Category: News and politics

I returned home from Kabul and Juba last week to three
nights of six one-act plays each evening by twelve playwrights at the
Shakespeare Theater under the title “The Great Game: Afghanistan.” I just can’t
get away from it. I landed at 2:00 Wednesday afternoon and at 7:30 pm the same
day was watching actors play British troops in Afghanistan at the turn of the
century. The second evening of one acts covered to Soviet occupation era and
the final evening the American occupation, which is to say the current era.

“The Great Game,” the plays, isn’t real history. The authors
knew what they wanted to say about “history” from today’s perspective, but it
rings true to me. Basically the large message is that Afghanistan is a complex
place ungovernable by foreigners and no one seems to learn that. The British
ruled it for 90 years then failed, the Soviets for a decade then failed and we
have been at it for almost as long (nine years) and are failing. We did not
really go there in order to rule as did the British or the Russians, but we have
been trying none-the-less to impose our way of doing things, enlightened as
they are, on a reluctant Afghan population. No one seems to have learned the
lessons of their predecessors. The viewing of these plays was very painful at
many levels.

Many of the episodes invite the audience to see Afghanistan’s
many invasions from an Afghan perspective. In the second episode of the first
evening – the British period from 1842-1930—four frightened British Army
buglers looking into the dark for enemies are approached by an Afghan of some
wit. They demand of him “Stop! Who are you? And why are you here?” He stares
intensely back at them and says: “The real question is who are you and why are
you here?”

The opening play of the second evening—the Soviet period
from 1979 – 1989—presents the welcoming speech to his troops by a new Soviet
commander in 1987. He sets out the rather hapless goals for continued Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan that reflect the emptiness and futility of the
undertaking. The next scene is a somewhat more upbeat speech by his Soviet predecessor
as he takes command two years earlier in 1985. This is followed by the opening
addresses of earlier commanders in 1984 and 1982, each more ambitious and
upbeat than the previous (i.e. later) one. The goals of building schools and hospitals
etc., sound remarkably like American goals twenty years later.

The third and final evening—the American period from 2001 –
20??—ended with an American solder watching TV in the middle of the night when
his wife asks him to please come to bed. An intense exchange ensues in which he
speaks of the need to return and protect poor Afghan children from the terrors
of Taliban oppression and his wife speaks of the need for him to look his own
child in the eyes and engage him. This is not just or even one of the many
collateral damages of war politicians too easily and readily forget when
sending our young men to far off wars. This young man suffers deeper problems
having nothing to do with this or any other war. Blaming his dysfunction on the
war is rather like blaming Jimmy McNulty’s neglect of his family to his all
consuming battle against crime on crime in “The Wire.”  There, I found another chance to plug TV’s best series of the last decade.

The controversy over building an Islamic cultural center and
mosque several blocks from Ground Zero continues with President Obama joining
in. Michael Gerson explains in today’s Washington
Post, why it is an American President’s duty to uphold the rights of all
American’s and to defend America’s core values, as President Obama has done in
this instance: http://tinyurl.com/Zeromosque

Two of you have sent rather different but interesting
comments on my Daily Caller op-ed on "Shariah and
America" that I am sharing with you below:

Warren,  

Interesting but I think you are insufficiently critical of
Islam.  The Pope forbid Catholic nuns from opening a center near a concentration
camp site because he understood that it’s existence would be insensitive to
Jews.  The insistence of the Moslems to build near the 911 site shows
massive insensitivity at the least.  It is not just a few Moslem radicals
who commit unspeakable acts but look at all the Moslem countries that deny
fundamental freedoms to women, gays, other religions, journalists, etc, etc, look
at the tens of thousands of Moslems who rioted against the Danish cartoons and
killed people and destroyed millions in property.  Look at all of those
that cheered 911.  When Moslem Americans threatened the producers of
Southpark, the Moslem establishment was largely silent as they have been with
most of the other outrages.  I think that Hirsi Ali is right when she
suggests that we all stand up and say these behaviors do not meet civilized
norms for a religion in the modern world.  We know that many Imams preach
violence and hatred and act as foreign agents.  Every religion has its
assorted violent nut cases, but every major religion other than the Moslems has
acted quickly to condemn and squelch such people.  If they want respect it
is time they started showing respect for others – a good way to start would be
by agreeing not to build at the 911 site as an act of respect to all of those
who died there.

Richard

[Richard W. Rahn – former Chief Economist of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, author and columnist, former fellow Director of the Cayman
Islands Monetary Authority, and currently a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute
and Chairman of Institute for Global Economic Growth]

**********************

Warren,

As in the past, when spirit and time combine to permit, I am
commenting on your thoughtful piece on shariah law, mostly to highlight a few
items touched on too passingly:

1. The Cordoba House controversy is almost entirely more a
zoning issue than either a property or religious freedom issue. There are, I’ve
read, more than 100 mosques already in Manhattan. It seems unlikely all but a
very few people in the U.S. either object to these or would object to another
100 being built in New York City, by these individuals or others. If 100
mosques do not evoke controversy and one proposed "cultural center"
does, it almost certainly means it is not the area set-aside for prayer that is
at the heart of the issue.

It is, then, at bottom the location and the publicity
surrounding the intention to build so near the 9/11 site. One may well disagree
with a great many zoning laws and the attitude behind many zoning proposals (as
you and I surely do). One can understand, however, why many might, say, object
to an adult video store being located near an elementary school or a church.
One might even suspect that the intention was provocative more than commercial.
In any case, it is sure to evoke public controversy. A judgment then needs to
be made whether or not the result, including both the building of the center
and the hostile reaction to it, is close enough to the intentions of the
builders.

