WhackyNation

On May 5th in Denmark, the Danes don’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Instead, they celebrate the end of World War II.

On the evening of May 4, 1945, as Danes sat behind their blackout curtains listening to outlawed radio sets, they heard the news from London.  British Field Marshall Montgomery that day had taken the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Denmark, Holland and Northwest Germany.

The next day, May 5th, the Danes celebrated as they still do every year.

The west did not learn about the German surrender until May 8 which became known as “V-E Day” or Victory in Europe Day.

But the actual surrender of German forces spanned over a week.  Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30th.  The next day, May 1, German forces surrendered in Italy.  On May 2nd, German forces surrendered in Berlin.  On May 4th, German forces surrendered in Denmark, Holland and Northwest Germany.  On May 5th, U-Boats were ordered to cease operations.  on May 6th, German forces in the beseiged town of Breslau surrendered.  Finally on May 7th, all German forces were surrendered to the allies and Russians with all operations ceasing on May 8.

Considering that so many lives were lost in WW II, including so many Americans, maybe we should remember the German surrender as the Danes still do as we toss back our Cinco de Mayo beer.  And maybe instead of drinking Coronas all night we might order one Carlsberg to honor and thank the Danes for making us remember.

Come on, now, rack your brain. Think hard. What would you say was, arguably, the most important speech delivered in the 20^th Century, who delivered it, and what it accomplished? No, it wasn’t delivered by Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, or any other American President, although all of them could qualify as “runners up.” Nor was it delivered by Sir Winston Churchill, the British spellbinder.

No, the most important speech of the last century was made by — are you ready for this? — Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the old Soviet Union. And he made it on February 5, 1990, in an address delivered to the startled Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

It was truly one of the most remarkable documents in history. In his address, Gorbachev rejected the tenets of the founders of world communism, including Karl Marx and Nikolai Lenin, and he set the stage for Russia’s first real taste of representative democracy.

Gorbachev called for an end to one-party or Communist control of government, abolition of his own all-powerful position as the Communist Party’s all-powerful party secretary, and, most welcome of all, a demand that Communism junk its program to revolutionize the world.

He also surprised even his strongest backers by urging an end to Lenin’s No. 1 rule —that all members of the party had to obey all instructions issued by party leaders. Everything he said was designed to pave the way for a revolutionary transfer of power from the Red Party to the new Parliament, which was made up of representatives elected throughout Russia.

In view of hardliners’ opposition to Gorbachev and his extraordinary new plan, it was suggested at the time that if anything happened to him, his counter-revolution would fail and the Red Party would return to power and end the move toward a representative democracy.

With one dramatic gesture, Gorbachev ended the specter of another World War, the danger once posed by the Cold War, and the fragile relationship of the Western democracies and the nations behind the Iron Curtain. It is true that President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were instrumental in the revolts that ended Communist regimes in Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. But it was Gorbachev who supplied the major blow to Communism in Europe.

Today, his great accomplishment is somewhat threatened by the present Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, who has hinted at a return to some of the governmental intrusions of the old Soviet Union. Some of the old hardliners are still trumpeting the “glories” of the nation under Stalin, Molotov, and other dictators.

But after getting a welcome taste of democracy, thanks to Gorbachev, most of the Russian citizens have signified they want no return of the old Red Empire. Let’s hope they prevail and keep Russia among the ranks of the world’s dominant democratic republics.

I recently came across an editorial arguing that capitalism is to blame for high health care costs in America. What frustrated me the most was that it was written by a very educated person (a fellow academic). It is always depressing to see smart people make bad arguments. How are we ever going to find solutions to complex problems when even the intelligent people can’t get it right? As I usually do in these cases, I hunkered down in front of my computer and took one more shot at trying to explain the real reason for high health care costs in the US.

Let’s start with the idea that capitalism is to blame for high health care costs. Capitalism has been the dominant organizing principle in America since the late 1600s, yet we didn’t get a health care crisis until after WWII. If capitalism can cause a health care crisis we would have had one in the 1700s. We didn’t. Here is an idea. If the health care crisis began to emerge after WWII, maybe we should look at events around that time period for an explanation, not events that took place during the reign of King Charles II.

As almost all social scientists know, something did happen during WWII that started our decline into a health care crisis. (Hint: we didn’t invent capitalism in WWII). No, we created, due to government interference in capitalism, a “third-party payer” system—a system where a third party (insurance companies) pays the supplier (the doctors) for what the purchasers (patients) consume. Once a third-party payer system is established, consumers no longer inquire about prices, and therefore, producers no longer have any incentive to hold them down.

It is important to remember that Americans do not buy health care. They buy health insurance. Therein lies the problem. When you buy a car, you ask the dealer about the price. You shop around. You find the best deal. Why? Because you will be paying the dealer directly. Not so with health care. We don’t pay the doctor for what we buy, the insurance company does. We never ask a doctor how much an X-ray costs. We never compare one doctor’s price to another. We don’t shop around because we don’t pay (directly) for the health care. Because we don’t ask about price, doctors have no incentive to offer lower ones.

