
methods of determining the
effects of prejudice and discrimination on
health or personality have not yet been de-
vised, nor has a sufficient number of stud-
ies dealing with various minority groups
been made. An American Dilemma was
an especially odd book for the court to be
using in adjudicating the constitutional-
ity of the laws in question since the au-
thor, Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal,
stated therein that the U.S. Constitution
is impractical and unsuited to modern
conditions and its adoption was nearly
a plot against the common people. The
courts approach to resolving the issues
raised in Brown gave rise to the question
plainly stated by Cook and Potter: Should
our fundamental rights rise, fall or change
along with the latest fashions of psycho-
logical literature? Regarding the courts
overturning of the Plessy rule based on
the psychological knowledge of mod-
ern authority, H. Gifford Irion wrote in
the Georgetown Law Journal: It is im-
possible to read this portion of the opinion
without concluding that a constitutional
doctrine which had endured for fifty years
was cast into limbo on the authority of so-
ciological writings which were accepted
as beyond dispute.
In Virginia, the state closed all public
schools rather than integrate them. At
times the nation appeared to be nearly on
the brink of a second Civil War. To defy
the Court openly, acknowledged syn-
Davis cited a lack of evidence that the 14th
Amendment was intended to empower the
federal government to outlaw segregation
in the schools. During Reconstruction, he
said, the Freedmens Bureau, established
by Congress, set up segregated schools
throughout the South.
PAST AND PERSPECTIVE
HISTORY
HISTORY
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 38
Animosity: Even eight years after the Supreme Court ruled that schools must be desegregated,
these Ole Miss students protested the arrival of a black student on the campus. Prior to the Brown
ruling, other schools desegregated minus the strife simply because it was cheaper.
AP Images
dicated columnist and Virginia resident
James J. Kilpatrick, would be to enter
upon anarchy, the logical end would be
a second attempt at secession from the
Union. And though the idea is not without
merit, it is impossible of execution. We
tried that once before.
Not all the criticism of the courts opin-
ion came from the South or from segre-
gationists. Herbert Wechsler, a New Deal
liberal and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg
trials, wrote in the Harvard Law Review in
1959 that the Supreme Court decision vio-
lated the right of free association of South-
ern whites. The eminent jurist Learned
Hand criticized Brown and other rulings
by the Warren court as an overreach of ju-
dicial authority. In an otherwise favorable
history of the decision, authors Robert J.
Cottrol, Raymond T. Diamond, and Leland
B. Ware acknowledged in Brown v. Board
of Education (2003) widespread criticism
of the courts willingness to give the his-
tory of the Fourteenth Amendment rather
short shrift, leading many to believe such
reasoning smacked of a dangerous kind
of judicial policy making.... What did
Kenneth Clarks experiment with dolls or
Gunnar Myrdals documentations of prej-
udice and discrimination have to do with
the Fourteenth Amendment?
What might have happened if the U.S.
Supreme Court did not interject itself? We
will never know, of course, but perhaps the
answer might be found in Warrens passing
mention in his opinion that the lower courts
had found the Negro and white schools in-
volved have been equalized, or are being
equalized, with regard to buildings, curri-
cula, qualifications and salaries of teachers
and other tangible factors. It seems likely
the states involved would have resisted and
delayed court-ordered efforts at equalizing
the black and white schools, just as they
resisted and delayed compliance with the
desegregation orders. But its also possible
that the costs of litigation, added to the con-
struction costs of equalization and the
overall expense of maintaining dual school
systems, would have eventually worn down
Southern resistance as it eroded the states
resources. Southern legislatures and school
districts might have eventually concluded
that separate but equal was no longer
practical.
The fall of 1962 saw rioting and armed
resistance in Oxford, Mississippi, over the
admission of a single black student, James
Meredith, to the University of Mississip-
pi. Looking back at some of the decisions
that preceded Brown, one might wonder:
Would Merediths admission have met
with less resistance if the state had been
given the option, however impractical
economically, of creating a separate law
school for black applicants?
