Cold War Then, Jihad Now

During the years we now call the ‘Cold War era,’ the United States faced a significant threat from an international communist conspiracy. The U.S. encountered a clear and present danger, mainly from the Soviet Union, but also from mainland China, North Korea, and Cuba. That era can be marked out, roughly as ranging from 1917 to 1990.

In the post-Cold War era, the United States faces lethal danger from a global jihadist movement. Although this militant Islamic network has historical roots which are centuries old, it has emerged in its most recent form since the fall of the Soviet Union. A long list of Muslim terrorist attacks during the last two or three decades of the twentieth centuries shows both a departure from more sporadic attacks earlier in the century and the increased pace of attacks during the first few years of the twenty-first century.

One central task for historians is to compare and contrast the Cold War to the subsequent wave of Islamic Jihadism. How are they similar? How are they different?

One clear difference between the two is the in tactics of the aggressors: the officers of the Soviet military were professional soldiers, who had been trained for their careers in military academies. A Soviet officer, for example, was neither trained for, nor inclined to, a suicide attack. Soviet pilots, trained to potentially drop atomic bombs on the United States, would execute their missions with care for their own safety. Many were married, had children and homes and were integrated parts of their communities.

By contrast, a Jihadist is not only willing to plan and execute a suicide attack, but also plans non-suicide attacks which are rather cavalier toward the safety of the attacker. Jihadis don’t typically embrace a lifestyle which includes a house in the suburbs, picnics with the family, or baseball games.

As ruthless as the Soviet Union was, and as aggressive as its ideology was, Soviet officers did conform roughly to the pattern of a middle-class professional and paterfamilias, and could be expected to carry out their duties as such.

Although on opposite sides, a Soviet military officer and a United States military officer functioned in similar ways, shared a foundational set of presuppositions, and were able to understand each other as peers.

A Jihadist, on the other hand, does not have a set of commonalities to share with the ‘infidels’ or ‘westerners’ he attacks.

We can also find a similarity between the Soviet threat and the Islamic threat. Both were able to exploit a hesitancy found in western democracies to clearly state identified threats. Just as the State Department was in some ways hesitant to articulate the extent of the Soviet’s ability to compromise U.S. security, so also a segment of leadership has been hesitant to express the extent of Islam’s threat to societies around the globe.

In both the Cold War and in the subsequent era of Islamic Jihad, technology allows one individual, or a small group of individuals, to have a disproportionately large effect. One individual, smuggling information about the atomic bomb to the KGB, could cause a massive shift in the Cold War dynamic. One Jihadist, likewise, can cause the deaths of many civilians, hijack media coverage for days or weeks, and throw the security services of many nation-states into high alert.

This phenomenon, in which technology amplifies the actions of one individual, is sometimes called ‘proliferation.’ It requires a recalibration of how threats are perceived, and how we respond to them. During the Cold War, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote:

It is largely because of this new face of treason that we in the free world are writing, preaching and discussing ways to adapt our traditional concepts into serviceable weapons with which to protect ourselves from hazards the architects of our society never contemplated. The job will be hard. The new consequences of treason will not allow us to settle for a security program based on the idea - in itself venerable - that ten suspected traitors working in the State Department should not be molested lest one of them should prove to be loyal. It is one thing for Lizzie Borden to benefit from the charity of the doubt; it is something else again to protect Klaus Fuchs until after he has committed the “overt” act.

Both the Cold War and the post-1990 wave of Muslim terror took place in the age of electronic media. While the Cold War ended before the 24/7 cable TV news cycle, and before the widespread use of online internet news, it nonetheless was covered differently than, e.g., WWII. Telecommunications allowed for near-instantaneous coverage of events during the Cold War.

Both Islamic terrorism and the Soviet threat were, therefore, well known to the general public. Buckley notes:

By 1950, we were more or less agreed that the overt act a Fuchs might commit was something we dared not risk. The majority of us now knew that, for all the twists and turns of the Party Line, the Communists have never swerved and, barring a philosophical or political revolution, never would swerve from their ambition to occupy the world. And we knew, moreover, that they had hit upon an uncommonly successful formula for achieving their goal. The era was past when Americans needed to be educated about the threat of Communism.