Imagine if by purchasing auto insurance you got to take any car you wanted off the lot. Would you ask about price? No. Would you take the most expensive car there? Of course you would. Would car dealers compete with each other by lowering prices when you don’t even ask “How much?” In fact, when consumers don’t see the price they are paying, there is actually an incentive for producers to increase prices. The third-party payer system encourages doctors to raise prices because they have no fear it will lead to lost customers. You don’t get the bill, the third-party payer does.

How did such a terrible system come about? During WWII the Roosevelt administration interfered with the market system and established extensive price and wage controls. It became illegal for most firms to give pay raises. Yet, pay raises are how companies compete for labor. Without the ability to offer higher salaries, companies instead started offering “fringe benefits” to entice workers to their field. The most popular fringe benefits offered were “free” health care benefits.

The problem was magnified when the IRS ruled that salaries were taxable, but health care benefits were not. This led workers to prefer health care benefits to wage increases, even after the wage and price controls were dropped. A $1,000 pay raise with a 20% tax gives you an extra $800. But, a $1,000 non-taxable health care premium gives you an extra $1,000. After WWII, everyone began to prefer employers that provide third-party payer health care benefits.

Now we are paying the price for Roosevelt’s foolish market interference. He inadvertently created a system where consumers do not inquire about price and doctors do not lose customers by raising prices. In such a system, is there any wonder why health care costs are going up?

Others can observe the Monday date for Columbus Day — a day to provide the “three-day-holiday” clan an excuse to extend its time-off mania — but today, October 12, is the historic and correct day to honor the courageous Italian mariner, Christopher Columbus, who landed his fleet in the New World late in the 15^th Century.

How well I remember the October 12^th festivities in Cleveland’s Little Italy, where I grew up. The Italian community went all out with a spectacular parade, entertainment, and all-day feasting. Of course, we had to put up with the politicians and other self-appointed leaders, who insisted on making speeches in the neighborhood.

But it was “Our Day,” as the Italian-Americans, most of them new immigrants or the sons and daughters of the new immigrants, loved to refer to October 12. The public school in the heart of the district always closed its doors on Our Day; it didn’t dare require the kids to attend classes on the special day.

Also, no one dared make reference to the Scandinavians’ oft-repeated declaration that it was really Leif Eriksen who discovered America, not Columbus. Insofar as I can remember, no Swede or Norwegian dared set foot inside Little Italy on October 12 to pooh-pooh the Columbus claim.

To this day, I haven’t changed my mind about Columbus’ extraordinary feat. It was he who opened the way and discarded the myths about the New World. Yes, he was looking for a new route to the Far East, but he found something that was to prove to be the greatest nation the world has ever known.

The Indian tribes of America have a much greater claim to the title of discoverer and founder of the Western Hemisphere. They were here in large numbers long before the three ships in the Columbus expedition arrived on our shores. But it was Columbus who opened the way to the west and who encouraged others to follow.

It’s hard to believe that many Old World adherents seriously believed that mariners daring to sail due west into the unknown would disappear and fall off the earth into calamitous waterfalls. Other myths discouraged travel westward. It was Columbus who dispelled such myths and opened the way to the New World.

God bless America — and Columbus!

One of the most indelible memories of my life is etched as clearly in my mind today as it was when it was formed on that sunny day in Cleveland in 1927. It was the day the legendary Charles Lindbergh visited Cleveland for a hero’s welcome soon after he recorded his historic first flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, his single-engine aircraft.

The famed aviator was seated in the back seat of a limousine that drove through Cleveland’s Wade Park as thousands cheered. My Dad had hoisted me up on his shoulders so I could get a better look at the smiling, baby-faced Lindbergh. He was not only my hero. He was everybody’s hero.

What a feat it was! Every person in America had followed Lindy’s remarkable flight, which remains to this day one of history’s most dazzling adventures — flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean and landing in Paris in what now seems like a toy aircraft, and he did it without refueling.

The name, Lindy, was on everybody’s lips for years thereafter. Then tragedy struck and Anne and Charles Lindbergh’s first child was kidnapped and murdered. The entire world was horrified by the foul deed, and Congress was moved to adopt a law making kidnapping an act punishable by death.

The trial that resulted in the conviction and execution of Bruno Hauptmann was attended, I’m ashamed to say, by frequently grotesque, stupid coverage by the press, which treated the event as if it were a circus sideshow. It was one of the reasons Lindbergh became a recluse.

It was not only a sad day for Lindy. It was also a sad day for American journalism, as the gossip mongers serving as reporters covered the trial like bloodhounds on the trail of a rabbit.

Later, the heroic flyer would make his way back into the news with a warning concerning the growing air power created by Adolf Hitler and his generals. But he made the political mistake of urging the United States to remain neutral in the Second World War and refuse to become involved.