2. Law generally.

The late, great Harvard law scholar Harold Berman wrote
powerfully that only in the late 20th century (and now the early 21st) has the
idea developed that "law" was a single thing, namely positive,
legislated law. When Blackstone wrote his celebrated commentaries, there were
at least over half a dozen "legal systems" operating in England.
Overall, three legal themes were intertwined to form a larger understanding of
law: 1. moral/natural law – meaning the customs, including both simple
practices and those with moral meanings, that were embedded in various
communities. These were not explicit or precise and varied from village to
village in small ways, but were always part of the judgment as to "what
the law is". 2. Judge-made law or the conclusions judges, over long
periods of time, had come to decide in specific cases that were similar to an
issue before them. Call is precedent. 3. Positive law that legislatures enacted.
The notion that "LAW" now means some combination of the positive law
enacted by a legislative body and even a very narrow court decision by judges
is the only "LAW" has warped our understanding.

Thus, your larger understanding of shariah law invokes this
longer tradition of what law is and how it responds to changing times and
mores.

3. Shariah Law.

It is tendentious and misleading (or simply ignorant) to
speak of "shariah law" as if it is precise and universal. There is no
single "authoritative shariah law" that many commentators speak of.
Muslim women are instructed to be "modest" in public. Some take this
to mean simply modest dress and appearance. Some wear a scarf to cover their
hair (as St. Paul also argued for women in church; and Mother Teresa always
adhered to in public). Some argue for a burka or complete covering. Which is
"authoritative shariah law"?

As you say, there is a general sense among many Muslims that
"interest" is not allowed (as many Catholics also believed for
centuries). That seems an unfortunate approach in the modern world of finance
(although the excess of the use of credit is also perilous). Refusing to
separate a mortgage payment as part "principle" and part
"interest" seems an easy way around the prohibition and almost a semantic
dodge. Going into a rant against shariah law is similar to condemning
Christians for not wanting to invest in companies the activities of which they
disapprove.

The notion that the spooky because unknown "shariah
law" will be imposed on 330 million Americans is obviously far-fetched.

4. The Unity of Islam

Muslims are proud that there are over a billion Muslims in
the world. Those most eager to incite the West, speak as well in a way to
suggest that this is a unified entity for political or terrorist purposes. In
fact they are deeply fragmented. Even the use of "radical" or
"extremist" covers over that, however broadly or narrowly defined,
these groups are also fragmented.

Even so, "radical" and "extremist" do
not fully describe those Muslims that we should oppose with military force.
They are those Muslims who are quite willing to use violence against Western
people or assets. A civil war among factions, whether religious or not, in
Afghanistan or Iraq, Somalia or the Sudan, should interest us in only a tangential
way. Every terrorist is not a Muslim, although many are. Likewise every Muslim
that uses violence, even the vilest kinds (stoning someone for adultery or
homosexuality or whatever), is not someone the US military should be trying to
kill. For one, it is an impractical goal for a 330 million population who knows
very little about various cultures in Islamic countries. We simply cannot
achieve our goals — any more so than, say, an invasion of China to root out
their system of government.

Secondly, the attempt to root out violence between the various
Muslim communities and within their communities (such as honor killings) will
turn their violence against us.

In short, a longish way of saying that I think I agree with
you — once again.

Best,

Bob

[Robert A Schadler, Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy at the
American Foreign Policy Council, Board Member of the Center for the Study of
Islam & Democracy Secretary, former
editor of The Intercollegiate Review,
during the Reagan administration he was the Director of the Office of
International Visitors and Chief of Staff to the Director of US Information Agency and is a fellow member
of the Philadelphia Society.]

*********************

Best wishes,

Warren

Should an Islamic community center and mosque be built a few blocks from the site of the collapsed World Trade Center in New York? The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) doesn’t think so on the grounds, they say in a lawsuit brought against the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission last week, that the Commission did not adhere to proper procedure when it refused to designate the property on which the facility would be built an historic landmark. The basis for requesting historic landmark status was that some of the debris from the World Trade Center fell on it. The Commission’s unanimous ruling preserves the right of the owners of the private property to permit Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, who Time magazine characterize as “modernists and moderates  who openly condemn the death cult of al-Qaeda and its adherents” to proceed with their intention to build the Cordoba House Islamic Cultural Center there. Score one for private property.

According to Jeffery Goldberg, writing in the Atlantic “Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda.  Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative’s proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama’s most dire enemies are Muslims…. He represents what Bin Laden fears most: a Muslim who believes that it is possible to remain true to the values of Islam and, at the same time, to be a loyal citizen of a Western, non-Muslim country. Bin Laden wants a clash of civilizations; the opponents of the mosque project are giving him what he wants.”[1]

The bigger picture, however, is the serious damage this controversy has done to our struggle to contain al Qaeda and radical Islamists. Our enemies are radical Islamists, not Islam or Muslims. Success depends heavily on our ability to isolate these extremists from the broader Islamic community of which they claim to be a part. The hypocrisy of the ACLJ, which in the past has filed suits “that argue that religious freedom trumps land use laws,”[2] though obvious, is not the issue. The damage comes from the clear message to the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims that many Americans blame all Muslims for the terrorist acts of a handful of political fanatics claiming to act in the name of Islam. ACLJ attorney Brett Joshpe told The Daily Caller: “Would I be personally involved in this matter if this were a church? No. And the reason why is because if it were a church it wouldn’t be offending and hurting the 9/11 victims’ families”[3] Score one for transparency, ugly though it is.

Too many Americans who should know better have taken up an unwarranted and
unhealthy attack on Islam.  Consider the claims of some that shariah law violates American law and
basic American principles. There are several strains to this argument.