We will never know, of course. What
we do know is that the Supreme Court and
lower federal courts, abandoning the con-
cept of a color-blind Constitution, eventu-
ally interpreted the meaning of the 14th
Amendment to require the assignment of
children to schools based on race in order
to achieve what the courts had determined
was a proper racial balance. That in turn
required the busing of children away from
neighborhood schools to distant locations,
igniting a backlash among parents, North
and South, that brought back memories
of Little Rock. The Warren Court in the
years following the Brown decision used
the 14th Amendment to carry out a virtual
revolution in constitutional law, outlaw-
ing prayer in public schools, ordering the
redrawing of legislative districts to meet a
one man-one vote mandate, overturning
obscenity laws, and striking down a state
law banning the sale of contraceptives, to
cite but a few examples. The trend would
continue post-Warren, with the court
under Chief Justice Warren Burger ruling
that an undefined indeed, unmentioned
right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution
required the striking down of state abor-
tion laws and the substitution of a new
law for all 50 states, improvised by the
court itself. However morally repugnant
that practice of segregating people by race
was and is, the signers of the Southern
Manifesto delivered to the nation a fair
and prophetic warning: We appeal to the
States and the people who are not directly
affected by these decisions to consider the
constitutional principles involved against
the time when they, too, on issues vital to
them, may be the victims of judicial en-
croachment. n
39 www.TheNewAmerican.com
Pondering: Rioting happened when Ole Miss was forced to accept James Meredith as a student.
Though we do not know what would have happened without the Brown ruling, it seems likely that
outside influences, such as sports competition, would have opened school doors to blacks.
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Man in Wheelchair
Shoots at Intruder
KOCO.com out of Oklahoma City, Okla-
homa, reported on April 4 about a man
who didnt let being confined to a wheel-
chair prevent him from defending himself.
Steven Ferguson has been in a wheelchair
since he suffered a severe injury in a mo-
torcycle accident as a teenager. Ferguson
was at his home alone when he witnessed
a stranger trespass into his backyard in the
middle of the night. It was when the strang-
er came up to his house and looked into his
sunroom that Ferguson went for his gun.
Im not that quick. Im in a wheelchair.
He couldve killed me. He couldve got-
ten anything he wanted, Ferguson told
KOCO.com. Ferguson said he saw that
the man was armed and that he decided
he needed to get his gun up and fire first.
Before he flagged me, thats when I drew
and fired, that was when he was pulling his
gun up, said Ferguson. Ferguson utilized
the modified holster on his wheelchair and
fired through his sunroom at the intruder,
who immediately fled the scene. Its my
property. I dont like anybody standing on
my property without my permission, Fer-
guson said adamantly. Its not something
thats fun, having to shoot at somebody.
But, Im glad I had it, said Ferguson, re-
ferring to his pistol, which he felt saved
his life. Ferguson said the intruder escaped
over the back chain link fence into an
empty field after he fired at him.
Its Her Right
The Montgomery Advertiser out of Ala-
bama reported on April 4 about a woman
who survived a terrifying ordeal thanks
to her gun. She was home with her niece
when she heard a knock on the door shortly
after midnight. The woman retrieved her
.32-caliber handgun and went to the door.
She asked the person on the other side of
the door what he wanted, and the man re-
sponded that his car had broken down and
he wanted to use her phone. She suspected
foul play, and seconds later she was proved
correct. Before she could even react, the
man had forced his way into the home and
knocked her to the ground. Thankfully, she
still had her revolver in her hand, which
she used to fire at the violent intruder. The
suspect staggered from the scene, but col-
lapsed nearby. The distraught woman im-
mediately called 911, and the police dis-
covered the body of the deceased suspect
30 feet from the house. Police also discov-
ered what authorities referred to as bloody
drag marks from where the man initially
collapsed, which made them think that
another suspect was involved. After some
reconnaissance, the police soon picked up
another suspect, who they believe was an
accomplice, and charged him with robbery.
