Short News and Commentary

Multiculturalism’s next defeat

When voters in California despair of a response from their state officials, they turn to referenda. Their latest end-run around recalcitrant government is the "English for the Children" initiative, which would dismantle bilingual education in California. Launched by 35-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Unz and Santa Ana school teacher Gloria Matta Tuchman, "English for the Children" would replace the state’s current practice of teaching non-English-speaking children in their native language with "sheltered English immersion" (that is, English designed for new learners). The measure would also provide $50 million a year for adult English classes, provided that those adults agree to use their new skills to teach English to children. Initiative supporters are now gathering signatures to qualify for the June 1998 ballot (about two-thirds of the 450,000 signatures required by November have been collected as I write).

It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact this initiative will have if it passes (and all polls show that it will if it gets on the ballot). In California there are 1.3 million school-age children (23 percent of the statewide total) whose native language is not English. When they show up in public schools in most districts in California, they are placed in a "bilingual" program and receive all their academic instruction in their native language. Thus, the typical classroom for Hispanic immigrant children offers Spanish language textbooks and Spanish oral instruction. English is administered in small doses, 30 to 90 minutes a day, during "English as a Second Language."

Children who exit these programs five to seven years later typically cannot read or write English. That’s not surprising, since their English instruction only consists of informal English conversation. No phonics, grammar, or academic material in English is permitted, and there is no written work in English. The result: the State Board of Education reports that only five percent of Hispanic students successfully graduate into English-language instruction each year—a 95 percent failure rate. If "English for the Children" passes, these abysmal practices will be history. Native-language instruction will be replaced with immediate immersion in simple English.

Initiative sparkplug Ron Unz is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former candidate for governor (he lost to Pete Wilson in the 1994 Republican primary) who says he always found bilingual education questionable, but decided to act when he learned that L.A. Times polls show 80 percent opposition to bilingual education among Hispanic parents, while no statutes at either the state or federal level mandate today’s ineffective "bilingual" instruction. When I asked Unz if he foresaw lengthy legal delays if the initiative passes (as happened to Propositions 187 and 209), he replied: "Given the strong support we’ve received from prominent Latinos, any liberal judge tempted to block this on the grounds that it violates the civil rights of immigrants would look very foolish."

I have myself become involved in the bilingual debate. As a teacher and teachers’ union representative at a Los Angeles elementary school, I’m focusing on the role our United Teachers of Los Angeles (utla) union has played. In deference to bilingual teachers who make up to $4,000 more a year than teachers who speak only English, utla has not opposed the bilingual policy of the L.A. district, despite its poor results. In 1989, a referendum of utla members overwhelmingly opposed the bilingual program, but the results were never published in the union paper. Last June, another utla referendum calling for abolition of special pay and protections for the bilingual program lost, but carried a strong 43 percent of teacher votes.

I’ve just finished collecting teacher signatures to qualify a new referendum which, if it passes, will put utla on record as supporting English language instruction for non-English speakers. The measure will also require the union to support the "English for the Children" statewide initiative. My referendum will probably occur this fall. I’ll keep readers of The American Enterprise posted.

—Douglas Lasken teaches at Ramona
Elementary School in Los Angeles.

Breakthrough for Education
and Localism

As this magazine went to press, a new opportunity in Washington had opened up for those who want to devolve government authority and resources to the most local level possible. Senator Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) managed to attach to a 1998 spending bill a measure that redirects as much as $13 billion away from the U.S. Department of Education, sending it instead as aid directly to local school districts. Such a move would immediately boost neighborhood schools and eliminate at a stroke a whole thicket of federal education programs that dangle aid only in return for compliance with burdensome regulations.

The measure passed the Senate and was in conference with the House as this is written. Naturally Bill Clinton condemned Gorton’s amendment and may well veto any bill containing it. But a promising precedent has been set.

