Reflections  

See the world — I saw an advertisement for ArmedForcesEntertainment.com (Tag line: "Tour for the world's most appreciative audience"), which offered "Tour 08," visiting "Belgium, Greece, Italy, Japan, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Germany." These are, of course, just a few of the places where American troops are stationed (that is, permanently garrisoned).

Stop someone at random on the street and ask him if he thinks it is true or false that the American armed forces have fully staffed American military bases in Honduras, Belgium, Greece, etc., etc., etc.

My experience is that almost everyone says "No."

Then explain (possibly using a printout Wikipedia article or Google search) that it really is true; and ask if he has any problem with reciprocation — agreeing to allow foreign governments to set up military bases in the United States, run by soldiers from Qatar, Bahrain, Honduras, and perhaps even Iraq. My experience is that almost everyone says "Yes, I have a big problem with that." Foreign troops are not welcome here.

Nevertheless, a policy of American noninterventionism is difficult to sell to the American people: it's a combination of ignorance of the facts and an unhesitating belief in American exceptionalism. — Ross Levatter

Liberty and authority — Do the tenants in public housing have a right to post things on the outside of their apartment doors? The question came up to the Washington Supreme Court, which decided, 5 to 4, that they did have that right.

The case involved the Seattle Housing Authority. Some of its tenants were expressing themselves on their apartment doors, in some cases with swastikas or images of naked people. Other tenants complained, at which point the Authority banned all placards, postings, and signs. Typical of government, the Authority was not going to decide which images were offensive and which not, so it banned all of them. A tenant group sued, claiming that the ban violated its free-speech rights under the federal and state constitutions.

Four justices argued that the Authority, as a subset of the state, should have the same rights as any apartment owner, which would include the right to make rules for the outside surfaces of apartment doors. They argued that free speech did not apply to all public property — you cannot paint your name on the side of the police station — but only to public forums. And an apartment door is not a public forum. It is part of a housing unit and should be managed that way.

Five justices argued instead that the door to an apartment, being for the exclusive use of the tenant, is private property for the duration of the tenancy. It is the tenant's, and the tenant may tape a sign to it. It is important for tenants to have this right, the court said, because a sign on a home is a personal statement of much greater power than an anonymous sign along the street. It is cheap, the tenant can afford it, and it is meaningful to him. As a mode of expression it is not easily replaced. The court briefly suggested that the Housing Authority might impose regulatory limits on the sign, though it didn't define what those limits might be.

In a libertarian world there would be no government housing, but we don't live in that world. How should a libertarian answer the question posed? The Washington Supreme Court does have a libertarian, Justice Richard Sanders. He voted with the tenants. I would have gone the other way. — Bruce Ramsey

The birds and the bugs — I have mentioned before the crucial role that independent thinktanks play in keeping even a modicum of balance in intellectual debates. With the universities now dominated by left-liberal thinkers, thinktanks are a vital voice. A free-market thinktank I have not mentioned hitherto is the Heartland Institute, based in Chicago. Two recent Heartland articles — both available from its website — give the flavor of its generally cheeky, politically incorrect approach.

The first, "Bedbugs Taking a Bite Out of New Yorkers," notes that New York City's heavy pesticide restrictions have had an unintended side effect: a dramatic increase in bedbug infestation. It seems that complaints about the blood sucking parasites (referring here to the insects, not the city's bureaucrats) have increased tenfold over the past three years.

After World War II, bedbugs were virtually eradicated by DDT, but when it was banned in the 1970s, the problem started to come back. New Yorkers, predominantly trendy environmentalists themselves, have led the way for decades in banning effective pesticides. The result is now, quite literally, biting them in their asses.

The second article, entitled "Altamont Pass Settlement Fails to Reduce Bird Kills," reports on a new ecological catastrophe: shredded tweet. Environmentalist activists — you know, the birds who killed nuclear power and oppose fossil fuels — are demanding tight regulation of wind turbine fields ("wind farms").

An example: the massive wind farm at Altamont Pass, CA., has 5,000 turbines. It therefore kills thousands of birds each year, including raptors such as eagles, hawks, kestrels, and owls; including many birds from protected species. Tasty rodents love to nest in the turbines, serving as bait that lures raptors into the whirling blades. (Oddly, the environmentalists don't seem to care what the rodents might think of this situation.)

Early last year, an environmentalist-instigated federal lawsuit led to a settlement, negotiated between the feds, the environmental mavens, and wind farm companies. But none of the agreed-to regulations appear to have helped. Scientists reported late last year that birds are being shredded at about the same rate as before.