One strain is that shariah law is foreign and that it is some how inappropriate to permit or give any scope to foreign laws in America. This misunderstands the nature of common law, which is the continuous discovery of a natural law that reflects people’s expectations of proper behavior between people.  In their compelling book, Money, Markets, & Sovereignty, Steil and Hinds present some of the history of the absorption of foreign law into our domestic laws. “The hugely important Lex
Mercatoria, or the international “laws merchant,” which developed privately and spontaneously to govern commercial transactions, dates from the twelfth century, before the consolidation of states….  The Lex Mercatoria was absorbed into English common law in the seventeenth century, where judges, who were paid out of litigation fees, initially treated it with some contempt. Competition from continental civil law countries, however, which frequently proved more accommodative to the Lex Mercatoria, ultimately forced English judges to recognize commercial custom in international trade in order to attract cases. In the United States, widespread early adoption of the practice of commercial arbitration, as well as the history of state jurisdictional
competition, contributed to greater acceptance of the Lex Mercatoria than in England. The U.S. Uniform Commercial Code thus reflects the fact that business practice and custom are the primary source of substantial law.”[4] Score one for common law.

A more serious claim, voiced for example by author and lecturer Nonie Darwish, is that “the goal of radical Islamists is to impose sharia law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.”[5] According to Newt Gingrich: “radical Islamists are actively engaged in a public relations campaign to try and browbeat and guilt Americans (and other Western countries) to accept the imposition of sharia in certain communities, no matter how deeply sharia law is in conflict with the protections afforded by the civil law and the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.”[6] Gingrich cites a New Jersey state judge ruling in June 2009 that “rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter.” This behavior obviously violates American law and core values and an
appellate court overturned the judge’s outrageous ruling. But this does not imply that Muslims should not be permitted to observe other (in fact most) provisions of shariah in America if they chose too. It also fails to take account of the fact the shariah law, which largely deals with requirements of personal behavior such as daily prayer (salāh), fasting in Ramadan (sawm), the
pilgrimage to Mecca (haj), charity (zakāt), a tax of 20 percent on untaxed, annual profit (khums), and struggling to please God. (jihād), is subject to interpretation by Muslim scholars. Traditional shariah has five main schools of interpretation.[7] In this respect it is rather like the Christian Bible, which is subject to different interpretations by different Christian scholars and denominations. Similarly some of the more extreme and cruel teachings of the Bible are broadly rejected by Christians (and American law).

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated the issue well in a strangely controversial lecture on “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective” delivered at the Royal Courts of Justice February 7, 2008.[8]  In a BBC Radio 4 interview the same day the Archbishop elaborated that: “‘as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law’. When the question was put to him that: ‘the application of sharia in certain circumstances – if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’
religion – seems unavoidable?’, he indicated his assent”[9]

“In his lecture, the Archbishop sought carefully to explore the limits of a unitary and secular legal system in the presence of an increasingly plural (including religiously plural) society and to see how such a unitary system might be able to accommodate religious claims. Behind this is the underlying principle that Christians cannot claim exceptions from a secular unitary system on religious grounds (for instance in situations where Christian doctors might not be compelled to perform abortions), if they are not willing to consider how a unitary system can accommodate other religious consciences. In doing so the Archbishop was not suggesting the introduction of parallel legal jurisdictions, but exploring ways in which reasonable accommodation might be made within
existing arrangements for religious conscience.”[10] Score one for common sense.

The level of ignorance or in some cases deliberate misinformation in an effort to tarnish all Muslims as enemies of decent, freedom loving Americans, can be illustrated by attacks on shariah compliant mortgages (or shariah compliant financial instruments more generally).  The Royal Bank of Canada, which offers such products to those who want them, explains the background of their shariah compliant mortgage products as follows: “Shariah law is interpreted on a case-by-case basis by recognized scholars of Islam. It forbids usury, including payment or receipt of interest on monies borrowed or invested. As such, a traditional commercial mortgage would not be a Shariah compliant way to fund a property purchase.”[11] The resulting mortgage contract has followed the guidance of the Shariah Supervisory Board.  Shariah-compliant financial instruments are equity rather than debt, producing, hopefully, profits rather than interest payments. Funds may not knowingly be invested in certain “unethical” activities or products such as gambling, alcohol and the consumption of pork. In this respect this instruments are reminiscent of Green investment funds. You might or might not be interested in such funds, but they hardly represent a threat to the American Way of Life.  Shariah compliant mortgages charge no interest, but establish a rent-to-own agreement that has a very similar end result to a conventional mortgage. If the label “Islamic” or “shariah compliant” where not attached to such mortgages, their critics might embrace them as a neat idea. Score one for sound finance.

Balancing faithfulness to our respective personal religious beliefs and practices with the requirements and laws of commercial, social, and political life can be a challenge, but America does it better than most countries to our great benefit. We have no reason to be at war with Islam. Those who give the impression that we should be are serving Bin Laden’s goals. Those Muslims, or anyone else, who are not willing or able to live in America and practice their religion within
the limitations of our laws and traditions are not welcomed here and should not come. Those who attempt to make Islam and its believers into our enemies are not welcomed either.

 

It was interesting being in Kenya this past week while the World Cup football (soccer) matches were being played near-by in South Africa. When Kenyan’s interrupted their viewing of a match to converse with me and learned that I was an American they inevitably wanted to know how I thought President Obama was doing. I hated telling them. The current World Cup in South Africa, however, made viewing Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” on the plane on the way home even more moving than it would have been anyway. The movie dramatizes South Africa’s first post apartheid President, Nelson Mandela’s, decision to save and embrace South Africa’s national soccer team, “Springboks,” so loved by white South African’s and thus hated by black South Africans, as an element of his program of national reconciliation.The wisdom, courage, and compassion of leaders like Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King overwhelm me. These leaders placed the well being of their people, their countries, and mankind more generally above narrower concerns for justice or revenge. They looked forward not backward. Mandela understood that his fellow black South Africans would have richer more fulfilling lives if they embraced and worked with it’s white citizens rather than simply displacing and replacing them in positions of power. He also knew that that would be a hard sell.