Together with Senator Paul Coverdell’s popular new proposal for tax credits for family education expenses, the bold congressional fight to establish a school choice program in the District of Columbia, and regional successes like Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson’s recent school choice triumph, there is suddenly much for opponents of lousy government-run schools to be encouraged about.

The "Banned Books" Bogeyman

Over the last few years, the American Library Association (ala) has gotten scads of sympathetic press coverage for its annual "Banned Books Week" at the end of September. Each fall, the ala blows its P.R. trumpet and warns darkly that dangerous book-burners are closing in on the nation’s free minds. Actually, as a new report from Focus on the Family documents, the number of controversies in question is miniscule, and the ala’s claims that these represent "book bans" are almost entirely phony.

The ala’s 1997 report cites 122 "book-banning" attempts nationwide, (25 of these are actually repeats from the 1996 report). Of these 122 incidents, only 17 took place in public library systems, and indeed all of them took place in just seven libraries. (There are 17,000 public libraries in the U.S.) At those seven libraries, moreover, only two actions were taken in response to the complaints of the would-be "book-banner." In Clifton, New Jersey, six sexually explicit books were moved to adult-only access. And in Columbus, Ohio, an audio tape titled Beauty that contained detailed pornographic descriptions of rape and sodomy was removed from a library after a mother whose 12-year-old daughter had checked it out (thinking it was Sleeping Beauty) pointed out that the library’s own selection policy forbids pornography.

That’s the sum total of the nation’s public library "censorship" in 1997. So where did the remaining 105 incidents on the ala list take place? "Not in public libraries; not in bookstores; not at publishing companies; not in front of the homes of authors.... In schools." And what precisely happened in these school-based cases?

• In 60 percent of all cases, no action was taken against the books in question.

• In two percent, a book was placed on "restricted" access.

• In four percent, a book was temporarily removed while a complaint
was investigated.

• In 34 percent, a book was pulled or deleted from a mandatory reading list.

Many of the cases in the last category involved parents or teachers question-ing the age-appropriateness of particular books for particular students. For instance, teacher Gwen Meeks disagreed with the inclusion of the book Coffee Will Make You Black on the freshman required reading list of Chicago’s Julian High School. The book revolves around a girl’s sexual awakening, which it treats with the crudest obscenities and graphic depictions of sex acts.

In another case that made the ala report, Florida mother Lisa Clinton filled out a request asking that the school reconsider having her eight-year-old daughter’s class listen to the teacher reading one of the Goosebumps horror stories aloud in class. For this, Mrs. Clinton was labeled a "censor."

None of this sounds like an epidemic of closed-mindedness to us. Sounds like the process of judgment being exercised by parents and school officials. Sounds like it’s time for the ala to get off its high horse.

Small Government
Really is Beautiful

Amidst arguments over whether more limited government is better government, keep in mind that in most states, the legislators who run the government are still everyday citizens who legislate only part-time—and that these more lightly governed states tend to be the most efficient and livable in the union. Only a minority of states like New York, Massachusetts, and California have full-time, fully staffed state legislatures. And for this, they have almost nothing positive to show.

New York’s full-time legislature, for instance, the most expensive and heavily staffed in the nation, is a pathetic laughingstock. The legislature meets year-round, and state taxpayers cough up almost $1 million in salaries, staff, and office costs per legislator. For this they get gridlock. The state has not had a budget completed on time for the start of the relevant fiscal year in the last 13 years. This season’s budget finally passed when the time period it was intended to cover was already more than a third over. Worse, all state budget decisions (and most others as well) are literally made in secret closed-door meetings involving only three politicians: the majority leaders of the Assembly and Senate and the governor. Everyday legislators and even committee chairmen have no say in the process. Meanwhile, New York is heavily in debt, has one of the lowest credit ratings in the nation, is the most heavily taxed state in the nation, has a rotten business climate, and has been losing population for three decades. Other big, activist state governments like those in California and Massachusetts are similarly dysfunctional
and counterproductive.