Virtually all Americans turned against Lindy because of his stand — and because of that trip he had made beforehand to visit Hitler. Lost in the ensuing drama was the report by an unidentified source that Lindbergh had actually gone to Germany to visit Hitler on a secret spying mission sponsored by the American military to assess the air and ground power of the Nazis. That report remains unverified, but since Lindbergh himself always remained a very private person, one may conjecture that it might be true.

From that time on for the rest of his days, Lindbergh withdrew from public life. I think Lindy, who died in 1974, was probably the loneliest and most tragic figure in American history. But he will always be one of the nation’s greatest heroes — particularly to that 8-year-old kid sitting on his father’s shoulders watching and waving that day in Cleveland’s Wade Park as the man who conquered the Atlantic rode by in the limousine.

And, despite the tragedies in Lindy’s life, he remains a national hero to this day to the aging, balding fellow who is writing this.

As once-proud and once-free America continues its slide down the slippery, dangerous road toward total Socialism and the Big Brother specter, I have wondered what needs to be done to return this once-great nation to the essence of personal liberty it once espoused. These are the steps I believe we must take to restore that greatness:

1. We must restore individual and states’ rights we once had and that were gradually usurped by the federal government, beginning with the Socialist measures adopted by FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. That should include privatization of most agencies of the federal government.
2. The two-party concept conceived by our forefathers and detailed in the U.S. Constitution but fragmented by politicians in the middle of the 20^th Century must be reborn, with both parties shedding Socialist principles on one hand and ultraconservative and even theocratic principles on the other.
3. The historic, traditional definitions of “conservatism” and “liberalism” must be restored to the field of political endeavor and to every political office from the local to the state and federal levels.
4. To counter the fact that virtually all skullduggery in public office is committed by those who are in office too long, we must adopt the six-year-limit formula to every elected office in the land, with no person being permitted to run for re-election and with the electorate being granted the right to “dis-elect” whomever they choose without cause. Public office should be a limited privilege, not a career.
5. Immigration must be strictly controlled and the once strictly observed quota system must be policed without exception, with immediate action taken to send all illegal immigrants back to their homeland.
6. The widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in America must be closed with the passage of laws requiring corporations and all other establishments to adopt “sharing” rules that require them to share their profits with their employees.
7. Federal-government bureaucracies must be eliminated in the fields of education and health; education should be the province of the states and private institutions, not the federal government, and the nation’s health-care system should be controlled and administered by the medical and dental professions, not a federal agency.
8. With no exceptions permitted, English should be declared to be America’s language by congressional law; at the same time, Congress should consider adopting sign language as the nation’s second language, with the intention of encouraging all other nations to accept it as a second language, as well.
9. Courses of study in American history, the federal and state constitutions, and local, state, and federal government should be made required subjects in all public and private schools.
10. Periods of election campaigns at all levels should be strictly limited to three months before a primary election and another three months before a final election; campaigners not observing these rules should be forced to withdraw their candidacy.
11. The U.S. should withdraw from the United Nations and form a new organization composed only of those free nations that endorse U.S. principles of freedom; at the same time, the U.S. should inaugurate a volunteer military force composed of paid men and women to police the world and stop internal conflicts and uprisings wherever they arise to threaten the peace of the world.

That’s enough for now. I hope these 11 principles will serve as prompters for a new look at democracy in America and everywhere else on the planet.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to participate in the Slade Gorton Lecture Series at the Discovery Institute. The topic of my talk was “Political Science and Liberal Professorate” in which I discuss why academia is a predominately leftward leaning institution and how it affects our education system. The talk was carried on TVW.

From opposite ends of the world, there are two under reported world stories in the drive-by media:

1. North Korea has shut down its nuclear plant.  Western Atomic Scientists have confirmed the shutdown.  Gosh, it makes Cowboy Bush and his gal Condoleza look like they scored a big one for US diplomacy.  No, can’t report that.  That would make Bush look good.

2. In Britain, global warming is introduced to the curriculum of public schools, and Winston Churchill is removed.  This story is symbolic of Western socialists using public education as a propaganda tool to brainwash the young.  Global warming alarmism is a political movement, not a scientific one, and its proposed cures are all socialist based.  Winston Churchill was one of the greatest men of the 20th century.  He stood up to both fascism and communism.  We need him as much today as the world did 70 years ago.  We sure don’t want to teach the kiddies about the evils of fascism and communism, do we?  Or that appeasers end up killing far more people than those like Churchill, Reagan and Bush who have the courage to face down evil.  The same story is happening in this country.  Al Gore’s wrestched film, An Inconvenient Truth, is propagandizing children in our public schools.  I wonder what our kids aren’t being taught by their unionized teachers?

The Korean story disturbs the belief of the mainstream media that Bush is just another dumb, poorly-educated, inferior Republican President.  The Churchill story exposes the left-wing political bent of public education.

Don’t expect much play, especially here in Seattle.