I remember well some worldly wise “friends” telling me in the 1970s that there was no chance in hell that white South Africans would allow blacks to vote and thus turn over the government to blacks. They would fight to the death rather than give in. My “friends” were reflecting not only the view that South Africa’s blacks were incapable of ruling the country
efficiently and justly, but that those in power for all those years would never give it up to anyone. In part my “friends” were ignorant of the actual attitudes of many of South Africa’s whites toward South African blacks. And no one expected a Nelson Mandela to take over the Presidency. It is still too early to know whether post apartheid South Africa will succeed in efficient and just governance, but that it even has a chance is the result of the belief and commitment of Mandela and the last white President F. W. de Klerk and others that the nation must rise above the hatred and score settling for the injustices of decades of the oppression of one people by another if it was to become great (or even survive).

My old “friends” were reflecting an all too human and common attitude of those who have ruled and dominated others for many years. They were reflecting the fear that the “ruling class” might not be able to stay in power on the basis of merit alone and thus needed to become more and more repressive toward the groups that might challenge them. Consider, for example, the outcry of some older American immigrants—we might call them the decedents of Mayflower Christians who came here to find religious freedom and less oppressive government—toward new immigrants, legal as well as illegal. The Mexicans and other Latin’s flooding into the U.S., for example, are not bringing an alien culture with them. They are part of that broader Anglo culture dominated by the Roman Catholic and other Christian Churches and the values they hold. So what is it that our old guard nativists fear? In part, perhaps largely, they fear the loss of their position in society. But why should they fear that in the “land of the free” if they hold their positions by merit? We must be suspicious of the motives of such people.

Before he was President of South Africa, Mandela was in prison for 27 years for opposing the white South African government as a leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress. He was released February 11, 1990 and led the ANCs participation in the negotiations that resulted in a new constitution opening participation in the government to all South Africans. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk in 1994. It was not easy for black South Africans to forgive a lifetime of oppression by whites. But for a man who had spent 27 of the most productive years of his life in prison to not only forgive but to lead his fellow black South Africans to deep and genuine reconciliation with their white oppressors in the interests of all South Africans is extraordinary and the mark of a truly great man.

Great leaders like Mandela, Gandhi, King, and Ronald Reagan, another of my heroes, were optimists who believed that the world could be made a better place for everyone and devoted themselves to that task. Those who out of fear (or plain malice) spread misinformation about others—e.g., Muslims who demonize America and Americans who demonize Islam—can create the very world they fear if we take them seriously. They endanger all of us and potentially make the world a worse place. I stand in awe of the greatness of Nelson Mandela, who could rise so far above his own suffering and the injustices against him to see and promote the higher principles that help make people and
society decent. “Invictus” is a deeply inspiring and moving movie.

My heart goes out to the poor people of Kyrgyzstan. They seem to be sliding into civil war. The current government of this small, poor central Asian country of 5 million people, in power for only two months, seems unable to contain the ethnic violence in the south near the Uzbek boarder and is appealing for outside help. Nestled between Kazakhstan to the north, China and Uzbekistan to the east and west and Tajikistan to the south (and Afghanistan just beyond), Kyrgyzstan provides an example of how it might look easy for the U.S. to help a friend—they have allowed us to set up an airbase there that we use for supplying our troops in Afghanistan to the south. The Kyrgyz Army is weak and its police corrupt. The new government just drove out a corrupt President, Kurmanbek Bakiyev,
who had come to power in March 2005 in the bloodless Tulip Revolution that replaced Askar Akaev, Kyrgyzstan’s first President since its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. They need help to survive.

When I first visited this little mountain country in February 1992, I referred to it as the Switzerland of central Asia. Like Switzerland its snow-capped mountains are spectacular and it has few natural resources. I suggested that like Switzerland it could become wealthy with free markets, good policies, and hard work. I lead the International Monetary Fund’s
technical assistance to the National Bank of Kyrgyzstan and helped it replace the Russian ruble with its own currency, the Som, in May 1993. A matched set of that currency with the serial number 000000011, personally signed by the then governor Kemelbek Nanaev, hangs proudly on my office wall. At a celebration of the 5^th anniversary of the Som, President Akaev, whose match set of the Som has the serial number 000000001, personally presented me with Kyrgyzstan’s Certificate of Honor for my role in introducing the currency. Some of the most exciting days of my life were in Kyrgyzstan. My strongly felt sympathies are with the new government. Yet it would be a tragic mistake for the United States to become militarily involved in restoring peace there.

Ms. Roza Otunbayeva, the interim leader until elections can be held later this year, has reaffirmed the U.S. lease on Manas Air Base after her deposed predecessor had tried to close it. She seems to be surrounded by pro market, pro freedom reformers. We have every reason to wish her government well. But a U.S. intervention would be taking sides in a potential civil war. Russia has bases in Kyrgyzstan as well and can hardly be indifferent to the fate of its neighbor and former fellow member of the Soviet Union. Russia has, up until now, wisely rejected Ms. Otunbayeva’s call for help and both Russia and the U.S. are exploring the possibility of international (U.N.) assistance. The U.S. Manas Air Base is an important U.S. air link to Afghanistan, but Kyrgyzstan is not critical to U.S. security. In any event, Ms. Otunbayeva asked Russia for help, not the U.S.