While the general public was well aware of the international communist conspiracy, significant segments of both the government leadership and of the media were hesitant to acknowledge the full danger it posed. Instead, coverage downplayed the Soviet threat, and cast those who were aware of it as paranoid or overly reactive.

Likewise, the threat of global Jihad is well known to the public, but some government leaders - and some media leaders - are loathe to publicly recognize the danger, and those who accurately describe the onslaught of Islamic terrorism are labeled as xenophobic or paranoid. Buckley writes:

But a new era arrived, the dominant characteristic of which was and remains - indecision. Undecided how to cope with the new menace, we lacked even the will to find a solution. Our confusion and our purposelessness were crippling. A symbol of it, perhaps, was our society’s relentless persecution of what John Chamberlain has shrewdly labelled “premature anti-Communists.” The evolution from pro-Communism in the direction of anti-Communism seemed to have ground to a halt in an intermediary stage, aptly described as anti-anti-Communism.

The challenge in both the Cold War era and the Jihadist era lies in persuading segments of the government and segments of the media to acknowledge what is already known: name the enemy and identify the threat the enemy poses. For those seeking to preserve some sense of peace, security, and liberty, the “overriding problem” is, in Buckley’s words, this:

Having acknowledged the nature and the immediacy of our peril, how might we get by our disintegrated ruling elite, which had no stomach for battle, and get down to the business of fighting the enemy in our midst?

Just as there were individuals in the State Department and in the media who failed to recognize the Soviet menace, or failed to act appropriately upon the recognition of such menace - just as there were those in the State Department and in the media who were actively complicit with the Soviet Union and on the KGB payroll to keep Americans complacent and to belittle those who attempted to alert Americans to the danger: so also there are those who do not recognize the threat posed by the efforts of Islam to establish an international caliphate, or who recognize but do not respond proportionately to this Jihadist threat - there are those who are enabling Muslim terror.

It remains for calm and articulate scholars to state the historical reality of such threats.

Small Acts of Treason Have Big Effects: Alger Hiss and Klaus Fuchs

In an early 1949 speech at M.I.T., Winston Churchill noted that, had the United States not held a monopoly on the atomic bomb, the Soviet Union would have continued the westward expansion which had already consumed nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia.

That same year, the communists would finally succeeded in developing, with the help of plans stolen from the U.S. by Soviet spies, their own atomic bomb. But the four- or five-year head start which which the United States experienced was enough to grant security to western Europe. The Soviets could not restart their westward conquest, because NATO had used those years to solidify the security and defense of western Europe.

Commenting on Churchill’s speech in Massachusetts, historian William F. Buckley Jr. writes:

Sir Winston, of course, normally speaks with a robust certitude about everything. It is perhaps not “certain” that our monopoly on the atom bomb served during those years as the controlling deterrent to Soviet expansion. But whatever Churchill’s extravagances, he cannot be taken lightly. This time, no doubt, he put his finger on the dominant feature of mid-twentieth century international relations: conceivably a single individual could shift the balance of power by delivering to the Soviet Union technological secrets through the use of which they could overcome their strategic disadvantage and proceed to communize Europe.

Naming Alger Hiss and Klaus Fuchs as example, Buckley notes the dynamic of the atomic age. In a post-1945 environment, one person can smuggle data from the United States to the Soviet Union, and that data can carry significance on a scale previously unimaginable.

The historical effect of technology has been called ‘proliferation’ - the notion that technology makes the actions of one individual more significant. The secrets which Fuchs and Hiss sold to the Soviets were powerful enough that they caused ten of thousands of deaths, and could have caused, in a worst-case scenario, millions.

This is something new in the world. Traitors have played critical parts in the past. But many factors - primarily the indecisiveness of any single weapon - have mitigated the consequences of treason. The great traitors of the past have swung battles, but not wars. The situation is different today. An Alger Hiss, critically situated, can, conceivably, determine the destiny of the West. A Klaus Fuchs can deliver to “the thirteen scheming men” what may well be the key to world conquest.

A few sheets of paper, handed to a Soviet intelligence agent by a State Department employee, prolonged the Cold War by years or even decades. One or two individuals had the ability to create misery for millions around the globe.