Chief Deputy Joe Sedinger of the Au-
tauga County Sheriffs Office told the
Montgomery Advertiser that the investi-
gation is ongoing, but they dont believe
that the homeowner will face any charges.
The lady went to the door with her gun in
her hand, because it was after midnight....
After she was at the door, he forced his
way inside, and she shot him several
times.... Its her right to protect her home
and family and thats what our investiga-
tion shows she did.
All in the Family
Fox13 out of Tampa Bay, Florida, reported
on April 7 about an incident of armed self-
defense that involved an entire family get-
ting in on the act. Tampa Bay Police Chief
Gary Hester told Fox13 that a man broke
into a Winter Haven home and was shot and
killed by the family living there. A mother,
father, and son were awakened by the sound
of someone trying to gain entry into their
house. The family sprang from their beds
and armed themselves before confronting
the individual trying to break in.
Chief Hester said that one of the family
members fired a warning shot above the
door to deter the intruder, but the suspect
continued his efforts and eventually broke
into the house and entered the kitchen. All
three family members were armed and
came face-to-face with the assailant. It
appears at least two of the family mem-
bers fired in defense of themselves and
their property, said Hester. The shots hit
their mark, and the intruder was mortally
wounded. Police were immediately called
to the scene, and are still completing their
investigation. Investigators do not believe
that the suspect was armed, but authorities
believe it looks like the family had every
right to fire their weapons. Its not a very
far reach to assume that if someones forc-
ing their way into your residence early in
the morning, theyre not there to wish you
well.... Thats your castle that a reported
intruder is coming into, so whether he
was armed or not armed, when he failed
to retreat, they certainly had a right if
it turns out this way would have a right
to defend themselves.
A Few Days Before Moving
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on
April 18 about a 68-year-old Richmond,
California, resident who shot and killed
one of several armed burglars who broke
into his business, where he also lives with
his wife. The resident was also injured, as
a result of gunfire from the assailants.
According to police reports, the mans
wife heard a noise outside the residence, in
the back of the business where they were
staying, and asked her husband to investi-
gate. The man grabbed his pistol and en-
countered a man breaking in. The resident
fired on the intruder, hitting him in the
chest. The intruders accomplices opened
fire on the resident in retaliation, hitting
him several times in the legs. The injured
resident called police after the shooting
and said he had been shot in the legs dur-
ing a break-in. He was airlifted to a nearby
medical center, and is in good condition.
Later, a sport utility vehicle pulled up at
another nearby medical center with a man
suffering from a gunshot wound to the
chest. That man was pronounced dead, and
soon the other three men from the SUV
were in police custody, as the suspects
from the earlier break-in and shooting.
Authorities have said that the men may
face murder charges under the states
provocative-act doctrine, which holds
accomplices responsible if they create a
deadly situation. When the violent crime
happened, the resident and his wife had
recently sold the building and were living
there for a few days until the new owners
moved in. n
PATRICK KREY
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 40
... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
EXERCISING THE RIGHT
Washingtons
Emissions Industry
ITEM: The Obama administration main-
tains, as reported by Bloomberg News for
April 14, that it is pursuing EPA regula-
tion of power plants the largest emit-
ting industry sector largely because
Congress has for years failed to take up
U.S. climate change legislation.
ITEM: The Badger Herald (Madison, Wis-
consin) for March 6 reported: Newly
approved car standards from the Environ-
mental Protection Agency could prevent
thousands of premature deaths and respira-
tory ailments through major reductions in
emissions nationwide and in Wisconsin.
The paper added: By the time the
standards are fully implemented, 2,000
premature deaths and 50,000 respiratory
health issues among children will be pre-
vented, according to the report.... These
standards are a win for public health, a
win for our environment, and a win for our
pocketbooks, EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy said in a statement.