Were she to turn to us for help, it might look relatively easy to provide it. We have troops there already. But then for good or ill her problems would become ours and there is no knowing, really, what problems we might be taking on. The Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars looked very different when we got into them than they did at the other end of the process (when ever that might be for the later two). We need to try hard to imagine how it might look in a few years looking back. If there is a good case for external help, the U.S. and Russia should be able to make that case to the U.N. If and when the U.N. acts, it will clearly be doing so above and beyond the potentially conflicting national interests of parties to a new Great Game that we and the rest of the world can ill afford.

I have had to remind myself of late that there is much to be proud of as an American. And I have not been prouder for a long time than I was last night listening to this year’s recipients of the Merage Foundation for the American Dream’s National Leadership Awards. Paul Merage family’s foundation is dedicated to “Helping Immigrants Join Mainstream America.” Mr. Merage is himself an immigrant from Iran, which he left in 1979 by necessity. But his choice to settle in the United States was his, and the Merage Foundation is one of his ways of expressing thanks for the opportunities that opened up to him here and to give something back to help keep America the dynamic, innovative home to immigrants that has been such an important component of our success as a
nation.

America is the wealthiest nation on earth because it is the most productive. Many other countries provide us with first class competition these days. We will retain our markets and our edge only through remaining productive and innovative. We will be the best only as long as our workers and entrepreneurs are the best trained, best equipped, and best incentivized to continually perfect processes and innovate.

America is exceptional among nations in that it is almost totally a nation of immigrants – self selected immigrants who chose to come to our environment in which they were free to work hard and experiment. Mr. Merage noted that immigrants must change to adapt to their new homes and that a culture of change is good for innovation. In our globalized, highly competitive market, innovation is our competitive edge. Mr. Merage stated that those who say that America’s best days are behind her are wrong. They are wrong because of the continual infusion of enthusiasm and innovation from a never-ending
inflow of eager new immigrants.

Mr. Merage also noted that no nation can receive new immigrants without some trepidation and worry about how they will fit in and adapt to its culture and ways. Fear is a powerful emotion. Mr. Merage noted that we can all understand the fears of Arizonans and others over whether our relatively open borders are letting in the wrong people. Fear can cloud good judgment, for example, about who are criminals and where they come from. But America remains the most welcoming of all countries to our great benefit. Its can do spirit and the general decency of its people are magnets for the world’s best and brightest and most hard working. The Merage Foundation is dedicated to
helping them assimilate successfully.

This years winners of the National Leadership Awards where:
Eric Benhamou (Algeria), Chairman and CEO of Benhamou Global Ventures, cofounder
of Bridge Communications, and CEO of 3Com and Palm; Amador S. Bustos (Mexico),
Chairman and CEO of Bustos Media in California; Roger Cohen (England),
Columnist for the New York Times; Gloria Estefan (Cuba), singer, composer and
author; Dikembe Mutombo (Congo), Former NBA star; Arnold Schwarzenegger
(Austria), Governor of California and former Terminator; and Ahmed H. Zewail
(Egypt), Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999. The event was cosponsored by the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and I am grateful to my friend
Steve Meeter for inviting me.

Each winner addressed us with touching stories of how and why they came to America and how they flourished here financially and spiritually. The Terminator spoke to us by video because of the elections in California that day. Most of them expressed understanding but sadness that fear had pushed Arizona to trample on some cherished American qualities of openness to immigrants. Sorting out a proper balance and policy toward immigration is not and will not be easy but it is a critical, pressing need.

The most dramatic address was by Dr. Halel Esfandiari, Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Middle East Program. At last years awards dinner, Ms. Esfandiari was in prison in Tehran, where she had been since May 8, 2007. She had returned to her native Iran in December 2006 to visit her 93-year-old mother. The blood curdling story of her arrest and imprisonment can be found on the Woodrow Wilson center website.  She told us that those at last year’s awards dinner had prayed for her release and here she was. Keep those prayers coming, she said, there is so much more to do.

Paul Merage summed up the spirit of the evening by noting that the symbol of America must remain the welcoming Statue of Liberty, not The Wall (pick your favorite).

Thank you all for your comments. Four of them cry out to be
shared. The first is from Kelly Young, a long time friend here in DC, who is a
lawyer. The second is from Steve Paliwoda, who was an ATO fraternity brother at
UC Berkeley in the mid 60s and now lives in Alaska. The third and four—which
landed in my in-tray next to each other and both have things to say about the
Mormon Church are respectively from Diana Paskett, my cousin and the most
loving person on the planet, and Steve Lang, my English/Russian interpreter in
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova in 1992 – 96. Steve was such a good
interpreter that when translating my frequently given Monetary Policy 101
lecture, he sometimes translated statements before I made them. He later became
the personal interpreter of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who
built up Lukos Oil before being imprisoned (where he remains today) for gaining
Putin’s disfavor by becoming somewhat political. Putin’s friends have managed
to steal Khodorkovsky’s companies as the government bankrupted it with phony
tax claims. Steve remained in that position even after Khodorkovsky was put in
jail, but has now moved to Canada after the Russian government banned him from
entering Russia.

*****************

Warren,

Yep.  You hit the nail on the head:  the
fundamental problem here is the unnecessary involvement of government in
running universities, which necessitates political resolution rather than
private, market-based, and diverse solution-making.

Another problem, which you didn’t touch directly, is that
Hastings, like nearly all universities, levels a head tax in the form of a
“student activity” fee on all enrollees and uses.  It then uses monies to
fund such recognized groups, which it naturally has to define.  Hence, a
First Amendment problem akin.