Less active and powerful state governments have actually been much more effective than their strong-government counterparts. In a recent exchange in the Wall Street Journal, Wyoming state senator Charles Scott explains that his legislature convenes in January and ends its session in early March; then he notes that "we have no state income tax and no general obligation state debt. In Wyoming’s state financial statements, interest is an income item rather than an expense item."

James Risch, Senate Majority Leader in Idaho, another state with part-time government, asserts that there are three good reasons why they are more effective. One is cost. It is simply far less expensive to run a legislature 40 to 90 days a year. Another is streamlining: "The part-time system operates much more efficiently, since participants in the process (including, of course, lobbyists) have only a limited time to propose and push legislation, so only the most important matters are addressed. With unlimited time, legislatures tend to address unlimited issues and every aspect of our lives."

A third advantage to small-scale, citizen governance is that "legislation and budgets are enacted by ordinary people from all walks of life, not professional politicians. Most of the time such laws and budgets contain the common sense that comes from common life experiences, and they are passed with the certainty that we will soon be back home full-time, living, working, and paying taxes in the real world under the laws we passed. I believe this country would be far better off if the U.S. Congress operated in the same fashion."

BOLD YUPPIES FOR "DIRECT ACTION"

Remember when actor Woody Harrelson and a few others closed down the Golden Gate bridge for several hours some months ago, stranding thousands of commuters in a protest against logging? This was not some spontaneous lark, but a political action for which Harrelson and comrades were specially trained.

A Southern California group calling itself the Ruckus Society now holds "Action Camps" to teach environmental activists how to board ships, take over public sites, block loggers and builders, occupy private properties, and otherwise take "direct action" against their targets. Participants in the four-day training sessions also get extensive coaching in "befriending the media." At least 600 people have attended such camps since 1995.

Interesting hints as to the personalities of these revolutionaries-in-training can be gleaned from a recent Los Angeles Times article. Their home towns: Beverly Hills, Big Sur, Venice. The locations of the two California camps: Malibu and Sonoma County. For those unfamiliar with left-coast real estate, these are all Golden Ghettoes for the rich and fashionable. Radical chic lives.

The PTA Goes Kaput

This year, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, commonly known as the pta, is celebrating its centennial. But the national pta has little to cheer about. Fewer than a quarter of America’s public schools have active pta chapters, and officially, pta membership has fallen from a peak of 12 million in 1966 to 6.5 million today.

pta leaders offer many reasons why their rolls are declining. But they have done little to address the pta’s gravest problem—its subservience to the National Education Association (nea) and the American Federation of Teachers (aft).

Throughout its history, the pta has supported higher salaries and better working conditions for teachers. But in 1968, the teacher members of the pta threatened to withdraw membership and boycott the pta if the ptas supported school boards in teacher strikes. Thereupon, the pta rolled over and adopted a position of "neutrality" on teacher strikes as well as the issues negotiated in union contracts, such as class size, the annual number of parent-teacher conferences, and how parental grievances are resolved. "Neutrality" on these important issues is a big setback for parents: When school boards sacrifice parent interests to teacher interests, as often happens, the pta does not object.

As millions of parents dropped out of the pta, those who remained tended to be pro-union or unaware of the pta’s pro-union positions. And so the pta has gradually evolved into a front for the teachers’ unions. Consider these recent issues:

• Opposition to school choice. The pta opposes vouchers and tuition tax credits that would empower parents to choose private schools. The pta has capitulated to the nea-aft insistence on maintaining the government-school monopoly at all costs.

• Opposition to privatization. The pta blanketly supports nea and aft efforts to block school boards from contracting out school services such as food service, janitors, or school bus drivers, even if private contractors could provide better quality at lower cost.

• Focus on non-educational issues. Most pta programs now aim simply to convince parents that government schools are doing a good job, instead of showing where schools can be improved. Parents’ reform energy is channeled into comparatively trivial pta support services like trip-chaperoning, bake sales, and other fund-raising activities.