CORRECTION: Half-truths and complete
lies are congenial companions, as the
Obama administration and its friendly
media phalanx keep demonstrating.
Regulations, often based on phony
claims but backed by the force of the fed-
eral government, are tools repeatedly used
against development of the plentiful ener-
gy supplies in the United States. The regu-
latory weapon is a big one being employed
in the war on coal that is being waged, and
it is an expensive battle indeed. Testimony
before a House committee, by a deputy
assistant for clean coal at the Department
of Energy, reveals that implementing the
technology to fight climate change and
limit carbon dioxide will raise the whole-
sale price of electricity by 70 or 80 per-
cent. That, unsurprisingly, didnt get much
play in the accommodating press.
The EPA has been particularly unforth-
coming about its regulatory methods, pre-
ferring that taxpayers and consumers buy
their claims based on blind faith. In the
case of the sulfur standards on gasoline,
noted above, the faith being practiced
might be called confusionism.
The federal ecocrats say their rules will
add perhaps a penny to the price of a gal-
lon of gasoline. However, as pointed out by
columnist Paul Driessen, the EPA will not
say how it arrived at that estimate.
Industry sources say the Tier 3 rules
will require $10 billion in upfront
capital expenditures, an additional
$2.4 billion in annual compliance
expenses, significant increases in
refinery energy consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions, an extra
5-9 cents per gallon in manufactur-
ing costs, which will certainly hit
consumers at the pump.
But regardless of their ultimate
cost, the rules will reduce monthly
ozone levels by just 1.2 parts per bil-
lion during rush hour, says [a study in
2012 by Environ International]. Thats
equivalent to 12 cents out of $100
million or 1.2 seconds out of 32,000
years. These minuscule improvements
could not even have been measured by
equipment existing a couple decades
ago. Their contribution to improved
human health will be essentially zero.
[Emphasis in original.]
What the EPA doesnt mention is even
more telling: the jobs lost and those not
created, as well as the impact on family
budgets. This one agency alone costs the
U.S. economy billions of dollars each
year in its economic impact (out of the $2
trillion or so in overall annual regulatory
costs chalked up to federal regulations).
In the case of the EPAs regulations on
power plants, there will be a lot of pain
involved. An energy model developed by
the Heritage Foundation, which is based
on a government model, finds that the cli-
mate regulations that will phase out coal
will result in, by the end of 2023, the loss
of nearly 600,000 jobs, a decrease in the
income of $1,200 per year for a family of
four, and aggregate gross domestic prod-
uct decreases of $2.23 trillion over the pe-
riod of the study.
As noted by Heritages Nicolas Loris
and Filip Jolevski: Americas manufac-
turing base will be particularly harmed by
the EPAs climate regulations. Manufac-
turing accounts for over 330,000 of the
jobs lost. Meanwhile, there is around
500 years worth of coal, at current con-
sumption rates, that has come under fed-
eral fire. The latest regulations, directed
in large part against coal, will have a very
limited impact on the environment. They
will, however, stop new plants and close
old ones before their time.
The green movement, backed by its
41 Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
A deep hole for our country: Department of Energy testimony revealed that implementing the
technology to fight climate change and limit carbon dioxide will raise the wholesale price of
electricity by 70 or 80 percent.
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allies within the government, is good at
producing deficiencies, a byproduct of a
lack of common sense. John Stossel dis-
cussed the influence of such alarmists not
long ago on his television show with stat-
istician Bjrn Lomborg, who was likewise
critical of their sense of priority. As Stos-
sel recounted in Reason in April:
Time and again, environmentalists op-
pose the energy production most like-
ly to make the world cleaner and safer.
Instead, they persuade politicians to
spend billions of your dollars on sym-
bolism like renewable energy.
The amazing number that most
people havent heard is, if you take
all the solar panels and all the wind
turbines in the world, says Lom-
borg, they have (eliminated) less
CO
2
than what U.S. fracking (crack-
ing rocks below ground to extract oil
and natural gas) managed to do.