Consistent with your argument, private institutions ought to
be free to decide whether to organize themselves by imposing such fees and
using them however they please.  The market will decide which systems work
and which don’t.  But there is a strong argument that even private
organization – especially one as large and diverse as a university — ought not
to do such a thing, as Berkshire Hathaway approximates in allowing each
shareholder to decide how the company spends his share-based portion of the
company’s allocation of charitable contributions.  Of course, as Friedman
argued years ago, corporations ought not even try to make truly charitable
gifts but simply return profits to shareholders to let them spend, save, or
give away as they see fit.  Unless the organization has a comparative
advantage in making such decisions or can reduce transactions by doing so, the
economic – but not political – argument is quite strong:  focus on your
mission, whether profit maximization, education, or national defense – and
avoid taxing, spending, and other actions that don’t advance THAT mission.

I made this very argument in the late 1980s when I was an
undergrad at UVA.  I wrote a bi-weekly column for one of the newspapers
and called for repeal of the student activity fee as an inefficient and often
unfair “tax.”  As you might suspect, I was roundly…ignored.

Thanks for making and sharing your points.

Kelly

******************

Warren:

Public universities represent our Government, and
our Government says there can’t be discrimination; therefore, all groups
associated with public universities must adhere to the values of the
university, which in turn must adhere to the values of the Government. 
It makes no sense whatever for a public university to provide on-campus
meeting facilities for (1) A local wing of the American Nazi
Party — which advocates, among other things, discrimination
against Jews, or (2) A local section of the Ku Klux
Klan — which advocates, among other things, white supremacy,
or (3) A meeting of NAMBA — the North American Man-Boy
Association — which advocates pederasty.

It is an easy trap for parochial organizations to fall into,
that they claim they have the "right" to bar from membership all
non-believers (and gays — even if they are believers).  Today,
such groups are dealing with questions that are not yet fully resolved by
the law.  For example, the law, as well as general public
opinion, are pretty clear and unified regarding such issues as
racial discrimination, poll taxes, women suffrage, child labor, vigilante
justice, state secession, and slavery.  However, we have yet to clarify
and come to terms with such issues as sexual discrimination, abortion,
terrorism security, and illegal immigration.  And before too
long, we will have to deal with such issues
as diminishing available funding for social security, medicare and
national defense.

While the above "laggard" issues are being
resolved in the courts, the law must be obeyed.  This means that parochial
groups that discriminate cannot, and should not, have the use of public
facilities, or receive public funding or backing. 

Steve Paliwoda     

******************

Warren,

I so completely AGREE with you, it is late so I shouldn’t comment
further, however I will briefly say that as my Christian Church, the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, AKA the Mormons, will one day, if we
have not already, come head to head on this very issue.  The several BYU
campuses, many campus organizations, our Temples which even our membership must
meet very specific requirements to attend are all at risk.  Many of our
students depend on federal financing – grants etc., we are told which holidays
we MUST celebrate, and HOW we must celebrate them etc. I am not well
versed on the subject, but I hear people who are – discussing the issues
with great concern.  I am afraid we are sleeping through the loss of most
of our freedoms.

Have a good night,

Diana

******************

Hi Warren,

Hope this finds you well.  Thought I’d toss in my two
cents’ worth on this one for a change.  But before I do, some sad news
from Kyrgyzstan.  I don’t know if you recall one of the housekeepers on
the foreigners-only floor of the old Dostuk hotel.  Her name was Olga, and
she was tall and statuesque and looked like a cross between Geena Davis and
Whitney Houston.  She was the only non-Kyrgyz among the housekeepers.
 Anyway, I know Dave Lindsey would remember her (I am ashamed to admit
that I still haven’t written to him as I’ve been intending for several years),
as would Isaac Svartsman.  Anyway, Olga had one son, whom she was raising
alone, his father having been a Cuban exchange student who had long ago
returned to Castro’s paradise, and she absolutely worshipped the kid.  He
was around 21-22 years old this year.  I’ve been in touch with Olga all
these years, and last week I called her to find out if she was okay because of
the recent disturbances there, as I had called during the previous ones, since
she lives only a few blocks from the central square and, being so obviously
non-Kyrgyz, would be a natural target for any racist violence.  She was in
tears within seconds, saying that the disturbances are nothing compared to the
fact that in December, her son was one of the passengers in a car being driven
by a kid his age, very fast, and it lost control on a bridge, rolled over
several times, and smashed into a concrete wall, killing everybody instantly.
 I can’t imagine what her life must be like now, after having invested so
much of her life energy into her son.  I then did a bit of internet
research on the accident, and learned that it was a new BMW, registered to a
humble 23 year old clerk in the city court (the chairman of which is Marat
Sultanov), who had loaned it to his buddies for their joy ride to oblivion, and
that he had been fined a whopping 300 som for having given them the keys
without having first drawn up the necessary documents for the transfer with the
road police, so he was in a way responsible for the accident, see…  In
the former Soviet states, you have to draw up the equivalent of a power of
attorney to allow someone else to drive your car without you.  By the way,
have you got a valid email address for Isaac?  I found some old aol or
hotmail address for him and wrote him about the accident but he didn’t respond,
so I suspect it’s an address he doesn’t use any more.

Okay, let’s talk about clashing values…

When I was a student at Cal State Long Beach, I remember
there being all sorts of special-interest clubs registered on campus, with the
right to hold meetings on campus property, post notices about events on campus
property, and hold these events on campus property, provided they followed all
the rules.

These organizations included all sorts of narrow groups that
one would think discriminated:  there were definitely Christian
"fellowships" and probably a Catholic society, GLBT
"alliances", young Democrat and Republican groups and probably
various socialist-leaning ones as well, a black student "association"
and comparable groups for latinos and the several varieties of orientals who
had big representation in the student body, etc.

I remember once attending some event and being given one of
those "HELLO" stickers to write my name and affiliation on, and I
wrote that I was with the Lesbian Buddhist Student Association, and ended up
getting some very angry looks from another attendee who, I suspect, was
probably a lesbian Buddhist student and was not amused.

