Short News and Commentary

BLACK REPUBLICANISM

For the first time since the Great Depression, voters in Pittsburgh and surrounding communities put Republicans in charge of the government of Allegheny County. Among the 650,000 votes cast, a massive switch in African-American votes to the Republicans made the difference.

In Pittsburgh's predominantly black inner-city 12th ward, Republicans won 58 percent of the vote this November, up from eight percent in 1991. "We're the ones who've been true Democrats," said Dock Fielder, the ward's Democratic Party chairman. "Those days are over." In the 13th ward, another inner-city black district, Republicans made a similar climb to 50 percent. "Together, the city wards swung more than 10,000 votes to the GOP team," reports Sandy Hamm, city editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier, the city's African-American newspaper. This switch in black votes to the GOP was more than enough to end 60 years of Democratic control of the county commission that oversees Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.

The crack in the Democrats' lock on black voters began with a statement by Democratic candidate Mike Dawida that "we want black votes, but we don't need them." A few days before the election, the Courier editorialized in support of the Republicans, saying, "In this election, it is time for African Americans to prove their vote truly counts."

In places other than Pittsburgh, too, certain black Americans are breaking away from the Democratic party. An underappreciated story of the 1990s is the rise of black conservatives. Nationally, 27 African Americans ran as Republicans for the House of Representatives in 1994, up from 15 in 1992. Two were elected, including Connecticut's Gary Franks, and J.C. Watts, a conservative who became the first African American elected to Congress from Oklahoma. (See page 64.) Today, Watts says, "the struggle for civil rights is not strictly about legal rights, but about expanding economic opportunity and restoring respect for traditional values." In other recent results, black Republican Vikki Buckley won as the new Secretary of State for Colorado, and black Republican Ken Blackwell was elected State Treasurer in Ohio.

Over the past few years, over 25 percent of African Americans have voted for Republican governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, Pete Wilson of California, and George Allen of Virginia. In Ohio, African Americans delivered 40 percent of their votes to Republican governor George Voinovich. Jersey City, New Jersey, a poor, heavily black city of a quarter-million people, has installed Republican Bret Schundler as its mayor.

At the National Leadership Conference sponsored by National Minority Politics, keynote speaker Dr. Mildred Jefferson, a surgeon at the Boston University Medical Center, introduced herself as a "black radical conservative revolutionary," and delivered an impassioned call for a new black activism "to fight the creeping epidemic of socialism which, in disguise, is spreading throughout the country."

A current Washington Post poll reports that 26 percent of African Americans classify themselves as "conservatives." They support prayer in schools, business incentives, tougher sentencing for criminals, school vouchers, smaller government, welfare reform, and lower taxes. Black voters are beginning to join in the conclusion that the old solutions aren't working.

—Ralph R Reiland is associate professor of economics at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh.

THE CROWD AROUND THE TROUGH

"Campaign finance reform" sounds good to many Americans because they think too much money is spent electing politicians. But the money will leave campaigns only when there is less taxpayer money at stake in their outcome. If you want to shrink election budgets, you must first shrink government budgets. Quite simply, so long as there is a full trough in the barnyard, the livestock will cluster around.

Don't take our word for it. John R. Lott, Jr., a University of Chicago Law School professor, has the figures to prove it. He carefully studied U.S. Senate and House races, gubernatorial races, and state senate and house races. His conclusion? "Over the last couple of decades, most of the increase in campaign expenditures can be explained by higher government spending."

Alas, many of the "progressives" who talk about "reforming" election finance are opponents of shrinking the government. Most actually want to expand its reach. In the 1970s, these people legitimated PACs in an attempt to square their contradictory goals. Now they want to concoct Rube Goldberg-like limits on what can be spent on campaigns. But Lott points out that this tack, like other government efforts to control private resources, is doomed to fail.

People who want to influence elections will find a way around the roadblocks, whether

that means finding less desirable ways of giving money, or making non-cash donations of time and talents, or whatever.

So long as government favors are valuable, someone will seek to buy them. The friendship of a $2 trillion gorilla is simply too desirable to expect people to forego spending that tries to achieve it.