Churchill Identifies Key Issues

Not only did Winston Churchill popularize the phrase “Iron Curtain” in a 1946 speech to describe the geopolitical situation which shaped global politics from 1946 to 1990, he also used a 1949 speech as the occasion to articulate one of the defining characteristics of that situation.

If most, but not all, of the world’s nations were placed into one of two camps, two camps divided by that Iron Curtain, then one of the contentions between those two was the ability to gather intelligence about the other’s military secrets. One historian, William F. Buckley Jr., writes:

On the 31st of March, in 1949, Mr. Winston Churchill (he was then ungartered) was to address the Mid-Century Convocation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he had advertised his forthcoming remarks as “not unimportant.”

The United States held a decisive edge from 1945 until August 1949, when the Soviet Union succeeded in constructing its first working atomic bomb. The Soviets gained valuable intelligence from a variety of spies which it had placed within the United States, including physicist Klaus Fuchs, and couriers Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Churchill’s speech at M.I.T., then, came at a time when the United States still held a monopoly on nuclear weapons. He did not know, but perhaps suspected, that the Soviets would eventually break that monopoly. Many observers at the time were surprised, not that the communists eventually developed its own atomic bomb, but that they did it as soon as they did. This speed was made possible by the spy network which had infiltrated the State Department and other agencies within the United States government.

But the four or five years during which the United States had the nuclear advantage over the communists were enough to allow western Europe to be solidified. That time, purchased by the atomic monopoly, meant that the westward expansion of the Soviet Union, which had already swallowed up Poland and Czechoslovakia and other regions, would be halted at the Iron Curtain. Buckley writes:

After it was delivered, the press services had a hard time deciding what aspect of Churchill’s address was most newsworthy. They settled, finally, on this: “It is certain that Europe would have been communized like Czechoslovakia, and London under bombardment some time ago, but for the deterrent of the atomic bomb in the hands of the U.S.”

Had Fuchs and the Rosenbergs sold the military secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviets earlier than they did, an emboldened communism might have pushed westward to consume Switzerland and France. Although America’s nuclear monopoly ended too soon, it had at least lasted long enough to preserve both millions of lives and the civil freedom which lent dignity to those lives.

Nixon and the Grape

When Jack L. Davies, a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford, organized fourteen other investors to join him in purchasing a vineyard in 1965, he probably never guessed the manner in which their wines would become famous.

By early 1969, Richard Nixon was in the White House, and by early 1972, Nixon was making a historic journey: the first visit by a U.S. president to communist mainland China. Nixon had only one meeting with Mao, but many with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.

Both Nixon and the Chinese placed emphasis on ceremony and protocol. They visited historic locations and arranged for full media coverage. Concerning one meal, Leon D. Adams writes:

In February 1972, Schramsberg Champagne became world-famous overnight. President Richard M. Nixon had flown an American champagne to Peking to serve at his historic, globally-televised banquet for Red Chinese Premier Chou Enlai. On the day of the banquet a Washington newspaper columnist identified the shipment as thirteen cases of Schramsberg, Nixon’s favorite champagne. Press, TV, and radio spread the name, Davies’s story, and the fame of Napa Valley wine.

The results of Nixon’s trip to China were a gradual normalization of the diplomatic relationship between the United States and mainland communist China, and the sudden popularity of Schramsberg sparkling wine.

Haldore Hanson - Inconspicuous Danger

During the years of the Soviet Union, infiltration and the planting of subversives into various positions in the United States government was a standard tactic of the KGB. The list of such moles, when mostly, although not entirely, revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union, was longer than most observers had suspected.

In addition to such plants, however, were those who freely supported the Soviet cause without being directly employed by the Soviet intelligence agencies. These individuals were equally dangerous to the lives and safety of United States citizens.

The tension between liberty and security was highlighted as the United States worked to preserve freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly, even while it worked to protect itself from the Soviet espionage apparatus which aimed to destroy the United States.

An interesting example is offered by Haldore Hanson, a pro-communist author who came to the attention of the United States government in early 1950. Merely writing a book which was favorable to the expansion of communism in Asia was no crime. But there was evidence which suggested, if it did not at first prove, that Hanson was involved in a more direct connection with the Soviet government.