Given the way ptas are governed, it is virtually impossible for parents to dissent from the views of the teachers’ unions. A parent who attempts an open discussion of school choice or teacher tenure at a pta meeting could cost her child a varsity position or a lead in the school play.

As a result, more and more parents are dropping out of the pta. In 1996, for instance, 26,000 members of the Indiana Congress of Parents and Teachers simply did not renew their membership. Dozens of local school chapters have cut their ties with the national pta. In the more than 500 independent charter schools that have been started in the last three years, I know of none affiliated with the pta hierarchy.

Many parents are instead joining independent parent-teacher organizations (ptos). In the large Cherry Creek School District in suburban Denver, ptos have existed since the 1960s, when the district voted to keep the "liberal political agenda" of the pta out of the district. ptos also appeal to independent parents who create charter schools. Recently, parents at Warwick Point Academy, a charter school in Linden, Michigan, opted to become a pto because pta leaders "think free enterprise is the worst thing you can do to education."

The pta criticizes ptos on the grounds that they don’t fund national lobbying efforts. But members of ptos have found they can work through the local education maze more easily without the national policy prohibitions and teachers’ union allegiances of the pta. Parents who want to do more than just talk about parental control, who want to do more than attend monthly fund-raising meetings, and who want to direct their energies toward improving their children’s schools are forming effective alternative groups.

—Charlene Haar is president of the
Education Policy Institute. Her book
on the PTA will be published next year.

Pop Goes the Icon

The last decade has not been kind to the founding proponents of sexual liberation. First, much of the famous Samoan research of Margaret Mead—which purported to show that casual, early, and promiscuous sexual activity did no damage to human relations—was shown to be fraudulent. More recently, investigators began to note troubling aspects of the famous post-war studies of Alfred Kinsey, who legitimized academic sex studies at what became the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University.

For some years, researchers like Dr. Judith Reisman have been questioning the reliability and truthfulness of much of the data in Kinsey’s landmark 1948 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which fostered the ideas that adultery and homosexual experimentation are common experiences, that many forms of criminal sexual behavior are widespread and shouldn’t necessarily be discouraged, and so forth. More recently, critics have noted that many of the observations about child sexuality in Kinsey’s reports could not have been gathered without collaborating in pedophilia. And Kinsey’s insistence that ten percent of American men are practicing homosexuals has been found by recent research to be about four times too high.

How did Kinsey miss the truth on these topics and lead the whole nation so far astray? Until recently, the commonest answer was that he inadvertently erred by oversampling deviant populations like prison inmates when he collected his trademark "sexual histories."

Now, James H. Jones, a former member of the scientific board of advisers of Kinsey’s institute, reports that Kinsey’s "errors" were not so innocent. While he cultivated the public image of a bookish scientist, happily married and father of three children, Kinsey "was, in reality, a covert crusader," determined "to free American society from what he saw as the crippling legacy of Victorian repression." More specifically, after exhaustive research and interviewing for a biography of the man, Jones reports that Kinsey "was both a homosexual and, from childhood on, a masochist who, as he grew older, pursued an interest in extreme sexuality with increasing compulsiveness." Kinsey "placed a thumb on the scale" whenever he weighed scientific evidence. "His methodology and sampling technique virtually guaranteed that he would find what he was looking for."

He was also something of a swine. He regularly had sex with his study subjects, most of it homosexual. He was highly controlling toward his staffers and research associates, and subjected them to what several referred to as "sickening pressure" to have sex with him, his wife, or others, at risk of stalling their careers. He filmed many of these sessions—not in a lab but in the attic of his house. The institute’s photographer, William Dellenback, states that Kinsey grew overtly exhibitionistic, and repeatedly had himself filmed while engaged in masochistic masturbation. Many times he had his wife filmed masturbating and having sex with other people. He brought in sexual sadists from Chicago and filmed them practicing their trade upon each other. He also traveled to other cities to have relations with many such men in their own homes and clubs. Kinsey informed associates he believed sexual molestation of children was usually harmless.