FREE AT LAST

Republicans Pat Roberts of Kansas and Bill Emerson of Missouri came to Congress and

the House Agriculture Committee the same year. Seniority on the committee was decided by drawing straws, and Pat Roberts won. When the debate over the 1995 farm bill began, Pat Roberts was chairman of the Agriculture Committee and a staunch defender of the status quo. But by the time the farm bill reached House-Senate budget conference, Roberts was leading a Republican revolution in farm policy. His bill, the "Freedom to Farm Act," was adopted with few changes by the conferees, and farming may never be quite the same.

Roberts's reform would end government controls over what and how much farmers plant, and would ease producers into a free market through a seven-year schedule of declining payments. The House Agricultural committee was unable to get the proposal out of committee, where it was blocked by Bill Emerson and other Southern congressmen who favored a continuation of the traditional farm-subsidy straitjacket. But with the help of the House leadership, Freedom to Farm was approved on the House floor. If revolutions have a defining moment, the outcome of this particular uprising may have been decided 15 years ago when Pat Roberts drew the short straw.

In a clean break with the past, the conferees repealed the 1949 law that has served as the basis of all farm subsidies for nearly half a century. Without further action by Congress, subsidies will end in 2002. Of course, things could change when the actual farm bill is written in December. The Clinton administration advocates only a $4 billion cut in farm spending, instead of the $12.4 billion decided on by the congressional conferees. And ending government controls over planting decisions is anathema to both Democrats and traditional farm groups.

Nor does the bill fix every bit of farm subsidy wackiness. Dairy, sugar, and peanut subsidies escaped largely unscathed, and Southern agriculture was bought off with a continuation of the triple entity rule. Yes, I realize you don't know what a triple entity rule is, but without it, payments to cotton and rice farmers would have been capped at $50,000. Under current law, they can receive $150,000; after the adoption of the budget they will be limited to $120,000. But then, if you expected farm subsidies to end without deals of this kind, you haven't followed the last 60 years of government agricultural policy. In any case, the changes agreed upon by the House and Senate are sweeping – truly unprecedented in the history of our farm subsidies. The crux of our farm programs has always been supply control. That will no longer be the case. The Secretary of Agriculture will not be able '' to require farmers to idle land any more, which will change agriculture more than any government action since farm programs were first introduced in the 1930s. For the first time in my nearly 20 years of farming (indeed, in nearly three generations here on our Missouri farm), we will plant what makes the most money instead of planting what the government requires. I won't have to check with the ladies behind the counter at the Farm Services Agency if weather dictates a change in my plans, and I can grow different crops without being drummed out of the government program. The combines are in the shed here at Hurst Farms, and we won't pull the planter out until sometime in April. But I can hardly wait. This is one farmer who is looking forward to the freedom to farm.

 —Blake Hurst of Tarkio, Missouri, contributes regularly to The American Enterprise.

 THE UNREALITY OF POLL-SITTING

To a considerable extent, opinion polls have become the arbiters of what is "true" in American politics, of what "the people want," of what is "right," "fair," and "accurate." But it's worth remembering, in the heat of a political season, that much of today's polling is illegitimate. Many polls demonstrate nothing more than the operation of today's big-media echo chamber: People simply parrot back whatever predigested information was served up by the television news three days earlier. On political questions, racial questions, personal questions, respondents often give P.C. responses that don't reflect what is in their heart and what will be on their fingertips when they step into their workplace, bank, or neighborhood, or the privacy of a voting booth.

Polls mostly demand crude "yes/no" or "for it/against it" replies that can misportray public sentiments. Polls give too much weight to average respondents, and too little to the smaller subset of people who actually found businesses, write public letters, send money, donate time, vote, pay taxes, start organizations, and otherwise lead American society. Perhaps most foolishly of all, polls often ask about things that the average respondent simply doesn't understand or care about.

A November 1995 scientific poll of 600 Americans found that exactly 41.7 percent of the respondents were "looking for moral character in their president." Others reported "a vision for the nation" was important to them. Pretty impressive, huh? Now guess how many respondents could name two candidates for president other than Bill Clinton? Try under 29 percent. The rest couldn't even come up with a pair of names, much less react to their visions for the nation.

Along the same lines, we were amused by an October1995 poll of 1,970 Americans, conducted for the Washington Post, Harvard University, and a private foundation, which found that 44 percent of the public believes that white males are one of the groups that get preferences under federal affirmative action programs.

Next time you see a poll solemnly depicting exactly what Americans think about the proposed changes in Medicare Part B, the adequacy of the Bosnian peace agreement, or some other mind-numbing detail of Washington work, let those two little surveys flash across your mind.