Hanson had lived in Peiping (now known as ‘Peking’ or ‘Beijing’) and had substantial contact with Chinese communist leaders. At this time, the Chinese communists were solidly in league with the Soviet communists. Two historians, L. Brent Bozell and William F. Buckley Jr., report that:

For three years Hanson had taught school and had written as a freelancer, mostly while living in Peiping. The turning point in his career had come in 1937, when Japanese and Chinese troops clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge: he then took a job as war correspondent with the Associated Press. Two years later, at the age of twenty-seven, he published a book called Humane Endeavor.

Hanson’s writing career would include working with Edgar Snow and Helen Foster Snow. The latter used the pseudonym ‘Nym Wales,’ and both were known members of the Communist Party. In addition, Louis Budenz, who had been a well-connected member of the Communist Party, testified to Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut that Haldore Hanson was a member of the Communist Party.

In Hanson’s book, he clearly expressed his pro-communist views, and portrayed the communists sympathetically, while depicting the non-communists as, at best, mediocre. The book also apparently influenced John Service, a State Department employee. Concerning this, M. Stanton Evans writes:

The book was full of plaudits for the Red Chinese similar to those expressed a few years later by John Service, a Hanson friend and sometime roommate. In the 1930s, a united front was in effect between the Reds and Chiang Kai-shek against Japan, and in this context Chiang merited some kind words from Hanson, as well as some that weren’t so kind. However, Hanson showed no similar ambiguity toward the Red Chinese, on whom he showered lavish kudos.

Because he was an United States citizen, Hanson certainly had the right to freely believe, write, and publish whatever he wanted. But being a communist during the Soviet era was not merely a matter of expressing certain political views. Members of the CP took action.

In the early 1950s, to be a member of the Communist Party was not like being a member of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The Communist Party was not merely a subversive organization, it was a clandestine organization, involved in compromising military security, subversively influencing U.S. policy, and even sabotage. It was a direct threat to the lives and safety of United States citizens. To be a member of the Communist Party was to be advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government, the end of American civil and human rights, and destruction of the American physical infrastructure. To be a member of the Communist Party was to advocate, plan, and work toward the deaths of many innocent civilians.

The Communist Party, in the 1950s, was not merely a group which advocated free speech, free thinking, and free debate about policy questions. The Communist Party advocated violence, destruction, and the end of civil rights and of human rights. The Communist Party was organically and directly connected to Moscow and to the Kremlin’s actions, e.g., the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians in an artificially-created famine.

Haldore Hanson was connected to this Communist Party, and in the meantime, Haldore Hanson had obtained a job in the State Department. Hanson’s case contained an added urgency because he was now working within the United States government, where he might gain access to sensitive information and might have input into the thought process of policymakers.

At one point, however, it seemed that suspicions about Hanson might be wrong: in one hearing, Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa questioned Earl Browder about Haldore Hanson. Browder was a former member of the Communist Party, and while a member, had engaged in communications with the KGB and the NKVD. Browder worked with Philip Jaffe, who was an editor of a periodical called Amerasia. Jaffe and his fellow editors were found to be in possession of classified documents from the OSS and other branches of the United States government. Jaffe and Browder had met with a highly-placed Chinese Communist named Tung Pi-Wu (Dong Biwu). Clearly, Browder was well-placed in the networks of the international communist conspiracy, and Senator Hickenlooper wanted to hear what Browder said about Haldore Hanson.

Hickenlooper then questioned Browder about the meeting at Philip Jaffe’s New York home five years before this, attended by Browder and Red Chinese official Tung Pi-wu. When Hickenlooper asked if either John Carter Vincent or John Stewart Service had been at this meeting, Browder refused to answer. Hickenlooper then read a list of names, nine in all, asking if they were known to Browder as CP members. Two of the people on the list were Dorothy Kenyon and Haldore Hanson. In these cases, as in others, Browder said, “I refuse to answer.” This caused great distress to McMahon and Tydings, both of whom implored the witness to reconsider. Appealing to standards of “fairness and truth,” Tydings at last got Browder to say neither Kenyon nor Hanson “had any organized connection to the Communist Party.”