In other words, Alfred Kinsey was, to use an unfashionable word, demented. Who but a demented man would climb a chair in his office, throw a rope over a ceiling pipe, tie a knot around his scrotum, then jump? (Jones reports in a September article in The New Yorker.) That Kinsey is still counted as a great scientist and liberator in the "progressive" pantheon verges on the incredible. As his still-highly-secret archive slowly opens up, let us hope the fraudulent nature of his work—and the disastrous imprudence of building social movements on his ideas—will be more
widely appreciated.

Endgame of Sexual Liberalism

Speaking of swinish avatars of the sexual revolution, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled in August that Bob Guccione, Jr., son of the founder of Penthouse, owed a total of $850,000 in damages, back pay, and legal fees to a former editor. After hearing from two dozen witnesses, the judge found that "job benefits were conditioned on submission to sexual advances" at Spin, a popular magazine formerly published by Guccione, Jr., and that he "consistently made sexual advances to young women at Spin without any regard to whether they considered his advances unwelcome." The judge noted that Guccione "even propositioned the daughter of his business partner, who was working at the magazine and who found the situation deeply disturbing."

So it turns out sexual liberals are not so enlightened after all. What a surprise.

Stop, Look, and Lament

Just when New York City has succeeded at ridding its subway cars of graffiti, vandals have started going for greater mileage—by putting their markings on railroad freight cars that travel throughout the nation. "Freights offer the same thrill for the writers, without the worry of the New York City transit security," writes graffiti expert Jay Beswick in a National League of Cities publication, "Graffiti Abatement: Programs
That Work."

To defacers, writes Beswick, freight cars are "mobile billboards with exposures far greater than what inner-city transit lines had previously offered." He notes that "Graffiti art publications," of which there are over 100 in print, regularly disseminate maps of freight lines and offer tips on where to find lay-up yards. Some publications, he says, have even warned graffiti perpetrators not to paint over a freight car’s identification number, since that increases the likelihood of the car’s being cleaned.

Under the defiant title of Art Crimes, a network containing more than 3,000 photos of graffiti art has been created on the Internet. It provides 200 links to other pro-graffiti web locations, through which a vandal (aka "artist") can buy spray paint, paint sticks, refillable markers, adhesive labels, and other tools of the up-to-date environmental scourge. There has even been a surge in etching of glass by vandals, according to Beswick, since rocks, drill bits, sandpaper, and other tools used by this branch of the graffiti industry are easy to obtain. The glass industry estimated that vandalizing of glass totaled $600 million in 1993.

union hacks scratching backs

The afl-cio used to put collective bargaining first and political hackery second. That has changed since John Sweeney took over as president in 1995. In the most cynical and sordid ways, today’s union bosses have converted their organizations into electoral machines at the disposal of the left wing of the Democratic party.

The most recent report is that President Clinton’s chief fund-raiser and a Democratic political consultant who recently pleaded guilty to fraud brokered a lucrative deal that will bring the afl-cio $375 million in kickbacks over the next five years for floating an "affinity" credit card and handing over management of the group’s program for selling union members insurance, phone service, and so forth. According to federal prosecutors, the same two men who cemented this deal were also, simultaneously, arranging for the Teamsters Union to make hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore ’96 campaign—in return for secret dnc help in funneling reciprocal donations back to Teamsters president Ron Carey.

These actions (guilty pleas have already been entered in federal court in the second case) are criminal acts under existing campaign financing laws. They are also abuses of blue-collar union members, who provide the funds being raided. And these subterfuges follow on the broad-daylight heist of union-member funds for political purposes in the form of the 1996 "special assessment" on afl-cio members used for Sweeney’s election-swinging effort. Those involuntarily raised moneys were funneled to the Clinton campaign and select congressional races in an attempt to defeat conservative candidates. Professor Leo Troy of Rutgers University estimates that more than $300 million in union-member resources were channeled into the 1996 political campaign by labor leaders.