CANADA'S LIBERTARIAN/RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVE COALITION

American conservatives are not alone in their efforts to bind social conservatives to economic libertarians in one big political family. In recent years, similar coalitions have formed in Canada. The good news is that in Canada as in America, such a coalition is now driving the public agenda and exceeding all expectations at the polls. The bad news is that the Canadian conservative coalition seems to be inherently unstable.

In Canada, the Right was a negligible electoral force until the late 1980s, when the Reform Party led by Preston Manning emerged. A well-spoken populist with a strong following in the western provinces, Manning became an important player in the 1993 national election when he attacked the Progressive Conservative government's sorry record of deficit spending. He made what then seemed a preposterously bold proposal to balance the nation's books in three years without raising taxes. He also sought Canada's social-conservative vote with promises of tough anti-crime measures, an end to state-funded multiculturalism, and restrictions on immigration. He offered religious conservatives little in specifics, but as an evangelical Christian whose father had hosted a weekly radio program called "Back to the Bible Hour" while serving as Alberta's premier for 25 years, Manning inspired trust. In any case, religious conservatives represent a far smaller segment of the electorate in Canada than in the United States.

When voting day came, Reform was rewarded with 55 seats in the House of Commons (compared to only one before the election), an astonishing achievement for an upstart party. The ruling Progressive Conservatives—moderates in the George Bush tradition—were reduced to just two seats.

A majority government was formed by the Liberals, the other party in the Canadian mix. In recognition of the enormous appeal of the Reform Party's social and economic policy, however, the Liberals abandoned many of their usual left-wing positions in the course of the campaign. The Liberals continued to shift after the election, and they now are well to the right of where the Progressive Conservatives were when they ran the previous government. Thus Manning has singlehandedly moved Canada's ideological goalposts: what once was "far right" is now the middle of the field.

All that notwithstanding, it isn't difficult to imagine Reform back on the margins after the next election. Manning's odd personality, and the historic resistance of eastern Canadians to western populist movements, have something to do with that. But there are also strains in Reform's conservative coalition.

When their opposition moved right, Canada's social and economic conservatives lost the glue of shared antipathy for strongly liberal opponents. With both the Liberals and the rebuilding Progressive Conservatives invading Reform's pro-market, smaller-government territory, Manning could lose libertarian voters who are unmoved by his social agenda (or averse to it) in the next federal election.

Conflict is already breaking out at the provincial level in Alberta. There, a conservative coalition elected in 1992 pushed through a 20 percent cut in public spending. This averted a fiscal crisis and left libertarians in the ruling party more or less satiated. Social conservatives, however, remain hungry. While they got some things from the conservative government—welfare was reformed, the education system was improved, some intrusive social agencies were dumped—nonetheless crucial items like a proposal to dismantle the province's powerful human rights commission, and another to defund abortion as a medical service, have made no headway. Feeling betrayed, social conservatives have gone public with their disenchantment.

Social conservatives have recently brought the dreams of economic conservatives to fruition in Canada. Whether economic conservatives repay the compliment will determine if the partnership goes any further, or dissolves on the spot.

—Kenneth Whyte is editor of Saturday Night, based in Toronto.

DIRECT ACTION AGAINST TRASH TV

Recently, I witnessed the gang rape of three young women. The ring leader was a handsome and articulate young man, with a host of mostly female accomplices. A crowd of men and women had made special arrangements to watch, whistle, and cheer.

The setting was not an abandoned building or a darkened street. The victims had not been drugged or abducted. Nor were the assaults illegal. The participants were the host, producers, audience, and guests of a syndicated talk show, assembled beneath the bright lights of a television studio in midtown Manhattan to tape the emotional molestation of three very damaged girls. I call it rape. They call it entertaining the American public.

Weeks earlier, one of the show's producers had called me to explain that they were planning a show about "promiscuous teens." Would I be interested in discussing the subject? Having watched a few minutes of this program, a tender session where guests were reunited with significant people who had been absent from their lives, I accepted. I was impressed with the producer's honesty in using the word promiscuous rather than some feel-good term that failed to convey the destructive nature of the behavior. And I naively assumed these folks were part of a new genre of more humane TV talk shows being encouraged by Oprah Winfrey.