That progress occurred despite
opposition from environmentalists
and even bans in places like my
stupid state, New York, where activ-
ists worry fracking will cause earth-
quakes or poison the water.
Do environmentalists even care
about measuring costs instead of
just assuming benefits? We spend
$7 billion to subsidize electric cars.
Even if America reached the presi-
dents absurd 2015 goal of a million
electric cars on the road (we wont
get close), how much would it delay
warming of the Earth?
One hour, says Lomborg. This
is a symbolic act.
The examples are seemingly endless.
The long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline,
which would transport oil from Canada to
the Gulf Coast, continues to be pushed to
the back burner, mainly because the White
House and the Democrats want to get past
the next election cycle with their radical
environmental friends on board.
As it is, holding back on permits is a
favorite tactic employed repeatedly by the
federal government through such agencies
as the EPA and the Federal Energy Regu-
latory Commission. These agencies, as
pointed out by William Poole in Forbes
earlier this year, are not granting permits
for private firms to build infrastructure,
and U.S. investment and employment
growth are hurting because of it. Accord-
ing to Poole, during the presidents State
of the Union address, he
promised to act on my own to slash
bureaucracy and streamline the per-
mitting process for key projects.
Unfortunately, this is just more lip
service from a president who has con-
tinually refused to act on his own
to permit the Keystone XL pipeline.
His failure to follow through on his
words has set the tone for agencies
slow-walking the permit process.
Even wood-burning stoves cant escape
the imposition of federal regulations by
the EPA, which has come up with even
more new rules. They wont warm your
heart, or much else, unless you want to
set ablaze more of your greenbacks to be
in compliance. The Washington Times in
late March took note of these regulations,
reporting that they would
reduce the maximum airborne par-
ticulate emissions for new stoves
by 80 percent to 4.5 grams per hour
initially, and crank down the allow-
able level further to 1.3 grams after
five years. Achieving these targets
will add between $300 and $500 to
the cost of a stove, prompting fears
that working-class folk who typically
burn wood to save money wont be
able to afford to do so....
Theres not a stove in the United
States that can pass the test right now,
Reg Kelly, founder of Earth Outdoor
Furnaces, told a hearing of the Mis-
souri House of Representatives.
The radical environmentalist groups and
their cronies within the government have
also found a way to double-team econom-
ic progress by means of what has become
known as the sue-and-settle process.
The scammers on the outside sue their
comrades in the bureaucracy, with those
on the inside being glad to help kill vari-
ous projects not to their liking.
First, the federal agency perhaps the
EPA or the Interior Department falls be-
hind on its deadline, which is one thing that
the government does well. That invites a
lawsuit and allows the federal agency to do
what it wanted to do all along. Some of this
colluding has been uncovered in e-mails
that have been unearthed through a Free-
THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014 42
Cheap heat? Many houses rely on wood stoves to lower heating bills, but new EPA regulations
on particulate emissions will greatly raise the prices for stoves and fireplaces.
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dom of Information Act lawsuit,
showing how the game is played.
As reported in the Washington
Free Beacon in January, these e-
mails show that the EPA used of-
ficial events to help environmen-
talist groups gather signatures for
petitions on agency rulemaking,
incorporated advance copies of
letters drafted by those groups
into official statements, and
worked with environmentalists
to publicly pressure executives
of at least one energy company.
This is essentially a device
whereby government workers
can commit a fraud against the
public interest in favor of a radi-
cal green agenda. William Yeat-
man discussed the con game in
The Hill on January 8, 2014:
The process starts when an en-
vironmental litigation group
sues EPA over a missed dead-
line. Rather than contest the suit
and defend the agencys discre-
tion, EPA immediately enters
into settlement negotiations.