Do any of those nice ups men in brown shorts (who just valiantly fought off their employer’s mean-spirited attempt to give them a better-paying pension plan than the current one run by the Teamsters) realize that any of this is going on? After all, it’s their money. And our country.

Another bold and original legislative gambit just emerging on Capitol Hill is the effort by Representatives Steve Largent (R-Okla.) and Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.), in separate and slightly different bills, to have Congress eliminate today’s federal tax code at the turn of the millennium. Neither bill specifies what should replace today’s tax system, but both set a specific date (December 31, 2000, in Paxon’s bill; December 31, 2001, in Largent’s) when the current code would be repealed.

Such a move would head off efforts to merely tinker with our monstrously complex, unfair, and inefficient present laws and instead force Congress to consider how a fresh and altogether better replacement (like, say, a simple flat tax) might be constructed. The genius of this legislation is that it could pass quickly without prejudging what ought to be done next, and yet would immediately concentrate the mind of Congress in such a way as to assure that the tax reform vital to American success in the twenty-first century not be irresponsibly put off by our Washington representatives.

Sandblasting Religion
from Public Life

Amidst the hubbub in Washington today over rising religious persecution in foreign countries, the more immediate fact is that the boundaries of religious freedom in the United States have become startlingly unclear today.

In late September, the case of the Rev. Pierre Bynum was heard by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman. Bynum was leading about a dozen Maryland church-goers on a tour of the U.S. Capitol in 1996, stopping to discuss the religious significance of certain paintings, statues, and plaques. The group would pause for one or two minutes at each stop to bow their heads, close their eyes, and pray silently for the country’s future.

At their second stop, a Capitol police officer told them they would be arrested if they continued to pray in the building. Bynum says he was "stunned" to be told his group couldn’t quietly express their faith in the Capitol building. He contacted the American Center for Law and Justice (aclj), and when the Capitol Police insisted on sticking with their policy, the aclj filed suit in federal court. A ruling is expected in late October.

Also in October, the Alabama Supreme Court will hear the case of Judge Roy Moore, who has been sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in an attempt to force him to remove a copy of the Ten Commandments from the wall of his courtroom. The attempted removal has inspired public
expressions of support for Moore from Alabama’s governor, the U.S. House of Representatives (which passed a sense of the Congress resolution urging that public display of the Ten Commandments be allowed in government buildings), and from thousands of citizens. But the costly legal challenge is likely to proceed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And it isn’t only from Judge Moore’s courtroom that the aclu and other opponents of all religious expression want to expunge public references to faith. Earlier this year the aclu sued Haywood County, North Carolina, for instance, seeking to have an engraving of the
Ten Commandments removed from a courthouse wall there. The engraving in question has been in place since
the building was erected in 1932. The aclu plaintiff wants the county to sandblast it off.

Male Models

Washington, D.C., has just been visited by a huge gathering of men meeting under the banner of the Promise Keepers movement to seek moral improvement in themselves and their nation. In the months leading up to this event, the National Organization for Women (now) and a few other feminist critics began denouncing Promise Keepers as a "militaristic, anti-woman organization" that poses "the greatest danger to women’s rights." now warned that they would take "whatever steps are necessary" to "defeat" P.K. across the nation.

It’s true Promise Keepers is an all-male movement. But it is possible for a woman to take in one of their massive sports-stadium meetings. I know because I attended one at the Minneapolis Metrodome not long ago, along with 50,000 men.

Heading for the press box, I joined a milling crowd of men—old and young, fathers and sons, black and white. Outside, I noticed a smiling woman, children in tow, standing in the rain and holding aloft a sign: "Thank God for P.K." Inside, I scanned the program, noticing the characteristics of a "godly man: purity, devotion, reconciliation, repentance, humility, servanthood, and perseverance." And then, all around me, the Metrodome exploded with the words of a hymn: "All I once thought gain, I have counted loss, compared to this—knowing you, Jesus."