From backstage, I smiled as the taping began and busy stagehands orchestrated the audience's enthusiastic applause. So it's contrived, I thought. No big deal. But within minutes it became a very big deal. A degrading and heinous ordeal. Waiting to appear in the final segment of the show, I watched the monitor as several girls, at the urging of the host and audience, matter-of-factly told America about their depraved lives. Friends of the girls were invited to expose the sordid specifics of their buddies' liaisons. The teenagers relished the attention of a goading audience— shrieking, interrupting one another, trumpeting crass details of the depths to which their friends had fallen.  

The girls were called "ho." They were laughed at. They were told they had no self-respect. More publicly than in their physical encounters they were used for the pleasure and amusement of others. With each minute, my anger rose. I was mad at myself for not having done my homework by watching more segments of this show. I was furious with the host and producers for acting like pimps. My blood boiled at the riotous image of disrespectful black teens the show broadcast across the country. I was sickened that such shows are considered a legitimate form of daily entertainment.

Yes, I know, no one forced the girls to participate. But we Americans pride ourselves on ensuring that vulnerable individuals, especially the young, are protected from opportunistic adults. That's why we have statutory rape laws and why minors' names are not released after arrests.

Beneath the thin veneer of cocky self-assurance, these girls were no different from others I meet. Looking at the monitor, I did not see three sluts (as Danielle's T-shirt described its wearer). I saw the throw-away daughters of families and a nation who have other priorities.

When the show ended, I heard an authoritarian stage manager bark instructions for the girls to exit the studio and move along. Like the many beds they had lain upon, the stage was a brief stop where they could feel briefly important—all the while aching under the knowledge that it could not last, that they do not matter, that no one really cares.

Today, away from the unfamiliar pressures of the studio, I wish I had moved from my assigned chair to a commanding position, tall in my Texas boots, and said: "You (Host), and your producers are pimps, and you audience members are johns. Like the boys and men who used these girls' bodies for physical pleasure, you use them today for commercial profits and entertainment. And you, young ladies, if you have no self-respect, borrow some of mine. Follow me from this stage, and take the first steps to taking charge of your lives.

Alas, my post-taping fantasy is not what I did in reality. But it generates a challenge to every author, psychologist, and counselor who claims to abhor talk-show abuse: Refuse to appear on any talk show that involves an "interview" with dysfunctional individuals—especially the young.

Currently, "experts" serve as enablers, allowing hosts to masquerade as good guys who just happen to be asking a few questions. When the producers call, every author and mental health professional must stand in solidarity with those they claim to serve and forego opportunities to put "as seen on TV" on their books.

It's the right thing to do.

—Dallas-based Patty Stark is author of Sex Is More than a Plumbing Lesson.

LUST BUST

"Sex sells" is the old market argument against cleaning up sleazy TV and movies. But as Entertainment Weekly reports, Hollywood lust is being left in the box office dust. Robert Evans, producer of the risqué but failed Jade, marvels: "I guess somewhere between New York and Los Angeles there is such a thing as Bob Dole country. When he condemned American films, his polls went up. Paul Verhoeven, who directed the NC-17 flop Showgirls, says he too "miscalculated" his audience: "mainstream Americans" simply don't want mainstreamed pørn.

Even trash-TV maven Geraldo Rivera admits that the campaign to clean up TV talk shows, led by Bill Bennett and Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Ct.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), is "on to something." Rivera is moving away from the "transsexuals and other sexually related shows. I didn't feel like taking a shower every time I hosted a daytime show." Meanwhile, Oprah WInfrey, who eschews sleaze, remains the top-rated host. And this September one of the nation's largest advertisers, Procter & Gamble, pulled millions of dollars of advertising from several nationally syndicated talk shows because they had failed to "raise their standards and improve content."  Another victory for what Sen. Lieberman calls "the revolt of the revolted." 

HOLLYWOOD DOES ADULTERY

Human and religious law have been clear on adultery for thousands of years: It's wrong. But in 1995, Hollywood encouraged American film viewers to accept and actually celebrate adultery.

Film director Roland Joffe tells interviewers he wanted to take Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter and recreate it for the 1990s. This, he apparently concluded, required turning a tale of sin and redemption into a sex romp featuring a good measure of nudity and two lusty Puritans pitted against a bunch of evil killjoys.