This latter statement seemed, at first, to possibly exonerate Hanson. The 1995 release of information from the the “Venona” project - finally declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union - confirmed Browder’s resume as an important Soviet agent. There was even some evidence that Browder may have had a hand in planning the assassination of Leon Trotsky. So his statement that that Hanson had had no “organized connection to the Communist Party” would seem to carry weight.

But one historian, M. Stanton Evans, noted Browder’s curious qualification in the statement: “organized.”

If Hanson had no “organized” connection to the CP, did he have some other type of connection? It was known that the Soviets sometimes used casual social connections to infiltrate various agencies. Along these lines, M. Stanton Evans writes:

The locution used here by Browder, who was careful in his choice of words, seemed odd, speaking of an “organized connection.” Did this mean there was some other kind of connection on the part of Kenyon or Hanson to the Communist Party? Browder’s way of putting the matter cried out for clarification, but no effort of this nature was made by an inert committee.

Senator Hickenlooper, and the others investigating the matter, failed to follow up on this tantalizing clue.

Informally linked with the Amerasia periodical was the Institute of Pacific Relations, a network of business and academic leaders around the Pacific Rim. IPR had been infiltrated by confirmed Soviet agents, including T.A. Bisson. Two historians, M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein, note that:

Among U.S. officials who at various times served on the board of the IPR were such prestigious mainstream figures as General George C. Marshall and Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells, plus others who were of lesser stature but in their way important. Government staffers who served as IPR trustees included Soviet agents of influence Hiss and Currie and State Department official John Carter Vincent. Meanwhile, Owen Lattimore and Joseph Barnes, both on the IPR payroll in the 1930s, would become government information specialists in the war years. Others connected to the IPR included State Department Far East experts Michael Greenberg and Haldore Hanson and Soviet intelligence asset T.A. Bisson, who like others mentioned shows up in the pages of Venona.

There are many questions about Haldore Hanson. The most relevant one is not whether or not he was a member of the Communist Party, or whether he was an active Soviet agent, but whether the State Department was guilty of negligence for not having discerned him as a security risk.

Perhaps Hanson was neither a CP member nor a Soviet agent. He was, however, beyond all doubt surrounded by, and in constant contact with, both. They could, perhaps even without his knowledge, use him, either to gain information or to steer U.S. policy decisions.

The case of Haldore Hanson reveals a lack of care, and a lack of due diligence, in the hiring processes used by the State Department.

Dorothy Kenyon: an Unexpected Danger

When the Soviet Union’s spy network was active in the United States, the distinction between an active Soviet agent and an unwittingly utilized instrument was not always obvious. Such was the case of Judge Dorothy Kenyon.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, when many of the Venona project’s files were declassified, and the large extent of the KGB network inside the United States became widely known, it is not clear to which extent Judge Kenyon understood that she was being used as a tool of espionage.

Dorothy Kenyon first came to the attention of authorities in early 1950. At that time, it was discovered that she was a member of at least twenty-eight different communist front organizations. These were groups which had been identified, usually by the United States Attorney General or by legislative committees in one of the forty-eight states, as being substantially linked to the Soviet government.

Such organizations served several different purposes. The KGB - and its predecessor, the MGB - could found the group, working under the cover of one or more of its agents in the United States. To the public, these organizations appeared in various guises, never disclosing their links to Moscow.

These groups could then recruit members, some of whom were knowingly and deliberately seeking to harm the safety and security of United States citizens, and others of whom had perhaps no idea that they were being shaped into either intelligence gathering tools or policy-influencing tool of the Soviet Union.

Concerning Dorothy Kenyon, evidence is inconclusive, and will perhaps always be so. It is plausible and probable that she did not consciously enlist her services to weaken the security of the United States. She was more likely a well-intentioned, if naive and idealistic, individual who joined groups which claimed to favor some progressive cause.

How would these organizations have used Judge Kenyon? Most likely, she was not a major source of valuable information. Although well-connected in the government, her branch of the government was not a storehouse of military information, nor was it privy to private discussions of foreign policy.