To my surprise I found myself repeatedly and profoundly moved as the evening wore on. The climax—following two powerful speeches on self-sacrificing love—was an awesome sight. Tens of thousands of men knelt in ardent prayer, some weeping, arms around each others’ shoulders, praying fervently for sexual purity and single-minded devotion to their wives and children.

"We may wear size xxxl, but we’re still little boys," cried Bishop T.G. Benjamin of Indianapolis’s Light of the World Church. "Throw away those magazines, those videos, those phone numbers. Be responsible, be accountable. Loose the chains of sin and selfishness, and become truly free!"

It was a memorable evening, unlike any I’d ever witnessed. The only part that wasn’t so great was the walk to my car in the dark when it was over. Whom did I fear? Young men who’ve never heard the things I’d just heard, men who’d joined a gang to find comrades, men whose selfish and often violent behavior renders them a curse, rather than a blessing, to the women and children in their lives.

How strange, I reflected, that now has painted Promise Keepers as an enemy of women. Certainly, the organization isn’t for everyone. But in a society whose most fundamental problem may be men’s abandonment of their responsibilities, isn’t it a positive development? Why has now fingered Promise Keepers as Public Enemy No. 1?

The answer, I think, is that now and Promise Keepers have radically different views of human relationships. Take now’s primary gripe that Promise Keepers advocates men becoming "spiritual leaders" in their families. now interprets this as a raw power grab. The "real" ambition here, now insists, is nothing less than "overturning" the gains that women have made in the last century. Beth Anderson, Minnesota now president, says Promise Keepers seeks to consign women to a "subordinate position," and in the process "sets the stage" for domestic abuse.

Why do now leaders jump to such outlandish conclusions? Because, as readers of Steinem, Friedan, Millett, and Co. know, post-’60s feminism treats relations between men and women as a zero-sum game: If one has more, the other has less.

Promise Keepers couldn’t see things more differently—as a multitude of P.K. wives will attest. In the context of faith, to lead is to be first in service: to follow the example of Christ, who washed his disciples’ feet. Chuck Knapp of Minneapolis Promise Keepers explains: "We are calling men to become servants of their wives, to live up to the commitments they made to them." A man I met at the Metrodome concurred. "I used to be distant and disengaged from my family," he said. "Now I try to set the example of serving, and my goal is to earn the respect of my wife and children so they’ll believe me."

Promise Keepers also challenge feminist orthodoxy on the idea that mothers and fathers are somehow interchangeable. They maintain that men and women need and complement each other, and that children need both. Men, via their maleness, have something vital to contribute to the family. As one speaker I heard put it, "My grandmother, who raised me, deserves a medal of honor. But she couldn’t teach me about sexual purity, because it takes a godly man to raise a godly son."

Surely now agrees that too many men are abandoning their families or exploiting women as sex objects. now may object to the P.K. program for reform, but can it offer an alternative vision capable of inspiring men to change their ways? Hardly.

Where, then, are men to turn for guidance as they struggle to overcome the selfish habits of a lifetime? Our popular culture is a continual celebration of self-gratification. Nor are employers likely to urge men to devote more time to their families. What’s needed is a life-transforming change of heart. Promise Keepers understands this. now, on the other hand, doesn’t have a clue.

—Katherine Kersten is chairman of the Center of the American Experiment in
Minneapolis and a commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

 

 

Life-changer

 

Promise Keepers held its first stadium event, where men worship, pray, and learn, in 1991. Since then, more than 2 million men have attended such gatherings. Following are testimonies from men who attended a June 1997 rally at rfk Stadium in Washington. They were originally published at greater length in the Washington Post.

Todd Rich, Charlottesville, Va.: I was totally unprepared for the experience. I felt as if I was a spiritual infant among tens of thousands of "real" believers. The sight of 50,000 men singing and confessing their sins in the presence of so many others was overwhelming.