In the modern Hollywood version, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale (Gary Oldman) and Hester Prynne (Demi Moore) leave the red badge of shame literally under their coach wheels as they ride off to make a new world safe for free love. Meanwhile, the voiceover from their illegitimate daughter asks, "Who is to say what is sin in God's eyes?"

The Bridges of Madison County is another, more masterful 1994 film that makes the same point: Why can't we all just get along and commit adultery? What the Bridges novel and film say in their own special way is that married couples can get into ruts because they forget to listen to one another and talk about wonder and romance. Unfortunately, Bridges also encourages adultery by suggesting that if marriage hasn't brought you all you dreamed of, an affair can be just the thing to lift you from the reality of a stodgy partner and selfish children. There is a profound sadness to this film, which will probably win most of the Oscars in sight next spring.

Another Oscar contender will be How To Make An American Quilt, loaded with strong supporting actresses. The ultimate message of this film seems to be that men are unfaithful by nature (there is only one male character in the film who won't commit adultery) and that women must simply accept that. Or reciprocate.

Heroine Finn (Winona Ryder) is contemplating a marriage proposal from a man who wants to build her a house and seems to be her soulmate. The book on which this film is based is content to have Finn grapple with questions of loss of individual identity in marriage and the need to find lasting love. But screenwriter Jane Anderson added the sweet Hollywood touch of having graduate student Finn run off in a premarital affair with a local lifeguard.

Perhaps when Hollywood's creative tvpes work their way through the current adultery boomlet, one of them will make a movie exploring the powerful faithfulness that keeps the average successful marriage alive. Now that would be avant garde.

—Dave Geisler is a Southern California writer who covers Hollywood

SOLDIERS AREN'T COPS

As the nation debates sending "peacekeepers" to Bosnia, not long after dispatching soldiers to Haiti as policemen and to Somalia as famine-busters, it's worth thinking again about what an army is for.

In 1992, Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Dunlap wrote an award-winning National War College essay entitled, "The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012." In Dunlap's nightmare futurism, U.S. democracy is brought down by repeated episodes of involving our armed forces in social work. "People in the military no longer considered themselves warriors," goes Dunlap's scenario. "Instead they perceived themselves as policemen, relief workers, educators, builders, health care providers, politicians—everything but warfighters.... It is little wonder traditional apolitical professionalism faded away."

A sign of the truth of his cautionary tale is Army Major Ralph Peters' article in the Summer 1995 issue of Parameters, published by the U.S. Army War College. Peters approvingly assesses Army involvement in "struggles against organized crime and illegal immigration" and "missions of disease control [and] resource protection." In direct contradiction to Dunlap's warning, Peters argues that when soldiers "maneuver to avoid roles in 'non-military' problems, we betray the trust placed in us by the citizens we are pledged to protect. A military's reason for being is to do the nation's dirty work."

I suggest that is dangerous thinking. It's the same thinking, however, that prompted President Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing to propose applying our military against domestic "terrorists," weakening the historic prohibitions against use of the national defense forces for law enforcement against American citizens. Similar thinking prompted Pentagon civilians last May to propose involving the military in domestic social programs "in areas such as health and human services, education, and job training."

Where this can lead was shown by Peters's fellow military intelligence officer, Captain Lawrence P. Rockwood, who disobeyed the orders of his military superiors during the U.S. invasion of Haiti and set out on his own to "liberate" a Haitian prison. Court-martialed by the Army, Rockwood was praised by the liberal media and given an award by the ACLU. No wonder—Rockwood was doing what that crowd always tells soldiers to do: "obey the dictates of your conscience." But telling soldiers to do good and obey their own consciences rather than following the orders of the military and civilian leaders appointed over them is a slippery slope. Refusing to carry out orders that are clearly illegal is the only proper exception to military obedience. Inventing armed missions on one's own undermines the military's legitimacy and authority.

Using U.S. troops to separate warring parties and conduct "nation building," as President Clinton has proposed in Bosnia, is also very risky. This could be a repeat of our disastrous experience in Lebanon and Somalia.

In November 1994, Secretary of Defense William Perry said that "ordinarily the Defense Department will not be involved in humanitarian operations because of the need to focus on its war-fighting mission. We field an army, not a Salvation Army."

For the good of the nation, we need to hold him to those words.

—Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., an infantry veteran, has just published New World Strategy: A Military Policy for America's Future.