No doubt the environmentalists will swoop in with more regulations, indifferent to whatever protestations the rodents might make. — Gary Jason

Dirty little secrets — I often wish that "liberal" had not become a euphemism for socialist. It is such an appropriate term for people who think like we do, that it would be nice to have it back with the Jeffersonians. It's not even like the Left wants it anymore. Democrats always run away from that term. If an opponent calls a Democrat a "liberal" it is considered a slur. So what's the problem with being liberal?

In private life, being a liberal is a badge of honor. In academic and performing arts circles, people proudly declare themselves liberals. Usually at a Hollywood cocktail party, it is considered an insult to be called a conservative.

Yet, the reverse seems to be true of the Republicans. GOP candidates will publicly argue over who is the most conservative. One of the highlights of the campaign so far was watching everybody argue who is the most like Ronald Reagan (even Obama got in on that one). It kind of reminds me of playing baseball as a kid, and arguing with the other kids about who gets to be Al Kaline.

But the ultimate irony is that when Republicans get together at cocktail parties, they all deny that they're conservative. — Tim Slagle

With love and missiles — Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are firmly against the war in Iraq. However, they show little or no inclination to look deeply into the policy assumptions that underlie the war. In their Cleveland debate they affirmed that the United States must remain the leader of the world, that it must keep an eye on Pakistan and help it to become more stable and democratic (having proven in Iraq how good the U.S. is at such little chores). They were willing to consider intervention, even military intervention, in Darfur, and the issuance of an ultimatum to Russia to the effect that the sacred independence of Kosovo so recently declared (and of no import whatever to America's core interests) would be defended with military might if necessary.

If one of them is elected, I hope (though even there I can't be sure) that he or she will begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq as quickly as feasible. But it's dispiriting that neither is ready even to begin the process of questioning whether the United States needs to keep troops in so many countries of the world or to view the world as merely a province of the United States, cosseted by the watchful Mother Eagle. — Alan Bock

Subsidizing stupidity — Before my wife and I moved to Vermont, we sold our home in Massachusetts for more than twice the money we paid for it. We had owned the place for only five years. In other words, we made a killing.

The buyer no doubt believed home prices would just keep rising. "They can't make more land to build on," was the refrain back in the days of the boom — the implication being that demand would always outstrip supply.

That reasoning, of course, was faulty. The supply of people willing and able to carry ever-bigger mortgages was the real factor determining how large the housing bubble would grow, and how long it would last before it went poof!

The boom was artificially inflated and prolonged by the esoteric mortgage instruments invented by mortgage companies and banks. That was a function of greed on their part. The people who bought homes without making a down payment, or obtained mortgages with artificially low introductory interest rates, or who did both — in other words, people who bought homes they really couldn't afford — well, they were just plain stupid.

Because of the housing bubble's collapse, millions of homeowners now face the demon of negative equity. If they want to sell their homes, they have to show up at the closing and actually give the bank a check. This has come as a shock to the many people who believed that selling a house for a hefty profit was their birthright.

Now the federal government may step in to protect people from their own stupidity. Seems the federals are searching for a way to bail out millions of homeowners confronted with negative equity. They are being prodded to act by the mortgage companies and banks that have massive exposure in the subprime market and therefore face huge losses down the line.

Chris Dodd of Connecticut (Ted Kennedy's old whoring and drinking buddy), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, has got a plan to buy up delinquent mortgages and replace them with federally guaranteed loans that would carry lower interest rates and payments. A similar idea is being floated by Bank of America, which presumably feels it should be rewarded for acquiring Countrywide Financial (the biggest and greediest of the mortgage companies) and thus preventing the financial panic that Countrywide's declaration of bankruptcy would probably have created.

Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is also developing a plan for the government to bail out homeowners in trouble. I'd like to know how many of his constituents bought ridiculously overpriced homes in Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline (outside of Boston) and are now clamoring for him to do something before the fall in prices infects their communities.

So far the Bush Administration, to its credit (and how often do you hear me say that?), has resisted bailing out either the banks or the troubled homeowners. It's critical that it hold the line here. If the taxpayer winds up footing the bill for the foolish greed of the banks and the stupidity of people who thought they could get something for almost nothing, then we will at last have touched the depths of nanny-statism. If we make it all right again for big, grownup banks and the millions of boneheads they serviced, why should the rest of us bother to exercise prudence or responsibility in the future?

Alas, I fear that as the election nears, the administration's knees will weaken. Republicans in Congress will whisper that the Democratic gains look to be big, so we'd better do something. Even if the administration holds firm, the Democratic sweep in November (oh yes, it's coming) will probably lead to the biggest bailout of all time — bigger even than the resolution of the S&L crisis in the '80s.

We shall all be the poorer for it, in more ways than one. — Jon Harrison

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

Send editorial comments to letters@libertyunbound.com.
All letters to the editor are assumed to be for publication unless otherwise indicated.

Send web site comments to webmaster@libertyunbound.com.