Due to a revolving door be-
tween green groups and the
EPA, parties to these suits often used
to be colleagues. Thus, unelected bu-
reaucrats and environmental special
interests render policy by establishing
agency priorities, far removed from
voter accountability. In fact, most of
EPAs regulatory responsibilities pur-
suant to the Clean Air Act are dictated
by sue and settle litigation.
The revolving door between regulators
and outside pressure groups is not an exag-
geration. A recent story in the Washington
Post, for instance, took note of how envi-
ronmental groups were getting together to
steer more funding into politics, thus in-
fluencing national policies and legislation.
The collaborative effort, in this instance,
is LeadingGreen which is chaired by
Carol Browner. She previously was Presi-
dent Obamas special assistant on energy
and climate change.
The games played are legion. These in-
clude coming up with phony data that can
be used to justify more regulations. This
is sometimes done in spite of convincing
evidence to the contrary.
Consider a study called Airborne Fine
Particulate Matter and Short-Term Mor-
tality, which examined California from
2007 to 2010. The studys author, a Johns
Hopkins-trained biostatistician named
Steve Milloy, reproduced the study on his
JunkScience.com website; the study es-
sentially blows a hole in the EPAs long-
standing contentions.
As Milloy commented to CNSNews.
com: EPA says that when PM2.5 levels
[particulate matter up to 2.5 micrometers
in size] go up, people die every day.
However, if PM2.5 is killing people,
my data would show it, especially in Los
Angeles, which has some of the worst air
quality in the U.S. Not only was there no
relationship there, I found a nega-
tive correlation in the LA area....
If a significant causal relationship
between PM2.5 and mortality
existed, that relationship should
have been visible in this study.
But it was not.
Other scientific studies have
similarly shown how flawed
EPAs numbers have been. This
offers a pretty good clue why the
agency wants to keep its meth-
odology hidden. In fact, Milloy
told CNSNews.com that he un-
dertook the study because the
agency would not release any of
the taxpayer-funded research data
underlying these claims.
My study opened it up to
questioning. Anybody can get
this data and see whether theres
a relationship. If they get a dif-
ferent answer than I did, we can
go back and see what happened,
he said. Thats the scientific
method. As Milloy put it: As
it stands now, only EPA-funded
researchers do the work and re-
view the work, and nobody gets
to see the data. These are very
expensive regulations, and the
alleged benefits are entirely based on this
PM/death relationship.
So what has the U.S. government been
doing in this regard? Precious little. Even
Republican House Speaker John Boehner,
rarely to be confused with a hardliner, can
see the difference between rhetoric and what
the administration has really been doing. As
the speaker said in March, this country has
abundant supplies of natural gas, which is
much in demand by U.S. allies.
He complained, rightly, about hav-
ing to contend with the Energy Depart-
ments achingly slow approval process.
The speaker said the department received
24 export permits, but approved only six.
This amounts to a de facto ban.
Alternatively, perhaps there is a case of
sorts that could be made for relying more
on Washington. After all, it is truly the em-
bodiment of wind power. n
WILLIAM P. HOAR
43 www.TheNewAmerican.com
Cooked claims: The EPA claims that when amounts of small
particulate matter in the air rise, deaths rise commensurately, but
studies in Los Angeles have not found that claim to be true. The
EPA will not provide its data for review.
AP Images
W
hen that first shot
rang out, only
one person knew
where it came from. The
bewildered swarms of heav-
ily armed federal agents and
contractors, stunned, quickly
ducked behind their trucks,
scanning frantically in every
direction across the parched
wilderness. They called for
backup. Within moments,
government choppers and
Humvees from hundreds of
miles around all packed
with agents in futuristic out-
fits bearing advanced weaponry began racing toward the
scene. Drones were already in the sky.
Scattered about 100 yards from the feds position in several
directions, hundreds of protesters, including women and chil-
dren, darted for cover behind whatever they could find: cars,
tents, cacti, rocks, cows, anything.