FEDERAL AID FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

What do O.J. Simpson, Patrick Ewing, Julius Erving, Colin Powell, Mr. T, and several members of Michael Jackson's family all have in common? They were part of a group of black investors who received a tax break from the Federal Communications Commission for investing in a television station — on the theory that, being black, they were "economically disadvantaged." This year the partners sold the station for a healthy profit. The FCC policies that make such dubious deals possible are under inspection.  Will all such preferences meet the fat they deserve?

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ON EVER-THINNER ICE

Author Richard Kahlenberg has written a book on affirmative action to be published by Basic Books this spring. In it, he notes a fascinating development: Writers and act ivists on both the Left and the Right increasingly differentiate between private and public discrimination. He writes:

"Passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was bad news for racists, but it was also bad news for libertarians. The legislation sharply redefined 'public' and 'private' behavior. It said that while individuals are still free to discriminate on the basis of race in choosing a girlfriend or a golf partner, they could no longer discriminate in whom they hire, or whom they serve in a restaurant. Those acts, even when taken by private individuals, were seen as sufficiently public in character as to properly come under government regulation. The old libertarian principle—that the owner of a business could hire, fire or serve , whomever he wanted, for whatever reason—was seemingly buried.

"More than 30 years later, however, the wisdom of that move is being questioned by a surprisingly diverse group of thinkers. The most direct assault comes from Dinesh D'Souza, who argues in The End of Racism for colorblindness by the government, but toleration of racial preferences (for or against) in the private sector. Drawing an analogy to government policy toward religion, D'Souza says government should not engage in racial favoritism, but neither should it prohibit private employers from exercising the freedom to discriminate. If a Korean business wishes to employ only Koreans, a black business only blacks, or a white business only whites, the government should not interfere, he argues. It is time, D'Souza declares, to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"In a related context, New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan argues in his new book, Virtually Normal, that there should be no government discrimination against gays (for instance in the military, or in the granting of marriage licenses). But private employers and landlords should, he says, be free to discriminate—to hire or rent to only heterosexuals or only homosexuals if they wish.

"The distinction between public and private spheres has also re-emerged among political centrists looking for a compromise on affirmative action. The Progressive Policy Institute's Will Marshall testified before Congress recently that government-sponsored racial preferences should be repealed but that at the same time we should 'reinforce' and 'encourage' preferences in the private sector. The distinction between public and private spheres, Marshall says, offers 'third way,' which avoids the 'convulsive " either or" debate' on affirmative action.

"The two major political efforts to curtail affirmative action to date have implicitly endorsed the public/private dichotomy. The California Civil Rights Initiative would prohibit the state from imposing preferences, but says nothing about the private sector. State-sponsored contract set asides are prohibited, but private employment preferences will be unaffected. Race is taken out of ad missions at Berkeley, but racial preference may continue at Stanford. Likewise, Bob Dole's Equal Opportunity Act of1995 will, Dole says, get 'the federal government out of the business of dividing Americans.' But it will allow private employers and universit to use racial preferences all they like."

Kahlenberg argues that this "third way" begs a serious question. If racial preferences are terribly wrong in the public sphere, why are they okay in the private sphere? He argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was right to prohibit all racial discrimination, and suggests that the policy change most needed now is to apply prohibitions consistently and in all sectors—that is, to forbid measures which work against whites equally with those that discriminate against racial minorities.

THE NEW JOURNALISM

"The fashionable formula offered by white demagogues for addressing black men's monumental woes—three-strikes-and-you're-out, mandatory sentences, and the abolition of parole—is especially vicious and destructive.  As an African American who's gone the prison route, these sinister measures make me so furious sometimes my vision gets blurred. They make me want to lash out at whites in the basest way."

—Armed robber turned Washington Post reporter Nathan McCall in the October 15 Post.

WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR BLACK CRIME?

Our country's current affinity for explaining away any information that reflects ill on minorities was underscored by the recent release of a statistical analysis entitled, "Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System." This study revealed even more about America's "authorized" attitude toward race than the Simpson trial or the Farrakhan sermon it shared October headlines with.

The report carried an astonishing revelation: On any given day in America, one-third of all black men in their twenties— 827,440 individuals—are either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. That figure represents a dramatic increase since 1989, when about one in four young black men were similarly situated.

Observing that the corresponding figure for young white men is just 7 percent, co-author Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Washington-based Sentencing Project, concluded that "the racial problems that divide us have been getting worse." Note the culprit: depersonalized "racial problems."