But actually, my choice of fake affiliation illustrates an
important point that made all these groups legal:  membership was
technically open to everybody.  You didn’t have to be lesbian or Buddhist
to belong to my LBSA.  You didn’t need to be black to belong to the BSA or
pro-gun/anti-abortion to belong to the Republicans, or a Christian to belong to
the Christian "fellowship".  The question is, why would you WANT
to join a group of people you didn’t have anything in common with?
  But there were pragmatic answers to this question:  I know for
a fact that there were, for example, white guys who happened to be into
oriental girls who purposely joined the Asian Student Association or the like
just to get to meet lots of slant-eyed chicks.

The Mormons were different.  They like to be in control
of their own organizations, not beholden to the rules of an overseeing secular
institution.  They had a building off campus for all of their
extracurricular activities, where young Mormons could hang out in the safety of
their own kind and do all kinds of safe things together.  But even they
were open to outsiders!  I was actually a card-carrying member of the LDS
"institute" just off the CSULB campus and took Book of Mormon courses
there, and used their computer and printer, and their parking lot (which ended
up being cheaper than using the school lot).  And nobody kept me from
joining.

As an aside, in Utah, the Mormons have an
"Academy" building adjacent to every public school, where Mormon kids
go for an hour before or after secular schooling for some religious
instruction.  In Poland, there’s a priest teaching Catechism in most
public schools, but of course in the US that would be a no-no, so the Mormons
just build their own parallel schools right next to the public schools.

And, as another aside, one of the reasons the Boy Scouts are
as despicably reactionary an organization as they are is precisely because
they’ve been taken over (I mean this quite literally, at least in the US) by
the Mormons!  Every Mormon boy is a Boy Scout, the church sinks massive money
into the organization, and in return holds the majority of the executive and
board seats at the top of the BSA pyramid, where it sets the agenda for the
organization.  Mormon girls, however, do not join that dangerously rad-fem
lezbo-commie organization known as the Girl Scouts, because GSA categorically
told the nearly-dead old white men who run the LDS in Salt Lake City they could
go to hell when they came to the organization with an offer to richly fund it
in return for being given control.  And the Mormons are so misogynistic
that they wouldn’t let their docile and obedient matrons do the job in their
name – no, it had to be the MEN.

Okay, let’s get ourselves out of Utah already.  The
best way to diffuse a potentially dangerous campus organization is to flood its
membership with dissenters.  How dangerous would the Christian Legal
Society be if a whole bunch of leftist (sorry, like you, I find leftists to be
quite dangerous too, albeit less so than Christians) gay-tolerant agnostics
surreptitiously joined it, ultimately creating a large and vocal minority, if
not an outright majority, in the organization?  The only criterion for a
student organization (besides not engaging in criminal activity) ought to be a
firm insistence on open membership.

Such organizations are, indeed, discriminatory by their very
nature, and, as you correctly point out, that’s all fine out in the world of
private societies, as long as they don’t violate the rights of other people
outside their organizations.  But a public university campus would be a
far poorer place without its special-interest societies. Essentially,
prohibiting all these groups would create something no better than Jim Jones
University or Oral Roberts University or whatever Pat Robertson’s university is
called.  These schools also tightly control what kind of organizations are
allowed on campus, and permit only ones the administration deems to be
politically correct.  There’s no difference between that and a public
university only allowing pantheistic rainbow-coalition groups to exist on
campus!

Another aside:  How come White Student Associations
come under such fire at universities whenever somebody tries to form one?
 Why is it wrong for white students to associate AS SUCH?  Why is
"black pride" (or "gay pride", or whatever) okay, but
"white pride" is instantly labelled fascist/racist?  Why is it
okay to be proud of anything except being white (and male), and if you DO
express your pride in one of these two things you are, once again, a racist or
a sexist and very dangerous and probably another Timothy McVeigh?  And
even if these white groups DO believe whites are superior to others, how does
this differ from, oh, I don’t know… Black Muslims, or Muslims in general (who
are something entirely different from Black Muslims, who actually believe Allah
walked the earth seventy years ago), or CHRISTIANS (of all flavors!), who
believe they’ve got a monopoly on the truth and everybody else is destined to
roast in hell for eternity, and are not ashamed to let you know this?

Returning to the Boy Scouts for a moment, I find the
organization’s homophobia amusing, given that a) there is ample circumstantial
evidence to strongly suggest that its founder, Baden-Powell, was a repressed
homosexual himself (every Victorian was sexually repressed, regardless of
orientation…), and b) its real fear and concern ought to be the pedophelia
that I’m sure has always quietly existed in its ranks.  And if you really
don’t want testosterone-fuelled teenage boys to "turn gay" (I’m using
terminology the Boy Scouts leadership might use, which, naturally, does not
reflect my own views in the least), then it’s probably not a very good idea to
toss them together into close collective quarters running around naked together
and sharing tents together and what-not…

Back to the Christians…  You write that one of the
problems these days in distinguishing between private organizations (who can
deny membership to anyone they please) and public ones these days is the fact
that that evil big government has crept into more and more areas that used to
be the exclusive domain of the private sector through the evil of
"funding" (socialism creeping in through the back door?).
 Indeed.  While those super-fundamentalist universities in the south
(and Brigham Young in Utah) don’t take a dime of government money precisely
because they want to retain the right to bar negroes and homosexuals and
(gasp!) liberals, you’ve got plenty of mainstream schools (Georgetown,
American, etc.) that come from distinctly religious traditions but have long
ago sold out to the almighty dollar and become as secular as any public
university.