She was, however, connected in a way which gave her the ability to informally influence policy. Not a source of intelligence, she was capable of nudging the thinking of policymakers and writers on policy topics. The Soviets could school her in ways which led her to favor policies which played into the hands of the Kremlin. These views she would then casually and unwittingly spread through her social circle, which included prominent leaders in government and in the media.

Given her role in government, away from military and foreign policy matters, and given her probable unawareness of the ways in which she was being used, it surprised many when her involvement in so many subversive organizations came to light. One historian, M. Stanton Evans, writes:

The case was that of Dorothy Kenyon, a former New York City judge and State Department appointee to a U.N. commission on the status of women. It seemed a curious selection. Judge Kenyon wasn’t a well-known or high-ranking official, and her connection to the State Department had recently concluded.

The organizations to which Judge Kenyon belonged were not merely interested in free speech and free debate about U.S. policy. These organizations had direct links to the Kremlin, to the KGB, to the MGB, or to other branches of Soviet military intelligence.

The surprise surrounding the revelations about Dorothy Kenyon support the hypothesis that she had not fully understood how she was being exploited. The Soviets valued her well-placed friends, and sought to influence the thinking of those friends through Kenyon’s social contacts. The Soviets would value the ability to steer an influential policymaker’s line of thought or the writing of a media personality.

Kenyon’s connections in the United Nations would also be valuable to the Soviets. Two historians, L. Brent Bozell and William F. Buckley Jr., write:

The name of Dorothy Kenyon was little known to the public - much less in association with Communist activities. Judge Kenyon was a reputable New York City lawyer, had once served as a municipal court judge, and had attracted some attention as a political activist, especially in the advancement of women's causes. She had been hired by the State Department in 1947 to serve as American delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

While there can be no doubt that Judge Kenyon served the Soviet cause, it may never be certain whether she did so knowingly, or whether she was exploited as an unwitting accomplice. In either case, however, her career path from municipal judge to State Department employee simultaneously made her more interesting to the Soviets, but also revealed a lack of discernment on the part of the State Department in creating, not only a security risk, but an actual security breach.

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics

In 2013, The National Association of School Nurses, citing a 2005 study titled “The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: The indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment” published in the Journal of Family Psychology, summarizes the findings of the study’s author, P.E. Davis-Kean, this way:

Children from single‐parent households have an increased risk for dropping out of school, becoming teen parents, and face barriers to success in the workforce. Although many children from single parent homes fare well, others face challenges in their educational, occupational, and social well‐being.

In 2012, according to the Obama administration’s Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 27% of children aged 0 to 17 years live in single-parent households.

The problems identified in 2012 were visible a decade or more earlier. As noted author Ann Coulter writes,

A 2004 New York Times Magazine article on welfare families by Jason DeParle said, "Mounds of social science, from the left and the right, leave little doubt that the children of single-parent families face heightened risks." Calling a single-parent family "a double dose of disadvantage," the Times article cited as "the definitive text" a book by sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur that concluded, back in 1994, "In our opinion, the evidence is quite clear: Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents' race or educational background."

Mounds of statistical evidence show that children raised in a single-parent home are more likely to abuse drugs, end up in jail, have lower educational achievement, have lower adult incomes, have poor health, and have nearly any other measurable demographic disadvantage.

The problem has been repeatedly quantified, by university researchers, and by agencies at the federal and state levels:

Controlling for socioeconomic status, race, and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.

Questions about policy responses to this situation have also been raised many times. One obstacle to any policy action is that such action could have an unintended result of further reducing the nation’s already too-low birth rate. Far from a population explosion, like those seen in some third-world countries, the United States has a birth rate so low that if it drops further, serious economic repercussions would threaten.

But a still larger obstacle also blocks policy action regarding single parenthood: it is a societal phenomenon, not a governmental one, and so the most direct solutions are to be found among the organic institutions of society, not in legislation.

Governments are not free to change the laws of nature, including the law which says that even well-intentioned federal programs, perhaps especially well-intentioned ones, will yield a result in direct opposition to their stated purpose. Thus, any governmental program designed to strengthen families can only, and will inevitably, weaken them.

Society, if unimpeded by governmental regulation, is often capable of self-correction. Legislation, while well intended, is often ham-fisted and triggers unintended consequences - often, consequences which effect precisely those results which are opposite to the intended ones.