Since the number of black drug-offenders has recently soared at nearly twice the general rate of increase, the report argues that the war on drugs "has been an unmitigated disaster for young blacks and other minorities." The passage makes it sound as if the individuals in question were victims of Hurricane Opal, or perhaps some infectious disease, rather than drug felons. Would the same focus-shifting verbiage have been employed a few years back to describe the Justice Department's all-out assault on the mob: "The war against organized crime has been an unmitigated disaster for members of La Cosa Nostra"? No, because it is socially acceptable to say that members of the Mafia acted willfully and so deserved punishment for their sins.

Just as revealing as the study itself was the media's kid-gloves coverage of it. Indianapolis's leading newspaper ran the headline "The Jailing of Black America," a title which conjures up images of doe-eyed innocents rounded up on streetcorners and herded into paddywagons for no reason other than color. The story reports that police are "ensnaring an alarming portion of young black men and women in the prime of their productive lives." Whether those productive lives have thus far been given over to producing more and more crack cocaine is not addressed. "We are at war with young African-American men," the article quotes one expert saying. Again, note the emphasis: It's not that transgressors are at war with social norms, but rather that society is at war against certain men.

Granted, any rational person will acknowledge that a host of mitigating circumstances figure in these sorry statistics. The numbers themselves, however, are neutral. They tell us only that a lot of young black people are in trouble today. When intelligent people use such information to blame society for depriving drug traffickers of "the prime of their productive lives," we have escaped the gravitational pull of common sense and are hurtling into dangerous space.

The society-blaming authors of this port are guilty of an insidious form of racism, one that demeans blacks by apologizing for them. Taking the responsibility for criminal actions off the shoulders of those involved imputes a helplessness to African Americans, and implies that blacks will remain chained to their fates until society itself—white society, one supposes—does something about the problem. Left to their own devices, it would seem, blacks are powerless victims of America's undeclared "war" against them. This is the worst of all possible messages to send young black men and women struggling to overcome disadvantaged beginnings.

—Steve Salerno is editor-in-chief, of The American Legion Magazine

 PUNISH THE LIARS

 Mark Fuhrman recently reminded us how much damage can be done to our justice system when perjury occurs. Perjury— lying in court—is rampant today because it goes unpunished.

Despite the Simpson hullabaloo, police officers are typically among the most truthful testifiers in court. The worst offenders are deceitful plaintiffs and hired "expert" witnesses. One recent case that attracted attention involved a Long Island New York aircraft mechanic who swore that his neurosurgeon's negligence had left him permanently disabled, unable to stand on crutches for even 15 minutes before succumbing to pain. The poor unfortunate couldn't brush his teeth without hi wife's help, and hadn't engaged in marital relations since 1980 because of his bad back. The man grimaced, moaned, and groaned while testifying from a stretcher that was wheeled into the courtroom be cause he was allegedly too weak to sit upright in a chair. Then the doctor's attorney played a videotape of the mechanic lifting cinder blocks and changing the shock absorbers on his car.

An enraged judge ordered the district attorney to investigate, and the man was eventually charged with perjury. That case was the exception, though. Most judges and prosecutors don't have the stomach for going after witnesses who lie. Nor do they often hold lawyers to federal Rule 11, which requires attorneys to make reasonable factual inquiries before pushing a lawsuit into court.

Why is there such reluctance to punish perjury? True, the cases are difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Is the infraction a deliberate lie, evasion, exaggeration, or faulty memory? An expert witness's testimony may be laughable, but if it falls even remotely within the realm of opinion, he'll get away with it. Prosecutors argue that they're already overwhelmed with murderers, armed robbers, and other miscreants. They can't devote scarce resources to someone faking a limp or fibbing about his résumé.

This attitude of resignation by court officials only emboldens the dishonest and greedy. Failure to sanction dishonesty in court makes a mockery of the legal system. It creates dangerous incentives in a society that depends in many areas on people telling the truth. It can also result in distorted verdicts when jurors retaliate against perjurers with their deliberation vote because they believe the courts won't punish liars directly

Prosecuting perjury is not a waste of time. A few tough penalties would serve as an example to thousands of potential fibbers. Judges and district attorneys just need to rediscover their sense of outrage. Authorities should take particular interest in disreputable attorneys who put witnesses up to lying. That's called suborning perjury, and it's a felony committed daily by ambulance-chasers.