Before anybody had a clue as to what was really happening,
a hail of bullets was flying in all directions. At that point, it did
not even matter who shot first, or second, or third. Both sides
knew it was now a fight to the death, and took aim accordingly.
Snipers began firing. The sound of automatic weapons roared.
The noise was deafening. Puffs of desert sand popped all over
the range. Slowly, streams of blood coming from tents and un-
derneath cars started forming small pools.
Then, for a brief moment, it was as if everything was on
pause. The silence was eerie. The 25 or 30 federal agents, vastly
outmanned and outgunned, were all dead. A lot of militiamen
were, too how many, at that point, nobody knew, but there
were dead bodies everywhere. Tragically, a young mother with
her child in her arms had been riddled with bullet holes as well.
She lay hunched over on the desert sand, lifeless, with the small
baby screaming.
Suddenly, over the horizon, the choppers appeared, smashing
the silence, getting louder as they approached. Everybody scat-
tered, but there was no way the feds would let them get away.
Bullets started raining down, and soon the dust made it almost
impossible to see as commandos dropped on ropes, fingers on
the trigger.
One of the fleeing men who made it out, armed with an AR-15
and wearing a bullet-proof vest, was the American flag bandana-
wearing Arnold Bennett the man who, it turns out, fired that
first shot. Speeding from the scene in his truck, he was stopped
by a hastily erected roadblock manned by sheriffs deputies.
Their scopes were trained on his head.
Get out of the vehicle with your hands up, one of the depu-
ties shouted through a megaphone. No sudden movements.
Arnold complied, but shouted
back, Im a federal agent,
dont shoot. He slowly
reached into his shirt and
pulled out a badge with the
words Department of Home-
land Security across the top.
He was part of a secret, elite
unit charged with monitoring
Patriot groups. Ive got to
get going, thanks, Arnold
told the deputies. The badge
number checked out, so they
let him on his way, figuring
he must have some important
business to attend to.
Back in Washington, the president was yanked aside by an ad-
visor, who told him the terrorists had attacked and the prepared
statement was ready. Today, a despicable group of domestic-
terrorist militias has brutally slaughtered 27 brave federal law-en-
forcement officers in the line of duty, he told the nation, as usual,
reading from his teleprompter. Let me be clear: My administra-
tion will not rest until these anti-government terrorists and all of
their supporters are brought to justice. God bless America.
President Vows Justice for Anti-government Patriot Terror-
ists, read the giant headline across the New York Times front
page. Other papers ran similar headlines, and TV news stations
across America made it a non-stop story. Many Americans still
secretly sympathized with the militiamen, but nobody dared say
it amid the frantic atmosphere that ensued.
At the bureaucracies, every manager was busy putting into
place plans that had been drawn up for precisely such an occa-
sion. They started rounding up militia leaders and members be-
fore moving on to Tea Party groups, conservative activists, consti-
tutionally minded lawmen, and more. Even some state lawmakers
were rounded up in the process. Where they were taken, nobody
knows. The future of the Republic looked dark indeed.
Of course, the BLMs Bundy Ranch showdown did not cul-
minate in the bloody scenario sketched above. But it well could
have. If an agent provocateur, for instance, had fired a shot (or if
any of the nervous participants had accidentally squeezed a trig-
ger), the standoff in Nevada could have turned tragic very quickly.
Thanks be to God, things worked out more peaceably this time.
Next time, though, it might not. So, it is important that Americans
use all lawful means available to preserve liberty.
While there may come a time when armed force is the last
remaining option for those who refuse to live as slaves, that day
has not come. Hopefully it never will. For now, Americans still
have all of the tools they need to restore constitutional govern-
ment: education, the ballot box, the jury, nullification, and more.
Lets use those and keep guns out of it, reserving them, as our
Founding Fathers intended, to be used as the very last resort. n
The Tragedy That Might Have Been
44 THE NEW AMERICAN MAy 19, 2014
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