My life has been laden with sins of all sorts and sizes, and I thought that I was far past the point of being accepted into the body of Christ. But as the rain began to fall on us that Saturday, and as we sang "A Mighty Fortress," I felt the power of the spirit working in me, and the redeeming love of the Lord with each raindrop that washed over me. With tears streaming down my face I thanked Jesus. I am anxiously awaiting October 4, so that I can once again lift my voice with tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of believers.

Carvin Wilson, Gaithersburg, Md.: June 15, 1997, was a turning point in my life, as we stood together in the pouring rain. I lifted my head in awe at the unity that filled rfk Stadium. Never have I seen men so close, united, sharing one common bond. It is such a simple concept I’m angry that it took me this long to realize the error of my ways. I have begun to refocus my life and build my relationship with God and my family. I learned that there are many disciplines I will have to succeed in before I can call myself a complete Christian and godly man. Thank you for bringing down the walls, rain, and showing me the light to a new and better life.

Vincent Ahern, Richmond, Va.: I attended my third P.K. event this year and each one had a unique and profound effect on my life. The 1996 theme was "break down the walls." God’s approach to racism and prejudice is so much more effective than the billions invested in government programs that divide us. "Have we not one Father, have we not one faith, have we not one calling to become one holy race?" Building relationships with men of God, of all races, benefits us all. God calls us to be overcomers. I want mighty warriors like Wellington Boone [a speaker at the rally] on my side. My life has been blessed by my black brothers in Christ who have taught me the definition of fervent prayer.

Lou Bender, Reston, Va.: Praise God, the speakers tell it like it is! None of this politically correct mush, but be faithful to your wife, stay out of debt, be ethical and honest at work and be the head of your household.

 

HE WROTE THE BOOK ON ABSENTATION OF
ACTUALITY

Academic writing has probably never been good, but on today’s politically correct, Marxified campuses it’s definitely getting worse. Consider this bit of contemporary
literary criticism from Paul Fry’s A Defense of Poetry:

"It is the moment of nonconstruction, disclosing the absentation of actuality from the concept in part through its invitation to emphasize, in reading, the helplessness—rather than the will to power—of its fall into conceptuality." 

Higher learning is such a marvel.

THE GOP CROUCH

Disgusted with Republican timidity, Kate O’Beirne of National Review recently cracked in a speech at the International Conservative Congress: "No wonder Republicans are the pro-life party—they spend so much time in the fetal position."

 

 

 

 

 

OUR TAXING MEDIA

As the tax debate raged on Capitol Hill this summer, the invaluable Media Research Center toted up the score for one month of evening news shows on abc, cbs, cnn, and nbc: 22 - Total number of tax stories 13  -Stories mentioning Democrats’ claim that gop plan favors the wealthy 1 - Story mentioning gop counter-claim that their plan favors the middle class 0 - Stories mentioning that both parties’ plans increase the tax code’s complexity 0 - Stories mentioning that education tax credits will encourage tuition price increases 47 - Total soundbites 41 - Politicians 4 - People on the street 1 - Business representative 1 - Economist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNLIKELY REVOLUTIONARY

Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) may just be the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate; so it’s fascinating to see that even he has begun to sing the devolution tune. As he makes his "poverty tour" of the nation, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press, "he is starting to believe that problems are best solved by people working in their own communities, not by programs directed by Washington." "It’s got to happen internally," he says, "within the neighborhoods and within the communities." Though he still sees a role for federal aid, "I’m attracted to the notion" that community-based programs are "where it could all happen."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUDICIAL RESTRAINTS

A state law has recently taken effect in New Hampshire making it illegal to drive a pickup truck with an "unrestrained" dog in the back. They could fall out and get hurt, explains Roberta Troughton of the Humane Society. State senator Sheila Roberge, the law’s author, was inspired by her daughter, who once saw a dog dive from the back of a pickup. We had already heard that the state of New Hampshire is trending Democratic.