Congress has pretty much flubbed serious legal reform this year. But there's still time for a "sense of the Congress" resolution to focus public attention on this serious problem. Even if the trial lawyers poured out money against it (as you can be sure would happen), what politician would dare oppose such a measure? Four simple words—"perjury will be prosecuted"—would go a long way toward reestablishing respect for our judicial system.

—Mark Crane is a senior editor at Medical Economics.

THE LATEST WORLD WISDOM FROM THE MULTICULTURAL GULCH

After attending a workshop on race put on by the Affirmative Action and Minority Affairs

directors of a prominent New York school district, a self-described "liberal " newspaper reporter described the proceedings:

"It made me realize how outdated and shallow many of my suppositions about race and education have been. Here are a few examples:

Old idea: Scatter students of color widely throughout a school, and they'll learn how to succeed in the system through the role modeling and challenges provided by white students.

New idea: Students of color need to be clustered in class to give each other moral support and identity. They might even need separate schools. The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. the Board of Education wasn't about integration, it was about equal education, which African Americans weren't getting.

Old idea: Teachers need to help students of color to learn standard classroom behavior.

New idea: Old standard classroom behavior is a part of the European culture, alien to many African Americans who don't learn best in a quiet classroom. Some compromise needs to be made. Part of their experience needs to be in more relaxed, conversational, idea-trading environment.

Old idea: Multicultural education, which teaches students the customs and foods and holidays of different ethnic groups is good.

New idea: Multicultural education should be about empowering minorities not only through educating them about their own histories but through teaching them how they can use the current system itself to bring about a more democratic society.

Old idea: Equality in the United States is all about making the American way of life available to everyone, at least in so far as the law can make it available.

New idea: Traditionally, the American way of life has been the European-American way of life. If we are to be a truly democratic society, we need to accommodate other cultures, not insist people change to meet the norms and ideals of European Americans."

NO ENGLISH, PLEASE, WE'RE FACILITATORS

At this year's convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, many delegates objected to the word English in the group's name because it's "non-inclusive" ("communication arts" was suggested as a possible replacement). Delegates also objected to the word national: "It smacks of nationalism," delegate James Davis complained. Objections were also made to the word "teaching," which should apparently be replaced with "facilitating." All of which brings to mind novelist Flannery O'Connor's remark about educrats: If this is what they do to the language, think what they do to the children.

FRESH AIR IN ACADEMIA

Is a tide turning in the culture wars? At the very least an extra front opened up in September when the newly formed Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC) held its first national convention in Minneapolis. In its initial year the ALSC has grown rapidly to over 1,400 members. These include such distinguished literary critics as Paul Fussell, Denis Donoghue, E.D. Hirsch, Leon Edel, Alfred Kazin, and Mary Lefkowitz, plus luminaries like Lynne Cheney, Robert Conquest, and Richard Posner from other fields.

The group aims to offer an alternative to academia's dominant literary organization, the Modern Language Association, or MLA, which has become obsessed with politicized race, class, and gender themes. ("The Muse of Masturbation" was one recent MLA paper.)

The founders of the ALSC obviously tapped into a large underground reservoir of discontent within the humanities profession: The convention had expected about 150 attendees but experienced twice that, plus local walk-ins. Highlights included keynote addresses by classicist Bernard Knox, and author Stanley Crouch, who filled in for an ailing Saul Bellow. With a mix of humor, pathos, and eloquence that matched the novel itself, Crouch celebrated Bellow's 1970 novel Mr. Sammler's Planet for its honest and prophetic portrayal of U.S. race relations.

To counter the MLA trend whereby critics displace authors in importance, the ALSC has worked to enroll writers like Joseph Brodsky, George Garrett, and Charles Wright, Jr., in its ranks. Perhaps the most innovative session of the conference paired two of America's most accomplished poets, Mark Strand and John Hollander, with academic critics of their work. Alternating poetry readings with analyses of the poems, this session demonstrated that a productive dialogue between authors and analysts is possible. The fact that the poets found this occasion unusual, and even a ' bit flattering, is a telling sign of how academic critics have been squeezing creative writers to the margins in recent years.

Boston University professor Roger Shattuck, winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, has been elected president of the ALSC, and Berkeley professor Robert Alter is vice president. With support from so many major players in literary study today, the organization seems to be here to stay.