Which isn’t nearly as bad as the opposite trend, which we’ve
seen develop during the glorious reign of W.:  the government actually
seeking out and encouraging the formation of "faith-based"
organizations to give federal money to (but only approved faiths – I don’t
think they gave a dime to, say, Sikh or Shinto organizations).  When the
state actually starts giving money to organizations that are discriminatory by
definition (remember, any Christian organization, by definition, believes I am
inferior, whether they act on it or not, although, of course, there is a
fundamental difference between "prejudice", a belief, and "discrimination",
a behavior that acts upon this belief), it loses a lot of its moral right to
prohibit discriminatory organizations from asking for and expecting to get
money from the state, which brings us right back to the Christian Legal
Society.

And finally, a thought on school vouchers.  An idea any
true libertarian ought to champion, except, of course, that we then open up
another pandora’s box – who will determine which schools qualify?  Why,
the state of course.  This is already an acute issue in the US and
elsewhere in the modern world, when fundamentalist religious schools (of any
religion) fight to get accreditation.  Under a voucher system, they’d be
fighting for the accreditation in order to qualify to get state money, and here
we go again…

The knowledge that there are actually schools in Amerika
today that are teaching children creationism instead of science, and these
kids’ education is recognized as perfectly valid by the relevant government
agencies, simply scares me to death.  A former girlfriend of mine, who
always was into Jesus, has really gone off the deep end in her old age.
 She and her husband, both born-again musicians, have actually
home-schooled their five kids, and this is apparently a very big trend amongst
the fundamentalist crowd.  There’s a whole industry of teaching aids for
bible-based home-schooling.  One of this particular couple’s money-making
projects is making CDs of bible verses set to catchy music (think Sesame Street
or Electric Company songs, but with bible verses instead), as performed by
their kids.  These disks are then sold through the above-mentioned
teaching aids industry to help Christian kids learn their mantras, in between
learning about how Ezekiel begat Bathsheba and how first there was light and
then the sun and the moon were created a couple of days later.

Once again, I’m seriously scared when I contemplate that
there’s a whole generation of kids being home-schooled or Christian-schooled
today in an entirely different value system from the shared one you and I were
raised in a continent and a decade apart.  What will happen when this army
of reborn zombies has graduated from Christian colleges and begins to
infiltrate American society in ways that make today’s already alarming
infiltration by Christians seem like chicken feed?  And what will happen
when they clash with upwardly mobile young Muslim professionals, who will have
their own equally strong, but irreconcileably contrary views on who has a
monopoly on the truth?  I don’t want to be there when it happens!  And
it WILL happen…

And on that apocalyptic note, I bid you good night!

Steve

The Supreme Court is about to hear a case brought by the
Christian Legal Society (CLS) against the Hastings Law School in San Francisco,
a public university. The law school refused to register CLS as a recognized
student organization because it discriminated against non-Christians and gays.
The CLS claims that this violates its freedom of association with others of
similar beliefs. Hastings says that CLS is free to believe what it wants but
cannot have university (state tax payer) funds and use of university facilities
if they violate the university’s anti-discrimination policies. Needless to say,
if this issue had a simple and easy resolution, it would have been resolved
long before reaching the Supreme Court.

As a country we have limited the areas of such conflicts by
limiting the scope of government involvement in our lives and associations.
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist groups are free to form and limit their
membership to the like minded. Their right to do so is protected by the U.S.
Constitution and by the cultural respect for privacy and the rights of others
that is an enduring feature of our country. This right is unchallenged when
exercised in the purely private sphere. But as government involves itself in
more and more areas of our daily lives, such conflicts have multiplied and must
be resolved at the state rather than the private level where individuals are
free to have different answers to important moral and philosophical questions.

To me, it is foolish for a university to prohibit clubs that
will only admit members who share the purpose and beliefs of the clubs’
founders. On the other hand, I find it objectionable for the state to prevent a
university from setting whatever policy it wants for clubs or for the students
it wishes to admit and teach. However, such thinking is more clearly applicable
to private universities, which are in fact private associations like the
clubs/groups in question. Public universities are funded in part from general taxpayers’
money. As such, they must not favor the religious or social views of some
taxpayers against those of others. Here is where the conflict of values—freedom
of religious belief and assembly, and non-discriminatory use of the taxpayers’
money—arise.

The well known case of the Boy Scouts banning membership to
gays comes to mind. While I would refuse to join an organization with such
Neanderthal attitudes and find the image of some homophobic scout master
quaking at the thought of a potential encounter with a homosexual scout
pathetically amusing, I think the Boy Scouts should be free to define
membership qualifications anyway they like. The problem, of course, comes when
they want to use public facilities and public funds. And the real problem is
that it is increasingly difficult to find any activity that does not involve
public/taxpayer funds in some way or other. Jonathan Turley provides an
excellent discussion of this conflict and of this latest Supreme Court case in
Sunday’s Washington Post.[1]

The Court will hopefully find a pragmatic balance between
these two social and constitutionally protected values. But we should also not
give up on trying to limit the scope and reach of the government into our every
day lives. The argument made by Milton Friedman and others long ago that a
social interest in education does not justify the state building and operating
schools is as valid for universities as for grammar schools. He championed
tuition vouchers—i.e. public financing of education privately produced and
delivered—that students could use at any school they chose that would accept
them. It is hard to believe that the money government spends to subsidize
university educations in public universities produces better results than if
the same financial assistance were given in the form of vouchers (and research
grants) to be used at private universities of the customers’ (students’)
choice. The problem of conflicting values would not go away—could vouchers be
used at Jewish, Christian, Muslim schools—but it should make it easier to
fashion pragmatic solutions that broaden or protect the freedom of religion and
association of one person without violating such rights for others. It would
also surely improve the quality of education per dollar spent.

Anyone interested in the debate over whether torture is a useful interrogation tool for fighting terrorists should watch this presentation earlier today at the New American Foundation: http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/effective_interrogation_techniques