March 03 Soundings

Not many pundits alive today are wiser than Thomas Sowell. So, when he writes a column entitled "Dangers Ahead—From the Right," it is worth paying attention. Here is the gist of his message: "Neoconservatives . . . who were pushing an activist 'national greatness' foreign policy, even before September 11th, have seized upon that event as a reason for the United States to 'use American might to promote American ideals' around the world. That phrase, by Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and The Weekly Standard, is breathtaking in its implications. When he places himself and fellow neoconservatives in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, it is truly chilling. . . .

"The track record of nation-building and Wilsonian grandiosity ought to give anyone pause. The very idea that young Americans are once again to be sent out to be shot at and killed, in order to carry out the bright ideas of editorial office heroes, is sickening. In a dangerous nuclear world, it is a full-time job for the U.S. government to protect the lives of the American people. That cannot be done by staying home and depending on two oceans to shield us, as the old-line conservatism of Patrick Buchanan seems to suggest. But to destroy regimes that are trying to destroy us is very different from going on nation-building adventures."

Leonard Peikoff, call your office! The following ran in the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today" on January 3, 2003: Stupidity Watch: "Writing in the Roanoke (Va.) Times, one Glen Martin, a professor at Radford University, finds ominous parallels: 'In Nazi Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of

dehumanization and human-rights violations. In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.'"

Every Objectivist who has argued for laissez-faire capitalism has become familiar with a certain rhetorical question that is supposed to be the crushing argument for a welfare state. "Are you going to let people starve?" But if welfarists believe that freedom must yield before starving masses, they evidently do not believe that their fear of high-technology must yield. How else can one interpret the actions of Europe's welfarist governments with regard to Africa?

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Amid a Heated U.S.-EU Clash On Biotech, Africa Goes Hungry," the European Union countries, which have placed a moratorium on new genetically modified (GM) crops, have hinted to their former colonies that switching to GM crops might endanger their agricultural exports to the EU. "Meanwhile, Africa is caught in the middle. As one professor of plant breeding and genetics said, 'We missed the Green Revolution. We're being fed by Europe, Asia and the U.S. If we miss the GM revolution, then we're finished.'"

Ah, the loving heart of the altruist, as depicted in a New York Times interview. Anne Compoccia lives in an apartment filled with cuddly stuffed animals. "She faithfully attends Mass and describes her religious education as forming her core and her beliefs." Indeed, Compoccia wanted to be a nun but was twice rejected. Her explanation: "They did not want tough street fighters." If the image of street-fighting nuns conjures up a Woody Allen movie, it is one that Compoccia could star in. When she directed a Catholic youth organization on the Lower East Side, "'I threatened the kids that if they did not go to church I would hit them with a baseball bat.'" She also began a charity at her church and, in 1986, started the Little Italy Chamber of Commerce. "As head of the Chamber of Commerce she began to collect about $80,000 in 1995 from merchants on Mulberry Street for a summer pedestrian mall. She moved about Little Italy with increasing confidence. . . . 'I would walk into a store and if they refused to donate money I'd ask them if they might consider making a 10-dollar donation so all their windows wouldn't get broken,' she said. 'I never understood these people that did not want to help others.'" One of the people she helped was Anne Compoccia: in 2001 she was convicted of embezzling nearly $100,000. Still, she says: "'I would never deliberately break one of the Ten Commandments,'" an avowal that invites the question: Which one?

Is the Pope Catholic? Someday, he may not be—if the nondiscriminators continue to trample the right of association. Last September, Rutgers University revoked its recognition of the InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship, an evangelical Christian student group, and the group was subsequently denied access to university support and facilities. The reason for the action, allegedly, was that the group's constitution does not comply with university guidelines on nondiscrimination. Specifically, although InterVarsity says it allows anyone to become a member, its charter states that only those "committed to the basis of faith and the purpose of this organization are eligible for leadership positions." Fortunately, Alan Kors's Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is on the case, and executive director Thor L. Halvorssen wrote to Rutgers president Richard L. McCormick. One hopeful sign: The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, which threatened similar action withdrew that threat four days after Halvorssen wrote to UNC chancellor James Moeser.

Since November, a group of women have been staging "the Women's Peace Vigil" in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Dubbed Code Pink to satirize the nation's terrorist alert system, the vigil is supposed to culminate on International Women's Day, with a (what else) "massive" peace rally. And what, exactly, is the rationale for a one-sex peace movement? "'War is a women's issue,' says Code Pink organizer Medea [yes, Medea] Benjamin. . . . During a war, she says, women become widows." The things men will do to oppress their wives! Women's E News.